
marya
|
Hi!
If you have decided to go to Portugal from Frankfurt forget England, Holland, Belgium and Italy -they are too far for your short time unless you want to spend a lot of time on the train, except maybe for Maastricht in the "deep South " of Netherlands. (They really call it deep South although there is like 200 miles from the northernmost point in Netherlands ). Remember that that part of Eyrope is very densely populated -which means that there is a big city every 90 km (=50 miles) where the train stops -usually, excepting the fast, super, (superexpensive) trains. US is mostly sparsely populated, so this makes a lot of difference and you don't necessarily come to think of it.
Germany, France, Swizerland and Spain will be on your way. What do you want to see? Nature, culture, tourist things? art? nightlife? Alsace in France is neat with picturesque villages, good food and wine, and unbeliavable art like Colmar -a very small town -museum has some striking, deeply touching old paintings -and I am not an art fan, so to say, even I was touched. Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace is also very nice. Other parts of France have a lot to offer, too; likewise Switzerland and Spain. Barcelona might be a good New Year place , Portugal has a lot of interesting things. But it is winter there -it can be very wet and cool, even cold.
Do you like skiing? The Alps have a lot of skiing -if the snow is already there. Lake Geneva with the cities, villages -fantastic. But have warm clothes with you and be prepared for rain. The Germans and Swiss and Northern France know how to heat their houses, I am not so sure about the Spanish and Portuguese or southern France -as the cold is for such a short time. I have never been as cold as in Northern Portugal for Christmas as it was very humid and they were saving money and not heating properly.
If you type in tourism and Alsace or tourism and any place you are interested in -you are likely to find lots of interesting things.
If you want time tables, go to the Dutch railways net page (English available) http://www.ns.nl and you can get uptodate European time tables very easily -even if you never go to Holland.
You will have limited time so you better decide what type of things you are interested in and then do some web research or go to a library with a selection of travel guides and look through them to get ideas.You can also find information about weather etc.
You can definitely have a fantastic trip and see and learn a lot -so good luck!
wishes
mary a
from Northern Europe
ps. Hbf is German and is short of Hauptbahnhof=main railway station |

Martin the baby
|
they are not objective
I say:
1 czech republic
2 italy
3 france
4 swiss
5 spain
then japan, egypt, russia, brazil, kenya |