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[wildflowerssss]

Sooo, i've bought my plane ticket already to fly from NY to Paris. I'm meeting my friend there who's been studying abroad and now has May 28th-June 20th to travel. She's currently preoccupied on spring break in Spain so it's been hard for me to make plans with her. As of now I just know some cities she's interested in seeing. What I'm trying to figure out is what the best route is and which cities are the most worthwhile in going to. Also, trying to think of how long I should be in each for and time factored in for traveling. Basically I have no idea what I'm doing. I've never done this before and am just really confused. We're planning on taking trains, considering buying the Eurail Pass for 3 weeks, but am also wondering if we need to.
I know that we want to spend at least a week of our time island hopping in Greece, but even there I'm lost trying to figure out which ones are the best and the most efficient way of going about so. I guess I just need some advice from someone who's done this.

oh, and cities on her list were Berlin, possibly Amsterdam, Prague, Vienna, Krakow, and if Italy fits in at all. Then just going from Athens to whichever islands.

Hopefully this isn't too vague/too much to handle and someone will be interested in trying to give me some feedback.

[raniroo]

that is going to be some whirlwind europe trip....you want get to many days in each spot....

The greek islands are really easy to travel between, ferrys leave every days and are really cheap...I travelled the cyclades islands (mykanos, Paros, Ios etc) and you could do a 2-3 in a week (with a couple of days at each).

[starlagurl]

So you will spend a week in Greece... OK... that's probably a good idea.

But I would not advise spreading the rest of your two weeks out so thinly.

So, I kind of jigged around the Google maps to see what your itinerary might look like IF you included every city.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source...ie=UTF8&z=5

I know you're not driving but I think this is a good tool to visualize it.

I don't think you can do all that in three weeks. You'd be spending 2 days or less in each place, it would be pretty hectic.

P.S. not sure the link is working! Arg!

[jeremystravels]

oh, and cities on her list were Berlin, possibly Amsterdam, Prague, Vienna, Krakow, and if Italy fits in at all. Then just going from Athens to whichever islands.

You might be able to do a trip from Paris to Amsterdam to Berlin to Prague to Vienna, then do Greece. But that would only give you 3 days in each city with transportation if you wanted to do a week in Greece assuming you want to spend time in Paris too.

Assuming you wanted to hit two of the big three cities in Italy [Florence, Venice, Rome] that would put you at 8 cities already. You would only get to do them all if you did 1 day touring, 1 day traveling, and even then you'd be cutting it close.

I recommend cutting either Greece or Italy off, and Krakow should be looked at too since it is quite far from any other cities.

[durnadupa]

I too recommend taking Krakow off of your list, it is all the way in eastern Poland which would take a solid 12 or more hours from Berlin. If you still want to hit a city in Poland I can recommend Szczecin or Wroclaw. Szczecin is easily acessible via a one hour bus ride from Berlin, and Wroclaw is kind of in between Berlin and Prague.

Hope that helps.