I am in the very beginning stages of planning a trip. It will be about 3 weeks. I am thinking fly to Paris and spend 6 days then 5 days in Vienna and 4 for both Budapsest and Prague. Is this reasonable? How is it best to travel from city to city?
I appreciate any advice.

Hi Steve,

When you say "4 for both Budapest and Prague," I'm assuming you mean 4 days each. If so, I think your time in each city is certainly doable and reasonable.

I would look into discount European airlines for a flight from Paris to Vienna, for example.

www.whichbudget.com is a good starting point for discount European air fares. Using that site, I find that AirBerlin has lots of very cheap flights flying out of CDG linking Paris to Vienna. For transport between Vienna, Prague, and Budapest, I'd take the train, as we did in our May trip last year. Check out:
http://bahn.hafas.de/bin/query.exe/en

If you can, you would save travel time if you fly open jaw from the US (in one city out another, rather than a standard round trip).

For cheap flights we took SkyEurope from Paris to Budapest, which might make more sense. From there you would take the train to Vienna and then the train to Prague.

Thanks for the information. I looked at the rail web site and found it confusing. Do you book on the web site? We have been to Europe several time but have never taken a train so it is a little scary.

Steve, we used the Die Bahn site (german trains whose link I provided you, works in much of Europe) easy to use to find travel times and estimated length of trips and to find trips with little or no need to change trains. However, to actually book and pay for our combination of rail passes and point-to-point tickets, we called Budget Europe, 1-800-441-2387 (outstanding service, education, and assistance). You can also get an idea of the estimated cost and of the cheapest combination of passes and tickets on this site:
www.railpass.com

Happy planning!

Hi Steve,

May I suggest saving Paris for another trip and including Munich and Salzburg along with V, P and B?

It will eliminate the flight from France to Austria and will give you a more unified cultural context.

Thanks everyone. I will look into Salzburg.
Steve

I was reading these posts in hopes of finding something to make me move on from Salzburg. I'm looking for a tour to do Vienna, Budapest and Prague but every time I see Salzburg something just makes me want to book 4 nights there!!!