Planning on going to Europe... Suggestion on planning this trip? Websites, etc...

We're mainly going to be staying with the tourist stuff mainly because we have a toddler with us.

 

I planned my honeymoon in Italy. While I used a travel agent for hotels/airfare, it was mainly due to the discount I received using them as I had researched everything ahead of time on my own. These are the sites which were pretty valuable:

http://tripadvisor.com/ - great for reviews of hotels, restaurants, sights, etc. Be careful with the reviews though, standards for Europeans are very different than Americans.

http://ricksteves.com/ - great for itineraries and ideas for hotels, restaurants, etc.

Also helpful, is to ask the hotel concierge ahead of time for restaurant recommendations. They can usually set everything up for you too.

 

My brother does a lot of travel to Europe for work, and he usually tries to do some "vacation" stuff around those trips. He is drunk on the Rick Steves koolaid. If you don't have your own itinerary in Europe, that's probably the best place to start for ideas of stuff to look at, day trips, etc.

 

tripadvisor, ricksteves, viator for tour needs. and random sites to get the best rates for hotels.

 

Thanks guys,

I'll look into all of these...

Were planning to fly into London then use the train to go everywhere else. Isn't there a tunnel that goes under the English Channel to France?

EDIT: Eurostar

 

see if you can buy a pass, and weigh if that's cheaper than buying single tickets. where else are you going?

 

We know where we want to arrive (London) and we know we want to depart from Italy somewhere

We're trying to fill in the rest but the plan is to just bounce from neighboring country to the next.

 

ridiculously inexpensive flights can be had by http://www.ryanair.com/en but they fly out of the smaller airports which can be a pain to get to/out of :-/

when I was stationed in Germany, I flew from Frankfurt to Pisa Italy round-trip for 40euro (about $55)

http://www.italiarail.com/ is good for Italy rail travel & http://www.bahn.de/i/view/USA/en/index.shtml if you find yourself in Germany

 

Get a good GPS navigator and download the maps before you step on the European soil.

 

a europass probably would save you some money. and make sure you know how things work in each country. In Italy, you have to stamp your train ticket at one of those stamp machine before getting on the train. If you don't stamp it, you're going to be fined.