There is something slightly ridiculous about planning your first trip to Europe, especially if planning to visit all the way from Australia.
You look at a map or Europe and think, Paris is quite close to Amsterdam. Italy isn't that far away. We could probably squeeze Spain in too. Before you know it, you've planned seven countries in 16 days and created a holiday that involves living out of a suitcase and sending more time in an airport than actually sightseeing.
Most of us at FlexySim have travelled around Europe at one point or another. Some of us grew up there, some have lived there, and others have done the long journey from Australia more times than they'd probably like to count.
If you're heading to Europe for the first time, these are 20 things the team here at FlexySim would like to pass on.
1. Europe Is Smaller on a Map Than It Is With a Suitcase
Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Rome, Prague, and London all look tantalisingly close when you're sitting at home planning your itinerary. However, they feel considerably further apart when you're dragging a heavy suitcase through your fourth railway station of the week.
One of the biggest changes we've made to the way we travel is simply doing less. Four nights somewhere nearly always feels better than two because it allows you to truly settle in. You find a favourite local café, stop checking Google Maps every five minutes, and actually get to see a city in the evening after the day-trippers have disappeared. You don't need to “do Europe” all at once; pick a few places and genuinely enjoy them.
2. Your Best Day Might Be the One You Didn't Plan
It's incredibly tempting to organise every single minute of your itinerary. You've spent a lot of money getting there, so naturally, you want to make every day count before you gave to head back home.
But some of our absolute favourite days in Europe haven't involved a famous attraction at all. Instead, they've involved walking somewhere without much of a plan, stumbling into a neighbourhood we'd never heard of, and settling into a relaxed, two-hour lunch because there wasn't anywhere else we particularly needed to be. By all means, book the major things you desperately want to see, but leave some gaps. Europe is very good at filling them for you.
3. A Hotel's Location Matters More Than You Think
Saving $50 a night on a hotel sounds great in theory, but spending an hour travelling into the city every morning doesn't feel quite as good. We'd usually choose a smaller or slightly less fancy hotel in a area we actually want to be in over a better hotel miles away.
Being able to walk out of your hotel lobby in the morning and immediately be somewhere interesting changes the whole feel of a trip. Plus, after dinner and a few drinks at night, you'll be especially pleased with your decision.
4. Don't Treat Every Journey as a Flight
Coming from Australia, we're conditioned to fly everywhere, but Europe is completely different. For plenty of journeys, trains are significantly easier.
There's no trek out to an airport on the edge of the city, you don't need to arrive hours early, and you generally step off the train right in the heart of where you actually want to be. For classic routes like Florence to Rome, Paris to Amsterdam, Madrid to Barcelona, or London to Paris, always check the train before booking a flight. It's also quite nice spending a few hours watching the European countryside go past rather than staring at an airport departure board.
5. Give Yourself More Time Between Flights Than Seems Necessary
On the other hand, when you do have to fly, don't make your connections unnecessarily stressful. A 60-minute international connection can look perfectly reasonable when you're booking from your sofa in Melbourne, but it looks rather different when your first flight lands 35 minutes late and your connecting gate appears to be in another postcode. A slightly longer connection isn't wasted holiday time if it means you're not sprinting through Frankfurt Airport carrying your shoes.
6. Europe Doesn't Require Your Entire Wardrobe
Packing for Europe somehow encourages irrational behaviour. We start worrying about hypothetical scenarios: What if we go somewhere really smart? What if it's freezing? What if it's hot? What if I suddenly need three pairs of jeans? Then you get there and end up wearing roughly the same six things the entire time.
If you're travelling between several cities, your luggage becomes a major part of your daily life. You'll be lifting it onto trains, carrying it up steep hotel stairs, and pulling it across cobblestone streets built centuries before anyone considered suitcase wheels. In short: pack less. We've rarely returned from Europe wishing we'd brought more clothes, and with major shops available in most cities, you can always buy something if you truly need it.
