I think limiting your trip to 4-5 cities would be more economical on your budget and stress level. It's tempting to do it all in one trip but that burns money and leaves you with negative feelings.

How I plan is to make a list of the things I and my group are interested in. Then I try to group them by location so you aren't spending ages getting from place to place. I include down time and "flex" time in the plan so there is time for last minute changes to go see something you just heard about.

Before narrowing down my travel route I then research the various transportation options available including costs and time estimates.

Best example I'm planning a trip for spring 2015 and the must see on my one companions list is to visit Venice. She is notorious for packing heavy and I will be having a lot of conversations with her just to make sure her bag is only 1 and under 50#. Trying to get it under the 22# for most European flights is next to impossible so Venice is our second stop before she has a chance to add souvenirs to the weight. Everything else is going to be by train until we fly home.

If you are careful with your budget you should be able to keep to the 5K but you will only know for sure once you estimate travel and hotel fees.

Best of luck with your plans.

I would start by looking what your flight options are... Most North American flights use London and PAris as hubs. There used to be some flights to Athens, not sure if this is still the case. If Santorini and Italy are top priorities, I would start by looking of flights Rome to Athens. I know that Aegean flies this route through Athens, there might be some direct flights too. It is wise trying to book open jaw tickets eg arriving in Europe in one spot, departing form an other so you do not back track.
4 weeks are not such a great ammount of time as you may think. Roughly allow one day in transit when you move between destinations. Personaly I would see if I can get a flight to my far out/hardest to reach destination, then a returning flight from a closer/easier airport. Why trying to see so pmany places? If Santorini ehich is in Greece is a top priority and then you want to explore various areas in Italy, why not to spli your 4 weeks between those two countries? If you have to use a larger city/airport for travel logistics, you can allow 4-5 full days for this city and then focus on those two countries. I have take many 4 weeks trip always focusing on one country only. As you mention your self, there will always be future trips to see what you did not manage on this trip. So why to russ?

We all can understand the feeling overwhelmed part of planning. I'm an old hand at travel planning, but just yesterday I felt at a total loss in pulling my one-city trip to Dublin together.

So it's not you!

I think you have wisely answered your own question: Santorini really is out of the question unless you move your entire trip south. You do have enough time, but you will not have enough money to wisely encompass all of that.

I respectfully disagree with mariha912 that most NA flights use London and Paris as hubs. There are a lot of direct flights EVERYWHERE in Europe. For example, I can tell you that Amsterdam works very well because KLM is centered there. Since KLM is part of the SkyTeam Alliance, that means a lot of code shares with Delta, Air France, Alitalia, etc.

Hence you could easily fly into Amsterdam and fly home from Rome booking an open jaw flight, especially since it's a snap to work your way down through France to Italy via trains and cheapie European flights.

I often play around with this website, http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ to see which dates, connections work best for me getting over and back. Then for travel between places in Europe, I check out the cheap European carriers. Flycheapo.com and SkyScanner are two excellent online resources for budget European air travel.

I'm not discounting the use of trains, by the way. Eurail passes are not the bargain people generally think they are, but when you are traveling for four weeks, you have a shot at making those passes VERY cost effective. Do check out the pricing here: http://www.eurail.com/eurail-passes?gclid=CJyC5YWr4LUCFUZV4AodA24Acg.

Amsterdam to Paris rail, London to Paris rail, and Paris to Venice rail are all delightful options. I really want to try the relatively new Thello system: http://www.seat61.com/thello-train-from-paris-to-italy.htm#.UTMmCFc8CIk.

And by the way, if you really want the best timetable for rails, it's still the German website that operates best: http://www.bahn.com/i/view/GBR/en/index.shtml.

I suggest you buy a big map of Europe, and circle the places you want to go. You should start to see what grouping would work best to limit your transport time and expense.

Very nice suggestions from AlessandraZoe. I would also recommend not just hitting the big cities (which tend toward many tourists, high prices, and more hustles and hassles) and add in a transition or two that allows you time in smaller towns in between your major destinations (you can also do small towns as daytrips from larger cities). A night or two in a small town on the Rhine, or in Italy, or by a beach, can not only be a breath of fresh air, they can be highlights of the trip.

