Dear Friends,
As a person not very good at geographic and history, it was a hard task to me to arrange the two weeks trip without any hand to help. Thanks for the APPs and suggestion I found online and the followingtips for your planning of the trip and vacation.
1.Fixed the time period of your trip at first.
And plan your Visa Issue at first. To apply the visa to Switzerland just need 3 working days if you prepared the whole package. (I use the agency select on www.Taobao.com as for consultant)
Don't forget to buy an insurance. If you find an agency, to see whether they include the insurance in the service package.
2.Select which scenic spot you want
and make the decision which kind of you tour style you like, to have a very casual and depth understanding for a country or city or have a tight tour schedule to visit more scenic spots.
(learning the information of scenic spot and country orcity, I use the APP or online web address of http://guide.qyer.com/)
Hereafter is the Brief introduction for how I use http://guide.qyer.com/, I haven’t found the English version for my system all setting in Chinese, you could try on your system.
You could search Country or city which you are interested in.
And you will find there is a manual with followingstructure:
- Overall introduction for the country or city
-The typical scenic spots you can visit
-Recommended trip route (sometime it will give a short trip route or depth tour route, normally the scenic spots recommended on the first one or two days trip in these routes will be listed on my trip list for my first visit and the schedule could be more relax)
-The local festival or activities introduction, normally you could learn more detail by click the link.
-scenic spots introduction (you could combine the information with the recommend route to select the scenic spots you’d like to visit finally) almost all the scenic spots, you could rent a audio guide.
-Transportation, accommodation and restaurant recommended (I will elaborate more for my trip as following).
-Safety
-Some brief information for visa, tour center, map for emergency
-And other information for your reference.
3.Get rough plan from the following two views:
a) Register into a package tour in whole from China or locally in Europe (you could find many trip packages online, which I normally use “www.Ctrip.com”and you could find the package trip on http://guide.qyer.com/,but normally they are Chinese one and you could try to find an English package tour or American Agency or Local agency.)
i. Advantage: you have a tourist guide to introduce some cultural and history. And the transportation is well planned and with high efficiency.
ii.Disadvantage: miss the chance to experience the local life style.
(There is a joke that the tourist guide told me that Chinese is not travelling who is just like go to a fair (laughing and crying), so package tour I mentioned may not suit to you. I join a short 3 days tour which was part of a two weeks tour package that they are half of the time is on the way. )
b) Planned by yourself for all the views you like.
i.Book the air ticket, local travel ticket, and accommodation by yourself
ii. Arrange the route by yourself
iii. More causal and relax
4. How to plan by yourself.
a) Transportation:
i. Air ticket for round trip from China to Europe: book on www.Ctrip.com, you could set the price alert for your price target on APP of Ctrip. The price normally changes everyday. And now is good to have cheaper rate for the winter season.
ii. Transportation among cities in Europe:by comparing the transportation efficiency and convenience as well as the economic comparison, I selected the point to point train tickets booked online (www.Ctrip.com)in advance as soon as I fixed the cities to be visited.
You could also book Eurail Pass online www.eurail.com/cn, which you could use to get on the train in the valid period.
Frankly speaking,if you could well plan your trip before you start your trip, point to point ticket will be more economic. Which is far more cheaper than an eurail pass for you could get big discount by book the ticket earlier.
Kindly note that: use the e-ticket or pick up the ticket locally for I forgot one of my paper tickets at home and waste it (crying:’()
The reasons for why I chose point to point train tickets:
A. Time efficiency and convenience: the train stations are normally in the downtown of European cities.
B. Economic than air ticket.
C. Your time on train will not waste for the out window view.
iii. Transportation in cities:
A.There is bus tour ticket for big cities which setting a good route for the typical scenic spots and there are many languages to be selected on bus for the introduction for the scenic spots you have passed (its supper awesome for self-serve trip, remember to get the route map and you headset from the bus driver). You could get on or off at the spot you in valid time. You could firstly to visit all the scenic spots on bus at all to have an overview and then select two or three best scenic spots you want to visit to get off and spend more time.
Take Paris as example, I bought two days bus tour tickets in airport. The first day I go around for all the scenic spots (with my luggage)and second day I selected three typical scenic spots to visit.
Tips: do you know Shanghai has that bus tour too, you could have your Shanghai overview tour too and select which you like to have a depth visit.
