
It can take months of planning and its fair share of disagreements on the way to plan the perfect road trip.

But now one American scientist believes he has planned the perfect European road trip that means we can all put away those atlases and close down Google maps.

Michigan data scientist, Randy Olsen, has come up with route using an algorithm that calculates shortest distance, excluding any journeys over water.

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The journey takes in 45 stop-offs in total, taking in countries such as the UK, Portugal, Bulgaria, Estonia and Finland.

Covering 16,287 miles and 14 days of driving, Mr Olsen advises putting three months aside to explore the cities.

Rather than looking at every possible solution, Olsen used something known as a 'genetic algorithms' which starts with just a few random solutions.

It then manipulates these solutions, while trying something slightly different each time, until it finds one that it can't improve on.

DESINTATIONS ON THE ULTIMATE EUROPEAN ROAD TRIP Innsbruck, Austria Munich, Germany Pag, Croatia Venice, Italy Tuscany, Italy Florence, Italy Rome, Italy Vatican City Amalfi, Italy Gozo, Malta Dubrovnik, Croatia Santorini, Thira, Greece Rila Monastery, Rilski manastir, Bulgaria Istanbul, Turkey Sighisoara, Mures County, Romania Budapest, Hungary Vienna, Austria Prague, Czech Republic Krakow, Poland Jägala Waterfall, 74205 Harjumaa, Estonia Lapland, Finland ICEBAR, Marknadsvägen, Jukkasjärvi, Sweden Bergen, Norway Copenhagen, Denmark Berlin, Germany Amsterdam, Netherlands Keukenhof, Stationsweg, Lisse, Netherlands Edinburgh, United Kingdom Inverness, United Kingdom Ballybunion, Ireland Cliffs of Moher, Clare, Ireland Cornwall, England Stonehenge, Amesbury, United Kingdom London, United Kingdom Brussels, Belgium Paris, France Pamplona, Spain Lagos, Portugal Granada, Spain Ibiza, Spain Barcelona, Spain Luberone, Bonnieux, France Nice, France Monte Carlo, Monaco Interlaken, Switzerland Advertisement

Paris in France is obviously included in Olsen's ultimate European road trip map, as he wanted to take in many famous landmarks

Olsen is the man behind the 'Where's Waldo' ('Where's Wally' in the UK) algorithm where he looked at numerous pages of the famous children's illustrative challenges, and developed a mapping theory on how best to locate all the bespectacled characters.

Using similar methodology, Olsen then took on the challenge of planning the best U.S. road trip - ensuring the car would never leave home soil on its route.

His only limitation was to make one stop in all 48 contiguous US states, along with Washington D.C. and two stops in California.

There is a scheduled stop-off at the world famous prehistoric monument of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, UK

Each stop would be at a national natural landmark, national historic site, national park or national monument. And the car could never leave US soil.

To create the map, Mr Olsen first found the shortest distance by road between each of the 50 landmarks provided.

The tricky part was putting the landmarks in order to eliminate as much driving back on himself as possible.