I was thinking that to make your planning simpler, you may want to start by flying to London for several days (always the best place for an English speaker to begin).

Then, fly to somewhere in Italy (look at budget airlines, lots of cheap flights from London -- www.whichbudget.com ) and spend several weeks seeing your Italian cities but also spending time out in the countryside (excellent advice from dfourh). I also second the idea of taking day trips from your major cities -- make sure you allow enough time to add some of these.

Next fly (or taking the train would be even more fun) to Paris and spend several days there; then take the train to Amsterdam for a few days before flying home.

What I like to do for planning purposes is make a Day-by-Day list (i.e. Day 1, Day 2 etc.) and just start filling it in very generally:

Day 1 -- Fly to London
Day 2 -- Arrive London
Day 3 -- Stay London and see...
Day 4 -- Stay London and see...

It will help you to get a better sense of how you want to spend your time, and you can play with it any way you want, trying out all kinds of different scenarios. When you have something roughed out, you can start looking at flights etc. and eventually add actual dates.

What an adventure -- there is nothing like the thrill of your first trip to Europe!

>>>Most North American flights use London and PAris as hubs<<<

That depends on the airline you use. Different airlines have different hubs. Delta has non-stop flights from the states to Paris, Amsterdam, Nice, Venice, Rome, etc.

I would look for one of the better flight deals to any of your cities (I like to fly to the furthest point and home from the shortest). If Athens flights are too expensive from the states, look at taking an Aegean airlines flight from Rome or Milan to Athens or the islands. You could visit Italy, fly Aegean to Greece, fly back to one of the other cities on your list.
http://en.aegeanair.com/

Your 22 and you have many years of traveling ahead of you. Pick the places you want to go and enjoy the area. Find small apartments and/or guest houses to stay for at least a week.

Start with what you love.

Do you see yourself on vacation on a beach somewhere, drinks at sunset? Or do you see yourselves hiking? Taking in history and museums?

Start with your #1 spot and your #1 activity and find that.

my advice, fly into Amsterdam where everyone speaks fluent English and lots of fun for people of all ages....stay there 3 or 4 nights then take a train into Germany (you decide where) Stay in Germany for about a week - hitting Frankfurt, Berlin, then swing by Prague, head down south to Munich, keep heading east into France, week in France including time in paris, then into Spain for a few days, fly out of madrid or Barcelona to go home. I would avoid the UK, much like the US only more expensive, it pales compared to the places I described...

I actually rather agree with jp4120. London/Paris or even London/Amsterdam/Paris trips can work OK, but I always found from my own experience that London travel plus elsewhere tends to be inefficient in terms of time and money.

I am particularly fond of Amsterdam because it is so unusual but so culturally accessible. You land, as jp4120 says, in a place that speaks English (often with an NA accent) and as I'm going to go on record saying, operates very efficiently in a manner you are used to. And from Amsterdam, you can train or plane ANYWHERE.

In other words, NA first-timers can transition beautifully into European culture without a hitch.

I want to add that I have nothing against Great Britain in general and London in specific. I love GB. But I feel that London and its environs are best toured for one whole week, and three weeks in Wales, Scotland, England would be an ideal.

Assume you are taking trains or cheap flights and of course boats to Greece and in GVreece (many boats from Italy to Greece that go overnight - save on cost of hotel and in your age group many just 'sleep' in the ship's night club/bar or on deck chairs outside - you can also pay a bit extra for proper sleeping berths.

anyway if under 26 yrs old you can use the bargain Eurail Youthpass on trains and with such wide-ranging travels it will probably be a great deal. You can also hop the zillions of overnight trains running throughout Europe to save travel time and again the cost of a hotel - many folks your age from all over the world doing that!

