Getting Around Western Europe

[welsh]

Hello!

I'm planning on travelling around western Europe, however I am not sure of the best way to get around. Here are the places I want to visit:

Paris
Nantes
Bordeaux
Amsterdam
Utrecht
Berlin
Brussels
Barcelona
Monaco
Rome

I will be travelling from London to Paris, but then I am not sure what the best route to take would be, although I suppose I could take a plane to Amsterdam and work my way from there.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Esterina]

Hi welsh ! How many weeks will you have ? Are you flying back home from London ?

The cities you want to visit aren't working so well in an "ideal" itinerary. For instance, if you only have two weekish trip, better focus on one area such as France+Northern Italy+Spain or France+Belgium+Netherlands+Germany.

Here, we tend to advise travellers to spend a minimum of 3 days in large cities, that should give you an idea of how many places you can visit within the time frame you have.

[marc873]

Yeah, a time frame is def needed to properly answer this question... The railway system in Northern EU is top notch, so thats the easy part!! Now for the timeline and piecing the trip together!

[aliz]

I'd go with trains for most of those connections. But for longer stretches (like brussels-barcelona and barcelona-monaco) you could look into flying, european flights can be ridiculously cheap! I've always liked easyjet, so maybe check out whether they fly into those cities. and yes, what kind of timeframe are you looking at?

[welsh]

Hi, thanks for the replies!

I'm looking at a timeframe of 4-5 weeks, and a budget of £1500 if possible.

[MeTurk]

Most those countries have high speed trains so your best off going with the train. You won't save any time using planes with all the security, checking in and out and then geting to and from the airport, the train is much more straight forward and in allot of cases drops you off right in the middle of the city your going to.

Unless your going across a body of water or more than 1000klm the train is the way to go in Europe, every effort is made in most EU countries to make the train the best way to travel.

EDIT: One thing to keep in mind however is that the train is probably going to be the most expensive way to travel. If it's a short journey go with Buses, there's a bus going everywhere in Europe the networks extensive and cheap. Planes are very cheap but a hassle.