Ok all great suggestions. Based on the opinions, I think I will try to do the following. What do you think?
May 12th - Fly in to Paris on wednesday. To make this simple I will pick a ficticious date. So say we fly in May 12th 2010. A friend of mine from London says he found its best to fly to Europe on wednesday or thursday. I would have asked him about all this but he has done little to no traveling outside of the UK. Leave for Amsterdam on the 16th.
May 16th - Arrive in Amsterdam. Stay 2 nights. Leave for Berlin morning of the 18th.
May 18th - Arrive in Berlin. Stay 4 nights. Leave for Interlaken the morning of the 22nd.
May 22nd - Arrive in Interlaken. Stay 2 nights. Leave for Rome the morning of the 24th.
May 24th - Arrive in Rome. Stay 4 nights. Leave for home on the 28th. Have the 28th, 29th, and 30th to readjust before work
I did some research on the trains. If this dates were accurate, we could take a train from Paris to Amsterdam in about 4 hours for around $250 for 2 people. They leave as early as 5 in the morning. So we could still get to Amsterdam in the AM. Then take the 7 hour night train from Amsterdam to Berlin for $225. From there not sure how to get from Berlin to Interlaken. I found a train, but no night trains, so we would be leaving at 8am and not getting there til 6pm which I would want to avoid wasting a whole day. Maybe we could go from berlin to Munich, then take the night train to rome and skip Interlaken. Not sure. If we did it that way it would be about $1000 in train costs.
Does anyone know a good website to check for cheap flights between cities?
Doing a little bit more research, it seems that for $1000 you can get a 5 country pass that allows you to travel for 5 days in a 2 month period in 5 different countries. Do overnight trains count as 2 days on your pass?
There should be a tab, link or something similar on the website where you did your initial pricing which covers sleepers.
This link should help provide some insight for sleepers via Eurorail and there is mention of the night train between Munich and Berlin.
Crud, countries have to be bordering...Man this might be a trip that warrants a travel agent. Not easy to plan.
EDIT: There is a Eurail Global Pass Saver. This is for 2 people and can travel to 21 countries within 15 days for $650 each. that may be the best option.
Does anyone know a good website to check for cheap flights between cities?
Ryanair & Easyjet are like the equivalent of Southwest. We flew Easyjet from Paris to Venice. It was very cheap (something like $120 for 2 people). They try to get you on fees...assigned seat, overage on baggage, etc. We made sure our bags were the right weight and we were fine. I did end up paying to get their first to board option. They had a separate check-in line for those people and we got to board first...it was worth it as the regular check-in line was crazy.
After taking quite a few trains in Europe on our trip, I would only take a train if less than 4 hours. If over 4 hours, I'd only do it if overnight, however, I found it to be much cheaper to fly than train for the long distances.
Ryanair & Easyjet are like the equivalent of Southwest. We flew Easyjet from Paris to Venice. It was very cheap (something like $120 for 2 people). They try to get you on fees...assigned seat, overage on baggage, etc. We made sure our bags were the right weight and we were fine. I did end up paying to get their first to board option. They had a separate check-in line for those people and we got to board first...it was worth it as the regular check-in line was crazy.
After taking quite a few trains in Europe on our trip, I would only take a train if less than 4 hours. If over 4 hours, I'd only do it if overnight, however, I found it to be much cheaper to fly than train for the long distances.
Wow, your right. Just got on ryan air site and we could get 2 tickets from Rome to Paris for 74 euros.
Something I forgot to mention with the cheap airlines like Ryanair & Easyjet...they often fly out of small airports far from the main city. We flew Easyjet because they went from CDG to VEN so it was convenient. But we were looking at flying from Venice to Frankfurt on Ryanair and they flew into an airport 90 minutes outside of Frankfurt. I read a lot of mixed reviews on Ryanair which is why we went with Easyjet. I would fly them again as long as it was convenient.
Train will be nearly always for long distances than LCC like Ryanair or Easyjet. However, you should carefully calculate how much time the plane costs. While the Train stations are always in center of the cities, the airports Ryanair and Easyjet are using are not central.
I would recommend you the following
1. Paris-Amsterdam: train (faster than anything else, but during the day)
2. Amsterdam-Berlin: train (the difference between a low-cost-plane and a stay in a hotel vs. train, should be small)
3. If you want to skip Interlaken take a plane to Rome, there are plenty of different options.
cheers
757DUD
PS: For most passes like Eurail, you have to pay a "reservation charge" if you want to use a night train.
