Top 10 Favorite places visited in order:
1) Interlaken, Switzerland
2) Pamplona
3) Paris
4) Rome
5) Normandy
6) Barcelona
7) Florence
8) Amsterdam
9) Cinque Terra (San Sebastian is similar in Spain and maybe more convenient)
9) Munich/Dachau/Neuschwanstein
10) Ios, Greece
Top 10 Places I visited that I wish I would have skipped in order of suckiness:
1) Lyon, France
2) Brussels, Belgium
3) Romantic Road in Germany (Rottenburg, etc.)
4) Random small towns in Italy
5) Athens
6) Milan
7) Berlin
8) Pisa
9) Mykonos, Greece
10) Nice
Top 10 places I didn't go that I really wish I would have:
1) Stockholm
2) Any of Southern Spain (Madrid, Sevilla, etc)
3) Lucerne, Switzerland
4) Prague
5) Dubrovnik, Czech
6) Vienna
7) Copenhagen
8) London
9) Lisbon
10) Bordeaux
Top 50 Random things I wish I would have known or learned along the way:
1) Italian and Spanish trains and planes are always late. Always.
2) German and Swiss trains are always on time. Always.
3) The two above facts can result in conflict
4) Cheap flights abound and can save time on trains (RyanAir, Easy Jet, etc.). Trust me; the joy of train riding wears off real, real fast.
5) Always double check the exact location of hotels and hostels before you book it. On the website, everything is "located walking distance from the city center" or something. In reality, few are. http://www.famoushostels.com/ is a good place to start. Hostels charge per person/bed. In a pinch (as in it's fully booked), you and your girl can share a single bed.
6) Plan on spending a lot in Interlaken... follow up point: mountain biking in the Swiss Alps is way harder than you want to bother with
7) Il Latini in Florence is the best restaurant I've ever been to. It's got two seating times. Get there early. Dan Les Noir in Paris is pretty cool, too.
8) Les Caveau des Obliques is a great, authentic Parisian hangout
9) Don't trust anyone that asks you with an accent if you speak English. They're always gypsies looking to swindle you.
10) There's an underground entry to the Louvre. Speaking of which, there's free admission to the Louvre one day a month. Google to find out.
11) Don't follow the crowds at the Vatican. There are ways to avoid the crowds that will save you like 2 hours of wait time. Again, google to find out.
12) Don't try and do Paris in like 1 or 2 days. That city is freaking incredible and has way more than you could possibly handle in a short amount of time. So, be efficient with the sight seeing and take a guided tour like Mike's Fat Tire Bike Tours to get all the obligatory sights out of the way.
13) The farther south you go in Europe, the shadier and cheaper it can get.
14) It's fairly cool in Northern Europe the entire year. The weather in Paris is a good 15 degrees cooler than here. Dress accordingly.
15) Don't buy souvenirs there unless it REALLY is going to be hard to get once you get back. So, for example, instead of buying wooden shoes and a German Christmas tree over there, a friend bought me one on the internet when we got back. It was way cheaper and I didn't have to lug it around and risk it getting damaged. I was grateful.
16) Shopping in grocery stores is fun. Buy a bunch of stuff and then google it when you get back. Haha, I had a good time finding out that I had eaten horse meat and washed with lotion.
17) You might think that visiting small towns will allow you to see the real side of Europe, but you're wrong. It's boring and you'll end up with nothing to do and no one to talk to.
18) It's way more fun to stay in hostels than hotels, because you get to interact with foreigners. Force yourself to get brave and make friends with those new folks right away when you get there so you can have people to do stuff with and talk to.
19) There are guided tours and audio devices at most museums. It sucks just walking around them and not knowing what you're looking at. Let's be honest, though. You're not going to care about some random picture you saw at a little museum once you get back (even though you think you will at the time) So, either buy the guided tour or don't even bother going.
20) Another non-touristy thing to do is going to a orchestra performance at Saint Chapelle in Paris. A girl will think this is freaking cool if you pull this on her.
21) Students get discounts everywhere.
22) La Sagrada Familia has to be seen
23) Prices in the north are awful. Buy little there.
24) Some banks make deals with international banks to give you free ATM withdrawls. Bank of America had the most deals when I went last. It might be worth opening an account there so you can pull out of ATMs.
