14 Day Trip In March

[francefiend]

me said:

francefiend said:

I'd ax Vienna altogether and stay in France / move on to Italy for those days. You'll save money on the night trains and flights.

must differ. Vienna is the 2nd most important city in the history of Western civilization! only Rome tops it.

I would say Paris, but oh well I didn't mean to infer that Vienna wasn't important. It just seemed out of the way on the itinerary, but of course, the final decision rests with dddx. I like Austria. I like The Sound of Music! I like Western civilization!

[dddx]

Thank you all for the replies again. Must say they have all been very insightful.

Well having read all your suggestions, I've revised my plans (again!) so that the order of the places make a little more geographical sense, and also planned for taking budget air (again) until I can decide for sure if rail is indeed cheaper (maybe?). I've also managed to find a possibility of an open jaw ticket flying into Paris and out of London, so I've taken that into consideration as well. So here it is (again)!

14 Depart from Home
15 Paris
16 Paris
17 Paris
18 Paris
19 (Morning Flight to Berlin) Berlin
20 Berlin
21 Berlin
22 (Morning Flight to Vienna) Vienna
23 Vienna
24 Vienna
25 Pisa (Not sure how to get here from Vienna, please advise!) (Evening Rail to Florence)
26 Florence
27 (Morning Rail to Rome) Rome
28 Rome
29 Rome
30 Rome (Afternoon Flight to Barcelona)
31 Barcelona
1 Barcelona
2 (Morning Flight to London) London
3 London
4 London
5 London (Day Trip to Manchester and Liverpool - can't miss these, unfortunately)
6 London (Night Flight Home)

I know the argument of visiting the south first before going north to lengthen the days, but I realised that in doing so, I would end up in Rome on Easter! So I planned in the opposite direction and ended up with this. A couple of days... doesn't make much a difference, ya?

[me]

dddx,

my search found nothing from Vienna area to Pisa. so, would it be a problem to fly to Rome on 25 March? this year, is it 2008 already? , that'd be the Tuesday after Easter. you ought to be able to reserve beds in Rome by then, i'd think. [reserve beds for Easter in Vienna asap!]

there are flights from Bratislava to Rome on SkyEurope, i'll let you check price & availability. there are also flights from Pisa to Barcelona & to Gerona. <Clickair & Ryanair> just switch the order in Italy, if that isn't a problem.

- d

[Eagle]

dddx, your newly revised Itinerary looks much more realistic and workable. However, one point that seems problematic (someone else mentioned this previously) is the "day trip" to Manchester and Liverpool. I suspect that given the prices of Britrail, this is going to be not only an expensive trip, but also a long and tiring day!

Regarding your problem in scheduling a visit to Pisa, would this route work better:

- Flight from Vienna to Venezia Treviso (Sky Europe) - Taxi or Shuttle to Venezia S.L. (not sure what's available for ground transportation from Treviso?)
- Train from Venezia S.L. to Firenze S.M.N. (08:43-11:22, 2H39M, 0 changes) - tour Florence
- Train from Firenze S.M.N. to Pisa Centrale (07:51-08:59, 1H08M, 0 changes) - spend a few hours to see the Leaning Tower, etc.
- Train from Pisa Centrale to Roma Termini (13:00-16:14, 3H14M, 0 changes)

I'm sure there are several ways you could arrange your Itinerary, but thought this suggestion might help.

Good luck with your planning!

[pointofnoreturn]

Regarding Manchester and Liverpool, here are some budget travel options:

MegaBus: www.megabus.com/uk/
(London to Manchester or Liverpool for as low as £1 each way but quite a long bus ride!)

National Express Fun Fares:
www.nationalexpress.com/save/funfares.cfm
(London to Liverpool/Manchester, may be as low as £1 but needs to be booked in advance)

While the bus ride is quite long.... You might want to look into getting value advance train tickets... The journey is about 1/2 the travel time but to get the cheap fares, you need to book in advance at the right time (no more than 12 weeks ahead of time). I can see fares as low as £13 with Virgin Trains and the fares go up considerably from there.

Note:
There's quite a lot of travelling involved with this particular day trip and you'll be quite exhausted ... have you given thought about over-nighting in Manchester or Liverpool and taking a train back to London the day before your flight? It might not seem geographically-appropriate, but you could spend 3 days in London, head up north, then come back for one or two more days (and stay in a different accomodation) then fly home?

