Tips
This is the second chapter of my mini guide on how to plan your travel to Europe. In chapter one, we have learned how to find the best time to visit Europe. For this chapter, we will continue to discuss on how to fix the length of Europe travel. To successfully plan an Europe vacation trip, fixing an optimum period of time traveling in Europe is as important as choosing the best time to fly. It is the second element of our travel plan to Europe, after timing.
Europe is a huge continent. It consists of 50 countries, 27 of which are member states of the European Union, and covers an area of approximately 10 Million Km²! If travelers were to explore the whole Europe with hundreds of cities of interest, they will need years to do so! Eventhough not all cities in Europe are tourist frequented destinations, travelers will still need at least a year or four seasons to cover them all at one time! However, this is not advisable for a budget traveler, since traveling Europe is expensive and time consuming. Likewise, there are other factors limiting your holiday period in Europe, such as the following few.
Factors deciding the maximum period of your holiday travel to Europe
- Different season, different climate. If you have decided in Chapter 1, the best time of year for you to travel Europe, it will mean that you are looking at visiting Europe in certain season of the year, which last for only 3 months. Europe is a continent with 4 distinct seasons in a year (with temperature varies as much as 30°c between Summer and Winter). That said, if you travel to Europe for more than 3 months, it will encompass 2 seasons of a year, and you will need extra sets of clothing to cope with that 2 different climate, extra burden and extra cost to your luggage. We call it uneconomical. So it would always be better to travel to different parts of Europe in a few year but in the same season of year. For instance, I traveled to Central Europe last Spring and then Western, Eastern and Northen Europe this Spring, since Spring is my favourite time to see lush greenery and colourful flowers in Europe.
- Visa validity. There are 39 countries whose nationals do not need a visa to stay in Europe for up to 3 months, which include US, Japan, Australia and others. Other nationals will need to apply for a visa before flying to Europe. Validity of Visa is normally 3 months, albeit some are 6 months. So, it is advisable to plan your Europe trip for a period of not exceeding 3 months, in order to avoid hassle in extending your visa or of being blocked in entry border.
- Annual leave. Generally, annual leaves for employees are around 2 weeks, or 14 days. Taking leaves for more than 2 weeks will need either cumulative leaves brought forward from previous years or, to apply for unpaid leaves. If you are traveling every year, with no leave being accumulated from previous years, the safest traveling period to Europe is 2 weeks or 14 days.
- Health condition. Exploring historic sites after sites in European cities by walking is absolutely possible and advisable since most of the travel attractions are within walking distance in any European city. Having said that, a considerably fit and healthy body is still required to do that much walking on Europe trip. How far and long one traveler could go depends on how fit he or she is. Traveling Europe with walking for 20 days can be quite tiring, mind you.
Even if you are fit for that long period of traveling time, accidents do happen. Travel Insurance could cover any emergency medication in overseas. However, you need to pay much higher premium for longer travel. Check with your insurance agent to see if there is maximum period of travel.
So, we know the maximum period for traveling Europe hassle free should be 3 months (or one season), but for how long would be the optimum?
Let’s answer this question: “How many days should we stay in each city?”
In general, I would suggest 3 to 7 days. For small cities, we need at least 1 day to get ourselves into the city environment, another day at least for sight seeing, and 1 remaining day to explore further and deeper into the city. The larger the city, the more days we need, normally up to 7 days per city. Since we are traveling Europe in a budget style, we try to plan our itinerary perfectly to have sufficient time to explore each city we are going, but not wasting anymore time in doing nothing, except for relaxation after a long trip.
It is not economical staying too short in a city either, since transportation cost carries a substantial percentage in our total cost of Europe travel, and it’s a fixed cost, means we must spend such money to travel from one city to another. Let’s elaborate briefly with sample equations below (more detail budget planning will be discussed in next chapter), with some assumption on fixed transportation (T), variable foods (F) and accommodations (A) costs:
1) Travel 5 cities in 5 days (1x): €625.00 (T) + €350.00 = €975.00 (1x)
2) Travel 5 cities in 15 days (3x): €625.00 (T) + €1,050.00 = €1675.00 (1.7x)
3) Travel 5 cities in 30 days (5x): €625.00 (T) + €2,100.00 = €2,725.00 (2.8x)
The above result clearly shows that with transportation a fixed cost, the longer you stay in a city, the lower average daily cost you would need to allow for each day.