25) Tell your banks you're traveling abroad
26) Communicating with America stinks. Don't use your cell phone. Use skype when possible and buy phone cards the rest of the time
27) There's really only so much sight seeing you can do with the "big stuff". After a while, your eyes sort of get numb to seeing the David, the last supper, the mona lisa, etc. etc. (the one exception is the Eifel Tower... that's always amazing). So, I had a heck of a good time taking random, silly tours that seemed stupid at the time but weren't. I toured the Gulpener museum in some small town near Maastricth, Netherlands, went through the catacombs in Paris, toured some chocolate thing in Brussels, the OECD in Paris, an apartment in Barcelona, and some went to a college party in Rome. Those were some of the best times.
28) If you know anyone no matter how remotely in Europe or how stupid the city is, beg them to let them hang out with you. Guides are simply awesome.
29) You and your buddies will undoubtedly get annoyed with each other at some point when you miss a train or it's too hot or you get to a museum too late to go inside. Remember me telling you this and you thinking "it won't happen." It will. Just think back to me telling you to not blow up and blame it on the situation and move on. Kiss and make up.
30) You typically need reservations for overnight train trips, cross country trips, and between some high volume locations. Get them early and know that it's not included in your eurail pass.
31) Greece is really freaking hard to get into and out of. In fact any of the sort of fringe countries are that way.
32) Don't let yourself be lost for more than about 90 seconds. Walk in and ask someone for directions. If the person you're asking is not in a hotel or big restaurant, ask them if they speak English and learn the phrase in the country for "where is ___". Your best bet is just going into a hotel or big restaurant where everyone speaks English.
33) Bring less clothes than you think you need. You'll buy stuff there and you really don't need more than 1 of each item - so like 1 pair of jeans, 1 pair of shorts, 1 long sleeve button up, etc. etc. If you're bringing two of anything, it's a waste
34) There's a cheap retail store in every country you should try to hit. It's Zara or El corte ingles in Spain, H&M in the Netherlands, etc. Figure it out and drop some bucks. You'll feel like a bad-a whenever people say "I like that. Where'd you get it?" and you get to respond "Paris"
35) Like I said, it's fun to buy stuff in grocery stores, but know what they don't have: deodorant, face wash, and powdered drinks. With the amount that you'll be walking, you'll want all three of those things.
36) You'll live off of ice cream at times
37) Rick Steve's knows everything
38) Some countries are just way too expensive to try and be a baller in. So, pick your battles is what I'm saying. Fondue in Switzerland is going to set you back way more than it's worth. The same can be said for basically all of Great Britain, and Scandinavian hotels. I've heard you can live like a king in Eastern Europe for like 8 dollars, though.
39) Try and set up as much as possible before you go over there. Obviously, don't go crazy, but calling up places to set up tours and reservations doesn't kill spontaneity.
40) You'll inevitably under-estimate how long it takes to do... basically everything but especially travel time. So, plan accordingly for that.
41) You'll learn a lot. Treat some of your tours like school time. I honestly kind of wish I would have taken notes on some of that stuff. Like, it was so awesome comparing the way WW2 was depicted in Normandy vs. the concentration camp in Dachau. I can't remember half of it, though.
42) Buy stuff over there that you can't get here. I know it's like an earlier point, but, again, over half the fun of going overseas is getting to remember it.
43) I never look at pictures from anything I do except for the Europe trip.
44) People stand close on trains, smell funny, will ask you for basically anything, hit on your chicks aggressively, and yell when they talk (especially in Southern Europe). I encountered very, very few rude or untrustworthy people over there, though (other than the gypsies). It's not as unsafe as movies or friends would have you believe.
45) Bring your GPS watch and running shoes. You'll feel cool running across country borders
46) Pack nice-ish shoes that don't mind being crumpled.
47) Take overnight night trains whenever possible. It'll save you travel time.
48) Try lots of beer in Belgium/Netherlands. I liked something called sjoes that I've never seen any where else.
49) Try escargot (and other junk you don't think you should try)
50) Homer's tomb is in Ios, the oldest restaurant in the world is in Madrid, the thinker is in some random garden in Paris, etc. etc. Use guide books to find off the beaten spots like these.
Bonus:
The cheapest way to get drunk is to buy 3 dollar bottle of red wine from the grocery store and mixing it with coke. It's called calimoxo in southern Europe and it's delicious. You head to the hostel with that, noodles, and sauce, and offer to share with some of the bunkmates. You follow those steps and you will inevitably meet some girls to make some bad decisions with.
[This message has been edited by careerchange05 (edited 2/7/2012 4:41p).]
