emj

I'm planning my first trip to Europe ( me and 6 other people). We are going in April. Is it generally cheaper to fly into Paris or Rome? We plan to visit Paris, London, Geneva, Rome, Venice and Florence. We will travel from city to city by rail.

Also, when should I plan to purchase airline tickets (when are tickets cheaper)?

elberko

Welcome to the forum!

Hopefully this trip will be 3 weeks or more...

Highly recommend doing this kind of trip "open-jaw", say TO London, then FROM Rome, which avoids back-tracking and costs about the same as 2 halfs of the fares from both cities.

Where are you flying from?

~Liz

Jane_R

Not sure where you are flying from so it's difficult to answer. However, I do find for us that Paris is generally cheaper. That being said, you may want to look into a multi-city ticket as Liz suggesred. Prices are usually not a whole lot more and it saves you time....

Jane

suze

Go to a website like expedia.com and enter various dates and destinations. This will be you a general idea of costs and what is available. What city are you flying out of, i.e., where do you live?

I would suggest booking an "open jaw" ticket for example fly into London and fly out of Rome, so you do not have to back-track long distances on the train.

Cheapest can be many things and is hard to predict with any accuracy, i.e., purchase far in advance, purchase at the last minute, go thru a ticket consolidator, take a package deal, etc.

emj

Thanks for your response Liz. I was actually planning to do it open jaw into Paris and out of Rome or vice-versa. But if London is cheaper then I would do that. We are flying out of Houston, TX, Atlanta, GA and Miami, Fl. We'll be there about 15 days.

emj

Oh, thanks to all of you. Just noticed that I had several responses.

Thanks for the advice.

elberko

Reason for suggesting London wasn't that it would be cheaper, but that it's the most northern destination, so that you could more from north to south without backtracking.

That's a LOT of destinations for 15 days.

suze

At this early planning stage, I would kindly suggest dropping 1-2 cities. 6 cities in 15 days will involve aLOT of time on the train and checking in and out of hotels, and only leave you ~2 days in each place. I'd skip London, Geneva, &/or Rome and you'll still have a very busy 2 week itinerary.

elaine

You didn't ask this, but I suggest you consider dropping at least two of those cities. It takes at least half a day to travel from one city to another, even if you fly, even if trains are on time, and that's not counting checking in and out of hotels, transport to the terminals, packing and unpacking, etc.
By that calculation you have less than 2 days on average in each place, and those are major cities.

bardo

I know, I know. You didn't ask for this advice, but your trip sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen. I strongly suggest the seven of you get together on a conference call or something and try to agree on three cities. Otherwise, as mentioned, you won't have much time to see anything.

FWIW, I would try to convince your freinds that Paris should be one of them

I also think the open-jaw flights is the only way to go. For and April trip, a good time time purchase airfare is anytime between now and the end of January.

Look at www.itasoftware.com click on "looking for airfares"

It is a fantastic web-sight that allows mont long searched to find the cheapest days to fly. It also allows sorting by price, duration, connection times, length of layovers, layover cities (pick one that has easy immigration lines), airline, etc.

ita is used for info only. After you find the perfect flight, buy tickets through orbitz, expedida, or the airlnes directly.

bardo

I also wanted to suggest considering everyone getting on the same flight out of JFK or Newark to avoid the messy "meeting up" logistics upon your arrival in Europe.

Again, using www.itasoftware.com - sorting by stopover location.

Patrick

Open jaw is great, but my second choice for your (overextended for 15 days, in my opinion also ) itinerary would be to fly into and out of London, which is almost always cheaper. Start and London and end up in Rome or Venice where you can get a cheap flight back to London (although, probably having to switch airports, which could mean spending an extra final night in London).

kismetchimera

Flying into Paris is cheaper..I normally have an open jaw ticket, fly to Rome and leave from Paris or viceversa..

Flying to london will be cheaper, but then you must take in consideration the extra expense and the lost time that you will incur,unless of course, you decide to spend some time in that city..

Patrick

emj,in her original post included London as one of the cities they want to visit, so it is a logical starting (or ending) destination.
By the way the first city I'd dump from the itinerary would be Geneva.

suze

I'm with Patrick on skipping Geneva (and I am a huge fan of the Vaud region of Switzerland generally speaking). Geneva IMO would be a great place to live for a year or get sent on a business trip but would be WAY down my list of places to tour for a couple days and is not particularly convenient to any of your other destinations.

beachbum

My tickets from the W. coast to Paris for later this month were booked and paid for in February. Had I waited until today, I MIGHT have saved $180/ticket. But, I don't know if I'd have gotten the flights and dates I want.

If you're coordinating people out of multiple airports, scheduling becomes more difficult. You don't want to risk a scheduling problem in the hope of saving a few bucks. So, I'd start looking about six months out, and make reservations as soon as you find ticket prices everyone can live with.

emj

You all are great. I'm going to drop London. We have to go to Geneva to visit my cousin. Also my aunt,who lived in Europe for years will be our guide so hopefully that will help us with staying on schedule.

That www.itasoftware.com site sounds like it well be very helpful.

emj

After searching on itasoftware.com, I have decided that we will be flying into Paris and out of Rome.

Thanks again!

ira

Hi emj,

Unless you want the experience of travelling on a train at night, you can fly Paris Orly to Venice on www.volareweb.com for much less than the cost of a train.