So you should have your own answer for the above question by now.
Next, you can start fixing a period to travel Europe which is best suited you. Remember that what we have discussed here are merely for your reference, and I’m here to only guide you through the planning process. The final decision on the total number of days you are going to spend in Europe is all up to your needs and desire, albeit some of the following factors may justify your decision,
- Cost per city – We now know the average daily cost is getting lower when you travel longer period, but they still escalate along your stay in days until to a sum that you could afford to spend in each city, and that is the total cost per city for you;
- Time available – Check you office planner to decide how much time is possible for you to take leave off your work duty.
- Health and strength – Are you on periodic medications? Is your pregnant wife going to due soon? How long can you withstand the chilly weather in Winter? For how long could your travel insurance covers you?
- Number of cities of interest – Number of cities multiplied by number of days in that city and you will get the total period of your Europe trip. For example, you will need at least 15 days in Europe if you plan to visit 5 cities back to back.
With all the above information and tips, you should by now be able to fix a date to depart for Europe and fix a date to return back from Europe. Next chapter we will guide you to fix a budget. If you can’t decide a period just yet due to budget constraint, skip this chapter and jump to chapter 3 to fix your budget first. They are interrelated like a chicken and an egg. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate guide to Europe travel
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Italy undoubtedly is one of the most popular travel destinations in Europe. It is the fifth most visited country around the world. Its rich cultural and historical features with the greatest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites to date (totally 44 of them) that inherited from different period of time, has won Italy over 40 million international arrivals each year. Unfortunately, traveling to Italy is always like a dream comes true for most of us who have limited budget for travel.
Reasons contributed to this costly visit inlcude its strong Euros, high tourist demands and high local living standard. But don’t let them stop you from visiting Italy! there are still ways to cut the overall travel cost to Italy down to a level that could fit into your available budget. These are 5 tips that may help you through your Italy travel planning and budgeting:
- Spend more days in each city of Italy. Traveling to your dream country for the 1st time need lengthy and well ahead plan. Plan longer period for the whole trip and spend more days in each day. Your average daily budget would be much lower since transportation cost plays the biggest role in Italy travel. You will have more time instead to explore further into Venice, Florence or Rome. Don’t be so ambitious as you can’t have both worlds at one time!
- You will be able to find cheaper deal and nicer authentic local street food, by staying more days in each city! Best discovery always comes last. I always found the best value food on my last day on any travel but could only hope to stay longer. With that in mind, You need to decide what would be your maximum period available for Italy travel, and your maximum allowable budget. Strive a balance in between to achieve a lower daily budget.
- Book all your local transportation and accommodations well ahead as soon as like 3 months in advance. Domestic train online booking can only be done 3 months before traveling day. So book at least 3 months ahead especially in peak season to grab the cheapest possible fares. Most likely local transport will determine your period of stay in that city of Italy. So, confirm your domestic trip before booking your accommodations. Following the above steps, you are very near and on the right track to achieve an average daily budget of 150Euro, by rule of thumbs.
- Book entrance pass and travel pass online. The longer you stay in a city, the cheaper you would get to travel around city. The best example would be Roma Pass which costs 25Euro but covers 3 days unlimited travel pass and 2 entrance passes, which carries extreme value!
- The last tips to fit the Italy travel cost into your budget is saving one meal for the another meal. After deducting all costs of transportation and accommodation, and also those expensive entrance fees, with your budget, you will know how much you could spend on each meal. An average meal in Italy costs 12Euro. If you have only budgeted 10Euro on each meal, save your lunch with 5Euro pizza plus Coke and you will have 15Euro to spend for an authentic dinner with a cup of cappuccino!
