Two-Week France, Italy, and Switz Trip Itinerary

Okay, now that you’ve read all the details on ways we saved up and budgeted for this trip, I wanted to share the day-to-day itinerary we went by while we were on the trip. In our opinions, we thought our plans ended up being the perfect mix of being able to explore each location we visited with enough time (many times, just a single day was perfect), and with a great mix of things we wanted to visit in each city as well (ie. museums and cathedrals).

I’ll add a few pictures here as well, but if you want to see more pictures of each city, head to my IG for my Europe and Europe Hacks highlights as well as my recent posts. I know for me, pictures are what sold me on adding each location to the list of places we visited on this trip, so just know there are plenty more of each place I mention in this post over there on IG! Okay, now buckle up, because this is gonna get lengthy with it being such a long trip. 🙂

I’m going to simply break it down day-by-day in order of what we did. Before that, I want to mention a few random things that will help to know along the way:

• We only traveled with a carry-on suitcase to share and a backpack for the whole trip. This is worth mentioning because it made it so easy when we were hopping between cities and Airbnbs to not have a ton of luggage to haul on the sidewalks (or cobblestone — yikes). It made it so simple for us. We each packed 7 outfits, mine were 90% dresses, and just did laundry halfway through the trip. Worked like a charm.
• For when we walked around each city, the only things we took with us were a fanny pack and my Hydroflask. We used our Visa card for everything, so we had that with us at all times (obviously), along with our important documents like our passports and COVID documents. The other things we always had with us were our essential oil rollers, my mini fan (hello pregnancy), a portable phone battery, and our phones.
• This trip included a LOT of walking, but I will say it wasn’t too much for me, even at seven-months pregnant. Don’t get me wrong, I had my fair share of swollen ankles and had to sit a few times each day from getting hot so easily, but it was never too much for me even at that stage. So keep that in mind when reading through this itinerary: it was a lot of walking, but if I could do it, I’m sure anyone can. (With the caveat that we probably chose the perfect time in pregnancy to go on this trip… I don’t think my answer would be the same if we had gone in my third trimester hahaha). That said, we both only took our Hokas with us and they were the perfect shoes to wear the whole trip. Cannot recommend enough to bring quality tennis shoes with support for a trip like this, especially for two whole weeks. Also, we were ending days around 8 PM each day, so we were getting plenty of sleep to recharge for the next day!
• Hacking the time differences on travel days: This is a big one. We didn’t want to waste any days on our trip, including the day we flew into Paris, so we wanted to jump onto the new time zone as fast and seamlessly as possible to make the most of that day. We flew out of Newark at 11 PM and arrived in Paris seven hours later at 1:00 PM time there. We tried to just get a few hours of sleep on that flight so we could spend the rest of the day out and about in Paris once we landed. It worked great! The trick was definitely to not take a nap once we got there. On the way back, we did the same thing but backwards. We left Paris at 8 PM and arrived to Newark at 10 PM. We stayed up that entire flight watching movies so we went right to sleep when we got back to Newark that night. By the time we got home the next afternoon, we were already back used to our time zone. Nothing revolutionary here, just wanted to mention that because it was so worth pushing through those few hours instead of feeling off for multiple days each way. If you want help on how to do this for any trip you have coming up, the app TimeShifter is a great tool!
• Eurorail for traveling between countries was the best thing we did. I mentioned this in the other blog, but to summarize: Eurorail is a network of trains that connects  pretty much anywhere you want to go in Europe. You buy a pass for however many days you need (we bought 10 day passes) and you can use it for any amount of trains you want in that time period. The days don’t have to be consecutive, either! So we had days where we hopped four trains to get to the next city, and it was included in our pass price. We’d just scan our pass when a train attendant would come by. It made it SO easy to plan things through the app and change plans when we needed to, too. Not to mention, trains were much faster than driving would have been.
• Getting around each city: As long as somebody has data on their phone during a trip like this, you’ll be good. Apple Maps made it super easy to navigate either walking or using the metros/buses around town. Don’t let getting around stress you out, I promise it’s easy to figure out as long as you have your phone, maps, and Google Translate!

