Amsterdam-Berlin-Prague
 

Looking to do Amsterdam-Berlin-Prague or Amstrdam-Prague-Budapest this spring.
It would be a total of 14 day trip including flight from Florida, Would appreciate any suggestions/advise you could provide! Traveling with husband and we are mid-40s...

Either should be wonderful -- it really depends on what YOU want to see and experience, so you'll need to hit the guidebooks. ;-) I strongly recommend the Rough Guide or Lonely Planet as your primary resource. I would also recommend that you consult Fodor's, Frommer's, or the Michelin Green Guides to help prioritize and the National Geographic Traveler, Insight Guides, or Eyewitness for inspiration. Hope that helps!

Fly open jaw if possible. That is, fly into Amsterdam and back from Prague (or Munich if you have to ).

Guide books may vary when ti comes to your spending level on things such as lodging. Frankly for that I would look at TripAdvisor as well as Booking.com and Venere.com for up-to-date reviews if those matter to you.

If you had listed some specific interests in your post I think you'd be getting a lot more responses.

depending on what you are planning to do in each place, I would suggest stopping off for a night or two in Dresden between Berlin and Prague. There are lovely river trips to do there, which would make a nice interlude between those two big cities, plus terrific museums and galleries, and avery interesting and walkable town.

easy to get from Berlin to Dresden by train, and then from dresden to Prague.

you can look up train timetables and costs on the German railway website bahn.de

Amsterdam to Berlin by InterCity train with dining-car, departures every 2 hours, from 39 euros ($47) www.bahn.de/en

Amsterdam to Prague overnight via sleeper, http://www.seat61.com/train-from-ams...-to-prague.htm

Berlin to Prague from 29 euros ($35?) www.bahn.de/en - use the 'enter stopovers' feature to pre-plan a stopover of up to 48h in Dresden and still get an overall fare from 29 euros.

Prague to Budapest from 19 euros www.cd.cz/eshop

Bookmarking

check out not only Man in Seat 61's excellent commercial site he mentions in his post but also these info0laden ones to get a fix on European trains and night trains - www.ricksteves.com; www.budgeteuropetravel.com.

Strongly frecommend a stop of at least a few hours in Dresden en route if not a whole day there.

Night trains involving Germany and neighboring countries seem to be being axed a lot - check as your planning goes to see if the night train will be running or not!

While both Budapest and Prague are fascinating I prefer the latter since it is 1) the only major city with intact organic architecture - not have been bombed to smithereens in WWII and 2) unique in having along heritage of religious diversity - being approximately 1/3 catholic, 1/3 protestant and 1/3 jewish until the Nazis invaded in WWII.

Budapest doesn't have "intact organic architecture"? That surprises me. Anyhow, Berlin and Amsterdam are both the outliers I think, while Prague and Budapest are closer together and give you a good dose of Middle Europe. So that means either Prague and Budapest plus Amsterdam or P and A plus Berlin.

That there was a large jewish community in Prague (but also in Berlin and Amsterdam and Budapest) does not mean that there was "religious diversity".

If having to stay in a deleanated ghetto is religious diversity you could say the Auschwitz area was thus religiously diverse because of the thousands of Jews in the two camps there!

When will you be traveling this Spring? I'll be doing Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam in mid April. Would love to hear your trip report if you be back before I leave. We're flying open Jaw into Prague, by train to Berlin, and then by train to AMS before flying home from Amsterdam.

Any updates?