Europe Itinerary

[lycerejo]

My wife and I are planning a trip to Europe mid June - first week of July. We are currently using points to fly into Paris, arriving June 19th noon and flying out of Athens on July 3. We currently have thought of the following cities (2-3 days in each):
Paris - Brussels (optional) - Venice - Rome - Athens. Any other suggestions inbetween?
1. Would train (Eurail pass) be the best option for balancing budget vs time spent?
2. Which segments would it make sense to fly (right now thinking Italy-Athens)
3. Are there discount airlines / flights that we can book that may be around the same or a little bit more than a rail pass ?

Thanks

[NFLqueen]

Hello there! Welcome to the boards, sorry for the delay in responding to your post.

First of all, yes I would suggest leaving Brussels out of your itinerary, mostly because you're covering a lot of ground in 2 weeks and Greece is time consuming to get around.

With two weeks you'll most definitely want to fly from Italy to Greece. I don't personally know of particular budget airline that do this route. You'll want to almost plan your itinerary around this decision depending on the cost to fly to Greece from either Rome/Venice/Pisa. I flew with Air Alitalia from Vienna for 100 euros last summer.

Check out www.ryanair.com or www.easyjet.com , I've looked and ryan air flys from Paris to Rome, or from Brussels to Venice and Rome. There is also a night train that runs from Paris to Venice. You'll save on accomodations and not waste any valuable tourist time

Can you tell me what you would like to do in Greece? Are there specific islands you want to see?

www.raileurope.com have a look at the france/italy multiple country pass, this will likely save you money on your train rides .... then you'll only need to pay for reservations on your night train and a sleeper if you want it because individual tickets can get expensive

Soooo
Paris 19, 20, 21, 22
take the night train on the 22nd to venice
Veince 23, 24
take the am train on the 25th to rome
Rome 25, 26, 27
fly to Greece on the 28th
Athens 28, 29
take a night ferry on the 29th to an island for example santorini for a few nights and come back to athens to depart

Athens barely deserves 2 full days, its not a very nice place to be, so go see the acropolis and a few other sites and get to an island to truly apreciate it ;D

Hope this has helped a bit, let me know if you have any other questions. Good luck!

Kelly

ps - when are the olympics in greece? have you taken that into consideration?