Okay, I think that’s all I wanted to start with, now let’s break down each day! (Ps. We started our trip a few days earlier in New York, but I’m going to skip that part and the travel days getting to and from Paris. That to say, this trip was two weeks total, but 12 days really in Europe itself!) Here is a visual of all the cities we stopped in, in order, on the map. This was a HUGE loop, but the trains made it so doable!

Day 1: Paris

☀ We arrived in Paris (ORLY airport) at 1:30 PM and took a series of metros to get to our Airbnb to drop off our luggage.

☀  Walked to Moulin Rouge (6 minutes from our Airbnb) just to see it from the outside for a second.

☀  Walked to Sacre-Coeur (free) (13 minutes) which is a cathedral with a great view of the city, and we went through the cutest neighborhood on the way. Grabbed a quick lunch on the walk there, too.

☀  Took the metro to Arc de Triomphe / Champs of Elysees (22 minutes). Just looked at it from the outside for a few minutes.

☀  Metrod from there to the Eiffel Tower (15 minutes) and sat on the lawn for a while! Note: we went back to go up the tower another day 🙂

☀ Got dinner at Firmine near the Tower (about a 5 minute walk)

☀ Headed back (via metro) to the Airbnb around 7:30 PM. Found a place with crepes nearby (of course) for dessert then called it a night!

Day 2: Paris

☀ Started our day at KB for coffee and a quick breakfast around 8 AM. PS. this was one of our longest walking days! We had tons of energy so it was no biggie pacing it out, but just note that you can also metro to these places as well if that’s better for conserving your energy!

☀ Metrod over to the Louvre. This would’ve been great but it turns out they’re closed on Tuesday (my bad for not catching that). So we ended up starting our day there but came back to actually visit the Louvre at the end of our trip. It wasn’t a huge deal since it gave us way more time to do a lot of other things, but just note to self that they’re closed on Tuesday!

☀ Walked to Saint Chappelle ($) (VERY pretty stain glass windows inside) then Notre Dam (which was closed on the inside due to the fire renovations) (20 minutes). Was a great view of the river on that walk!

☀ Started walking towards Luxembourg Gardens (free) (20 minutes). We got a crepe on the way and then lunch at Le Choupinet right before we walked through the gardens. So that split up all of these longer walks being in a row! The gardens were super pretty to walk through and sit in.

☀ Headed towards the D’Orsay (art) Museum ($). (30 minute walk) It was beautiful in there, and they have a lot of Vincent Van Gogh featured there, too!

☀ Walked along the river to head to the Modern Art of Paris Museum (free). (30 minutes, like I said, we did a lot of walking this day LOL) This isn’t a usual museum people put on the list, but there’s a great concert video we love by FKJ that was filmed there, so we wanted to see that display: Raoul Dufy’s painting “La Fée Electricité” . It was HUGE and so worth seeing! It was a nice last-minute decision in our day that we treasured seeing.

☀ Walked back to the Eiffel Tower (15 minutes) to go up ($) and ended the day with dinner nearby!

Day 3: Bern, Switzerland

☀ Started our day bright and early with a train ride from Paris to Bern at 6:45 AM! (5 hours)

☀ Arrived in Bern at 11:30 AM. Walked from the train station to

the Airbnb to drop luggage and picked up lunch on the walk over there.

☀ Walked through the city down to cross the Aere River (from the train station to the other side of the river was probably 15 minutes total, with us stopping at our Airbnb along the way. The city isn’t very big!)

☀ Went to see the Bern Bears. This is a bear pit they’ve had for years in Bern! We, sadly, didn’t see any bears but we sure did try!

☀ Walked down to the river to feel how cold it was (5 mins)

☀ Walked to the other side of the bridge for the cutest little area filled with flowers and Switz houses (called Matte) (5 mins)

☀ Took a bus to Rosterei for some goood coffee (15 minutes).

☀ After coffee, we took another bus to the Gurtenbahn area (15 minutes). This is a tram ($) that takes you up the mountain in Bern to overlook the city. Note: this isn’t a snowy part of Switzerland, it was very green!

