Round The World With Paul and Jose: Prepare For Take Off

We have 6 weeks in Europe included in our 87 day RTW trip, and here’s how we planned them.

We started listing some 18 cities and realized it was too dense. We’ve hardly been anywhere in Europe prior, and we know we will return, so we focused on more time per city. Our entry point coming from Bangkok is Vienna on May 16th, and we need to get to Stockholm on June 19th. See my previous post for how this fits into the world journey. We have 1st class rail passes so we can enjoy the European landscape, but longer hops we are doing with flights. We also are centering weekends on the cities we feel may have bigger gay party scenes.

We are covering Budapest, Vienna, and Zurich by train. 3 nights for Budapest and Vienna and 4 nights for Zurich.  We have weekends in Budapest and Zurich for partying, and Vienna is mid-week. We chose Budapest since its a happening city and was highly recommended by a well traveled “Family” bartender we met on the Queen Mary 2. ManAboutWorld has a great Vienna guide in their January 2013 issue showing that it is certainly on the must visit list. As for Zurich, we simply have wanted to go there. After Zurich we fly to Catania, Sicily.

There’s a fabulous seaside cliff village on the east coast of Sicily called Taormina which I have been to before and insist on going back with my partner; so we have 3 nights in a B&B there. Afterwards, we rail up the boot to the Amalfi coast for 3 nights in Sorrento, and will also visit Pompei and Capri. Lastly for Italy, we rail north to Venice for a 2 night stay. We thought it good to see it before it sinks. We then fly to the South of France.

So many of our friends love the South of France so we are going to spend one night in Nice and then 2 nights in Aix-En-Provence. Nice is the more commercialized beach seaside town, and Aix-En-Provence a bit more charming village. We are traveling by train throughout and then continuing by train to Barcelona. This whole route is supposed have incredible scenery, even though it has multiple transfers.

We have 4 nights at the Le Meridien in Barcelona and can’t wait to party in this city.  Adding in their amazing food, and that my partner is fluent in Spanish, this is one of our most anticipated destinations. We are visiting Madrid as well for 3 more nights.

Madrid to Paris is by plane, and we have 6 nights lined up in a charming Latin Quarter apartment. We are planning side trips to Versailles and Rheims as well as many activities in the city.

We then have 5 nights in Stockholm followed by 4 in Amsterdam to end our Journey.