In June 2019, I took my wife and parents on a two-week trip across western Europe by train. I had just graduated from business school and had a couple of months until starting the big boy job. I had to make sure to capitalize on this opportunity! In a few weeks I would be counting precious vacation days again.
Making the most of this two-week window in Europe was really important to me. With that in mind, we wanted to see as much as we could while we were there. We stayed in five cities across three countries to make that happen.
This article will walk through a 13-day itinerary of western Europe. We saw classic tourist locations, ate at some fantastic local restaurants and had a great time as a family.
From the Anne Frank house to the Louvre, we did the classic European tourist adventure. We got passport stamps for the Netherlands, France and Italy (and pretend ones for The Vatican). For transportation, we took two planes and four trains (including an overnight car) to get around. We saw a ton, ate a ton, and had a ton of fun (bars).
I’ll foreshadow that there were also some horror stories on this trip that taught me some tough lessons. Travel isn’t all smooth sailing. Lots of things can go against the plan, and being humble and learning from the experience is one of the things that makes traveling so impactful.
I created The Meticulous Traveler to help travelers learn from mistakes I’ve made. So I’ll keep my promise and share stories that are funny now (I guess), but sure as hell weren’t then.
THE PLANNING
My wife Sunshine and I have been big into booking trips on Groupon Getaways lately. However, we didn’t go that route with our two-week European itinerary. Rather than save on a pre-destined activity list, we wanted to make this trip entirely our own. Additionally, members of my family had specific requests and addressing all of them would have been difficult with a Groupon.
- My wife, Sunshine, had to see Venice (and eat pasta but that we could’ve done anywhere)
- Dad wanted to take trains and drink wine
- Mom wanted to see Cinque Terre
- And the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam
- And the Louvre in Paris
- Plus the Roman Forum in…. Rome
- If you ever see my mom, remind her of all these things I accommodated for her.
- All I wanted was for everyone to have a great time because I’m a great husband and son 😉
These were all doable things with our timeline. But, I wasn’t going to find a vacation package with all of these boxes checked. I had to flex my travel planning muscles that were a little out of shape from Grouponing so much. It was time to break out the pencil and paper and start mapping out what this might look like.
THE FLIGHT
I had a two-week window to try to squeeze in this entire request list. I had been tracking several round-trip flights on Google Flights for a few months prior to our departure. But, I wasn’t seeing great deals in any of the big cities we’d be visiting. MSP is a Delta hub with frequent round trips to Amsterdam and Paris, so I was surprised I wasn’t seeing anything I loved.
I switched up my strategy and started looking for open-jaw flight itineraries. For those unfamiliar, this means that our departure airport would be the same (MSP), but we’d fly to city A, but then fly back home from city B.
There were a limited number of possible combinations. We wanted to visit Amsterdam, Paris, and various cities in Italy. It made sense to look for flights that allowed us to go north-to-south and vice versa.
This flight purchase story is outlined in another post: Airline Partnerships: What you Need to Know. Head over there to read the flight details for this trip!
We ended up buying an itinerary of MSP airport to Amsterdam and returning Venice to MSP. We booked through British Airways, departing on a Finnair flight to Amsterdam, returning on an American Airlines flight from Venice.
That sounds ridiculous but it will make sense if you read the airline partnerships post.
Or, it will make sense to those who know the inner-workings of airline partnerships and the arbitrage that can be won by navigating that dysfunctional system.
These flights cost us ~$950 USD per person. That’s a bit more than I’d like to pay for a European round-trip flight from the US. However, the flexibility of that open-jaw made the premium price worth it. This plan prevented us from having to fly back to our first European city before heading home, so I accepted it. No reason to take an extra flight if we didn’t need to!
PLANNING: THE TRAINS
After I booked our flights, my focus turned to intra-European transportation. And yes, I had to Google to make sure “intra” was the right word, lay off me.
In its simplest form, I had to find the best way for us to get from Amsterdam to Venice in 13 days. This could have easily included flights but we preferred trains. For whatever reason, I find trains much more relaxing, if they’re available. Train stations are less stressful than airports, there’s more space for you to stretch in your seat, and the travel is smoother. Trains, in my experience, are also more reliable regarding on-time departures. Down to the minute, you can feel confident that you’ll depart and leave when you planned. As a meticulous traveler (smirk & wink), that is invaluable.
Ok, on to actual train ticket booking. In my preparation research, I stumbled across one of my now favorite travel blogs/resources. I used advice from The Man in Seat 61 to book every train we took. The owner of the blog, Mark, is an authority on train travel. It’s all he writes about! His advice was super helpful for finding the best way for us to get from Amsterdam to Venice, but see everything we wanted in between.