[francefiend]

18 Paris
19 (Morning Flight to Berlin) Berlin

This makes me nervous. How early are we talking about here? You should allow a full hour (30-40 mins plus cushion time for heavy traffic) to arrive at CDG/ORY/BVA two hours before departure time. It might make sense to 1) sleep in the airport on the eve of departure 2) stay at a economic hotel near the airport.

I'm not sure about access to the airport in Berlin, but the same solution may have to be applied in your Berlin-Vienna flight as well.

[herrbert]

It would depend on the airport in Berlin, but most european flight have a check-in limit at 45-60 minutes before departure. (but check the site of the airline for that). Remember that it is the absolute limit! So showing up a little early is wise.

I used Tegel as the airport to travel to/from in Berlin, and it can take some time to get there by Metro and Bus, or from the center you can take citybusses to the Airport.

I don't know the situation at the new airport Schönefeld from experience, but I believe connections (busses and trains) to Schönefeld are good.

[me]

herrbert said:

the new airport Schönefeld

this line struck me as odd, Schönefeld was East-Berlin's airport when i 1st visited Berlin in the 80's.

just read <www.berlin-airport.de/EN/index.php?nocache=1> that Schönefeld is to be greatly expanded and the name will change to Berlin-Brandenburg International [BBI] by 2011. also that year, Tegel is to close, with all flights moved to the renamed Schönefeld. the oldest airport, Tempelhof, is scheduled to close this year.

i'd read about this before, but forgot.

as i recall, the Berlin government tried to close Tempelhof before. but, some low cost German airline took a page from Herb Kelleher's playbook, sued and forced Tempelhof to stay open.

- d

[WillTravel]

The connections to Schoenefeld are good, but when I was taking the train there, the train stopped for a while because of something on the tracks. That's one reason I don't believe in cutting things too close.

The check-in cutoff time is strict, like Herbert said. And this means that even if you are still in line, when the time cutoff happens, it doesn't matter. The agents don't really have any flexibility on this even if you beg and plead, because they are needed in other parts of the airport. So another reason to allow sufficient time - I like to be there two hours in advance.

Tempelhof will close finally on October 31, 2008.

[dddx]

Hi all again! My plans are in chaos again because my travel mates are wanting to see a little too much in too little time. But I'm trying my best to plan the best I can to accommodate as much as we can comfortably.

Question though. I know I should expect myself to be at the airport a good 2 hours before.

But can anyone tell me how much time it will take from landing to getting out of the airport? I want to be sure that I won't end up stranded at an airport because my flight arrives too late for me to catch any transport into town!

[herrbert]

In most airports I visited so far, I stood outside the airport about 30 minutes after landing.

I think the only that took longer was Stansted, because you first walk towards a metro-like transport to customs, and then on to the baggageclaim. So sheer size will have some influence on how fast bagage will be handled.

If you want to be on the safe side, then stick to 1 hour. That should be enough.

[WillTravel]

Very occasionally a flight is delayed and it does arrive past the point that transit is available. This can happen at tiny airports that are only used for a very few flights, like Beauvais, for example, which is 90 km from Paris.

So if you do use an airport like this, consider your contingency plan if that happens. If this were to happen at a London airport, you'd have to wait a while, but a National Express bus would probably be available within a couple hours (but check the nationalexpress.com site to be sure). With Beauvais, just as an example, I would probably have the phone number of taxi companies, and also hotels in the nearby town. It would be an unwanted hit to the budget, but occasionally that sort of thing happens when traveling, and the odds are against it happening.

My experience with very small airports is that I am out extremely quickly once I arrive. Because you have the only flight coming in, the baggage agents immediately unload luggage, etc. Like Herbert said, Stansted can be slower.

[pointofnoreturn]

dddx said:

But can anyone tell me how much time it will take from landing to getting out of the airport? I want to be sure that I won't end up stranded at an airport because my flight arrives too late for me to catch any transport into town!

It depends on the airport, in all honesty. For example, CDG was a fast one because we landed in Terminal 3 (ugh) and our bags were *right there* after a short shuttle ride.

In Rome, it took a bit longer but in Santorini, we were at the taxi ranks within 20-30 minutes of arriving.

If you have a late night flight, definitely look into alternative arrangements or make an "emergency fund" in case your plane is late and public transportation has stopped running. It's always good to be prepared.