Planning a vacation to Western Europe!

A trip to France, Italy and Switzerland has been on the cards for quite sometime now... So we made the Schengen visa and now the planning had to start.... We planned the trip for the first two weeks of September... It took me almost the full of August to plan the entire trip out... We didn't want to go through a travel agent.... The vacation was a successful one, all went as per the schedule,  we were able to find the hotels and all the tourist places with the help of maps without much difficulty... I felt an air of satisfaction and pride when all fell in place :) MH (My hubby) was pretty impressed with my planning and organizing skills :)  Planning tools used were internet, Lonely planet's Western Europe guide book bought from Landmark, Madras... Endless hours I spent on surfing to find out which cities to visit, where to stay and what to do in each of these cities... Finally the itinerary was done... We flew from Oran, Algeria to Lyon, France... We used the Eurail pass to travel in train within Western Europe... I would recommend to plan your trip by yourself instead of going through a travel agent if your young at heart, want to be a little adventurous, have the time to plan and resources -fast internet and want to save some bucks :) The following posts will be on each of the cities we visited and some travel tips as well :)