Hope these will help you to plan immediately your next travel to my favorite country of Italy. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel blog
Italy, ah, what a beautiful place. Beautiful food, beautiful scenery, beautiful life – everything is just wonderful. Now, all you need to add to that wonderfulness is a great trip budget or a cheap vacation. Like Travel Feeder suggests, plan ahead and map it out. So, what are you waiting for? Go be brilliant in Italy! Happy Travels to you from Reader’s Digest!
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One of the most exciting destination in my Europe travel last year, Amsterdam has actually a lot more on offer than its famous red light district. It was the last city to be included into my last Spring Europe travel itinerary. We went there merely for the blooming season of tulips in the nearby city of Lisse and Amsterdam was actually our starting base for the day trip. But after 1 day 1 night we spent in this capital city of Netherland, I personally felt that we should have stayed at least 3 days in Amsterdam. Why? Please read on…
Still remember when I talked about the fast and comfortable Thalys train that took us to Amsterdam from Paris in 3 hours? It was really a fantastic start of our Amsterdam travel. We left Paris at 8AM and reached Amsterdam’s Central Station at 11AM. It was a lovely sunny day in Amsterdam with temperature in the region of 12-15°C, which was perfect for tulips viewing.
Don’t be fooled by the rainy scene in above photo which was actually taken on the next morning when we were about to leave Amsterdam. I cut and pasted here merely to show what you would see once you step out of the station. We were in quite a hurry to leave the station since our day trip to Keukenhof Tulips garden departs at 1:30PM, so we needed to check into our apartment in Nieuwendijk area fairly quickly and come back out again to Damrak, albeit not very far away from each other. This is how I normally book my accommodation on travel, just to make sure we stay near to where we arrive at, or where we depart from.
This is another photo being cut and pasted here from what I took in the next rainy morning. This is the Nieuwendijk area or the famous shopping street in Amsterdam city centre. We came here to check in but soon realised our apartment was in another place! Fortunately, it was not too far away in Red Light District, minutes away from Damrak street.
In fact, out of my expectation, our apartment exact location was even better with a very nice view to the canal, next to the red light district. Facing us, the cafes across the canal, are actually 2 of the famous smoking coffee shops for tourists and celebrities called Green House and City Hall. Don’t be confused with cafes selling coffees and cakes, coffee shops in Amsterdam are meant for those smoking joints selling soft drugs such as grass, cannabis or marijuana, choose from a menu! Under Dutch drug law, coffee shops are allowed to sell a maximum of 5g of cannabis per person to their customers. OMG!
As you can see from the above photo, our rented apartment is just above the another famous smoking bar, Rock Planet, on the 1st floor of the building in Oudezijds Voorburgwal 246. I didn’t shoot any photos inside the apartment but what I can say the apartment is brilliant for the money with fully equipped kitchen and 3 large and clean rooms. We hoped we could stay there for more nights!
We didn’t stay long in the apartment as we were catching our next bus to Keukenhof Tulips garden. We walked back to Damstraat. The streets were so busy with tourists and there are many shops and restaurants along the streets. Watch out also those bicycles on the road!
After the long Winter time, people are rushing out for the sunshine in Spring.
From Damstraat we came to the National Monument square. I was kind of excited when I saw the monument. According to my maps in hand, Royal Palace of Amsterdam is right behind the monument at the Dam Square. I grabbed my camera and walked quickly trying to snap this gorgeous architecture! Hold on a second. Where is the palace? Oh my god! What happened to it?
The Royal Palace was covered! It was still under renovation! 
Disappointingly, I snapped the surrounding feature in the Dam Square instead…. Luckily, they are equally interesting!
Then I found this guy, playing around a wooden long horn, the same musical instrument I saw in Eumundi market in Sunshine coast.
This was classic! A tree man who only moved and played around a crystal ball in his arms when coins being dropped into his bowl by any donor. When he stopped, the crystal ball stayed on his arm!
On top of bicycles, we had to watch out trams passing by also. Look at these tram tracks on the main road of Damrak…
Damrak is the main road of Amsterdam to connect its Central rail station to Amsterdam city centre. All kinds of transportation use this road… including this No.113 ‘motorcar’!?
There is also wide pedestrian avenue along the Damrak, with restaurants, hotels, cinemas and casinos operating here.