Programs: UA 1K, AA Exec Plat, Starwood Gold, Hilton Gold, Hyatt Plat, Marriott Silver
Posts: 2,129
Quote:
Originally Posted by jw713
Ryanair & Easyjet are like the equivalent of Southwest. We flew Easyjet from Paris to Venice. It was very cheap (something like $120 for 2 people). They try to get you on fees...assigned seat, overage on baggage, etc. We made sure our bags were the right weight and we were fine. I did end up paying to get their first to board option. They had a separate check-in line for those people and we got to board first...it was worth it as the regular check-in line was crazy.
After taking quite a few trains in Europe on our trip, I would only take a train if less than 4 hours. If over 4 hours, I'd only do it if overnight, however, I found it to be much cheaper to fly than train for the long distances.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jw713
Something I forgot to mention with the cheap airlines like Ryanair & Easyjet...they often fly out of small airports far from the main city. We flew Easyjet because they went from CDG to VEN so it was convenient. But we were looking at flying from Venice to Frankfurt on Ryanair and they flew into an airport 90 minutes outside of Frankfurt. I read a lot of mixed reviews on Ryanair which is why we went with Easyjet. I would fly them again as long as it was convenient.
Great advice. I'd err on the side of favoring longer train trips, as I find them easier and more romantic if you can book assigned seats and/or travel in the first class cabins. But that's a quibble on my part. Here are links for a few search engines that might be useful in identifying low-cost flights from A to B, though as jw713 cautioned be aware of the extra fees since they can pile up:
As for where to go, it's great that you include Paris since it really is the most romantic city in the world. I took my wife there for her birthday a few years ago, thinking that of course it will be wonderful to go there because that's what she wanted, though it was not on the top of my list. But I was thoroughly sold on the place. It helps to learn at least a few words of French (hello, good-bye, thank you, could we have the menu please, etc.) so that folks there know that at least you're making an effort, but it's not essential.
Amsterdam (and its canals), Berlin and Rome are also great cities. I'm also very partial to London and it has the advantage of being English speaking and easy to get to/from Paris. And Venice, tourists and all, is almost as romantic as Paris because of the canals and lack of cars, but if might be somewhat out of your way. In any event, you can't do it all.
In fact, despite my praise for London and Venice, you might even consider cutting back from five places to four (as long as one is Paris and I guess the other Berlin given your connections to Germany) so you can sink into each place and enjoy it a bit more--two nights in a given place seems a bit rushed to me. But again, this is just a judgment call and there is no "perfect" way to go about this.
It sounds like you might go in May, which is good. If you're still up in the air, I'd suggest May over April and September over October because you'll likely get better weather in those months and longer days. In May, in fact, the days will be quite long, which is great.
I'm so partial to Paris that I'd consider making it the last and potentially best stop rather than first. This also has the advantage of starting in Rome (which is fantastic but on the busy side), where the weather is likely to be warmer earlier in the month and ending in Paris when you'll have a slightly better chance of getting warmer weather if you go later. But once again, these are just details.
I believe you mentioned the possibility of coming back on Friday, May 28 so that you two could have time to re-adjust. I think that might be overdoing it a bit. If you want time to re-adjust, and more importantly more time in Europe, you should do fine if you come back on Sunday, May 30 since you presumably then have Monday, 31 off for Memorial Day. Of course, if your wife's health issues make an earlier return advisable, so be it.
You're wise to start accumulating Hilton points. I'd strongly suggest you and your wife each get the American Express Hilton Honors Surpass card. (The term "Surpass" doesn't really mean anything here beyond being used for marketing.) If you haven't had an Amex HH card before, you each get 40,000 points for your first purchase, plus up to nine points for various kinds of spending. Also, you automatically get Gold status (I don't recall whether this is as long as you have the card or just for your first year), which gets you free breakfasts and sometimes can get you upgrades to better rooms at Hilton properties. (If you email ahead to any Hilton hotels you stay at and mention your Gold status and that this is a special trip, that could also help a bit with upgrades, though there are no guarantees.) If you already have an Amex HH card, you still get the bonus point difference between the 40,000 and what you got for that previous sign-up. For many folks that original bonus was 10,000 points, so you'd still clear 30,000 points per card. If you spend $40,000 in a year on the card you even get HH Diamond status, but from what I understand it's not worthwhile to distort your spending just to go from Gold to Diamond.
