Europe - Summary and Tips

2010-11-13

This final Euro Trip post (before we get back to Switzerland) is to sum up my impressions of each city. In particular it is dedicated to Tim and Kate who might be coming over next year, or anyone else that plans on travelling to Europe in the future. Hopefully these tips/comments will be able to make your trip even more enjoyable than ours.

Places

Rome - Rome as a place to visit is a must. There is so much history and places to see that it's somewhere everywhere should go once. Having been once, I don't think I will go back but a one time visit is essential. The two highlights were the Colosseum/Forum Tour and the Vatican Museum.

We found Rome to be a fairly dirty/unfriendly/busy city. People I talked to (both before going and after) were divided: 50% agreed that it was a yucky city, while 50% thought it was superb. So this indicates to me that it all depends on what areas you visit, as I had a bad first impression, but found the touristy areas nice. Make sure you find some good accommodation even if it's a bit more expensive. The hostel we stayed at "Hostel Roma Downtown" wasn't very good, but we heard that the other ones are even worse so make sure you read some reviews before staying anywhere.

Florence - Florence was a magnificent city, and the hostel we stayed at "Academy Hostel" was great, we even got some free pasta for dinner. Make sure you visit the gardens and the duomo, and maybe some museums if you are into that sort of thing. There wasn't a great deal of things to see and do, so you probably don't want more than 2 days.

Venice - For some reason the reception at our hotel "Residence Al Carmini" was only open from 9 - 2 each day, and when we were there at 9 one morning there was nobody there, so I don't think even that is truthful. It made leaving luggage and checking out a big hassle, so make sure you check when reception is open in advance for any of the places that you stay at.

Paris - Paris was Rachael and I's favourite city and two days was not enough. I think you would need about a week to see it properly. The hostel we stayed at "St. Christopher's Hostel" was excellent and I highly recommend it. You probably don't need to plan anything in advance, just see what takes your fancy each day. In particular we got told that there are always concerts and shows going on, and if there are still seats left an hour before the show then they sell them for only $10 each.

Prague- Prague was a lovely city, and the food and drinks were so cheap. If you have time, maybe leave the city and go to somewhere nearby as it will get cheaper still and I'm sure is just as nice. The "Plus Hostel Prague" was pretty good, as was the 5 star place we stayed at "Hotel Pariz".

Neuschwanstein Castle - This castle screams "massive waste of money" in every single way, but it has turned out pretty well in the long-term, as once the king died they opened it up to tourists and now make 0.25mil euro a day. Well worth a visit at least once just to see how stupidly extravagant it is. The view from the castle is great as well, with lots of lakes and the Austrian alps surrounding it.

Tours

The best tours in Europe are by far the NewEurope tours. In fact I reckon that you could probably book a holiday of Europe just around these tours and it would be epic, I will probably do this if I come back, try to go on each one. They also have paid tours and pub crawls as well, which we didn't have time for.

The Hop-on Hop-off bus tour in Rome was great because everything was so close and it made travel convenient, but not as convenient in Paris because everything was so far apart. The Paris metro was cheap and easy so I would probably suggest this as a better option to travel. The actual "tour" part (in the form of the audio guides) was pretty dull for both though.

Skip-the-line tours are great, the Vatican would have sucked without it because the line was huge and by paying for the tour you get in straight away. The tour itself was pretty good, nothing exceptional but definitely better than navigating the place by yourself. The Colosseum skip-the-line tour was also great. We found it by accident as they were selling tickets out the front, but I recommend paying the extra 10 euro or so over lining up, and you get a guide!

Most of the paid walking tours that we did were horrible and I would recommend against them. The one in Venice was an exception because of the Gondola tour, but the tour itself wasn't too bad either.

Language

Try to learn some basic words in the language, especially for Paris. I've always heard about how rude people are there, but as long as you open with "Bonjour, Parlez vous Anglais?" the seemed to be nice enough. That goes for all the places, you don't need to speak the language, but at least learn Hello and Thankyou. This was pretty easy for everywhere but Prague, because they have some russian looking letters and we had no idea how to pronounce it. But we asked someone and "Ahoy" is the informal way to say both hello and goodbye, so just pretend that you are a pirate and they might understand you. Most people speak at least some basic English in Europe so we had no problems.

Other

Bring your student ID card. Rachael didn't for some reason so she had to pay full price at some places. They might not recognise Oz ID's everywhere, but so far I haven't had any problems.