B. By bus or subway with one day ticket or one time/short time ticket.
C. Rent a car if you have countryside tour.(you could find link via www.ctrip.com too)
b). Accommodation:
i. Hotels: You could book hotels via www.ctip.com and www.booking.com or Ctrip app. Or any other APP you found is good.
ii. Airbnb: you could register with link https://abnb.me/e/SLmFr5aLwI to get $30 coupon for your first book. I used Airbnb a lot for I want to cook something in case my son didn’t like the restaurant food and then I finally found that at most time it was lucky for me that it was hard for me to eat western food in restaurant for two weeks and I could cook for myself (laughing with crying).
And I found that it’s very interesting and good experience of local life by booking homestay house. And more relax and causal for me just like home. See my booking on Airbnb for your reference, They are very nice, right? Airbnb is highly recommended for your self-serve trip.
Picture for Paris Home
My son said he likes the homestay more than hotels. Every time we movers to a new house, he would call it as our new home.
Picture for Rome Home
Tips:
No matter hotels or Airbnb, please take the following items for some hotels not provided and most Airbnb house didn’t provide.
- Scanned copy of your passport for my husband was stolen in Paris when he was in the train station. Fortunately, no important thing was lost.
- Toothbrush
- Toothpaste
- Slippers
- Power adapter for it’s different for Chinese standard and Europe standard.
- Umbrella
- All other daily use items necessary
For Airbnb, fixed where and when to get you key in advance.
Clean the house before you leave just like treating your own house and in case you forget something.
c). Restaurant
I found there was not so reliable for the restaurant score and suggestion for Chinese restaurant on google map. I didn’t use google map for western restaurant and then try to find the expensive one or famous one:P.
My son slept too early so normally I don't’ have too much chance to have enjoy my dinner outside.
I’m waiting for your suggestion for this part after your trip :P
In Paris, to find good restaurant of sea food, it’s really famous in Europe
In Germany, you could enjoy meat and Italy food, turkey food.
In Italy, Pizza
In this trip, my friends in Germany were really liked the Chinese food I cooked there which I thought it was far more better than the Chinese restaurant I have taken by searched with high score in google (Thanks for the SHANGHAI supermarket just in the next street of where I lived). I think I like Chinese food more and more as much as oversea visit experience I had (laughing and crying).
d). Supermarket
Use google map to find supermarket nearest, and it’s conveniencenormally open on 7 o’clock and closed by 8 or 9 o’clock in evening. Google mapwill show the work time I think.
e) Europe Phone number with 4G mobile data traffic
Yes, you could purchase a phone number use specific foryour trip in Europe with 4g mobile data traffic. I purchased on Taobao but thelink is invalid now, you could find a new one if you need.
Buy it in advance with enough delivery time for you need toget it delivered to you. And don’t throw away the card package.
Trying to read through the comments by other users as much as possible to identify whether most of the comments is reliable or not.
Above all, I'm really enjoying the planning with my husband for my trip and even some good or bad surprises which may not happened if selected a package tour. Just like, the first day I arrived in Paris, we met our uncle in the train station. It was really a big surprise and we had supper together on the second day. But if I was in package trip, I may not so lucky to meet him. And the experience to live as an local was very interesting too even it's somehow more tired by self-serve than joined into a tourist team especially with a 4 years old child.
My trip route for your reference:
Day 1-Day 3: Paris, two days bus tour, one day Disney
Day 4: morning train go to Kolner, have a half day tour in Kolner.
Day 5: noon train to Munich, it was a nice train view of Rhine: ICE
Day6: tour to Schloss Neuschwanstein
Day7: Tour to downtown of Munich, and 4:30 pm train to Schaffhausen
(Day 6-7，My friend provided the guide in my Munich stay)
Day8: Tour to the biggest waterfall of Europe, the churchnear to the hotel and IWC museum
Day9-11: short time local package tour in a tourist groupfrom Zuich to Rome(all the trip arrangement was booked before starting thevacation)
Day9: Mountain Titlis,and Lucerne
Day10: Venice
Day 11: Rome
Day 12-14: Self-serve trip to Rome
Day 12: Downtown tour
Day 13: Vatican in the morning and small shopping in the afternoon (highly recommended for the church, to visit it on morning, you will need to wait at least 45 minutes to get into it for waiting for safety check in afternoon in winter season, even not mentioned in other season. You could get audio guide APP by pay for 5euros for each account）
Day 14: Rest in the day and packaging. Tax refund in airport and flight back to Shanghai in evening.
The Safety is not as bad as mentioned if you could carefully watch out your stuffs and didn't stay outside too long or in remote place in evening. But still need your patience for any risk.
Enjoy your trip:P
Best Regards!
Rachel
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