7. Good Shoes Beat Good Photos
European cities are made for walking. A casual day sightseeing can easily turn into hours on your feet without you really noticing. Cobblestones also have absolutely no sympathy for fashionable footwear. Take something supportive and comfortable that you've already broken in—your feet won't thank you for wearing Gucci loafers while traipsing around Rome.
8. Don't Eat on the Main Square Just Because You're Hungry
Imagine you're standing beside a famous square, you're tired, and there's a restaurant right there featuring photographs of every dish on the menu. We've all been tempted by convenience, but it almost always pays to walk another couple of streets away.
While there are exceptions to every rule, moving away from the busiest tourist hubs usually improves both the quality of the food and certainly the price. One of the nicest parts of travelling in Europe is finding small, local restaurants you hadn't planned to visit. If the place is buzzing with locals who appear to live nearby, that's usually a decent start.
9. Lunch Doesn't Have to Take 45 Minutes
This is a habit that takes Australians a little while to adjust to because we are used to everything being efficient, and perhaps a little rushed. In places like Spain, Italy, Greece, or France, a long lunch isn't necessarily eating into your sightseeing time—sometimes it is the sightseeing. Order another drink, have dessert, people-watch, and remind yourself that you don't need to spend every minute of a European holiday accomplishing a task. It is a holiday after all, and you need time to relax.
10. You'll Use Your Phone Constantly — Just Not Necessarily for Social Media
Before travelling, it's easy to think mobile data is mostly a luxury for posting on Instagram or messaging on WhatsApp. Once you're actually on the ground, however, it becomes your lifeline for everything else.
You'll need it constantly for maps, train platforms, translation, restaurant reservations, digital boarding passes, ride-share apps, checking opening hours, and much more. Because of this, we highly recommend organising your connectivity before leaving Australia rather than relying on patchy public Wi-Fi when you arrive. Yes, we sell travel eSIMs at FlexySim, so we're hardly neutral on this one. But even if you don't use us, work out how you're going to get online before you land; it's one of those boring pre-trip jobs you'll be incredibly pleased you sorted out.
Here is a link to our range of prepaid low cost Europe eSIMs
11. Roaming Is Worth Checking Before You Leave Australia
Don't assume your normal Australian mobile plan works overseas the same way it does at home. Some providers offer international roaming packages or daily charges, while others can become eye-wateringly expensive depending on how you use your phone and where you're travelling.
Be sure to check your details before you leave. If you're travelling through several European countries, a regional Europe eSIM can be incredibly convenient because a single plan covers multiple destinations seamlessly. The important thing is knowing exactly what your setup will cost before you start using it, because coming home to a massive phone bill isn't the sort of European souvenir anyone wants.
12. Cash Isn't Dead Yet
While you can travel through much of Europe using a card for almost everything, the keyword is almost. Small cafés, local markets, public toilets, taxis, and independent businesses can still occasionally remind you that cash is very much alive. We wouldn't recommend carrying a huge amount, but having a few euros tucked away can save you from an unnecessary headache. Also, remember that Europe isn't one giant Eurozone, so double-check the currency of every country you're visiting rather than assuming everyone uses euros.
13. The Weather Forecast Deserves More Attention Than Your Instagram Feed
A European summer doesn't automatically mean pleasantly warm weather. Southern Europe can get punishingly hot in July and August, while northern Europe can suddenly decide it's autumn for three days in the middle of June. On top of that, many older, historic buildings lack the sort of powerful air-conditioning you might expect back in Oz. Check the live forecast immediately before packing your bags rather than relying purely on seasonal averages.
14. May, June and September Are Hard to Beat
If you have flexibility with your dates, don't automatically choose July or August. While peak European summer has a brilliant, buzzing atmosphere, it also brings massive crowds, peak accommodation prices, and potentially serious heatwaves.
In contrast, late spring and early autumn can be fantastic. You can still get beautiful weather, long daylight hours, and plenty of events happening, while popular destinations feel slightly less overwhelmed. We'd happily choose September for a lot of southern Europe.
