14 days --- 8 countries --- we need your opinion

[WillTravel]

Look at www.whichbudget.com for budget airfare ideas.

Herbert already mentioned Milan Bergamo - Krakow, which is one option. Another option is Bologna to Krakow, on CentralWings. The city of Bologna is about 2 hours from Venice, and I think Milan is about the same. But in each case, I would not try to rush anything. I'd figure out transport from the city to the airport in advance, and arrive in the city with enough time to allow at least a few hours of exploration (storing your luggage at the train station).

Another option is to reshuffle a bit, and fly Venice - Prague on SkyEurope, and then train Prague to Krakow (which should be quite cheap purchased in Europe), and fly Krakow to Paris on EasyJet or Transavia.

If you are flying home from Paris, I'd suggest arriving back two nights before departure. If the unlikely worst happens and a flight gets cancelled, you'll still have plenty of time to be able to get back to Paris on time for your return flight.

[j33pguy]

thanks for the reply.

why would we need to go to milan? we only want to see rome and venice. is it that milan is the only place we can fly out of?

also, are we better off taking the plane from italy to poland or the train?

[j33pguy]

OK everyone....

plans are now falling into place thanks to you all... :-)

here's what we have so far.....

Fly into Venice (2 nights)
Train to Rome (3 nights)
Fly to Krakow (4 nights) ------> 105 Eruos for both of us including taxes and everything
Train to Prague (2 nights)
Fly to Paris (4 nights) ------> 88 Eruos for both of us including taxes and everything

the train prices are considerably higher for the two train trips i just mentioned.

thoughts?
is this a better/more reasonable plan?
any suggestions on the train situation?

[WillTravel]

Which site are you using to get the train prices? For Krakow to Prague, I think I would buy it in Europe, unless you can find a Polish site that sells it, or if you can buy it on bahn.de (I think not, though). Any site like RailEurope will mark it up hugely.

For the Venice to Rome part, you could get a special fare, probably, at trenitalia.com if you book ahead. The total price per person if you buy it at the train station will be somewhere like 50-60 Euros.

[j33pguy]

we were using a polish website for poland to prague.....said the trip was 9.5 hours cause of the 4 stops!!!! price didn't matter at that point! we're not wasting that much time!

unfortunately there are no flights from krakow to prague....otherwise, i think that would have been the best alternative....

so your suggestion is to get the tix at the train station then for those two trips huh?
what about the route and the duration? is this a better choice now?

[WillTravel]

Using the bahn.de site, I see you can do Krakow to Prague as a night train, leaving at 22:25 (10:25 PM) and arriving at 6:45 AM. This might be your best use of time. Maybe someone else can advise on how far in advance you would need to do this, but I think you could even buy the ticket at the train station in Italy and make the reservation for the couchette, or worst case buy the ticket in Krakow. If you do this, I'd advise being very security-conscious, as I think this is one of the night-train routes with a worse reputation for thieves.

If you can get the trenitalia.com site to work for you (some people have reported problems), then you might as well save a few Euros by prebuying the tickets, but otherwise you can buy them there.

[j33pguy]

thanks a bunch. that actually could save us some money since we won't be needing a hotel/hostel for that night as we'd be sleeping on the train!
thanks again.