Anyway for lots of great info on European trains and passes, etc I always spotlight these IMO fantastic sites - www.ricksteves.com; www.seat61.com and www.budgeteuropetravel.com and download the latter's free and superb IMO European Planning & Rail Guide as it gives lots of rail itineraries in various countries, travel times, rail maps, etc.

Thank you all so much for your responses!! They have been such a big help!

What do you think about this itinerary? I've searched open jaw flights to Amsterdam and out of Athens, and found many for around $1600. Is this a good deal?

1. Edmonton, Canada -> Amsterdam
2. Amsterdam --> Paris
3. Paris --> Italy (Venice, Rome)
4. Italy --> Santorini
5. Santorini --> Athens
6. Athens --> home

Does this sound reasonable? How does travel from Italy to Santorini to Rome work? What are the cheapest options for connecting between the rest of the destinations I've picked?

What are your dates alex?

It may be cheaper to fly to fly, return, to Santorini from one of your Europeanstops and have your open jaw from that other city. For example Rome-Santorini return and your open jaw could be Deadmonton -> Amsterdam/Paris and Rome -> Deadmonton

Aramis..sounds like you know the locale?? Deadmonton indeed, definitely not the center of the universe as we know it.
Alexlee, try to keep the airline the same or partners and you can check straight through. AC to Frankfurt to elsewhere to Santorini?? BA to London to elsewhere to Santorini??.KLM as you obviously know. If you can get your itin. as you stated above for $1600 and that is the total you probably should go for it. Travel light, duplicate your docs., advise your bank and cc people ans off you go.. BTW leave a clear itin.& copy of docs. with family..Then off you go!!!

Hi there, I think flying into Ams is a good idea to get started, then head southwards to Paris and down south to Italy. You might be able to stop in some other places like bordeoux or nice before you enter florence, pisa, rome. I suggest that you look into doing maybe a short cruise that departs from Venice. Msc cruises has itineraries that will start in venice and it will pass by even dubrovnik in croatia and then towards santorini and even athens. Theres quite a number of Italy - Croatia - Greece cruises. You might want to check around abit. Bear immind that flying from Venice to Athens might be expensive ( I was researching this route myself). Bologna, which is sandwiched between florence and Venice has an airport as well and there mihht have some budget airlines. You can check that out as oppose to just flying from Venice to Athens. Otherwise the cruise for seven nights will be about five hundeed pounds for the cheapest option for a seven night trip. For flights around the italy greece routes try Aegean Air and Olympic Air.

Peronally, im heading to Greece in two weeks time. My route is flight from London to Corfu. Corfu to Athens by flight and from Athens to Santorini by ferry before taking a fliggt back to London.

I've been to Berlin as well but if this is your first trip to Europe it will not be a good experience. Berlin is essentric and different and its not a romantic place to visit for sure. The effects of the cold war can still be felt, so I think you should stick to the more hyped up places first and move on to the European must go firsts. You can go to the eastern european trip the next time. Cover prague, budapest, slobakia andnthen go east towards berlin, warsaw, talinn and riga perhaps. This way you wil get to make a contrast of culture and understand the culture better imo.

Here's something to think about, and I know a lot of people will disagree with me.

As summer approaches the cruise lines often slash fares pretty dramatically. There's a good chance you can find a 7-day cruise out of Venice that will make a port call in Santorini, along with several other interesting ports. (Last summer we were able to book a 12-night cruise for either $699 or $749; a 7-night cruise might be under $400, before tips).

Some cruise ships have self-service laundries. It could be a great way to relax and get your clothes clean and see some places that you otherwise would not see.

Just a thought.

>>>Does this sound reasonable? How does travel from Italy to Santorini to Rome work?<<<

Look at Aegean Airlines.

When searching flights, you should flip cities. It may be cheaper to fly into Athens and home from Amsterdam. You could also consider a round trip flight to Greece (or two one ways which are cheaper on European airlines) and fly home from Italy. You might find a cheap flight from Amsterdam or Paris to Greece, then you could fly to Italy and finish your trip.

