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Our 4 Month Europe Itinerary: Everything We Did & Saw

A recap of our 4 month Europe trip! Including an overview of how the trip happened, how we planned and all the places we visited. I've also included a full itinerary that details the entire trip!

A recap of our 4 month Europe trip

If you’re new around here, let me start by explaining where this post is started.

About three years ago, my boyfriend Matt and I cooked up this dream to travel for an extended period of time. We’ve always loved traveling and felt like before we “settled down” we wanted to do it for real. Explore for at least a few months at a time.

And in August of 2019, we actually did it! We hit the road and traveled all around Europe for FOUR MONTHS!

How our 4 Month Europe Trip Came to Be

We're both in our early 30s at this point (he's 30, I had just turned 31), so it's not like we were fresh out of college. We both have/had jobs, we had a life in New York and we even had a dog. So the trip was fairly unlikely to happen, but that didn't stop us.

I would say everything kind of fell into place for us. The apartment we’d been living in for the last 6+ years in NYC was getting sold, Matt was ready to move on from his job and my business is completely mobile. Matt's mom also said she'd watch Trevi, so it was kind of a no brainer.

We settled on Europe for a few reasons:

  • We've both been there before and love
  • It's easy to get around and visit a lot in a short period of time
  • There's tons of different culture in a relatively small geographical area
  • Matt loves soccer and wanted to see a bunch of teams play

And without much planning, we put our stuff in storage, drove across the country to drop our dog off in Denver, then flew to London and set off!

4 Month Europe Itinerary

How We Planned Our 4 Month Europe Trip

Our plans for this trip evolved as we were going. When we first started planning this trip we thought about having “home bases” for each of the four months and take smaller trips from there. The idea was that we'd be able to leave most of our stuff in an apartment and then travel around. However, we quickly realized this was going to be way too expensive and we'd end up double-paying for housing most of the time. So we scratched that.

Our second plan was to travel north to south. Since we left in August it was still pretty warm so we thought we'd stay in the more northern countries while it was warm and work out way south from there. The goal was to be able to stay somewhat temperate most of the trip.

But here's what actually happened…

We totally winged it! Pretty much the whole time. And it was absolutely the BEST way to do it.

Basically, when we took off for Europe we had our first three weeks booked. From there, we went where we wanted! We followed the soccer schedule a bit, we went with what we were feeling, we watched the weather and we picked places based on what sounded fun.

I know that might not be right for some people, but it totally worked for us. We would book 1 – 2 weeks out at a time and it gave us SO MUCH flexibility. We weren't locked into anything and we were really able to follow our gut. It was the absolute best and I highly recommend it!

Traveling in Italy for a Month

Our 4 Month Europe Trip Overview

Just to give you a sense of what we did while we were away, here's a quick overview of our trip in numbers:

  • 117 days in Europe
  • 15 countries visited
  • 30 cities explored
  • 17 flights taken
  • 6 trains
  • 9 football matches attended
  • 4 groups of friends who visited
  • (only) 2 days of tears
  • and more laughs than I can count!

Traveling Europe in 4 Months

Our 4 Month Europe Trip Itinerary

Okay, now let's talk about the FULL itinerary. I think the easiest thing to do would be for me to basically just create the entire timeline for you. Starting with our takeoff and ending with our departure. Ready to find out what we did? Let's do this!

  • Aug 24: leave for London (BOS > LIS > LHR)
  • Aug 25 – Sept 9: London, England

September

In September we visited England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany and Greece!

  • Sept 9 – Sept 13: Lakes District (England)
  • Sept 14: Liverpool, England (for a soccer game)
  • Sept 15 – 19: Ireland (here's our Ireland Itinerary)
  • Sept 20 – 22: London, England
  • Sept 23 – 27: Netherlands (here's our Netherlands Itinerary)
  • Sept 28: Dortmund, Germany (for a soccer game)
  • Sept 29 – 30: Athens, Greece

5 Days in the Dolomites

October

In October we visited Greece, Italy and Malta!

  • Oct 1 – 5: Mykonos, Greece
  • Oct 6 – 8: Milan, Italy (with a day trip to Lake Como)
  • Oct 9 – 13: Rome, Italy
  • Oct 14 – 17: Tuscany, Italy (here's our Tuscany road trip recap)
  • Oct 18 – 20: Florence, Italy
  • Oct 21: Milan, Italy (just as a stopover)
  • Oct 22 – 27: Dolomites, Italy (I met up with my cousin, Matt went to Vienna & Budapest with friends)
  • Oct 28 – Nov 1: Malta

November

In November we visited Italy, England, Portugal and Spain!

