Tips for a pair of 22 year olds travelling around Europe in the summer?

I spent six months in Europe (covered something like 25 countries) when I was 22 with only a regular school-sized pack-back (one pair of denim, one pair of khakis, a few socks, few underwear, two tshirts, 1 sweater, 1 laptop, notebooks, and rotating books). I was travelling alone and had no particular plan, so my route and itinerary were very flexible. For me, that worked well. It meant that when I fell in love with Berlin I rented an apartment and stayed for a month. It meant that, after listening to someone tell me about their experiences in Kosovo, I had the flexibility to decide to head that way the next day. Sometimes I met a group of people I liked and would travel along with them for a few days or a week. And travelling light meant I was never tied anywhere and not burdened when something went wrong - if I missed a bus and had to sleep in a park for a few hours that was okay (backback as pillow, arm through arm loop to prevent theft). I haven't quite mastered this flexibility when travelling with a companion, but talking about expectations should go a long way to getting you both on the same page. If you decide you want to keep to the itinerary and route, perhaps it's worth considering taking a day a week to go do your own thing in a city. This way you can meet up together for dinner and talk about what you did, and you might find you each stumble upon small adventures of your own, or simply guilt-free enjoy an activity that your partner doesn't so much enjoy. Regardless, you can still work to keep things flexible even when travelling together or with a pre-set plan. You can't control everything while travelling and learning to accept that is a huge part of the fun. Learning to accept that together might also be very rewarding. Also, the language barrier. I kept a small notepad with me which came in very handy when trying to book tickets/buses/trains. I could write down a time or the ticket-seller could scribble down a time for me, or denominations of money. You can always draw a bus or a taxi or a picture of a band-aid if that's what you're looking for. Lots of buses and train routes are posted and easy to find yourself, but in smaller places these can still be rather ad-hoc. I remember in one coastal town I was told a bus would leave the next day at x time. There was no sign posted and I had very little reason to believe any bus would ever come to rescue me from the blaring sun, but sure enough, one did. I managed to do all of this on a very small budget. I stayed at hostels and churches and couch surfed, and, as above, rented short-term sublets. I also stayed in Italy for a few weeks in a rented room - though I suspect airbnb might be the easier way to do this - short term sublets on housing sites can save extra money. I had a small lock and chain - lock the two zippers on your luggage together so it can't be opened and use the chain to secure the bag to the luggage rails on a train. This made sleeping in-transit a little less worrying. I also kept my passport on my physical person in a passport belt under my clothes, along with an extra credit card and spare cash. At least if I was mugged I would only lose a portion of my money, and it helped me worry less about losing my passport, or godforbid, ending up unidentifiable in a hospital. Also - SD cards. If you're shooting photos that are particularly significant to you, spread these out on multiple SD cards and keep some in your passport belt. If your camera is stolen you don't want to lose all your photos. (I remember one notable visit to an Albania police station to report a lost camera...) I'd also like to suggest http://wikitravel.org/ - which I still consult before heading off to a new destination. And of course Lonely Planet (my travel guide of choice). I also loved the journal suggestion above. I kept a livejournal during my trip so my friends & family knew where I was, but it means now that I have a good record of all my adventures and experiences and how many different beds I slept in over those months and how many volcanoes I climbed (only 1 - Vesuvius - in Napels, land of delicious pizza). Finally, as a single woman travelling alone. Italy. Italy was unbearable. Italy was endless suffering and constant attention and one particularly awful walk being followed by a car I could not lose. Be careful.

