10 Days in Europe

Players: 2-4

Playing Time: 20-30 minutes



Having just returned from a recent trip to Europe (so recently that I was probably still a little jet-lagged), I was eager to give 10 Days in Europe a try. And, in doing so, I think I may have found my new favorite game.



The rules of the game are similar to those of 10 Days in Africa and 10 Days in the USA. At the beginning of the game, players are given a pair of tile holders, in which they place 10 tiles (which can be any combination of color-coded country tiles, color-coded airplane tiles, and ship tiles).



The object of the game is to create a complete 10-day trip, starting and ending with a country tile and moving from one country to another in one of three ways:

1. Directly, from one country to an adjacent country.
   
2. By ship, between two countries bordering on the same body of water.
   
3. By plane, between two countries of the same color code (green, yellow, red, or blue), connected by a plane of the same color code.
   

(Don’t worry…you get a map to help you figure it all out.)



At the beginning of each turn, a player may choose either to select a card from one of the three discard piles (which are placed, face-up, on the table) or to draw a tile from the top of the draw pile (which is placed face-down). He or she can then replace one of the tiles on his or her rack with the new tile and place the discarded tile on one of the discard piles. Players take turns drawing and replacing tiles until one player completes a 10-day journey.



10 Days in Europe takes a few minutes to learn—and a lot of practice to master. It’s much more challenging than it appears on the surface—which is why it’s not recommended for kids younger than 10. Initially, it seems a bit like Rack-o—but you’ll quickly find that it’s much more difficult to figure out how, exactly, to get from Norway to Greece in three days than it is to figure out how to get from 6 to 18 in three cards. It takes plenty of thought and strategy to make your way through the whole 10-day journey, but you’ll have a lot of fun doing it—and you’ll learn a thing or two about geography at the same time.