  • Nov 2 – 3: Naples, Italy
  • Nov 4 – 11: London, England
  • Nov 12 – 14: Porto, Portugal
  • Nov 15: Duoro Valley, Portugal
  • Nov 16 – 19: Lisbon, Portugal
  • Nov 20 – 22: The Algarve, Portugal
  • Nov 23: Sevilla, Spain
  • Nove 24: Granada, Spain
  • Nov 25 – 26: Madrid, Spain
  • Nove 27 – Dec 1: Barcelona, Spain

Christmas Markets in Munich Germany

December

And finally, December. It was our busiest month – we visited Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Czech Republish, Germany, Austria and back to Portugal!

  • Dec 2 – 5: Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Dec 6 – 7: Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Dec 8 – 10: Paris, France
  • Dec 11 – 12: Prague, Czech Republic
  • Dec 13 – 16: Munich, Germany (with day trip to Salzburg, Austria)
  • Dec 17 – 18: Lisbon, Portugal
  • Dec 19: HOME!! (LIS > BOS)

5 Easy Day Trips from London by Car or Train

The Trip of a Lifetime!

All I can say is this honestly was a trip of a lifetime for both of us. We had the absolute BEST time and I'm going home with some amazing memories. I'll continue to share some recaps of our trip, but if there's anything specific you'd like to know, let me know in the comments! I hope you enjoyed following along as much as I enjoyed sharing ❤️

More Posts about our 4 Month Europe Trip

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14 comments on “Our 4 Month Europe Itinerary: Everything We Did & Saw”

  1. Hi! I have a quick question in regards to your Borussia Dortmund soccer game visit. I am a 22-year-old recent undergraduate and am currently planning my 4 month Europe travel. One of my biggest bucket list events is to visit a home BVB game, and with consistent research, the overall consensus has been that it is very hard for tourists to purchase a ticket for one of these events due to many season ticket holders. My question is, how difficult was it for you to receive some tickets, and what was your overall experience like visiting the city of Dortmund and the game itself? Would love to hear back, thank you!

    1. Hi David – my husband was the architect of most of our soccer games, so here are his tips 🙂

      – correct it’s difficult for tourists to get tickets because of the way in which the leagues are set up and the preference they have for local fans to go to the games

      – you will likely have to pay a premium for a ticket – we used stub hub. Picked them up from the seller at the hotel near the stadium – took the train from Dortmund city center to signal Idunas park

      – try to do your mapping/research ahead of time because there isn’t much in the way of English signage or most people we spoke with didn’t speak English well.

      – get there early because you can walk to various parts of the stadium

      – We only spent a night in Dortmund so don’t have a ton of recommendations – we basically got there, went to the game, had dinner at a Thai place near our hotel and left in the morning back to the Netherlands

  2. SO fun! We are planning a 5 month Euro-trip in the new year – did you run in to any Schengen area issues? I have read that you can only stay in that “zone” for up to 90 days. Did you stay longer or plan around that? Thanks!

    1. Wooooot!!! Omg so excited for you! And no we didn’t because we limited our time in the Schengen to only 90 days. We spent a while in England/UK which is not part of it. I would not risk it unless you look into getting a tourist visa (which I think would give you more time?). Have the absolute BEST time!

  3. I’d love to know how much a trip like this cost. Any ways to save etc. And what happens now? Are you going to move back to NYC?

    1. Just shared a life update on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-pU8x_kxd0

      And I’ve shied away from sharing budget because everyone travels so differently. Since I was still working and we didn’t having living costs at home, I think we were in a unique situation and therefore were able to more flexible with our spending. You can absolutely do Europe on the cheap, but that wasn’t how we wanted to travel this time around – BUT there are tons and tons of resources out there to share! I’ll definitely create a post about tips for saving money while traveling though!

  4. So awesome and so fun to follow you through it all! Definitely generated some bucket list items for us! What’s next? Where will you three land?

  5. Congratulation, it is the best thing in life. Take care of yourself nd of your loved one and do it again and again.
    Regards.

  6. You lived my fantacy (for now, my time is coming ????) and it was so awsome to read and see your photos. That is exactly how my husband and I would love to travel one day. Thank you for sharing! Debbie

  7. Awesome! I traveled Europe for three months in my early twenties. A trip of a lifetime! We stayed with families often which was wonderful.