A month in Thailand is a real treat and a great opportunity. But you will find that Europe is much more like the USA than Thailand in that Western Europe has a great infrastructrue, excellent public transit, good roads, and English is widely understood. You might want to take a look at some of the Rick Steves guide books which many love because they give you detailed info on how to do various excursions on your own. AS Jill mentioned, Barcelona (and most other major European cities) have HoHo (hop on hop off) buses which run designated routes through the major tourist-interest areas. With these buses you pay one fare for the entire day and you can get on and off as you please. Personally, we generally do not use the HoHo buses because we prefer more walking and will use cheap public transit when we need to go longer distances. And there are some tricks of the tourist trade. For example, as Jill mentioned, you can take the free port bus in Civitavecchia to the port entrance and than its a short 4 block walk to the train station where you can catch a train into Rome. But, rather than buying a regular train ticket you can purchase a BIRG ticket (about 9 Euros per person) that covers your round trip train to Rome plus it also lets you have unlimited use of Rome's metro and bus system. In La Spezia, if you decide to go to Cinque Terre you can take the train (or possibly a boat) to the nearest Cinque Terre village of Riomaggiore. Once there, you can hike between some of the villages, take the local train, use the ferries that run between the 5 villages, or any combination of the above. This is where a decent tour book will show you the way and save you big bucks over taking crowded excursions.
Hank
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