flyingmikey

:-: I CHALLENGE YOU:

There are three citys that myself and a bunch of friends want to visit in a short amount of time: Berlin, Amsterdam and Prague. We only want to be in Berlin for about a whole day and one night; Amsterdam for 2-3 days and 2-3 nights; Prague (PRG) for the rest of the time adding up to about 10 days (March 9th to March 19th).

Apparently I am not that great at figuring out how to plan this. The cheapest roundtrip to the area is to Amsterdam (AMS) as far as I can tell. This is about $480 using kayak.com and hotwire.com. But then I'm left with getting around in Europe. All the discount carrier websites provided say that SmartWings.net is the only one that flys between AMS and PRG, but it says that its flights don't begin until the end of March.

Basically I want to find the cheapest way to do something like this:
March 9th - red-eye to Amsterdam from LAX
March 12th - flight to Prague
sometime in between visit Berlin (train???)
March 19th - flight to AMS and back to LAX

The order in which the cities occur doesn't matter - all types of transit are okay. Can anyone show me how to do this cheaply or point me in the right directions?

My main concerns are:
- How to get between Berlin and Prague or Berlin and Amsterdam?
- How to get between Amsterdam and Prague?
- How would train travel work for these? how long would it take?
- Do you know of a cheaper place to do the major roundtrip to that would be cheaper than AMS and still be in the area?
- Where do you buy train tickets if they would work?

AND finally - would bidding on priceline help the situation?

Thanks so much,

Mike

izzik

Sounds like you could use a travel agent!

SchmutzigMSP

Sounds like you're of the younger ilk? Chances are that youth Eurail passes would be on-par with, or cheaper, than the multitude of LCCs that exist all-over europe. It would probably be cheapest to fly into London and take a train/LCC from there, but YMMV. AMS may be cheap, but LON is usually the cheapest IME. Your flights may be more expensive since it looks like you're trying to go on your spring break week(?); the best fares are usually during Feb. Otherwise, I would recommend going to the Mileage Run forum and checking out the sticky on the top of the forum about tools. Read through them and figure out how to get the lowest fare. But _don't_ post over there the way you did here. That forum is for Mileage Runs, not "plan my trip!". But, the tools used there can help you find a low fare.

Good luck. ^

the_nomad

Huh?!

You SURE you guys wanna do that?
With soooo much to see and do in all three, it seems to me you'll feel like you've short-changed yourselves and will just have to go back again anyway.

My suggestion:
Spend the entire time in one or two cities and do daytrips, kinda like a hub and spoke thing. I think you'll be glad you did. One night in Berlin (or one night anywhere) will be a pain - travel time to the location, finding the accomodation, checking in and out, the possibilities of transport delays, et c.... a larger than necessary percentage of time and money spent on logistics.

xooz

Also, this far out, you might be able to find real cheapo flights between cities, using Ryanair, EasyJet, and others. The Mileage Run forum doesn't have much (usually) on the low cost carriers, since you don't typically accrue miles in a FF program.

Try this link ( http://wikitravel.org/en/Discount_airlines_in_Europe) as a general starting point to find appropriate low cost European carrier web sites. Good Luck!

Telfes

SkyScanner can be a good way to find cheap flights within Europe.

flyingmikey

Yeah, I should have noted that we have to go to Berlin but don't want to spend too much time there because one of the people has family there who he has to see if we go. This means no problems with getting a place to stay, and we don't want to spend too much time because we know we'll be locked down to see his family.

flyingmikey

This looks really cool. I appreciate it, but it says it can't find anything between AMS and PRG.

sadiqhassan

This site has a list of rail passes. You could probably find one that suits you

http://www.raileurope.com/us/rail/pa...ntry_index.htm

Cheers

MrAOK

Hi

To start out here, I suspect you may have made a wrong assumption here, which is you save if you fly in and out of the same city.

Unless you really have to fly in and out of Amsterdam, or you find a cheap fare, you may find it as cheap to fly into Amsterdam and out of like Berlin, saving your self time. my very quickee check of your dates on travelocity returned a $625 fare flying on usair flying into amsterdam and out of berlin and us air's site should be a little cheaper.

there's more competition to germany and amsterdam than to prague, but if you play around a bit, you may find ways to do that too.

On the intra european flights, one of the flights is cheap. http://www.transavia.com flies from amsterdam to berlin.

also several of the airlines offer coupon deals which offer the intereuropean flights for about $100 each (which is so so on price). here is an example
http://www.nwaworldvacations.com/spe...&rfr=VPSKY1220

my guess is the cheapest thing will be to go thru a travel agent or a consolidator, but try these sites

http://www.airtreks.com

http://www.go-today.com/site_gtweb/e...sp?p=7&t=p&h=1

flyingmikey

I'm gonna go see a travel agent tomorrow. But in the meantime I found a great Berlin - Prague train ride for 23 euros that only takes 4 hours.

Also an open-jaw from LAX - AMS and PRG - LAX is about 650 on expedia.

Air Berlin will do AMS - Berlin for about 50 euros.

So could work like this:
Thursday, March 9th - take a red-eye flight and arrive in Amsterdam in the morning of Friday, March 10.
Friday, March 10th and Saturday, March 11th - spend the whole day in Amsterdam, spend the night
Sunday, March 12th - Fly to Berlin in the early evening, spend night in Berlin
Monday, March 13th - spend the whole day in Berlin, spend the night
Tuesday, March 14th - take the train to Prague from Berlin in the morning
Tuesday, March 14th to Saturday, March 18th - spend the whole day in Prague, spend the night
Sunday, March 19th - Return to LAX from Prague

for a little over 700.


Can anyone come up with a way to improve this before I see the travel agent?

Thanks for all your help!!!!!

okko

http://www.smartwings.net/en/
- Czech LCC that flies between AMS and PRG, flew w/ them in March and it was ok (and cheap) ^

flyingmikey

For some reason they do not start that route until late March. I sent them an email and asked about it...we'll see if they respond.

Thanks,

Mike

flyingmikey

How did you guess? Unfortuately the student fares websites, which sometimes work are more than expedia. (STA Travel and studentuniverse.com)

Anyone else think of anything better than expedia? I tried kayak.

Thanks,

Mike

grbflyer

i was bored at work and tried the challenge, these are with all your dates.

open jaw lax-ams, prg-lax - travelocity 676.00allin
ams-berlin - travelocity 62.00allin could save the 5.00 fee is booked through their website.
taking the train, im not sure. i couldnt price out a ticket from berlin to prague. i did look at booking some cheap one ways and while it is very cheap, its gonna eat up a whole day. i dont know how long it would take for the train. i used travelocity as a reference because you can go to the website of the airline that has the cheapest ticket and book through them to save the booking fee. good luck finding a TA to book this, not many specialize in student travel. i had a hard time on my first trip getting help.

--- you may save some money flying lax-ams, ams-lax and going between prg and ams on your way out, or fly in and out of london because you can easily get to prg, ams, berlin from there. you could then get the youth eurorail pass and you would get more use out of it.