How To Plan Your Dream Europe Trip (A 10-Step Guide) 

Last summer, Jordan and I spent our 5 weeks of summer traveling through Europe.  We started in Ireland, where we visited some friends and drank lots of Guinness.  Next, we headed to Scotland, where we learned about the dark history of Edinburgh, took a boat tour of Loch Ness, and took trains through the Scottish Highlands.  From there, we hopped on a plane to Germany, and spent the next 3 weeks exploring Munich, Salzburg, the Swiss Alps, Geneva, Paris, and Bordeaux.  It was the trip of a lifetime, and we loved every minute of it (minus the occasional frustrating moment dealing with French train officials.  Seriously…they were the worst.)

And now for a not so humble brag….I planned the ENTIRE trip without the help of a travel agent, and I’m pretty proud of it! Below you’ll find a summary of the process I went through to plan our trip.  I’m hoping to write some posts more specifically on packing, using a home base strategy, sightseeing, etc, but this is a great place to start!

Without further ado…here is my 10 step guide of how to plan your dream Europe trip!

1. Make a list of all the places you would love to go.

On this part, just dream big.  What places have you dreamed about going to since you were little or since you’ve seen friends’ pictures? Have you always wanted to see the Eiffel Tower or the Swiss Alps or the Scottish Highlands? Put these places, cities or countries on the list.  Don’t worry about money or transportation or details at this point.  At this initial stage, Jordan and I probably had about 25 different cities, countries, and sights on our list that ranged from the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland to cities and countries all across Europe.

Lake Königsee, Germany

2. Sort these places into categories: Must See, Would Be Nice, and If There’s Time.

Make a chart and start to think about which places you absolutely want to see, would love to see, and would enjoy seeing if you have the time and money to do so.  Your Must See places are places you don’t want to leave Europe without seeing.  For us, this was the Alps, the Scottish Highlands, and French wine country.  Your Would Be Nice places are middle of the road.  You’d love to see them and will do everything you can to visit them if possible.  On our list, this was places like Paris, Munich, Salzburg, and various cities in Italy.  Finally, choose which places  could be cool to see, but you wouldn’t be devastated if you missed them.  We had some cities in Belgium, Northern Ireland, and England on this list.

Paris, France

3. Map out a potential route using a Home Base Strategy.

Jordan and I made it a goal to never have a “one-night stand” with cities.  Traveling gets tiring, and one of the best ways to wear yourself out is to be in a different city every night.  Instead, we tried to spend at least 2-3 nights in every city, doing smaller day trips (up to 2-3 hours away) during the day.  Taking a short train or bus ride out of your city to see something nearby is much less stressful than packing up your things, finding your hostel or Airbnb, and then going to explore.  Look at your Must See places list, and explore how you could use these cities as home bases to do shorter day trips to other places on your list.  As you do this, you will likely start to see a potential route unfolding with your Must See places and then smaller days or partial days in your Would Be Nice and If There’s Time places.

Example: When we visited Germany, we stayed at an Airbnb about 10 minutes outside of downtown Munich.  Our four days in Munich looked like this:

• Day 1: Bike tour of Munich in the morning, explore and walk around by ourselves in the afternoon and evening.
• Day 2: Short train ride to Dachau concentration camp outside city, explore the city the rest of the day.
• Day 3: Day trip to Neuschwanstein, Germany’s most famous castle about 2.5 hours away from Munich.
• Day 4: Day trip to Lake Königsee, an emerald alpine lake outside of Berchtesgaden, a Bavarian city that was the stronghold of the Nazi party during WWII.
• Day 5: Pack up and take an early morning train to our next home base, Salzburg, Austria (2 hours away).

By using a home base strategy, we were able to see lots of beautiful things without the stress of finding new lodgings every night.

Lake Königsee, Germany

4. Figure out your transportation plan.

As you start to see a potential route unfolding, look at a map and start to map out what route would make the most sense.  If you’re traveling through Central Europe, trains are often a cheap and easy way to get from city to city.  We used Eurail passes, which are pretty cost-effective if you’re under 26.  Small jumper planes on airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet can be cheap and good ways to travel between cities that are farther apart.  We started in Ireland, took a quick Ryanair plane to Scotland, took trains around Scotland, then flew on Easyjet from Scotland to Germany.  For the rest of our trip we used trains, buses, and our own two feet to get around.

