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The trouble with most European holidays often starts at the booking stage. Five common mistakes — and how to sidestep them.
Simon Flower
Avoid these mistakes when booking your European holiday
The five most common mistakes we see with European holidays.
The five most common mistakes we see with European holidays.
I recently helped a family friend sort out some loose ends for her European trip. She’d booked a specialist cycling tour with friends and was tacking on some personal travel at the other end. Standard stuff, you’d think.
Except getting from Český Krumlov in the Czech Republic to Passau in Germany turned out to be three trains. Or two trains and a long bus ride Not the simple hop it looked like on the map. This came as quite the surprise to the travellers who had assumed (I imagine) that it was a nice direct train or flight between the two.
Then there was her friend flying into Bari and out of Brindisi for a stay in Puglia. She hadn’t asked about the one-way drop-off fee on the car hire. When she did, the number floored her.
Same trip. Two avoidable surprises.
These are the kinds of mistakes that can catch you out when planning a Europe trip. Here are the five most common mistakes – purely my opinion of course.
Mistake 1: Underestimating the complexity of travel within Europe
Yes, Europe is small. Yes, it has a remarkable web of trains, flights, and motorways. And yes, the Schengen Zone has stripped out most of the paperwork between countries.
None of that means everywhere is easy to get to from everywhere else.
Flights between Athens and Split are a good example. You’re planning a Croatian cruise, you’ve spent a week in Greece beforehand, and you assume there’ll be a daily direct flight. There isn’t. Outside of high summer, the schedule can be sparse, and connections often route via Vienna or Munich. What looks like an hour on the map turns into a half-day exercise.
(Bizarrely, there are two airlines that fly between Athens and Split, and for some reason both seem to only operate on the same days).
Český Krumlov to Passau is another. Roughly 90 kilometres apart as the crow flies. Three trains in practice.
The same trap applies to rail passes. They sound like a bargain, but high-speed services in France, Italy, and Spain require paid seat reservations on top of the pass — which often makes a point-to-point ticket cheaper anyway.
Mistake 2: Not taking a holistic view of your trip
This really is a consequence of mistake one. People book bits and pieces of their European itinerary in isolation — a tour here, a flight there, a hotel somewhere else — without standing back and looking at how it all stitches together.
The Puglia example is a textbook case. The friend who booked her own flights into Bari and out of Brindisi did so because that’s how the search engine laid them out. Her Airbnb was almost equidistant from both airports. She could have flown in and out of Brindisi for roughly the same fare, picked up (and dropped off) the car hire from the same depot and saved the eye-watering drop-off fee.
A holistic view would have caught that in 30 seconds.
Mistake 3: Trying to do too many things in too little time
If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. It’s a (rather forgettable) 1969 American comedy about a coach tour blitzing through Europe. The joke, of course, being that the travellers remember none of it.
First-time visitors make this mistake constantly. The must-see list is a mile long, the holiday is two or three weeks, and the temptation is to cram in as much as possible. London. Paris. Rome. Barcelona. Amsterdam. Maybe Prague. Maybe Vienna while we’re at it.
(This is a worldwide problem, by the way. Having spent many years booking UK travelers to Australia, I was constantly trying to rein in their over-ambitious sightseeing plans).
Here’s what nobody factors in: travel days aren’t sightseeing days. Between checking out of your hotel, getting to the station or airport, the journey itself, navigating to your next accommodation, and checking in, you’ve spent four to six hours minimum. Half a day gone before you’ve unpacked. Do that five or six times in a fortnight and you’ve spent more of your holiday in transit than in cafés.
Pick your absolute must-sees and protect them.
I think three or four nights is the minimum you should give cities like Paris, London, or Rome. If that means cutting a couple off the list, cut them. The trip you remember will be the slower one.
Mistake 4: Not booking the headline attractions ahead of time
I’ve been caught out by this one myself. Twenty years ago you could turn up at the Vatican on the day and walk straight in. Those days are gone.
If you’re travelling between May and September, these need to be locked in before you leave home:
- The Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel, Rome
- The Colosseum, Rome
- The Eiffel Tower summit, Paris
- The Palace of Versailles
- The Anne Frank House, Amsterdam
- The Uffizi Gallery, Florence
- The Sagrada Família, Barcelona
- Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, Milan
The Last Supper is the brutal one. Capacity is tiny, viewings are timed, and tickets routinely sell out three to four months ahead. No ticket, no entry. People stand outside the viewing room, two metres from one of the most famous paintings ever made, and don’t get in.
Mistake 5: Not leaving a gap in your itinerary
I know this looks like this contradicts mistakes two and four. Yes, plan holistically. Yes, pre-book the things that need pre-booking. But also leave yourself some safety gaps.
Good travel agents, and we think we are good travel agents, should have a tinge of pessimism (well realism). We know planes don’t always leave on time. Trains don’t always arrive on time. Strikes happen — French and Spanish air traffic controllers love industrial action at busy times! Weather closes attractions. Baggage goes astray. The Sunday you’d earmarked for shopping in Florence turns out to be the Sunday everything’s shut.
A good European itinerary has white space deliberately built in. A free morning here, an unscheduled afternoon there. Not every minute accounted for.
The travellers who enjoy Europe most are the ones who treat the plan as a framework, not a contract.
How can we help you?
Expedition Partners specialises in small ship and river cruising in Europe, escorted tours, and private rail journeys — and we love stitching the whole trip together around them. Before you book a thing, talk to us.
About Simon Flower
Originally from the United Kingdom, Simon has worked in the travel industry for over thirty-five years. He is passionate about genuine expedition style travel and has travelled to both the Arctic and Antarctic on expedition vessels.
Expedition Partners (formerly Flower Travel) specialise in expedition style travel by small ship cruise and private rail journeys.
PH: 1300 654 861
Monday-Friday 9.30am – 5.30pm
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