I think the price for the Amex HH Surpass card is $75 per card, but you can always cancel after one year and the points and Gold status are well worth it. Anyway, here's the link:
In a related vein, if you want to save money on air fare or upgrades you could both sign up for multiple American Airlines Citibank credit cards, with each card getting you 25,000 or 30,000 miles once you spend $750. This may be more of a hassle then it's worth for you, but if not here's the link: http://www.citicards.com/cards/wv/sh...ILY_AADVANTAGE
For more information on this, you could search the credit card forums here on FT, using these words: American Airlines, Citibank and perhaps churning.
For very informative reviews of hotels you can of course search the Hilton forum here at FT, but for Hilton and other hotels I'd also suggest you check out Tripadvisor, at http://www.tripadvisor.com/ Once you get to that site, you enter, for example, "Rome hotels" in the search section and you should get to a listing of all Rome hotels ranked according to how favorable the cumulative reviews are, as well as the individual reviews for each hotel.
The best part of all this, of course, won't be where you go but simply being together. Whatever you do, have a wonderful trip!
Last edited by Thunderroad; Oct 30, 09 at 3:22 pm.
Great advice. I'd err on the side of favoring longer train trips, but that's a quibble. Here are links for a few search engines that might be useful in identifying low-cost flights from A to B, though as jw713 cautioned be aware of the extra fees since they can pile up:
As for where to go, it's great that you include Paris since it really is the most romantic city in the world. I took my wife there for her birthday a few years ago, thinking that of course it will be wonderful to be with her because she wanted to go there, though it was not on the top of my list. But I was thoroughly sold on the place. It helps to learn at least a few words of French so that folks there know that at least you're making an effort, but it's not essential.
Amsterdam, Berlin and Rome are also great cities. I'm also very partial to London and it has the advantage of being English speaking and easy to get to/from Paris, but you can't do it all. In fact, you might even consider cutting back from five places to four (as long as one is Paris and I guess the other Berlin given your connections to Germany) so you can sink into each place and enjoy it a bit more--two nights in a given place seems a bit rushed to me. But again, this is just a judgment call and there is no "perfect" way to go about this.
It sounds like you might go in May, which is good. If you're still up in the air, I'd suggest May over April and September over October because you'll likely get better weather in those months and longer days. In May, in fact, the days will be quite long, which is great.
I'm so partial to Paris that I'd consider making it the last and potentially best stop rather than first. This also has the advantage of starting in Rome, where the weather is likely to be warmer earlier in the month and ending in Paris when you'll have a slightly better chance of getting warmer weather. But once again, these are just details.
You're wise to start accumulating Hilton points. I'd strongly suggest you and your wife each get the American Express Hilton Honors Surpass card. (The term "Surpass" doesn't really mean anything here beyond being used for marketing.) If you haven't had an Amex HH card before, you each get 40,000 points for your first purchase, plus up to nine points for various kinds of spending. Also, you automatically get Gold status (I don't recall whether this is as long as you have the card or just for your first year), which sometimes can get you upgrades to better rooms at Hilton properties. (If you email ahead to any Hilton hotels you stay at and mention your Gold status and that this is a special trip, that could also help a bit, though there are no guarantees.) If you already have an Amex HH card, you still get the bonus point difference between the 40,000 and what you got for that previous sign-up. For many folks that original bonus was 10,000 points, so you'd still clear 30,000 points per card.
I think the price is $75 per card, but you can always cancel after one year and the points and Gold status are well worth it. Here's the link:
Finally, for good reviews of hotels you can of course search the Hilton forum here at FT, but I'd also suggest you check out Tripadvisor.com. Once you get to that site, you enter, for example, "Rome hotels" in the search section and you should get to a listing of all hotels ranked according to how favorable the cumulative reviews are, as well as the individual reviews for each hotel.
Whatever you do, have a wonderful trip!
Wow great info here thanks. I got my Surpass card about a month ago. I have 100,000 points so far. (40,000 bonus plus 20,000 SPG -> 25,000AA -> 50,000 HH plus my spend) I definately want to use it to stay here:
Switzerland intrigues us both. We love the mountains. However, it may be the most logical to cut out due to the fact that it seems not as easy to travel to by train. And with my wife being sick, I never know if its going to be a good month or not for heavy activity.
