First time in Europe, Beginning to plan trip.

[le_diagon]

Hello everyone! My cousin and I are planning to go to Europe next summer, I guess I'm kind of starting early with the planing, but I'm really excited, so I thought I'd get a head start :) I just had a few general questions:

Comments

[wishingforrain]

When I took a trip to London-Paris-Rome in 2007, I found it easier to fly between the countries. It was a lot cheaper than train tickets.

Now, I live in Amsterdam and I've seen some really cheap deals on train tickets from here to Paris and Belgium!

So you're really just going to have to keep looking into your options because you might it might be cheaper to fly to one country but train is cheaper to another. Good luck and if you have any questions about Amsterdam, I don't mind answering them. :)

[skidspoppe]

How old are you? If you're under 26 getting a eurail pass is the best way to go. You can get various plans, but I would certainly look into it. Also, if you get night trains, you can sleep on them and wake up in your destination.

[thesilverymoon]

-before settling on a finite $5000, budget it out. Figure how much you will spend on travel, housing, food, etc. Set a per diem budget (including how much you're willing to spend on hostels) and go from there. Personally, I think $5000 would be feasible, but cutting it a bit close

[monkeedreamer]

You are correct. There is North Holland and South Holland, which are in the Northwest region of the Netherlands. And it irritates me to no end when people very wrongly call the entire country "Holland," and I'm not even Dutch (my husband is, but he's too polite to ever even correct anyone unless they ask about it!)! lol.

I also agree with pretty much everything you said. Countries are close, but they're still countries. They still take at least a few hours to cross - by vehicle, not foot!! I don't really care for the cheapo airlines like RyanAir though, they stick in all sorts of hidden fees and their service & treatment of people is wretched. I prefer either train or regular flights (locating the best deal, of course). Buses are good for within-city traveling, but not very comfortable for extended travel; personal preference there, though.

Flight, accommodations, and food will cost min of 3k, figuring the very very cheapest possible (which isn't always possible), then there's still traveling between cities/countries, museums etc,

[aviation_]

I call it the Netherlands, but I've found that a lot of Dutch people don't particularly care and many say Holland themselves. When I have met Dutch people abroad, many say "I'm from Holland."

I live in the United States of America, but a lot of people just call it America, which isn't at all accurate, as America is actually all of North and South America. Mostly, I don't care.

[monkeedreamer]

Dutch folks tend to be pretty easy-going, and most everyone wrongly calls the whole place "Holland," so they tend to just appease people. Plus, my husband is from Holland, North Holland to be exact. Lots of people can correctly tell others "I'm from Holland" and be speaking completely accurately. If you ask any of them, they will gladly tell you that Holland is a region, though, not the country.

I'm American. I do not call it "America," since that is not the proper name. Although referring to both North and South is "the Americas," plural, as it is two continents. It seems quite popular for Europeans to refer to the US as "America" though, potentially because its inhabitants are "Americans," I don't really know. But I rarely hear Europeans refer to it as anything other than "America." However, I did not frequently hear people there saying it, most people call it "the US" or "the States" or "the United States." *shrugs*

[pocochina]

I'd recommend getting a round-trip to and from London, and then booking as far in advance as possible an Easyjet ticket from your last destination back to London. You might do best with a Eurail pass - you can design one that's just for the area you want to visit and then just pay for your Eurostar (London-Paris) and back to London tickets separately. That's a little more expensive than the bus, but at least your transportation costs will be covered before you leave, so you'll know exactly how much spending and accommodations money you have. (It also looks like you can get a great deal as a group of 2 on the Eurail.)

[kali_kali]

I never got a train pass. Didn't see the point. Figure out where you're going, and then check what point-to-point tickets cost. They could very easily be cheaper than the pass. Plus sometimes buses or planes might work better. And sometimes there are strikes on any given type of transport in a country, so if you want to get to your next destination, you may need to change to a different type of transportation.

As to walking - well, you *could*. It will just take you awhile, it might be hard to find places to stay along the way, and no way could you walk from London to Copenhagen via Paris in two months if you want to do sightseeing along the way. I mean, I walked across most of northern Spain, but it took five weeks and I didn't have the energy for much tourism at the end of a long day of walking.