Tips to See the Places i Visit

Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 02:30 AM
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Tips to See the Places i Visit

Hi, Two of us are planning a Small Budget Trip to Some places in Europe. We are travelling from India for a Conference in Brussels. We thought of exploring Europe before our conference in Brussels. We have Shoe String Budget and need guidance on our Tour.
We intent to stay at the following places and would request your kind suggestions as to what to see and two and what not to miss during our stay in those places.

Paris, France – 2 Days and 2 Nights

Interlaken, Switzerland – 1 Day and I Night

Lucerne, Switzerland – 1 Day and 1 Night

Tutlingen, Germany – 1 Day and 1 Night – Accomodation arranged at a Friend’s place

Venice, Italy – 1 Day and 1 Night

Salzburg – 2 Days and 1Night – Accomodation Arranged at a Friend’s place

Munich – 2 Days and 2 Nights – accommodation arranged at a Friend’s place

Berlin – 2 Days and 2 nights

2 Spare Days

- Does this Trip look good/ feasible? What's your opinion?

- We plan to travel by Eurail....Is this a good option and can we travel in the nights?
- What are the places and things to do that we should not miss in our limited time.

- Both of us are Non Vegetarian and love to taste new culinary delights with some Beer

- What is the budget we should have considering ours is a Budget Trip, and yet we would like to see and experience the wonders of these places.


Look Forward to seeing your views....Thanks....

Nitish
nitishraj is offline  
Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 04:52 AM
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Your trip is possible but you won't have time to see or do anything but rail stations and the inside of trains. No chance in the world to "experience the wonders of these places." You have two major issues to address.

First, you are moving too much and will spend all of your time travelling, leaving no time to enjoy your frequent stops.

Second, your trip will be very expensive because of the transportation costs and you say you are on a budget.

It looks like you have about two weeks to travel. I would seriously consider limiting your stops to no more than 5 and choosing, for example, Paris along with 2 stops in Germany and 2 in Switzerland.

We can't tell you what the budget is. You'll have to tell us what you have to spend and what you want to do first.

Give some thought to what you really want to see and do and we can help you fill in the blanks. Start with a couple of good guidebooks, use the search function on this forum, visit the "destinations" page above and choose the things you really want to experience. When are you going?
mamcalice is offline  
Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 05:21 AM
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Nitish,


Welcome to Fodor's. If you click on your screen name you can see the 25 responses to the almost identical question you posted a few days ago.

I agree that you will spend a lot of time traveling and not so much time experiencing these places. Mmacalice gives excellent advice, much of it you will find repeated in your other post.
ellenem is offline  
Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 05:38 AM
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Hello Mamcalice, we plan to arrive in Paris by 17th Oct and have to reach Brusells on 1st Oct morning to attend our conference...

Our Budget is abt 1500-1800 US$ per person including all meals,travel, stay, entrance to musuems etc...

In each country we would like to see the main tourist attractions as well as historical places like in Paris- Eiffel Tower, palace of versailles, moulin rouge and in Munich we would like to see typical bavarian villages and their life syle, neuswanschtien castle...in Salzburg, the sound of music tour. In Berlin, the pub crawl tour. In Venice , we would like to explore the place in a Gondola etc...we would also like to go pubbing... Can You Help us chalking a good tour?
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Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 06:15 AM
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You need to sit down and put on a calendar you days INCLUDING travel time.

To say 2 dyas in Paris, then 2 days in Lucerne...OK,if you were to arrive in Paris from India, your first 1/2 day would be used up landing, customs, getting baggage, taking taxi to hotle, checking in,etc. Then you are ready to tour...but you will have some jetlag. Need to figure out public transit.

Moulin Rouge..not so sure would rank that as historic

How do you get to Lucerne? How long is the trip? Flying or train? You need to chekc out of hotel and get to airport/train. Travel time to Interlaken. Once again, time to get from airport/train station. Figure out public transit, and so on/

Every time you change cities you lose time, you need to re-orient. Every time you change cities, you need to have hotels booked. If you are indeed going in 4 weeks (?), not much time.

10 nights hotel + 8 transfers + meals + daily costs...$1800?


You will get to experience the train systems a lot, but such little time in those locations. Sometimes less..is more.
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Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 06:18 AM
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Hey Nit,

You have over twenty responses to your original post.

You need only click on your name to find it.

