Over Christmas break in 2019-2020, I undertook my most ambitious Eurotrip I’d planned in years! I think the only other one that had come close at that point was when I visited Dublin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam with friends over 10 days while studying abroad. This time, while Matt was visiting me in Madrid for the holidays, we spent nearly two weeks traveling through Germany, Austria, and Italy.
The majority of our trip consisted of train travel; our only flights were bookends as we traveled from Madrid to Munich, Germany, and from Bologna, Italy, back to Madrid. We traveled with only backpacks and used only our phones for our boarding passes and tickets. We stayed in Airbnbs the entire time — a total of 6 different ones, plus one overnight train.
I’ll plan to write about much of the trip in more detail, but in this post, I’ll give an overview. Plus, since Matt is a videographer, he’s been working on short travelogues about different parts of the trip. I’ll continue to update as he finishes more of the videos. 🙂
Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany
We arrived in Munich late at night, and the next day we rented a car to visit famous fairytale castle Neuschwanstein. It was only a couple of hours away from Munich by car. Though the weather didn’t look promising, we were hoping for snow — or at least a lack of fog. The weather largely cooperated, and we really enjoyed our visit. We ate dinner in nearby Füssen, which gave us a taste of German small-town life (and schnitzel).
Munich, Germany
On our first day in Munich, it rained, and rained, and rained. It was also Christmas Eve, which meant that everything closed at 2pm and there was really nowhere to go to escape the rain, except for Starbucks. Thank you, capitalism? Our time in Munich was non-sequential, so after going to Salzburg and coming back, we had better weather luck. Notably, we visited the Pinakothek der Moderne art museum, Allianz Arena, and the famous Hofbräuhaus.
Salzburg, Austria
Our first day in Salzburg was equally rainy, and it was Christmas Day. We ventured out in the rain to visit the Christmas markets, and again Starbucks was the only thing that could provide any semblance of shelter from the torrential downpour. The only place in the whole city where we could find food was the grocery store in the train station, so we bought snacks and went back to the Airbnb to stay dry and watch Netflix for the rest of the day. Thankfully, the other days in Salzburg were much nicer! We got a beautiful view of the city from Museum der Moderne, and I got addicted to Mozartkugels.
Overnight Train
This was the third overnight train I’d ever taken, and I was assuming it would probably be the best one? The one I’d taken in Thailand was quite good, and the other one I took in Europe — where I didn’t have a bed — was quite bad. I think the problem here was my expectations, and they weren’t fully met. Once I got over that, I was as cozy as could be in my train bed… when the fire alarm went off for an hour at 2:30am and we thought we were going to have to evacuate the train. And then we arrived in Rome 3 hours late. But they gave us extra snacks to make up for it…
Rome, Italy
Rome for New Year’s! Even though I just went to Rome in July, I was happy to go back because it was awesome. However, I couldn’t believe how much MORE crowded it was than in the middle of the summer. Seriously, I would think winter would be off-peak travel time. But there were so. many. people. We weren’t able to do everything we would have probably liked to do, just because everything was already sold out, or the lines wrapped around blocks. Luckily, since we were meeting up with honeymooner friends Emily and James, they had the foresight to book a couple of Airbnb experiences for the four of us — including pasta-making in delightful little town Frascati.
Florence, Italy
Florence had been on my list for a while, so I was excited to visit, even though we didn’t have as much time there as I would have liked — only about 24 hours. It was probably okay though, because Florence was similarly packed with tourists, though not to the same degree as Rome. We were able to buy tickets for the Duomo museums, but the only thing we had time for was climbing the Campanile di Giotto — the famous bell tower next to the Duomo. Because even with advance tickets, we still had to wait in line for nearly 2 hours. But we also spent a lot of time eating really good meals, and sometimes I even had to use my Spantaliano language skills.
Bologna, Italy
We were flying out of Bologna because it just happened to be the cheapest place we could fly back to Madrid from. So we only had an evening there before our morning flight. And it was only a 30-minute train ride from Florence. But even with the little bit of time we spent there, it inspired me to come back. Apparently, Bologna is famous for its 40 kilometers — nearly 25 miles — of porticoes, which are pretty hard to miss. Though we had nothing but sun from the time we arrived in Italy, Bologna seems like a convenient place to be during a rainstorm.
Really, pretty much everything about our trip went pretty smoothly. No missed flights or trains, and no interpersonal conflicts either… which is also important! Not everyone travels well together. If you’ve read this far, you deserve to know that we did each receive a €50 fine in Florence for not having a valid bus ticket, which was basically was just bad luck. But that’s probably a story for another day. 🙂
Let me know if you have any questions about our trip or the planning process! Weird to think it’s all over, after 2 months of prep… but I guess that means it’s time to start planning the next one.
-Cathy
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Originally Published on January 15, 2020.
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