I’m so excited to take our big Europe trip this summer! Growing up, my family always took a big family vacation each year which was a highlight for me. I love international travel so much and have continued traveling each year with family, friends or on my own. But last year was the first in a long time when I didn’t take any big trips and didn’t leave the country- and I was NOT happy about that. So I knew for sure that 2014 needed to have some major travel involved.
I started researching options in September of last year and can’t believe we’re finally only 3 months away! For all of you who have asked, here is our itinerary for our trip. Yes, I know it’s a lot. Yes, we’re only going for 2 1/2 weeks. Yes, we’re going to be tired and busy. But our thought is that this is our time to explore all over Europe on an intense backpacking trip and later on we can go back and spend longer amounts of time in specific countries that we enjoyed. So far flights and train tickets have been bought and we’re working on the other details still. I’ll be posting our budget and spending on here as time goes along to everyone can see what we used and how we afford it. If you’d like a preview into our travel $ saving strategy, click here. And then you can take a look at the credit cards that I use as well.
| Day | Country | Location |
| Day 1 | US to UK | Fly Chicago to London |
| Day 2 | UK | London |
| Day 3 | UK to France | Travel London to Paris via Chunnel. Tour Paris |
| Day 4 | France to Belgium | Tour Paris; travel to Bruges |
| Day 5 | Belgium to Luxemborg | Tour Bruges; travel to Luxemborg |
| Day 6 | Luxemborg to Germany | Travel Luxemborg to Munich |
| Day 7 | Germany | Tour Fuessen |
| Day 8 | Germany to Czech Republic | Travel to Prague |
| Day 9 | Czech Republic to Austria | Tour Prague, Travel to Vienna |
| Day 10 | Austria to Hungary | Tour Vienna, travel to Budapest |
| Day 11 | Hungary to Austria | Tour Budapest, Travel to Salzburg |
| Day 12 | Austria to Slovenia | Tour Salzburg, travel to Slovenia |
| Day 13 | Slovenia to Italy | Tour Bled, Travel overnight to Venice |
| Day 14 | Italy | Tour Venice, , travel to/tour Pisa |
| Day 15 | Italy | Travel Pisa to Monterosso, Hike Cinque Terre, travel to Florence |
| Day 16 | Italy | Tour Florence, travel to Rome |
| Day 17 | Italy | Tour Rome |
| Day 18 | Italy to Spain | Fly to Barcelona/tour Barcelona/Fly to Dublin |
| Day 19 | Fly to U.S. | Fly Dublin to Chicago, drive to Lincoln |
We’re planning to do a lot of couchsurfing along the way, more on that to come. If anyone knows of friends or family along our route who would be willing to open their homes for a night, we’d love to chat and see if we could stay with them! Also, if you have any recommendations of sites to see along our route, please let me know! I’m still doing lots of research on this and am totally open to feedback and opinions!
Fire Round the World 
Hi Kelly!
I absolutely love your itinerary – everything looks so interesting. So happy you get to explore Europe.
I recently returned from a quick trip to Italy; the Cinque Terre region specifically. It’s absolutely wonderful – you will LOVE it. Below is the link to a company that I arranged a cooking class and wine tasting with. I would definitely recommend either one of them (sounds like you’ll be there just a short amount of time). There is nothing better than real Italian food and wine, so learning how to make their dishes and about the local growers was a great experience for us. I did a lot of research in terms of location, pricing, and the company in general and this is hands down everything we expected and more. I hope you get the chance to take advantage of their excursions. I also rented a room in Vernazza – I found it was the best place to stay in Cinque Terre!
http://www.arbaspaa.com/
I can’t wait to see lots of pictures of your travels. I’m doing a tour of Eastern Europe in the fall so we will have to catch up and compare notes so I know all of the good spots to hit! I love your blog and I hope all is well! 🙂
Casey B.
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Thanks Casey! Cinque Terre is what I’m looking forward to most in Italy. So I’m glad you give it rave reviews as well! We’re doing a cooking class in Florence actually, so I’m happy to hear you thought that was fun too. Our cooking class is booked with our rewards points so we can get it for free, so we probably aren’t doing the same one as you but I’m going to check out your link for any other ideas too!
I’ll be posting stuff on our trip, so maybe you’ll find some highlights for Eastern Europe. Turkey is top of my list for future travels so if you go through there, I want to hear about it!
Kelly
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