And there are many ferries between Greece and Italy - save a night in a hotel and have a kind of cruise ship experience - you can always fly but rarely have the opportunity to take a boat loaded with things to do, a la a cruise ship light.

Going from Rome to Santorini by ferry would be quite a trek. First make your way to the Italian port, overnight ferry from there to Patras or Igoumenitsa (ferries from Italy don't go to Piraeus or Santorini), then travel by road from the Greek port to Athens. Go from Athens to Piraeus and take a ferry to Santorini, another 8 hours. Most days ferries to Santorini leave only early mornings, so you will probably miss it and have to spend another night in Athens or Piraeus. The whole trip would take about 2 days, compared with 2 hours on the flight.

Of course you could take a flight from Athens to Santorini, but if you are going to do that you may as well fly all the way from Rome instead.

Hi everyone!! Thanks again for all of your generous responses! I apologize for the the typo in my previous post -- I totally meant "Does this sound reasonable? How does travel from Italy to Santorini to ATHENS work?" You all have great ideas and they have been very helpful.

To be honest, my boyfriend and I are finding it very difficult to find the time to get this trip planned. (The tentative dates for the trip would be May 28-June 25 ish.) We are both medical students (in different years) and don't get much time together, so planning this trip is just turning into even more stress for us.

We decided we may want to cut Amsterdam out to make it easier for us. Fly into Paris, train down through Italy, and somehow get to Santorini and back. I'm going to spend some time today looking through some of the options you all have proposed.

My next question is: Should we wait before booking any flights to have our accommodations planned and ready to book as well? We have no idea where to stay (for cheap) in any of these places, so I'd welcome some advice regarding this as well (we're up for hostels too.)

What about transportation within each of the cities? Could we survive without renting a car?

Thanks again everyone!

Here's a guick update after searching the last hour.

A multicity trip arriving in Paris and leaving from Rome would cost about 1100-1400 CAD. A round trip from Rome to Santorini (Aegean Airlines) would cost about 350 CAD, however the layover in Athens is 8-14 hours, which is annoying, and leaves not much time to explore Athens because the flight to Athens always arrive at around 5:30pm. What do you guys think about this?

Accommodations seem pretty easy to find using TripAdvisor. Already found some beautiful cheap options in Santorini.

Here's my plan thus far:

May 28 or May 29: Edmonton to Paris
5 nights in Paris
June 3-19: Train trip through France and Italy
Bordeaux/Nice/Venice/Florence/Rome
June 20ish: fly to Santorini from Rome (this is going to be tricky)
June 25ish: fly from Santorini to Rome to home

How does this sound?

Hmmm couldn't get you to bite on the Deadmonton comment.......

I'll look into to some Rome - Santorini options on those dates

<< You might be able to stop in some other places like bordeoux or nice before you enter florence, pisa, rome>>

First of all, no first-time traveler to Europe needs to go to Bordeaux. I didn't go there until I'd been in France a couple of dozen times, and then it took me another decade to even "warm up" to it. Second of all, Bordeaux isn't even remotely on the way from Paris to Italy. Sheesh!

Alexlee, forget Bordeaux. missnomad has steered you totally wrong. Go from Paris to Avignon or straight to Nice. If you have a map of Europe, you will see that traveling down the Atlantic coast of France makes no sense at all if you are headed for Italy.

The rest of your trip sounds quite good if you can work out the Santorini from Rome bit.

Aramis - hahaha. Edmonton sucks as you clearly know Hence why I'm so excited to get out of here! (But go Oilers and Eskimos!!! My boyfriend made me plan our whole summer around Eskimo games if you can believe it...)

And thanks for the advice StCrq! Ill scratch that out if my itinerary.

Good, because it makes absolutely NO sense at all from any perspective. Good luck with your planning! Go right to Avignon or Nice or Marseilles from Paris, not to Bordeaux for gosh sakes! Head EAST!

alex;

I can find a non-stop on "Blue Panorama Airlines" for 286 Euros, or about $275 CAN for your "ish" dates.