There is a very useful element of his site where you can say what your origin and destination cities are, and it tells you the best way to make it happen by train. Using this functionality, we booked our entire set of tickets:
- Amsterdam to Paris
- Paris to Rome, in an overnight car
- Rome to La Spezia (just outside Cinque Terre)
- La Spezia to Venice
We did book tickets on the actual company sites, but he helps you with links. To add a cherry on top, he gives tips on the best way to save money and get rebates on your tickets, in ways that I would have never known without his guidance. Definite travel man-crush brewing for The Man in Seat 61!
PLANNING: BOOKINGS & ACTIVITIES
With transportation finalized, my attention turned to tackling that bulleted list of family needs. This was a big to-do list for just two weeks across three countries. Hitting each item and not feeling stressed or rushed was a tough, but important challenge to overcome.
I was lucky that this trip featured heavily-toured areas. What I mean is, the cities we visited were some of the most popular global cities for tourists. Because of that, there was a ton of information and tips online to help the planning.
I had heard a lot about tourist-friendly offerings like The Paris Pass for exploring Europe efficiently. For those unfamiliar, many popular tourist cities have passes that allow you to visit either unlimited or a number of attractions in a specific number of days.
Using the Paris Pass as an example, you can buy 2, 3, 4 or 6 day passes. Passes include a transportation card for the subway as well as entry into the most popular museums in the city. Once you buy, you write down the date as you enter your first attraction, then your pass is good through the purchased end date.
After several hours of reading and research about these tourist passes, I learned you can buy them in-country when you arrive. This made the planning of activities much smoother for this trip. I had a list of tourist passes we wanted to purchase, but we didn’t have to think too far ahead. At most, I just thought about when and where we’d need to purchase them, e.g. the Paris Pass when we arrived at the Paris train station after arriving from Amsterdam.
In addition to tourist passes, my dad brought his collection of Rick Steves pocket guidebooks. These were valuable resources for our trip, despite my saltiness at our group holding a stack of travel books looking like the clueless tourists we were.
The thing I liked most about bringing the Steves books along with us was the walking tours. Things like the Paris Pass grant you entry to museums, but each of the Steves books had tips for how to navigate each museum. Having a navigator for a museum as big as the Louvre was a godsend, especially for someone that loves travel efficiency as much as I do. He recommends what to skip, makes sure you see all the main attractions, and provides a nice explanation of the history of everything.
ACTUAL IN-COUNTRY TRAVEL: TWO WEEKS IN EUROPE BY TRAIN
Travel planning is, of course, a passion of mine, but enough is enough! Time to jump into what we did at each stop along our European journey. I won’t jump into the really specific details of each item, but rather list out all that we saw and some of the notable takeaways I gathered that might help you as you plan a European trip.
FIRST STOP: AMSTERDAM
Amsterdam was probably my personal favorite stop on the trip. And that’s coming from someone who doesn’t drink, doesn’t frequent red-light districts, nor has ever smoked marijuana in his life. There is much more charm and atmosphere to this city than the presumptive attractions.
The weather in particular was what got me. I don’t do great with heat, being a lifelong Minnesotan. Anything above 75F starts to get a bit concerning. Amsterdam had mild weather with cool breezes, which made it really enjoyable for me.
The mild weather combined with the easy-going people, relaxed street atmosphere (50+% of traffic in Amsterdam is bicycles) and great food made this a very memorable stop.
Where I stayed: Hotel Mosaic Amsterdam, 214 euros/night in total for the four of us
Best thing I ate: Rijsttafel at Kartika Amsterdam near the hotel or pickled herring at the Foodhallen
Activities I recommend: wandering around Vondelpark, seeing Rembrandts at the Rijksmuseum, eating herring at the Foodhallen, Anne Frank Huis
Meticulous tip: Buy your tickets to the Anne Frank house way before you get to Amsterdam. We got lucky because the museum holds a small percentage of tickets for same-day buyers. We woke up early the day we wanted to visit and I mashed the refresh button on my browser like I was buying concert tickets. Luckily we got in but were initially nervous about not being able to see Anne Frank’s house and moving history.
LEG 2: PARIS
The impetus behind this whole trip was to see the USA women’s national soccer team play Chile in Paris. That was a great reason to visit Europe, although it was really just an excuse to make this vacation happen!
We spent four nights in Paris. We visited all the classic Parisian sites; The Louvre, Notre Dame (although we couldn’t go in since it recently had caught fire), Musee d’Orsay, and Sacre Coeur.