☀ Rode the toboggan (called the Ruterbahn) at the top of the Gurtenbahn. This was just a fun, five-minute activity that we thought was funny! It was $5 and worth the laughs for how slow it started out (but trust me, it sped up LOL). Here’s the slow video of Matt starting out!

☀ Got a snack at the restaurant at the top of the mountain and relaxed over the view for a while.

☀ Took a bus back to old town Bern (20 minutes) to walk to the Bundeshaus (Bern’s federal building)

☀ Walked to the cathedral in Bern (5 minutes)

☀ Ate dinner at Harmonie (right next to the cathedral) and had fondue for dinner!

☀ Got Switz chocolate for dessert (note: a lot of chocolate shops close by 6:30 PM there) and watched the sunset along the river right behind the cathedral.

☀ Headed back to our Airbnb for the night around 7:30 PM.

Day 4: Annecy, France

☀ Started our day off with another early train at 7:30 AM to head to Annecy (3.5 hours)! Annecy is a small town in France that isn’t super touristy, but it ended up being one of our favorite stops! The scenery was beautiful and so was the town. It’s also fairly small so most of what we did was walking around and sitting at park benches which was a great restful day for us. Here’s a reel I made that shows how cute it is there!

☀ We arrived at 11:15 AM and walked straight to the Airbnb to drop our luggage (see a pattern here?).

☀ We walked along the lake area into the small town (15 minutes total).

☀ Got coffee at Brumes which was SO good. From there we started walking along the river in the middle of town just to see the area! Again, it is so pretty there.

☀ Got a lunch crepe (what else would I be eating in France?) at Quai.

☀ Walked up to the Annecy Castle ($) and overlooked the town.

☀ Stopped into one of the chocolate shops in town for a snack.

☀ Walked back over to the lake area (10 minutes) and rented a peddle boat for an hour ($). It was so fun to view the lake and mountains this way!

☀ Got dinner along the river in the middle of town at La Chalet.

☀ Grabbed dessert (do I even need to mention that it was yet another crepe?) along the way back to our Airbnb for the night.

Day 5: Chamonix Mont-Blanc, France (French Alps)

☀ Hopped on a 8:45 AM train to head to Chamonix (2.5 hours)! This town is home to the highest point of the Alps (Mont-Blanc) so even the train ride there was beautiful and full of mountains. Visiting in September I feel like we didn’t see as much snow as we would’ve in a different season, but it was so breathtaking still.

☀ Hopped off the train and went straight to lunch at Josephine. And of course, from there we dropped our stuff off at the Airbnb.

☀ Grabbed some afternoon coffee at Moody Coffee Roasters

☀ Like Annecy, Chamonix is a small town that was super restful just to walk around and enjoy the view. The Alps were stunning surrounding the town! We walked around a good bit this day and just enjoyed the town because it was (sadly) rainy the week we were there. I’m gonna list out what we would’ve done if it wasn’t raining and foggy for those hours we had in town.

☀ Ski lifts up to the Alps: The Mer de Glace and Le Brevent cable car. These are in two parts of the small town but probably only a 10 minute walk between them! This was our main plan for the day was to pay to go up the ski lifts into the Alps (they also have an ice cave which is COOL). It’s a little pricey, but to see the Alps up close? We were totally down to pay it if it hadn’t been so foggy!

☀ We took this day as a day of rest and ended with dinner at Restaurant la Ferme. It was truly a breathtaking day with those views, and still ended up being one of our favorite stops of the whole trip!

Day 6: Train Day & Milan, Italy

☀ This day we had set aside as our biggest train day to go from France to Italy. We started our train day at 7:15 AM and it was 7 hours total on trains.

☀ The view this day was also full of mountains! There were a few switches between trains we had to make along the way, so it truly didn’t feel as long of a train day as we expected. It felt more like 4 hours to us.

