Europe Tour Itinerary
 

I am planning to tour Austria, Switzerland and Italy in the month of August, along with my family (total 4 people). Since I have never been to Europe, would appreciate if someone could propose an itinerary for me, considering max 14 days tour. No specific interest, mainly places of common interest. Plan to start the tour at Vienna and exit at Rome. Also please suggest mode of transport within each country. Thanks.

That is a lot of territory for a two week trip. You will be spending a lot of time on trains. Suggest you pick one country get a guide book and pick what you want to see and experience and go from there.
In addition August is coming up fast if you haven't made any arrangements yet.

Agree it's a fair bit of territory to cover in 14 days. And if you have "no specific interest" it's quite impossible to make suggestions, except to suggest that you do some research and propose an itinerary that makes sense for your purposes and wait for comments.

I am totally agree with RJD. I would suggest to pick just 1 country to visit and stay and spend your vacation there. I would recommend to visit Italy, there are some exciting cities in Italy to visit such as Rome, Venice, Florence, Naples, etc. Exploring Italy and spent 2 weeks there are more appropriate instead of wasting lot of time traveling from one country to another.

For transportation, I would suggest to take train.

The OP has already been given the advise on another thread that this is too much to cover in 2 weeks and he/she doesn't care.

I really think that you should plan your own itinerary so that you see what you want to see rather than what someone else chooses for you.

This is my opinion but please note that I would never do a trip like this:

Vienna - 4 days with a side trip to Melk
Lucerne - 1 day
Venice - 3 days
Rome - 3 or 4 days (whatever is left over after traveling time)

Use trains for all transportation.

Adrienne, your itinerary doesn't make any sense, as OP would have an endless trip from Vienna to Luzern ( 9 hours) and from there to Venice ( 8 hours), just for 1 day in Luzern?

There are cheap flights from Vienna to Zurich, that are sometimes much cheaper than train tickets, i think booking early a flight would be the best option.

Switzerland is the outlier, so save it for next time.

I like Adrienne's basic itinerary, without Lucerne and including Melk, even though the train trip from Vienna to Venice is a long one. Maybe a night train?

Exiting the Venice train station is one of the great travel moments.

Covering 3 countries in 14 days doesn;t make sense - you will spend a very large percentage of your time just getting from one place to another unless you pick just 3 - or at most 4 cities.

One consideration is that Italy in August will be very hot and many places - including many modest hotels, restaurants and shop do NOT have AC at all.

Also, Swtiz is VERY expensive - for everything.

So without knowing your budget and how you feel about heat - as in upper 90s and humid it's hard to make recos.

IMHO in 2 weeks you could do a couple of places in italy and Switz - OR Switz and Austrai - which should be cooler.

If you provide some further details on budget - what do you plan on spending per day for lodging, food etc - and how you feel about high temps. People can make recos. I imagine many of them will include fewer places than you seem to want.

Certainly you can bounce from place to place like a ping pong ball, moving every day or two - but it will be very expensive and you will see little.

<< Adrienne, your itinerary doesn't make any sense >>

Clausar - The OP wants to cover 3 countries even though he/she was told that it's too much. I'M not the one not making sense!! I mearly gave an itinerary that covers at least 1 place that I thought would appeal in each country. I also stated that I would never do that kind of trip.

Thanks for all the suggestions. If I reduce the number of countries to just 2 with a budget of US$ 8K (excluding entry/exit airfares), which would be the most ideal countries to visit ... Austria/Italy, Austria/Germany or Austria/Swiz. Also, any recommendation on hotels (family of 4) and low-cost airlines for long-distance travel. Thanks again.

Glad to see you're becoming a bit more sensible. Given your children's ages and your obsession with Austria I would do Austria and Bavaria.

Vienna
Melk
Salzburg
Munich
Neuweinstein Castle
Romantic Road

This will give you some small city and some country sightseeing. Keeps you away from the heat of large cities and will be more of a relaxing vacation for your family.

You can fly into Vienna and fly home from Munich.

Adrienne, thanks for your suggestions, well noted. How is Germany as a tourist destination ? Any language issues in these countries ? Temperature is not an issue as I live in Dubai where the temperature goes above 50 degrees. Your summer is like our winter ! Any suggestion on accommodation ?

Germans are nice to tourists, especially in Bavaria where the people are warm and welcoming - more of an Italian personality than a German one.

No language problems in Austria either.

I stayed at Pension Nossek in Vienna. It's located on the Graben (pedestrian area). If you search you'll find other suggestions for Vienna. And there are lots of posts here for Munich and other areas in Bavaria.

what adrienne said.