How we got there: SNCB international train from Amsterdam for 42 euros
Where we stayed: Airbnb in the Bastille neighborhood, story about that coming up
Best thing I ate: classic French cuisine (duck confit, escargot) at Le Bouillon Chartier. It’s way cheaper than you’d guess, you just have to be willing to wait in line!
Activities I recommend: Day trip to Versaille, stained glass at Sainte-Chapelle church
Meticulous tip: Consider the Paris Museum Pass rather than the Paris Pass, which we did. We didn’t think the transportation vouchers justified the higher cost of the Paris Pass. We were happy to buy our own subway tickets. Use the pass to jump the lines, especially at Versaille. Finally, buy your passes at the train station right when you arrive so you don’t have to worry about it later!
PARIS HORROR STORY / LESSON
In Paris, I made a very rookie travel mistake, in hindsight. See, even the experienced travelers among us can have our ignorant moments! Or rather, our humbling learning moments.
On our last day in Paris, we had a timing dilemma. We were supposed to check out of the Airbnb at 10:00 AM, but our train didn’t depart for Rome until later that evening. I knew that hotels often store luggage for patrons even after they check out, so I thought I’d ask the host if she would allow us to leave our bags for the day.
Our host was understanding and said it would be fine, and we could pick our bags up before heading to the train station. I was excited, now we could see a few other sights in Paris before we head off to Italy. We spent the morning and early afternoon at Sainte-Chappelle and Sacre-Coeur.
After Sacre-Coeur, we were hot and tired (there’s a super long staircase to get to it). I suggested we head back to the Airbnb for showers and to change and relax for a few hours before going to the train station. My own family questioned this and thought we weren’t allowed to do this since we hadn’t paid for the day. I disregarded the worry and said I spoke with the host so we were all good. MISTAKE.
While relaxing back in the room, a cleaning lady came in and was shocked to see us. She didn’t speak any English so I couldn’t explain to her that we could leave right now so she could clean. She left in a hurry without doing her work.
A few minutes later I got a series of irate messages from the Airbnb host. She was furious that we were still in the apartment so her cleaning lady couldn’t prepare for the next guests. I read words anyone would love to hear about themselves: “inconsiderate”, “how could you”, etc.
After an hour of attempting to resolve the situation, I told the host we’d pay for this extra day to make up for my misinterpretation of what was meant by the extension we had agreed to. The host meant we could leave bags but we could not be there. I falsely interpreted our conversation to mean that it was no big deal for us to use the apartment for several more hours.
In hindsight, my interpretation made no sense and I felt (read: feel) really stupid. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach all day afterward and felt like an irresponsible traveler.
This just goes to show that no one is ever a master of travel. People make mistakes and uncomfortable moments happen! I’m glad we were able to make up for it by offering an additional day’s fee. The host appreciated the gesture and ended up giving me a positive review on Airbnb, but I would have preferred to avoid that scenario altogether. Lesson learned!
LEG 3: ROME
After the Paris Airbnb debacle, as it was dubbed for the remainder of the trip, we sulked to the train station to head to Rome. The debacle put a bit of damper on the excitement of heading to Italy, but my family promised ourselves to not let it affect the rest of the trip. Good to have moral support, since I was feeling personally responsible for what happened.
How we got there: Overnight train on Thello Rail, 132 euros/person
Where we stayed: Hotel Lodi, very nice and helpful front desk staff (but no A/C, be ready for that), 92 euros/night in total for the four of us
Best thing I ate: gelato at the famous Giolitti shop
Activities I recommend: Rick Steves walking tour of Rome, Sistine Chapel
Meticulous tip: Pay extra for a skip-the-line tour for the Colosseum, but ESPECIALLY do it for the Vatican. On a hot day in Rome, you don’t want to get roasted in Saint Peter’s Square waiting in line. Even with skip-the-line, you’ll be waiting in various lines, so pay to minimize it. We legitimately felt like cattle being led to slaughter going through the papal galleries towards the Sistine Chapel. Shoulder-to-shoulder walking with sweaty people from all over the world, what a joy! Wasn’t feeling very Christian in the holy city, I’ll tell ya that.
I won’t lie to you, Rome was my least favorite stop of our trip. I can deal with dense crowds and hot weather individually. When you put them together, I’m out.
My two least favorite things in one picture: hot weather, and everyone.
It was great to get pictures of classics like the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Vatican City and Trevi Fountain. However, I found it to be a slog for me mentally to navigate the crowds there in mid-June. Maybe someday I’ll go back and try again in a different season, but I have to be honest about my jadedness to it.