15. Book the One Thing You'd Be Really Upset to Miss
While we are big advocates of not over-planning, there is one major exception to the rule. If you've spent years dreaming about seeing the Colosseum, visiting the Alhambra, eating at a specific Michelin-starred restaurant, or watching your favourite football team play, don't leave it to chance. Popular attractions and unique experiences can sell out months in advance, so lock those must-see items in early, and leave the rest of your trip open to adventure.
16. Every Country Has Its Own Rhythm
This is one of the primary reasons we love travelling around Europe—things change surprisingly quickly the moment you cross a border. Dinner at 7pm can feel perfectly normal in the UK and strangely early in Spain. Shops close at completely different times, tipping expectations shift, and public transport networks work under entirely different systems.
Furthermore, Sunday can mean business as usual in one city or practically the entire population shutting down in the next. Don't expect the next country to operate exactly like the last one you visited. Taking just five minutes to read about local customs before you arrive can save you a whole lot of confusion.
17. Your Normal Phone Number Doesn't Have to Disappear
This was something several of us didn't fully understand when we first started using travel eSIMs. On compatible phones, you can generally keep your normal physical SIM or primary eSIM active in your device while simultaneously using a travel eSIM strictly for mobile data.
This dual-setup is incredibly useful if you want to retain access to your regular Australian number or keep services like WhatsApp tied to your usual digits. Just remember that using your Australian SIM for calls, texts, or data while overseas can still attract heavy roaming charges from your usual home provider. The travel eSIM doesn't magically make your normal SIM's roaming free—as much as we wish it did!
18. Take Photos, But Occasionally Put the Phone Away
This admittedly sounds like something someone's dad would say, but it is still excellent advice. Some places in Europe have become so heavily photographed that it's easy to spend more time trying to capture the perfect frame than actually looking at what's in front of you.
By all means, take the photo to look back on later. But once you've got it, pocket the phone for ten minutes and just take it all in.
19. Keep a Backup of the Boring Stuff
Before you head off, make sure you compile all the unexciting but essential documents: your passport, travel insurance policy, flight details, hotel addresses, and important booking confirmations. Keep secure digital copies of these somewhere easily accessible offline, and make sure someone else travelling with you can get to them if necessary. It only takes a few minutes of admin before the trip, and while it will hopefully prove completely unnecessary, those are often the absolute best kinds of travel preparations.
20. Stop Trying to Have the Perfect European Holiday
The reality of travel is that something will eventually go wrong. You will likely miss a train, it will rain on the exact day you've booked a major outdoor excursion, the restaurant you've been looking forward to for months will be closed for a private function, or someone in your group will get sunburnt on day two despite insisting they “never burn”.
That's just part of the adventure. Try not to let a small logistical hiccup become the defining event of your day. When you look back years from now, some of the trips you remember most fondly won't be the ones that were remotely perfect—they'll just be the ones where you had the most fun.
What We'd Do Differently on Our First European Trip
If we could go back and plan our first European trips again, we'd make them simpler.
- We'd visit fewer places.
- We'd pack less.
- We'd spend a little more on good locations and a little less on things we didn't really need.
- We'd book the important stuff early but leave plenty of days largely unplanned.
- And we'd sort out the practical things before leaving Australia — travel insurance, money, adapters and mobile data — so we didn't have to think about them once we'd arrived.
Europe is too good to spend your holiday constantly checking an itinerary.
Get the essentials organised, choose a few places you're genuinely excited about and give yourself enough time to enjoy them.
If there are places you didn't get to, that you are still itching to see, that that is your excuse to go back ?
Staying Connected in Europe
If you're travelling through multiple countries, FlexySim offers low cost prepaid Europe eSIM plans designed to make staying connected while travelling nice and straightforward.
You can organise your eSIM before leaving Australia, keep your physical SIM in your phone on compatible devices and use your FlexySim data for things like maps, bookings, messaging and finding the nearest restaurant when the one you planned to visit turns out to be closed.
We hope you have a great trip to Europe, and safe travels from the FlexySim team