The outgoing flight is early and the return flight is quite late into Rome. For a little more there are morning flights;


Rome (FCO) to Thira (JTR) - Thu, Jun 20
Blue Panorama Airlines S.p.A. Blue Panorama Airlines S.p.A. 2418 Dep: 7:00AM Arr: 10:10AM 2h 10m Boeing 737 Economy (K)



Thira (JTR) to Rome (FCO) - Tue, Jun 25
Blue Panorama Airlines S.p.A. Blue Panorama Airlines S.p.A. 2419 Dep: 10:50AM Arr: 12:05PM 2h 15m Boeing 737 First (P)


Cost per passenger (including taxes & fees) €285.81
Total cost for 1 passenger €285.81

Sorry, that was the early return I pasted. The late one is 266 Euros, or about $27 cheaper.

Excellent!!! Thank you so much, Aramis! Which website did you use to find these, may I ask? Don't think I saw these options on the matrix website that was posted above, or kayak.

I think I'm going to try and get everything booked by next weekend. Getting excited now...!

I found it on itasoftware.com Unfortunately, they only display fares, they don't book them, and sometimes what they display is not easily found on the mainstream sites.

Fortunately (had you worried for a minute there didn't I?) I just double checked it on the airlines own site,
www.blu-express.com/en/index.html and got this - "You can SAVE, yes SAVE, 6 Euros by booking now!"

Flights
BV2418
Roma Fiumicino Airport >
Thira Santorini Airport
20 Jun 07:00 Dep - 20 Jun 10:10 Arr
1 Adult (1 X €169,98)
Fare and Taxes €169,98

BV2419
Thira Santorini Airport >
Roma Fiumicino Airport
25 Jun 10:50 Dep - 25 Jun 12:05 Arr
1 Adult (1 X €89,98)
Fare and Taxes €89,98

Total €259,96

Now I don't want to put pressure on you but this scheduling appears to be a very fortuitous circumstance. There are no other flights out for the 2 days before or after June 20 and no other flights back for 1 day on either side of the 25th return. So, if your Rome - Santorini dates are still "ish" and you want this kind of connection, you need to firm them up very quickly.

If you have problems with booking on the website (I'm not suggesting there will be, just being thorough) then take the flight information to a travel agent.

Have a beauty trip, eh.

Quick question. My boyfriend is concerned that if we book 2 separate flights, this situation could happen:

The flight from Santorini to Rome, which is supposed to arrive at 12:00, is delayed. Then we may be late for the flight from Rome to Montreal to edmonton, which would leave at 3:30 (plus we will have to pick up our checked luggage and check in during those 3 hours). He says that if we miss that flight, we won't get put on the next flight out for no extra cost, and essentially we'll have to pay for another one since the flights were booked separately. Is this possible/likely?

Thanks! If it's not an issue, I would like to book ASAP so please let me know!

especially with the instability in Greece - have been many many strikes I would always fly to your European departure airport at least the day before - spend the night in Rome before your flight - not only because of delays but other unpredicted events not foreseen - that is if you return flight is non-refundable as most are.

I don't think instability in Greece is an issue at all. In fact, if i'm not mistaken there were more airport/airline strikes in Germany last year than in Greece. More to the point, if you are flying on a budget or charter airline, the aircraft will probably have been scheduled for other flights around Europe that day, any one of which could have had a delay. With very little slack time built in, delays can carry over to subsequent flights, and if the plane is late arriving at Santorini it will be late departing for Rome.

Now if you are flying on separate tickets and miss the flight out of Rome, it will be at the discretion of the airline flying you to Edmonton whether they will let you on the next flight at no extra cost. Maybe they would be charitable, but don't count on it. If I were you I would get back to Rome a couple of days before the flight home.

Alex - Your boyfriend is correct. If, for any reason you don't make the AC flight out of Rome, you have to rebook however you can.

I didn't know that your return flight was the same day as the day you wanted to return from Santorini or I wouldn't have been so congratulatory and I would have pointed this out.

You may have to take one of the connecting flights you found in order to arrive back in Rome on the 24th if you want to make Santorini work.