10 Countries in 14 Days

Richard Smith

• 3 min read
10 Countries in 14 Days
I don't know why there's a gap from Germany to Luxembourg.

I've just returned from a family trip around Europe where we visited 10 countries in 14 days.

We started off in Scotland, and then visited England (1), France (2), Italy (3), Malta (4), Spain (5), France again, Monaco (6), Italy again, Switzerland (7), Germany (8), Luxembourg (9), Belgium (10) and France again before England to home.

Some observations:

  • The Channel Tunnel is amazing, but my kids didn't seem as excited as me. I watched the build progress, the news story when they first met in the middle, the documentaries explaining it all afterwards - it's a tunnel under the ocean! First time passenger, would recommend.
  • The UK has the worst roads, with Belgium just behind. Swiss roads were the best, or Luxembourg.
  • The UK has the best signage, with Germany a close second. They have very similar signs to us. Italy was particularly poor here, with a lack of consistency. The two numbering systems - Italy road numbers and European highway numbers - were also presented poorly. To make them both fit, they just made them both smaller, which is hard to read at 130kph.
  • But Italy has the best service station coffee. There were a lot of Italians getting their morning fix, downing multiple espressos like alcohol shots which was fun to see.
  • France showing the fuel prices on the signs next to the road before you enter the services should be the standard everywhere.
  • The UK does get some abuse for not learning another language, but when countries like Belgium or Switzerland have multiple languages in the same place (like trains with posters on the wall in French, German and Dutch/Flemish) then I think they're just incentivised more than we are.
  • Italy is surprisingly run down. Genoa especially. The cleanest parts of Rome seemed to be the oldest bits they're trying to preserve. Not sure what's going on here, it wasn't so obvious elsewhere.
  • Lots of graffiti problems in France too though. Much more than the UK or Germany.
  • The UK has lots of trees next to the highway. This seemed less so elsewhere. But I might also be mis-remembering that one.
  • Highway driving is quite dull through most of these countries. But driving to Monaco, or from Monaco into Italy, or Italy into Switzerland is spectacular. Do that bit.
  • Switzerland is crazy expensive.

The cruise part:

  • The first week was a cruise on MSC World Europa. A lovely ship.
  • The Panorama Lounge is the best entertainment on the ship. Much better than the theatre shows. The theatre show cast are the theatre geeks, the Panorama Lounge is the cool kids.
  • The theatre shows did seem particularly poor this time. Don't know why.
  • The buffet is confusingly laid out. Split across two floors for seemingly no reason. Split across either side of the ship, with no clear walking loop around it. Much better on other ships.
  • Only 1 day at sea out of 7 makes it a winner for places visited.

Some places we particularly enjoyed:

  • Fort Bard - also known as the Hydra base from the start of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Spectacular views, surrounding scenery, and a nice place to have a coffee. Parking can be a challenge, as we found.
  • The Mercedes-Benz Museum - very interesting, loads of cool cars, also tells the surrounding history of the world which provided the backdrop to those cars. As an F1 fan, it was also nice to see some of their championship winning cars.
  • Roman Colosseum - we didn't go in this time (we've been before) but it's still cool to see an almost 2000 year old building.

Planning problems:

  • I did not find a good way to plan a trip like this. I had a mix of Apple Notes, Excel spreadsheets, and just a lot of time on Google Maps. We needed to get to Marseille quickly, but the second week needed to spread the distance out so we were only doing a few hours of travelling per day. That just came down to a manual process and learning a lot of European geography.
  • Claude helped with finding places along our route (like Fort Bard) but only when it used it's route tools. Other times it didn't, and instead gave us recommendations in Switzerland that were a long distance from our route.
  • Apps I tried for planning were really poor.
  • All hotels booked on booking.com. No issues there. Although I did keep thinking I was going to mix up my dates and turn up on the wrong night.