☀ We had a stop in Milan for two hours which was the perfect amount of time. We metrod to see the Milan cathedral there (which was insanely big and beautiful) and got some real Italian pizza. It was the perfect break in between trains which probably is also why it felt shorter of a day! Honestly, we had debated spending a day in Milan, but after that stop, we felt like we saw enough and felt really good about it. If we were people who wanted to shop at designer stores, we may have felt differently, but the city felt very retail and business-centric, so a few hours was perfect.

☀ Hopped back on the trains and ended up in Florence around 7 PM right in time for dinner!

☀ We got the best pasta at Del Gatto E La Volpe!

Day 7: Florence, Italy

☀ We started this day with coffee and a big breakfast at Melaleuca. This was our second-longest walking day, and we saw SO much in one day, so it was really nice starting with a sit-down breakfast.

☀ There were tons of places to stop and see along our walk towards Accademia Gallery from where we started. The walk would’ve been 20 minutes straight, but we stopped at these places on the way and probably extended the walk to be more like an hour long because there was SO much to take in and walk around! Here are the stops we did in order on the way there:

☀ Piazza della Signoria and Palazzo Vecchio (10 minutes)

☀ Piazza della Repubblica (5 minutes) There were some local musicians playing right next to the carousal there and it was just the sweetest.

☀ Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (5 minutes) an iconic classic.

☀ The Baptistery of St. John (5 minutes)

☀ Accademia Gallery ($) (7 minutes) aka the home of the Statue of David. This was SO cool to see in person!

☀ We walked to the Cathedral of San Lorenzo (8 minutes) and got lunch right next to there at a place we stumbled upon. This is also where the Mercato Centrale market is which has tons of pop up shops to check out.

☀ From here, we walked to Basilica of Santa Maria Novella (7 minutes) just to see it from the outside. We stopped to get gelato right there at Gelateria Home Made Firenze.

☀ Walked to the Uffizi Gallery (13 minutes). This has tons of art to see! We actually decided to not go inside (we just were loving all we were walking around and seeing and didn’t feel like spending a few hours in an art museum), but it’s worth mentioning that this is one of the most popular museums in Florence.

☀ Right next to the Gallery is the Ponte Vecchio bridge, which is *the* bridge in Florence! It has shops and a great view of the river and city.

☀ Walked over to the Pitti Palace ($) (12 minutes). We opted to just view the gardens here, but if you have a few hours, you can also tour the whole palace! The gardens had the prettiest views of Tuscany!

☀ Took a snack break and headed towards Piazzale Michelangelo (25 minute walk) for a sunset overlook over all of Florence! This was the prettiest view to see of Florence and was a great way to end the full day! It’s a must-stop for sure.

☀ We found a random pizza spot on the way home and called it a night! It was a great day and we saw SO much, even with not seeing all of the palace and Uffizi Gallery. We had no regrets!

Day 8: Pisa & Tuscany, Italy

☀ This was our one day we did a classic excursion on the whole trip! We did this tour through TripAdvisor Pisa, Siena, and San Gimignano. It was a 12 hour day, but we had fun! For $80 that included lunch as well, it was a great deal.

☀ You can see the itinerary for that day on the TripAdvisor link, but it was great! We basically stopped in each of the three towns for 2 hours each, and had lunch at a winery in Tuscany. And seeing Pisa was super fun! Each stop was a pretty small spot, so it felt like the perfect amount of time at each spot.

☀ The only downer was that these locations were somewhat far apart, so it was a good bit of time on a bus. We didn’t mind because it covered a lot of ground, but worth mentioning if that’s not your jam.

☀ When we got back to Florence, we got some great pasta for dinner at Trattoria Zà Zà (each dish was around $8, too)! 

Day 9: Coast Train Day & Nice, France

☀ Wrapped up our Italy days and headed to the train station at 7:30 AM. We were also on trains for about 7 hours this day, but again, felt more like 4 hours. The views were right along the French Riviera, so it was beautiful. We got to Nice around 3:30 PM.

☀ After dropping off our bags and freshening up, we walked over to the Basilica of Notre-Dame De Nice, which led us right to  Avenue Jean Médecin, which is the main strip of stores and restaurants in Nice.