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Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 06:28 AM
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I agree with all the above fodorites , you have to be realistic, you do not wish to pass by, have a glance and look for the next place, with all due respect for that it is better to see a movie. Make a real calendar including the time and money you will need and spend only for going to one point to the other, I feel you must allocate sometime to sit in a cafe, watch people passing by, get a feeling of the place....but of course each person has a different point of view. Good luck.
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Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 06:30 AM
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OK, please don't waste your time and money on Moulin Rouge in Paris. Total tourist trap and to do that instead of something else of value is almost criminal. Spend the money on a night time cruise of the Seine to see the monuments all lit up, maybe...

There are so many beautiful churches to visit for free...Sacre Coeur, Notre Dame (towers are not free), St Sulpice.

Versailles is gorgeous and plan to get there when it opens to see as much as possible and beat the crowds.

You can book ET tickets online but you will still wait in line there.

For Venice, it is so gorgeous see St Mark's and just explore on foot. You have so little time there. A gondola ride is expensive so you might consider a ride or two in a water taxi instead.

I agree with the others that you are probably shorting yourself on time to actually enjoy the cities you visit and would encourage you to cut a few cities off the schedule and spend less time on trains.
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Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 08:08 AM
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>

You simply cannot do all that with your budget or current itinerary.

CUT BACK the plan! Visit 3 countries. Your current itinerary is going to be a detailed examination of the interiors of trains and stations and a HUGE waste of money.
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Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 08:19 AM
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I very much understand your wanting to fit in everything while you're in Europe, but as many other have said, you will spend much too high a percentage of your trip travelling BETWEEN locationos, rather than being AT them.

Think very hard about what you want to see in each of those locations, and decide which you want to see the very most (in addition to other factors, like free lodging). Then cut about 3 of the destinations that don't have the places you want to see the most.

For example, if you want to visit Salzburg, Berlin and Munich just to enjoy Germany culture and beer, then cut out Munich (because you have a places to stay in Berlin and Salzburg). Personally, I would only go to one of those 3 places, but my interests are probably different from yours (I love art and culture, and have never developed a taste for beer).

If you really want to experience the mountains, knowing that the weather might be iffy, then go to Interlaken or Lucerne, but not both. Though I'm not familiar enough with Switzerland to know whether you can enjoy the mountains from those locations, or they'll the kind of places, with the amount of time you have, to just enjoy a beautiful lakeside town/city. Why do you want to visit those two cities?

Paris has dozens, if not more, "main historical attractions and sights." Even if you added time to your stay in Paris, you'll still need to decide which of those attractions are what YOU want to see. Mine would be the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, some other museums, cafe-sitting, walking around. In all my visits to Paris, we've never been to the Moulin Rouge, and went to Versailles once - not because it wasn't interesting, just that there's so much else that we want to see within Paris and we haven't been willing to give up 1/2 day to visit Versailles again.

It's all a matter of how you want to spend your time. Take a calendar, use a train website like Germany's, which has train travel times for just about everywhere, and figure out roughly how much time every day would be spent enjoying vs. being on a train.
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Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 10:31 AM
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I'm sure it feels like people here are just coming down on you and not being supportive. But, they are being supportive and realistic.

I did some quick checking for you on the bahn.de website, I find it is the easiest train site to use for research. This might give you some perspective in the reasoning behind people telling you that your trip is not really feasible (which I agree it is not). At the least I would suggest dropping Venice, and extending time in Munich to include a day trip to Salzburg. i'd also consider dropping Interlaken and adding the time to Luzern. both of these would cut down on the long travel days and allow you more time to see some of the places that interest you.

So, let's look at your itinerary (the travel times may vary slightly due to departure time/number of stops).
Paris to Interlaken, travel time is about 6 hours, so you leave Paris at 8am, get to Interlaken at 2pm, check into hotel and probably hit the street around 3:30. So you have part of the afternoon and evening to enjoy Interlaken, not a full day. Then you go to sleep and leave the next day.

Interlaken to Luzern - 2.5 hours by train. Leave at 10, arrive and check into hotel and hit the street around 1:30. You have a good portion of the day/evening to explore the town. Sleep and leave the next morning. Again, you do not have a full day in Luzern.

Luzern to Tutlingen - approx 3 hours by train. Leave at 10, arrive at 1, get settled and on the street by 2. Again, no full day here.