LEG 4: CINQUE TERRE
I wrote an entire post about how to see Cinque Terre in a day, so I won’t belabor the point here. Read that post to learn about our strategy for seeing all five towns of the Cinque Terre in a rapid-fire pace! Quick summary, though:
How we got there: ItaliaRail, 24 euros/person
Where we stayed: Airbnb in La Spezia, a town near Cinque Terre with easy access by frequent trains
Best thing I ate: Marinated, fresh anchovies in Monterosso al Mare
Activities I recommend: walking around aimlessly, eating pesto
Meticulous tip: Mindfully plan how you’re going to get between the five towns. There are walks between but they range from super easy to very intense. Consider using the trains as your main transportation, and maybe a boat once for a different vantage.
LEG 5: VENICE
After an unforgettable experience in Cinque Terre (thanks, Mom. Also, you’re welcome, Mom), we set off for our final stop, Venice. This was a personal request of my wife, Sunshine, but I was excited to see it as well. I’ve seen The Italian Job and Inferno, I knew what I was in for.
How we got there: ItaliaRail, 52 euros/person
Where we stayed: Art Apartments Venice, kind of an Airbnb model but definitely a hotel company, 196 euros/night in total for the four of us
Best thing I ate: Tuna strozzapreti at Osteria Oliva Nera
Activities I recommend: Strolling around St. Mark’s Square (including paying to go up into the bell tower), a gondola ride if you need the classic Italian photo
Meticulous tip: Cannot overstate this, book dinner reservations far in advance for Venice. There are a lot of great restaurants here, but you’re basically on an island. The best ones book up FAST. Our first dinner restaurant was our fourth choice that night because of a lack of foresight. Don’t be a me, make a rezzie early.
VENICE HORROR STORY / LESSON
Yep, another one (DJ Khaled voice). On the morning we were supposed to depart for home, I was informed via email that our flight was delayed several hours. We only had a three-hour layover in Chicago before the final segment to MSP, so this was a big problem. It meant a night in Chicago. Psychologically, if you were coming home from a European trip, would you want to spend a night in an American city when you just wanted to be home?
The mistake I made was panicking and rushing to find an alternate flight. I kept refreshing browser pages and looking for anything. American Airlines was allowing us to choose our replacement or accept the delay, so I was frantically looking for a replacement.
I should have just left it alone and eaten the delay. In my hyped-up state, I thought I had found the perfect solution: another flight that left at the exact same time. Amazing!
But, since I wasn’t cool-headed and paying attention to details as a meticulous traveler should, I didn’t double-check all the info. The reason I found a flight at the same time was that it was for the next day.
So, I had just reacted to a six-hour delay by making it 24 hours instead. It should be noted that we had nowhere to stay in Venice for that night. Trying to help us in a panic, I had hurt our plans even more.
We decided to try to get to the Venice airport as soon as we could to plead our case to a gate agent to put us back on the original delayed flight. I can say that was the most stressful (albeit only) water-taxi journey I’ve ever taken.
Luckily, we got paired with a generous and understanding American Airlines gate agent. She understood what happened and spent 20 minutes getting us back on our original flight. Her manager kept giving us looks like “you’re welcome,” but I was happy to accept any sass if it meant getting back on our original flight.
My new favorite gate agent came through for us, so we were back on our original flight. A six-hour delay seemed luxurious compared to lugging luggage around Venice looking for a last-minute hotel.
Lesson learned, don’t buy flights or look for alternatives in a frantic state of mind. This is when you miss important details, such as THE DATE OF DEPARTURE. If something like this happens, take a deep breath, calm yourself, and think through the best path forward. Travel is often bumpy, you have to make sure you take the bumps in stride.
RECAP: TWO WEEKS IN EUROPE BY TRAIN
I try to focus more on details to help with the planning of trips like these. It’s understandable that this can make trip planning look a bit mechanical from my perspective.
I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. This 13-day trip through Europe was an incredible vacation filled with action, relaxation, and family bonding time. We saw so much in a short time and were really pleased with the outcome. Through all the details, planning, and crisis-aversions, it’s important to remember that this is supposed to be a vacation!
Yes there were hiccups and lessons to be learned (as there are on all foreign experiences), but they shouldn’t overshadow how enjoyable the trip was overall. I went deeply into those vignettes to help any of you avoid these pitfalls if you’re thinking about trips of your own.
As the primary planner and group leader of this trip to Europe by train, it was all worth it when my family toasted to me and my efforts at our last dinner in Venice. That was all the validation I needed. I had provided an unforgettable experience for the people in my life that I care most about, and for that I was very proud. And for the third time: you’re welcome, Mom.