☀ There is a tram that runs right through this road if you don’t want to walk, but we opted to just walk from there straight towards the pier (15 minutes).

☀ This led us to Place Massena area which has some pretty architecture, the Sun Fountain, and the statue of Apollo.

☀ Once we got to the pier, we just walked along it and sat on the beach for quite some time! Note: the Nice beaches are mostly rocks, not sand. It was super pleasant with the breeze, too.

☀ We ended with a beach dinner at Le temps d’un été! The walk back to our Airbnb was about 15 minutes. That to say, Nice was very reasonable to walk throughout.

Day 10: Nice & Monaco

☀ Started this day with some coffee and breakfast at Cafe Fino in Nice. Very vibey, might I add!

☀ We had a few more areas we wanted to see in Nice before spending the afternoon in Monaco, so from there we walked to the Old Town section of Nice (5 minutes). This area has tons of brightly painted buildings and there was a farmers market to walk through as well! 

☀ We headed back towards the beach pier and to the Nice overlook aka Castle Hill! Note: there is an elevator at the bottom, so definitely opt out of those millions of stairs like I did! This was a great overlook and photo op.

☀ We took the tram from there to the train station and took a short (20 minute) train over to Monaco for the afternoon!

☀ The main event in Monaco was definitely Monte Carlo, which is an extremely famous casino. You can pay to go inside the casino itself if you want, which is what we did. Or you can just walk into the lobby, which itself is BEAUTIFUL. We spent a few hours there before walking in the surrounding shop and pier area.

☀ The rest of the time we spent in Monaco was walking around, grabbing lunch by the pier, and we hopped on a bus to go see the Exotic Gardens. There were some other gardens you can also see there, too, (like the Princess Grace Rose Garden) if you want!

☀ We went back to Nice and spent the evening in this cute square area for dinner. We stumbled upon a Michelin-star restaurant called Olive & Artichaut. They had a three-course menu that was $35 a person, so we went with that! It was amazing. After that we found some crepes for dessert and called it a night.

Day 11: Train Day & Paris, France

☀ As always, we started this day with an early train at 6:45 AM to head back towards Paris. I know after reading this it may be easy to be like “Wow, that was a lot of early mornings.” But let me just say, since we ended our nights fairly early and got plenty of rest, it was awesome starting days that early. Plus, being on the trains was super chill for us. We were either talking, reading on the kindle, or listening to podcasts. It didn’t feel rushed or anything!

☀ We got back to Paris around 2 PM and dropped our luggage off before metroing to the Republique neighborhood market to grab some food and coffee at Fringe.

☀ This is the day we redeemed ourselves by going to the Louvre ($)! It has SO much more than just the Mona Lisa, and we spent hours there. It was definitely worth it, not to mention, it is MASSIVE.

☀ We ended our Paris nights with one last dinner in the city at Ober Momma, which had some amazing truffle pasta!

Day 12: Paris & The Final Day

☀ Our flight was at 7 PM that night, so we didn’t have a crazy amount of time that day before we wanted to head to the airport super early given all the travel restrictions and papers to sign before entering back into the US in 2021!

☀ Our single mission for the day: visiting the Palace of Versailles. We took a train from Paris to get there (keep in mind it’s about 45 minutes away). It was giant and beautiful and oddly empty when we went! We were there for probably two hours. The gardens were massive and it was so worth it to get there when it opened so that we could experience it without crowds.

☀ That pretty much ended our day and trip! From there was just getting our luggage and going through the travel day of heading back home.

So there you have it! It truly was an incredible trip and although some of our days (like Paris and Florence) were heavily packed, there was no stress the whole trip. We took our time (not to mention all the snack breaks I needed for my very-preggo self) and enjoyed it all. Ending days early was key for our recovery between days of walking, that’s for sure. Besides being bummed that we caught the Alps on a rainy day, we had no regrets on the trip and it was the perfect amount of time for us to experience each spot we chose. As always, if you have any questions, I’m an open book! Going on a trip like this was so life-giving to us and even on a budget, we didn’t feel like we missed out on anything. Happy travels! 🙂