Things We've Done Right

The biggest thing that we've hit 5 stars on is our decision to constantly take the train and to not bother with renting a car and trying to get from place to place paying for fuel and car rentals - not to mention the hassle of driving the autobahns and highways and trying to find our way around. Train travel is so comfortable and cheap. We get up and walk around, go to the washroom or the bar/restaurant car or talk to other people. It is a very civilized mode of transportation. We only need to find a hotel and then train it to that place and not worry about parking and the rest. For each city or town that we visit, the methods of transportation such as the trollies, busses , subways and trams far outperform the worry over a car. We have purchased separate 4-day monthly passes here in Europe rather than having purchased a Eurorail pass from Canada. It was cheaper here because we could get the specials and deals set aside only for those already in the country.
The second best thing is the money and speed that we've saved by booking our hotel rooms over the internet with, usually, otel.com. With them we usually prepay and save tons of dollars compared to the prices given to you over the counter or phone. We collect points too and then use them on other bookings. We've always chosen hotels close to the train stations so that we need not walk too far to find them with our backpacks.
The third best thing is that we tend to walk everywhere and stay in places that most tourists wouldn't dream of seeing. It has helped us to connect with the locals and to see and get to understand how they live and how the world around us is changing.
One of the biggest things that has made a huge difference in our trip is that we have taken bus tours to give us a break over having to set absolutely everything in motion for finding a place to stay and eat. It has been very nice to just let someone else take care of things. In this way too, we have been given a chance to see many more places that we would never have bothered to get to because they would have been to difficult - like the Alps, or too scary to go near - like Morocco. It has also given us a chance to meet some incredibly fine people on our tours with us.
We also put our "Europe on a shoestring" given to us by the kids to good use and followed quite a bit of suggestions. We always dropped into the tourist bureau every single time as we entered a new place and this helped us to get ourselves settled with knowledge.
Look for our list of things we've done wrong.