YAVT: Best Places to Vacation (Europe) w/o a car?

[SmackDaddy]

After traveling to Italy a few years ago, we are looking to take another trip somewhere in Europe.

We want an experience similar to Italy where we stayed in Florence and were able to travel to Rome, Pisa, Venice for day trips with ease via rail and walk everywhere. I know most of Europe is tied together by rail, but I know there are regions where a car might be needed to get the most out of an area, and we want to avoid having to deal with that.

We had been looking at the Andalucia region of Spain, but it seems we would be relying mostly on bus lines to travel within that region (at least from the things I've read so far, most travel journals/books concentrate on Madrid and Barcelona). We are also looking at Norway and Finland. We've ruled out the U.K and Italy as we want to go somewhere new to us.

Would love to hear comments on the above locations as well as suggestions to areas that would fit what we are looking for. Wherever we end up going, it will be the first week of July (June 30-July7) due to the wife's job.

[Mosskeeto]

If you're considering Andalucia then I think you'll regret it without a car. There are nice towns to visit but I found a car to be quite essential to make easy connections. Seville-Cordoba-Granada are great places to visit and a car isn't needed within the towns but trips to the "white towns" or along the coast are made easy with a car. Arcos de la Frontera (tiny, but a "white town"), Ronda, or Ubeda are worth exploring and somewhat difficult via public transport.
If Spain is a must then Barcelona has excellent train service regionally and the coast offers many cities with interesting sights.
Scandanavia is a possibility. My only experience there was a flight into Sweden (Stockholm) and a return via Denmark (Copenhagen). Loved both Stockholm and Copenhagen; the train to Copenhagen was fine. Got off the train to visit a friend in Skane for a weekend so we got to experience "country" life a bit.

[SmackDaddy]

Thanks for that info on Andalucia. Looking over their transportation system, it seemed that getting around between towns could prove problematic. I know we can use buses, but that just doesn't sound to appealing.

Did you have any issues with car rental? All I read about rentals there are to be wary of all the extra fees that can be tacked on even after you make reservations, even with reputable companies.

[Mabuse]

Bruge

[Xander]

We got around France pretty well using public transportation. I imagine you might have trouble going to some of the smaller towns, maybe. But the bullet train (TGV) is pretty awesome.