Tutlingen to Venice - approximately 9 hours. Leave at 9 arrive by 6, get to hotel and you'll be able to have dinner in Venice but no much else because you are leaving the next day.

Venice to Salzburg - approximately 7 hours. Leave at 9, arrive at 4. You have 2 nights here so 1 full day, a portion of the travel day from venice and then some time before you leave for Munich.

Salzburg to Munich - apprx 2 hours by train. Same scenario as Salzburg. One full day and a portion of the travel day.

Munich to Berlin is 6 hours by train, same amount of time as above.

Then on the last day, Berlin to Brussels is about 7 hours by train.

So, when you are thinking you have 1 day and 1 night, that isn't true because you are not accounting for the travel time. Another thing that I keep running up against is that everything just seems to take longer than I think it should. For example, the walk to the station, buying the tickets, getting food for the train, etc. So, you have to factor in those things as well. I'd suggest sitting down with a map of Europe, a connection to a rail site like bahn.de and reduce the number of places you visit so you can spend 2-3 nights each rather than 1 night. The places that you list are interesting and probably deserve more than a few hours before you have to leave again. It's your trip, of course so you can follow your plan if you want.
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Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 11:53 AM
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you can go directly to the English language version of bahn.de by typing in bahn.com instead
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Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 05:59 PM
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ira - you didn't grasp the other thread too well.

The OP started this new post because he was tired of people telling him he was doing it wrong and trying to direct him to their preferred itineraries. You folks never cease to amaze me. Unfortunately, most of you won't even recognize yourselves - you're just trying to help, we know.

See the title? The OP is going to these places and wants advice about them, not repeated attempts at lecturing him on the worthiness of his choices.
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Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 06:23 PM
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" The OP is going to these places and wants advice about them, not repeated attempts at lecturing him on the worthiness of his choices."

aramis: No one said the choices are worthless. Of course they aren't. But they are not ALL doable w/ the OP's stated time/money limitations. The OP wants tips to see places they simply don't have time or money to see

The posts on this thread are very similar to the other thread. But they would be. Re-posting the same question multiple times won't get different responses if the plan is the same . . .
janisj is online now  
Old Sep 2nd, 2011, 07:57 PM
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If the OP was tired of people telling him he was doing it wrong then why did he ask this question:

"Does this Trip look good/ feasible? What's your opinion"

On his other thread he asked:

"Is the trip too tight"

He obviously knows his plan is madness, especially since he states he's on a shoestring budget. And he's still asking for opinions which he is getting.

I say work the plan. Enjoy the 9 train stations you'll be visiting.
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Old Sep 3rd, 2011, 02:57 AM
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Thanks Again everybody for taking out time and guiding me in the above...I have realized that the trip is indeed very tight and no am planning to reorganize my self.

As mentioned by cls2paris and Lexma90 , am now considering to do Paris - 3 Nights , Lucerne - 3 Nights, Venice - 2 Nights, Munich - 3 Nights (Have accommodation here)and Maybe Berlin.

Since we are looking at a Budget Trip plus some part of our Trip is where we are staying a Friend's place...Can anybody suggest a good Company/ website who can organise the tour for us including travel, accommodation sightseeing etc...

Most of the sites, i visited, does the entire package, but stay is in 3 star hotels and you have to stay compulsorily in the hotel...could not see any company giving you an option where you stay in some country in a hotel and some on your own

Thanks in advance for the suggestions...!!!
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Old Sep 3rd, 2011, 04:08 AM
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I don't understand why you want to pay an agency or person to plan this trip for you. This will severely reduce your budget.

In 2 places you're staying with friends. Can't they guide you around or tell you what to see and how to get to places on public transportation?

In Munich (where you have friends) you want to see Bavarian villages. So you know what you want to do there.

Interlaken is about hiking/skiing. So that's what you'll do.

You have friends in Salzburg - again, can't they show you around. You want to do the Sound of Music tour which will take about half a day. See Mozart's house. If you have time see the salt mine.

It's not clear what else you're looking for. Perhaps if you ask specific questions you will get the answers you need. Each town has a tourist office where you can get information. The best suggestion from me is to read a guide book. Most guide books give stars next to the best sights. Of course, that is the opinion of the guide book just like any suggestion here is the opinion of the poster.

At the top of the screen is the word "Destinations" which gives the top sights and a description for major cities. Have you looked there?
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