How long are you staying? If your journey begins and ends with those two events, and if you play on having any rest at all (i.e. you don’t hate beaches and nature), a relatively direct road trip (recommended by train) along the Mediterranean coast Sardinia → central Italy → northern Italy → southern France → Catalonia could easily fill three weeks, and in July half of Europe moves there anyway, so you’ll have no trouble meeting Brits and Germans. You could fit in one or two short visits by low-cost airflight to out-of-the-way destinations, but that’s about it. Unless you seriously doubt you’ll ever return to Europe again, I wouldn’t try to squeeze in stuff like “two days in Paris” or “one day in Vienna”, you’ll just whet your appetite (and waste half as much time travelling as you would visiting).
Hostels are fine; get a Hostelling International membership and rely on it, if a hostel is affiliated with them it’s almost guaranteed to not be too bad.
On a separate note, I hope this is not the only place where you’re asking for advice. LW is a relatively small community, and for this type of advice it doesn’t offer huge benefits over places like Reddit (where ‘travel advice’ threads are insanely common on near every European subreddit).
How long are you staying? If your journey begins and ends with those two events, and if you play on having any rest at all (i.e. you don’t hate beaches and nature), a relatively direct road trip (recommended by train) along the Mediterranean coast Sardinia → central Italy → northern Italy → southern France → Catalonia could easily fill three weeks, and in July half of Europe moves there anyway, so you’ll have no trouble meeting Brits and Germans. You could fit in one or two short visits by low-cost airflight to out-of-the-way destinations, but that’s about it. Unless you seriously doubt you’ll ever return to Europe again, I wouldn’t try to squeeze in stuff like “two days in Paris” or “one day in Vienna”, you’ll just whet your appetite (and waste half as much time travelling as you would visiting).
Hostels are fine; get a Hostelling International membership and rely on it, if a hostel is affiliated with them it’s almost guaranteed to not be too bad.
On a separate note, I hope this is not the only place where you’re asking for advice. LW is a relatively small community, and for this type of advice it doesn’t offer huge benefits over places like Reddit (where ‘travel advice’ threads are insanely common on near every European subreddit).