Itinerary Help! 10 day Europe Vacation
 

Hello! My husband and I are looking to plan a 10 day (flexible here) trip to Europe sometime this May or June. He has been to Europe before and visited Germany, Austria and Switzerland but this will be my first trip! We are thinking of flying into Frankfurt because of the significantly lower flight cost and are looking for itinerary suggestions for other places to visit and stay...

Would love to visit either Paris or Prague if possible.

Any help or advice is much appreciated! Thank you in advance!

Just pick two places you would like to see and go there. Maybe Paris for five days and then the German Rhine for five days.

For a short trip going to mega big cities take the train - cars are great for exploring rural areas but with 10 days I'd do like FHurdle says - concentrate on two areas - Munich is one area with lots to see and do - lots of neat day trips and of course Paris is Paris - high-speed trains link Germany to Paris now in a few hours.

Consider an open jaw ticket for the plane - fly into say Frankfurt or Munich and fly back from Paris - negating any need to backtrack, which would be costly in time and money.

For lots of great info on trains in those countries I always spotlight these IMO fantastic sites - www.ricksteves.com; www.budgeteuropetravel.com and www.seat61.com - the latter has sage advice on getting discounted tickets on trains to Paris and inside Germany.

The Rhine and Mosel rivers would make a very sweet few-day stop - very close to Frankfurt Airport - could head there from the get go rather than staying in a Frankfurt that many folks do not see as fulfilling their romantic notion of Europe - but a sweet riverside town like Cochem, a perennial favorite of many who post here, certainly will.

Amsterdam is only a few hours by train from Frankfurt Airport - direct trains - to me one of the most interesting cities and gorgeous cities in Europe - then take a train to Bruges for two nights and then it's 3.5 hours to Paris, fly home from Paris.

Would love to visit either Paris or Prague if possible.>

Do an open jaw ticket - fly into say Prague or Vienna and work you way east to Paris via Munich.

Prague
Munich
Paris

use trains which are good between then all (or a bus in the case of Prague to Munich).

It is almost always best to get tickets to the city where you really want to be rather than using up lots of time and extra money on train/planes getting you there from some other place.

I liked PalenQ's first idea.... Amsterdam, Bruges, Paris... On that first night in Frankfurt, I might stay in a town like Mainz... Very close, charming German square, easily accessible by train and on the way to Amsterdam.

I used to work a lot in Frankfurt and Amsterdam... Always took the train when I moved between the 2 cities. The ride up the Rhine is quite nice. ... In Frankfurt, I always stayed in Mainz... A guy from the team lived there and it was so much nicer than Frankfurt....he drove me to work each morning.

Of course, I would only do this if it made sense to spend a night near Frankfurt.....

I disagree with Sassafrass. I am flying in and out of Europe to Dusseldorf for $750 round trip. The cost to fly to Paris would have been $1,300. It will cost me about $50 each to get my daughter and me to Paris. I guess maybe if you have lots of money you should ignore the cost of the ticket and just fly where you want to go.

FHurdle, Was that $50 RT to Paris? If so, that really is a great deal, especially if your connections are such that you are not using up another day of travel time, so, of course that makes sense, but it isn't often like that.

I've seen people save only a couple of hundred dollars to go RT Frankfurt, then spend nearly that much to train RT to Rome or Barcelona, then have to get back to Frankfurt a day early to catch the flight home, so not really saving anything in the end, plus using up precious vacation time in airports or train stations.

I recently took a trip where tickets could be had for $500 - $700. $500 looked like a no brainer, but $500 tickets had such convoluted connections, late night arrival on first day and super early departure at the end, that two whole days of my vacation would have been lost. I still had to pay for the hotel the first and last night, but the cheap tickets would have turned my vacation from a lovely 7 days to only 5.

I even think about things like if I travel on a certain day and save $100, but have to pay an extra day of Cat care for $50, or I need an extra hotel night near the return airport, etc. all adds up.

Really, it is not a matter of having lots of money and just ignoring cost of tickets. Each person can figure it out for himself and see if the "bargain" works for them or not. Unfortunately, they may not realize there could be a downside until after they have purchased the "bargain" and are trying to put the rest of the trip together.

Sassafras, I agree... When we lived in the US, we always flew open jaw to Europe and for 2 reasons... It was easier and it always saved money in total. Generally, it costs 100 to 200$ more.

I imagine most people smart enough to travel would also be smart enough to price this option and make an informed decision.

Not quite sure why posters on Fodors feel the need to add the editorial comments around wealth, etc. to perfectly sound advice. In any event, I agree with you.

The ride up the Rhine is quite nice.>

worldinbetween mentions staying in Mainz and suggesting a boat trip on the Rhine - which could be done the day you land even or the next day if you want to stay two nights here before moving on - K-D boats run frequent services between Mainz and Koblenz thru the prettiest part of the Rhine - the famous Rhine Gorge with the uber-famous Lorelei cliff where sirens once lured boatmen to crash their boats and go to Davy Jones' locker.

If you've had a chance to sample Germany and Austria (two of my favorite places) you might consider a change of scenery like maybe London and Paris this time. Price out flying into one and out of the other with a chunnel train ride in between. There are tons of other good places to add to the list. What do you enjoy, where are you flying from, what's on the bucket list?

with a chunnel train ride in between>

tsk tsk Chunnel - so there are others besides myself who use this term - every time I use it some Fodorgarchs harp that they never have heard that term before - yet to many Americans 'chunnel' is the term they use. Thanks for confirming that!

AisleSeat makes a salient point about the so-called open-jaw ticket - fly into one airport and return from another. Heck then you could say take a night train from Paris to Rome and split your time between the French and Italian capitals! Or go to Madrid or Barcelona on a night train - saving a day of travel and the cost of a night in a hotel to boot!