Building Your European Itinerary: One Country or Two?

When countries you’ve dreamt about visiting – with vastly different cultures, traditions and landscapes – are as close as California and Arizona, it’s tempting to try to do it all.

Hit the French Riviera and then pop over to Barcelona? Sounds perfect.
A week in Croatia then ferry to Italy? Why not?

But looking at a map and fantasizing about the trip of your dreams is a lot different than actually going through passport control and getting your luggage on and off trains and ferries….and if it’s a flight? You might kill the whole day.

In the span of your trip, one day is a lot of time in transit instead of diving into crystal-clear waters, taking in museums or wandering through a city that has stood for 2,000 years.

Fact: Travel time and hauling luggage through borders can be dream killers. Fun fact: In Europe, you’ll be hauling that luggage over cobblestone streets.

When making your dream trip a reality,
how much is too much?

I want to see it all…and I don’t want to spend a fortune doing it. I don’t want to be away from home for a year…and I wish I could live there (and it was always summer) permanently. So, being realistic is hard.

And, as a Libra, I’m compelled to get everyone’s opinion on itineraries – just to make the decisions a little bit harder.

Running the same itinerary-in-the making by different people yields responses ranging from, “That sounds like three trips,” to “You could probably fit a few more stops in there.”

Both could be right.

The Colosseum, Rome

Combining two countries into one trip means less international travel time and cost, and the chance to experience more traditions, history and cultures.
It also means expert-level logistics.

On our first family European trip, we took 18 days to travel through Italy and Greece. COVID restrictions were lifting and I was 98% convinced this would be our only chance to have a family adventure – while the kids were still young enough – before a new emergency would shut down the world.

We had to get in as much as we could.

It was a lot…of planning, scrapping those plans and starting over, days away from the animals, trying to fit everything in to get the most out of our time and money.

And a lot of logistics. I lay awake at night with diagrams à la A Beautiful Mind flitting through my head of transfers from country to country, region to region, port and train station to hotel.

It was also a lot of moments that will stay with us forever; a lot of connections made with art and history and family; a lot of opportunities to develop stamina, get comfortable being uncomfortable and dig deep to keep up our spirits.

Pompeii

What you don’t think about when planning a
trip of a lifetime: fatigue and homesickness.

That trip was frontloaded with tours. Each day the kids asked if I had more planned.

Yes. Yes, I do…

After the Uffizi and walking tour of Florence – at high noon in June – we were teed up for the Colosseum, Vatican and Pompeii – also at high noon. Thank me later.

(I made the Acropolis optional so they didn’t freak out. They all chose to go. Nailed it.)

By day 6, I thought: I could go home now. I’m pretty sure my son was thinking the same thing.

We really missed the animals. Being the planner of the trip was a lot of pressure. And I secretly wondered if we’d taken on too much.

But it was too late to do anything about it. We were all paid up. And there was no way we were skipping the ancient sites just because we were hot.

Tavernas along Amoudi Bay at night, Santorini

New Country, New Energy

When we hit Greece, it was like we hit reset.

I had the best meal of my life – the kind that nourished my body and soul – at Taverna Katina in Amoudi Bay. We finally relaxed. I couldn’t wait for the kids to see it all. It was a perfect moment in time. And that didn’t happen until we hit that second country. My son felt the same way.

All of us had different favorite things; the more we experienced, the more chances to fall head over heels for a place or its people – even though getting there required trams, ferries, buses and planes.

The 3x3 Guideline

We found visiting three regions in one country covers enough ground to feel like the flight from Southern California was worth it; three nights in each region keeps things fresh with enough time to double back to favorite spots before moving on.

We also discovered that the fatigue and homesickness accrued in the first country was neutralized by the second. (Can’t guarantee this would hold true if we added a third or fourth.)

Zlatni Rat, Brac

Time, Money & Travel

In planning next year’s trip, I wrestled with visiting one country or two, which really meant finding the balance between packing in as much as we could to make the most of it and savoring the moment.

I thought of all the airfare we’d save if we tied two destinations to one trip. How much more we could see if we country-hopped. But we finally settled on one country.

It was a time-and-money issue: we wanted to spend less of both. Less time in country meant less money on hotels, food, excursions, etc.

We decided on 11 days in Croatia – with three days in each Dubrovnik, Hvar and Korcula (with two day trips: Kotor, Montenegro and Brac) – and to leave nearby countries for a future trip.

I admit that, as we headed home, thoughts of the places we could’ve explored drifted through my head. I wondered if we should’ve taken a ferry to Italy, or at least gone to more islands in Croatia, more cities, more regions.

But overall we were happy to have slowed down a bit and made it home to the animals a little quicker.