BootsnAll Travel Community

Hello to all u wonderful travelers again! I have had a great deal of change since my last post about traveling in Europe for 2 months. I have subsequently came up with a firm time and action plan, however, I am unsure whether there is too much packed into this amount of time and would greatly appreciate some feedback from anyone that has completed a similar amount of time or number of countries driving.

Trip is as follows:

In April of 2009 I will arrive in wee Paris...I will then be hiring a car and traveling a loop down the West coast and into Spain, arriving at Barcelona. I will then continue on to Italy via south coast of France and drive down as far as Rome. From there I hope 2 cross the Adriatic via ferry and arrive in Croatia to do some diving. Pretty much want to drive straight through Slovenia and into Austria then Czech Rep, Poland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and back to France....Whew!!

Countries I'm willing to sacrifice time in are: Austria, Czech Rep, and Belgium (Could pretty much drive straight through).
I would like to spend at least a week in France and Italy. I'm estimating maybe 1 or 1.5 weeks traveling time in car...so I figure that I could have about 5 days in all remaining countries... does this sound reasonable? I mean I want to see alot but I do not want to fall into the trap that I have read about so intimately on these forums and spend all my time looking through a window at passing scenery!

Other things to consider. My wife will be sharing the driving. We are camping for the most part. We hope to work overseas for the remainder of the year at least, so other countries could be visited later I suppose. There is also the option of dumping the car and flying internationally if we get short for time....

Thank you to whoever takes time to read this long winded inquiry, but I want to be well informed and suckle at the wisdom of those who have gone before!!

Peace to all Newby

quote:

...arriving at Barcelona. I will then continue on to Italy via south coast of France and drive down as far as Rome.

I doubt whether that's possible. Have you investigated it? Renting a car in one country and returning in another wouldn be difficult, if ever possible, I'm affraid. Or, do you intend to do the whole journey by car, and return to the place where you rented it?
On the other hand, public transport, trains and busses, can be used everywhere. It's a comfortable way of travelling in Europe You can use a car locally, to explore country side, small towns and villages.
As for the amount of time in each country, I agree that you should spend more times in the bigger countries (France, Italy, Germany and Pooand), and less in Czech Rep, Belgium, Holland.

Why are you renting a car? One of the best things about traveling in Europe is that you don't *need* a car. You can take reasonably priced trains and public transport everywhere you want to go.

This sounds like it's going to be *insanely* expensive and you will spend a lot of time looking at scenery out the window - except you won't even be able to do that since you have to concentrate on the road and on following directions. Why not forget the car and train from place to place and when you get somewhere, if you want to explore more in depth, you can rent a car there for a few days.

As to how many places you're thinking about seeing, I think it's too much. In many of those places, you're probably not going to want to drive at night which means you're going to spend entire days just driving and sleeping. And I don't know how familiar you are with long-distance driving, but it can be exhausting. You'll need time to recover from that whereas on trains you can just sleep and wake up refreshed and ready to go.

I did some calcs, and I think you're underestimating how much time you're going to spend in transit. Remember, you're passing through some very mountainous areas and you'll be going slowly. And don't forget to add on recovery time at the end of each trip. Personally, for any leg over 10 hours, I'd probably allot a full 24 hours in the travel budget because of recovery time and sleep.

I also ran some numbers and figured that doing it this way will probably be at least twice as expensive as taking the train. And have you looked into all the issues involved with taking a car across borders? You need to look at the rental contract because there's a chance that you can't bring your rental car into some of those countries. And make sure you look at border crossing fees and driving permits. I know some countries require that you buy a pass in order to drive on certain kinds of roads. And don't forget about parking fees in any major city. They can be really high.

I dunno, this all just seems needlessly complicated to me. I can understand the idea of having a car so you can get off the beaten path, but trains go to most places you would want to visit and you can do day/weekend rentals if you really want to get away from it all.

Whatever you decide, good luck!

Hello again,

Thank you for your replies Vagabondette and Moniak. I think that I may have to seriously consider the length of Journey and places to visit (bring on the Country cull). I regards to driving, No offense intended with this, but I only need help from people who have traveled by car as this is our choice for mode of transport. We have weighed up the pros and cons alot and have chatted with many people who have driven through Europe. It is much more congruent with what we want from our experience. So if anyone who has some constructive information with regards to this then I would really appreciate it.

Hi Newbie!
I say "Go for it!"
I think you will have no problem with the time, since distances in Europe are not very long. For example, in September, me and my wife took the car and made the following trip in 4 days. Sofia (Bulgaria) - Vien - Prague - Budapest - Sofia (with 2 days in Prague and 2 days in Budapest). But I was the only driver and didn't have any problems driving and then going round the cities.
And since you have 2 months - your only problem should be where to spend more time. It all depends on your plan.
Wishing you luck! And have a nice trip.
Marin

If you are taking a car don't miss the driving across the Mittau bridge in France. But then you probably knew that already.