Sometimes, just hanging out is better than exhaustion-marching between sightseeing opportunities, and giving each other alone time is critical - one person gets the room for a while and the other goes and pokes around a grocery store or runs errands for more socks (you never take enough socks no matter how hard you try). Everybody needs a little peace to do their hair or scratch their ass or poop without their partner 3 feet away on the other side of a thin wall. You can also split up at a museum or zoo or other contained place, just agree to meet at the giraffe statue in two hours or whatever. That way if someone just wants to sit on a bench near the flamingoes and read a book, that's cool. Stuff will go wrong, and as long as you're not in real danger you should embrace those things as adventures. The place you really wanted to see is closed the only day you're in town, there's some sort of weird transportation strike, and you have to decide on Plan B on the fly. Or Plan A is going perfectly well, but a random stranger tells you there's a massive folk music festival in the town square, complete with local vendors and performances by schoolchildren - a year from now, would you rather have seen that painting you can examine on your monitor in HD or watch 5-year-olds try to clog dance? You have to be ready to be flexible and embrace the absurd, and know that you're always missing out on something and be okay with that. On packing: you'll be moving around too much for anybody to notice you wore the same pants four times in a week. If you don't want to look like a tourist and can stand the mild discomfort, dress business casual all the time and just adjust shoes slightly for requirements. Dark trousers and button-downs or nice pullover shirts for you, dark pants or skirts with coordinating tops for her (sundresses of the pretty-but-comfortable type will also work, but she needs to have something to cover her shoulders, like a pashmina or shrug she can shove in her bag). No yoga pants, no undershirts - don't treat Europe like your gym locker room and they won't treat you as much like Americans, or worse: American students. Do some advance research to figure out what websites have the most useful tips for you in the places you'll be going. This is not necessarily to make firm plans now, but to know where to look when the weather or strikes or other dependencies create a Plan B situation. Restaurants are by far your biggest money suck. Always identify your local grocery store and the inexpensive vectors for ready-to-eat food, whether that's a corner store or deli or street cart. it sounds like a lot of the places you are staying will have kitchen facilities of some kind, which is fantastic. It could cost the two of you $20 every day for coffee and some kind of protein-containing breakfast out, or you can spend $40 for a week's worth of eggs, butter, bread, cold cuts, milk, yogurt, and Nescafe'. Save your restaurant money for actual good restaurants and eat a lot of cornflakes in your lodgings. I assume you'll have phone-based cameras with you all the time, and you can use them to document more than just landscapes - take pictures of your tickets and posters for exhibitions and the menu of the restaurant you really liked. Also use them to snap the written address (with basic directions in the local language if possible) of your lodgings for showing to cab drivers, locker numbers if you store your stuff somewhere, coat check tickets, etc. Stuff can turn into a blur after a while.

Book in an "admin day" (or half day) every week - a day where you get your laundry done, go to the post office, sort out train tickets, go to the supermarket, catch up on emails, and spend the rest of the day hanging out in a cafe. Good for mental health, and frees up the rest of the time for having fun. Eat as well as you can afford - getting by on bread and cheese and pizza gets wearing after a while. As for travelling with your SO - one thing that I regret about some of my trips is that I dutifully went to everything that my then SO wanted to see. Even though I was bored/hot/tired/hungry. It's perfectly OK to not want to see the same stuff. Just make a time and a place to meet up again.

Echoing what others have said, don't feel guilty about skipping a certain site or day trip or cutting an entire destination out of your itinerary if you're feeling exhausted or testy. Allow yourself to just chillll in one place if you need to. My favorite memories from trips are always from the places I stayed the longest (usually because I went with my gut and decided to stay longer some place that "felt right" and cut out superfluous destinations I didn't have the energy for.) Remember: the hard/stressful part of traveling is the actual transport component (finding the train station, lugging your stuff, worrying about tickets, finding the hostel, etc.) so if you are feeling burnt out, cut down the amount of location-changes. Related: when you are staying in a place more than a couple nights, don't be afraid to frequent the same places more than once and feel as if you've got a homey little routine. If you like a cafe, go back again the next day. Spend time in the same park having a picnic lunch. You'll have a slightly different experience of the place and save yourself the mental wear and tear or constantly figuring out someplace new to try.