One of the local snacks in Amsterdam is this special frites, french fries with mayonnaise topping. Look at the crowds! Let’s try it ladies!
Souvenir shops can be found here also! What would you buy from Netherland as a gift to your girlfriends? A pair of clogs or wooden shoes apparently.
What about a gift for your boyfriends? Let’s try to carry one of these cheese home! Don’t quote me on this if your customs stop you.
Lindbergh travel agency was our Day Trip organiser to Keukenhof Tulips Garden. All of us joined the trip so there are 5 boarding passes in my hand.
Once on board, the tour guide also distributed our entrance tickets to the garden. €14 per adult.
After about an hour, we reached the small town of Lisse where is the centre of tulip flowers cultivation. Tulip fields could be seen everywhere. Dutch really likes to cycle… same with Danish I heard. So I will sure rent a bicycle in Copenhagen this coming May!
This is our excursion coach of Linderburgh. We spent 2 and a half hours in the garden.
A beautiful tulips garden must not be missed if you are visiting Netherland in spring between March and May. This is when the tulips blooming. I have written a separate and dedicated post on Keukenhof Tulips Garden and another post featuring many more photos in the tulips garden.
The coach sent us back to Damrak after the day trip in the evening. We strolled back to Dam Square for our dinner. No, sorry, we didn’t dine out in Amsterdam. We have been told by the hostel receptionist that there is a supermarket around Dam Square where we could get some stuffs back to cook ourselves dinner.
We followed the same way back along Damrak but this time we were at the opposite side, so I could snap some photos on those slanting and tilted buildings beside canals as seen above.
There was another Vlaamse Frites kiosk in Damrak. It was equally crowded as the one called Manneken Pis frites we tried earlier. They really like fries!
So there we reached Dam Square again. It was this ambitious street performer singing in the square. He even has his own recorded album CDs!
Have you been to Madame Tussaud, the world’s renown wax museum? Originally in Marylebone Road, London, Madame Tussaud can also be found in Hong Kong and here in Dam Square, Amsterdam, as seen above.
And the supermarket we were looking for is just behind it. It is called the Albert Heijn supermarket. I forgot to take some photos inside as we were too busy hunting for our dinner’s ingredients! Price is cheap and with full varieties. We bought pastas, steaks, minced meat, frozen pizzas, and even chilled fired rice! Oh gosh! We missed fried rice! We then went back to cook in our apartment and had our great time chatting, watching TV and I was checking emails for the first time since I was away from home a week ago.
When night drew in, we went out again. Where else to go? We headed down to the next street, where the Red Light District is! Famous for its sex orientated businesses, Red Light District has so many shops along both sides of the canal including sex shops, adult cinemas, brothels, restaurants, gay bars, sex museum and off course those red colour lit windows. Prostitution is legal in Amsterdam. Sexy prostitutes in eye-popping underwear posing behind those red colour lit windows to attract customers. Whoever interested may approach them to negotiate price. Once agreed, he may walk in for the ‘business’.
If compared to what I had seen 13 years ago when I first came here, those girls behind the windows now are much, much more sexy and attractive, and there are now less girls from Indonesian or Thailand… an eye-popping experience. Don’t let Jean reads this please…
Taking photos to those red lit windows is prohibited. So I didn’t take the risk and no photos could be shared here. I took the surrounding scenes instead… Frankly speaking, this looks like a church, but I’m not sure if it is a church. Just like the colour combination of the scene and took this photo.
Crowds started drawing in later at night. There are many pubs and hotels in this alleyway next to the canal.
Kebab house could also be found here. Not to mention those ‘coffee shops’!
>> Click HERE to view all photos in full resolution via Flickr
Sorry, we didn’t give any business to those sexy girls, but we did enjoy our ‘night excursion’ in the Red Light District. After all, we went back to where we stayed and had a few pints at Rock Planet downstair. They played really good rock songs from our age such as ACDC and Guns n Roses! A great night out in Amsterdam!
In the next morning, we woke up to have our own breakfast. We spent times in the apartment until check out. At noon, we left Amsterdam for its Schiphol airport. from Amsterdam, we were going to fly to Venice! Until next time… – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog
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