This is usually where you will start to eliminate places on your route.  Travel is expensive and often takes longer than you’d think, so you will have to really look at your list and see if the money and travel time are worth visiting your places.   We cut out Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy entirely because it would have cost too much and the travel time to get there would have used up several full days.  This stinks because I would have LOVED to go to Italy…but for now we’ll just say we’ll go back sometime and give it the time and attention all that delicious spaghetti and wine deserve!

Playing cards on one of our many, MANY train and plane rides

5. Research lodgings and start booking places.

Our travel philosophy is this: sleep cheap so you can eat and experience expensive (okay not that expensive.  But at least so you can spend some money on good food, wine, and experiences!).   We almost never stayed in hotels, instead choosing Airbnb’s and staying with people in their homes or sleeping in bed and breakfasts.  If you’re traveling to really experience a place, you’ll spend very little time in your lodgings, so our strategy is to choose the cheapest ones we can find that are still safe and convenient.  We traveled almost entirely using Airbnb, and we met so many wonderful people through doing that! I’m a huge advocate of Airbnb and we are now hosts ourselves, so please be in touch if you have any questions about it!

Our Airbnb in Paris

6. Research things to do and places to see and start booking them.

Remember your home base strategy? Use this to find fun places within the city and right outside it that you can explore.  Sites like Trip Advisor, Fodor’s Travel Guides, and other travel blogs are great ways to find museums, monuments, restaurants, plazas, and other fun places to visit.  One of the best things we did was start each stay in a city with a bike or free walking tour that first morning.  It helped us get acquainted with the city and gave us a sense of which sites we could just quickly walk by instead of spend hours walking through.  Tours like this sometimes fill up fast, so book ahead if it’s something you really want to do!

Bike Tour in Munich, Germany

7. Look up restaurants, bars, and other local eateries you’d like to visit.

This is the one part of our trip I wish we’d done better.  We called the hour before dinner the “hangry” hour because we got so tired of walking around and looking at restaurants that all started to look the same and cost a lot of money.  If you have a few restaurants you know you want to visit, you can work with those and fill in the blanks with places locals recommend, convenient places, or street food.  For some meals, I recommend eating sandwiches, salads, or snacks from local grocery stores to save some money.  We tried to always have a bag of snacks with us from a local store to stop us from buying expensive snacks every few hours between meals!

Biergarten in Munich, Germany (where the beer is served by the liter!)

8. Make your packing list and start ordering/buying everything you’ll need.

I could write a whole post detailing our packing list and how important it is to pack light.  We traveled for 5 weeks with nothing but a small backpack and never once felt like we were missing anything we needed.  The key? Packing cubes.  These things are magical, people.  I swear, they will DOUBLE what you can fit in your backpack, and they keep you organized when you don’t have time to constantly pack and unpack.  We used one big and two small packing cubes per backpack and that was the perfect amount of space. Check out my post about how to use packing cubes for my details!

Everything I packed in one small backpack!

9. Get in touch with your cell phone company and other utilities to make sure everything is good to go.

Make sure to alert your bank, cell provider, and other utilities or companies that you’ll be leaving.  Especially make sure to be in touch with your bank and have all of your international alerts set up so they don’t freeze your accounts while you’re gone.  Utilities and rent are important too.  I thought I’d set up automatic payment for our water bill on our apartment, only to come home and find some very threatening disconnect notices.  Whoops! Handle these things before you go so you don’t have to worry about them while you’re traveling.

Cliffs of Moher, Ireland

10. Hop on a plane and get going!

You can only plan so much before you have to just hop on a plane and start exploring!   Don’t get me wrong, I am as Type A as they come and had a very detailed itinerary with dates, phone numbers, addresses, etc printed out for our entire trip.  However, I still knew that things would change and we might be spontaneous and change the plan at times!  Forgetting things, missing planes, and other travel mishaps are what make it fun and exciting.  When things went “wrong” on a trip, my mom always used to say “It’s not a vacation, it’s an adventure!” With that mindset, you can face whatever ridiculous things happen on your trip as part of the adventure.

Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness, Scotland

One last thing…

Ultimately, this trip is YOURS.  People will give you all sorts of advice about how to travel and what to see, but when it comes down to it, YOU are the one on the trip.  Jordan and I are not big art people, and aside from an hour in the Louvre, we did not go to a single art museum our entire 5 week trip.  Blasphemy, I know.  But we don’t love art, and didn’t want to spend time our time and money doing what we thought we SHOULD do instead of what we wanted to do.  This is your dream trip, so do the things you’ve always dreamed of! As the great Tswift says…the haterz gonna hate, so just shake it off and keep on exploring.

Celebrating Germany’s World Cup win on the streets of Munich!

Happy travels!

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