It's an old cliche, but it's 100% true: bring half as much stuff and twice as much money as you think you will need. Pack lighter than you think is possible. Plan to hit up an H&M or thrift shop as necessary. I have a lot of "souvenir" clothes that I still wear but wouldn't have bought if not for wardrobe malfunctions. (Cue montage of me walking through various locales with giant, bum-exposing holes in my trousers.) I don't bother making copies of my documents anymore but I do scan them in and keep them in Google Drive, Dropbox, and as email attachments. The key ones for me are my passport and my eyeglasses/contacts prescription; drivers' license is not a bad idea. I really agree about getting some alone time. When was the last time you spent 24 hours a day with a person for three months straight? Possibly when you were an infant. Don't expect to be able to spend 24 hours a day together, and make plans keeping that in mind.

Do you have or can you get chip-and-pin debit or credit cards before you go? Some ticket machines will not accept cards unless they are chip-and-pin. There can be ways around this, like buying a ticket at a window, but that can take longer. If you are in a store, you may need to tell them to swipe a card if it only has a mag stripe. Since you are going to Croatia in the middle, put all of your Euros in another wallet or even just a plastic bag while you are there using kuna. It drives me crazy to dig through more than one kind of currency when trying to pay for something, especially coins that all look alike. When leaving, it can help you make sure you have spent all the local cash you have left (that you don't want as a souvenir). I assume you have told your banks that you will be gone. One of my cards will only let you put a 30 day travel advisory on your account. If any of yours are like that, be sure to have their international number so you can put another on when the first one expires. Most banks accept collect calls from traveling customers. It is a good idea to have the contact info for all of your accounts listed somewhere other than the back of the card. General travel advice: Take notes or keep a journal, even if it just a list of what you did. Exchange pictures with your travel partners. Whenever you remove your photos from your phone/camera, copy them to at least two places (laptop and jump drive or CD and Flickr).

Sounds like fun! Out of those cities, I've only been to Florence, personally...which is a beautiful city! After a day of wandering around all the museum, take a trip up to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piazzale_Michelangelo to enjoy the view. Also when in Italy, you can take advantage of http://www.walksofitaly.com/blog/food-and-wine/italian-aperitivo, which is basically like happy hour with free food. For Italy, be aware of workers' strikes on public transportation, taxis, etc. The Italian word for "strike" is "sciopero" and this might be a helpful word to learn in other languages for the countries you are visiting. Grocery stores + parks = inexpensive picnic lunch. A great way to enjoy the outdoors and get in some people-watching. As far as traveling with a SO, I think you need to be honest with each other about how much alone time you need, and what things you are hoping to get out of the trip. What things do you need to have to be comfortable? What can you be flexible on? What are your personal MUST See's and Do's? Definitely tell your banks and credit card companies that you are leaving. I always bring a couple of cards and keep one seperate from my wallet with cash and copies of my ID in case my wallet gets stolen. Make sure your PIN # will work in European ATMs.

Take as much time as you need to do your own thing and be separate--during daylight hours, of course, and only in areas where you both feel safe. There is SO much joy to be had in wandering around a strange place alone, and you'll have more to talk about later if you experience a few things separately. And you'll be less at each others' throats when frustrating things happen (which is inevitable). Personally, I need breathers built in like that or I go crazy spending too much time with someone. And don't worry too much about taking photos. A loose journal/travelogue might be a better way to remember the trip, and you'll be more there more presently if you're not hunting for photo ops all the time.

Keep a journal, don't just take photos. Stick all sorts of weird bits in the journal, tickets stubs, coasters anything and everything you can think of. Write how places feel, record the smells and sounds. Take time to really stop and look at things. Don't try and see all the things, but really be present for the things you do decide to go and do and see. Going to see something just to tick it off an imaginary list is the wrong reason to go. Never ever ever cut connections for flights, or whatever close it's not worth it. Remember things will go wrong, that's when the fun really starts and where you will get your stories you will tell for the rest of your life. People are mostly good and helpful I like to travel because it throws me onto the kindness of strangers more often and reminds me of that. This doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful about the security of yourself and your belongings, listen to your doubts if a person or situation triggers any alarm bells.