Need Advice Please
 

We r a family from Egypt. We are planning to travel to Madrid and Salamanca in November. We want to visit other cities in Europe. Paris, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Salzburg.

I need your advice to plan the order of my trip, which country to visit first, using the cheapest transportation. The city we are going to originate from is Salamanca.

Which is the best route to do this?

Thanks in advance.

to give advise we really need some info from you:

How many weeks will you have fr this trip?

Who/how many in the family - are there any small children?

How do you fee about cold weather? While spain and Italy are likely to be reasonably warm - you may get quite a bit of rain. But the other cities, esp in Austria, can get quite cold and you may even get snow, esp if you visit the mountains.

Often the cheapest transit is buses - but the trips are usually interminable and not worth the waste of time. Budget airlines and train tickets can be quite inexpensive if bought far in advance - but then the flights or trains can't be changed.

Wthtout knowing how much time you have - and your interests - it's not really possible to put together a specific itinerary.

ADVICE: You will get more responses if you put what you need in your title. "Need advice" is what everyone needs. Try again with STARTING IN SALAMANCA: NEED BEST ORDER TO VISIT PARIS, VENICE, VIENNA, SALZBURG AND ROME.

Try that and watch the hits grow.

We visited Egypt in 2007. Still talking about it today. Fantastic trip, great people.

We also had a great time in Egypt. Will you be returning to Salamanca? If not I'd recommend an open jaw where you fly into one destination in Europe and out of another. It's generally cheaper to do it this way as it cuts down on the backtracking.

I hope you have a month or more for this trip. If you have less than a month, I think you should reconsider Austria OR Paris. If you have less than 3 weeks, reconsider BOTH Austria and Paris.

Assuming you have a month and can fly home from Paris or Rome, there are at least two ways you could order these destinations, and you'd need to price the flights and trains to know if there's much difference in cost between them. Don't forget the costs of getting to/from airports.

Salamanca, train to Madrid, fly to Rome, train to Venice, train to Salzburg, train to Vienna, fly to Paris.

Salamanca, train to Madrid, fly to Paris, fly to Vienna, train to Salzburg, train to Venice, train to Rome. In November, I'd probably choose this route.

Thanks a lot for all your advice, I just saw them now as I didn't get any notifying mail
To know that someone responded!
That's why I just submitted my second inquiry few moments ago! Sorry about that.
Thanks again.

Are you actually flying into Salamanca? Are tickets purchased?
Departure city?
Length of trip, exact number of days on the ground, not including travel to/from Egypt?
Number of people in family? Ages?

To Sassafrass
We will fly from cairo to Madrid, and I checked there are no flights to Salamanca. Probably, we will go from Madrid to Salamanca round trip by bus.
Then we hopefully will do our tour starting from Madrid.
We are 3 adults, trip for about 20 days.

Welcome to fodors happytweety. Fodors doesn't send notifications when there are responses on a thread. So you will have to keep checking (and now you'll need to check both threads)

20 days is possible but AWFULLY rushed for 7 cities. Especially including places like Rome and Paris which take several days each.

I'd pick the three or four cities you want most to visit (5 maximum).

Many at Fodors like to travel slower than I do. I think 2 to 3 days (not counting travel time) at most in a city is fine. The issue is the places you want to go are very spread out so there will be flights involved that take longer than typical train travel. If it's important to see all those cities in 20 days (assuming travel is w/in the 20 days) here is what you'd end up with
1 arrive in Cas
2 tour cas
3 tour cas
4 train to Madrid / afternoon in madrid
5 tour madrid
6 tour madrid
7 fly to paris / evening in paris
8 tour paris
9 tour paris
10 tour paris / evening flight to vienna
11 tour vienna
12 tour vienna
13 train to salzburg / afternoon in salzburg
14 tour salzburg
15 tour salzburg
16 train to venice / evening in venice
17 morning in venice / train to rome
18 tour rome
19 tour rome
20 flight home

I like a faster than usual pace...but that's probably too much for me in 20 days. Skip Venice and try to add a day or two (I'd add it to Paris/Rome) and I think it's doable...a bit fast paced, but doable. Have you toured like this before? Do you like to settle in a place for awhile or do you like to get in and quickly see the popular sites?

The important thing is to put time into carefully planning every day. Look at train / airline websites to truly understand travel times. Build the entire itinerary and ponder it for a few days. Only you can know for sure if it's doable.

I will tell you that for me the year of planning a trip is just as much fun as the 2/3 weeks of the actual trip. Don't skimp on the planning, think of it as part of the vacation. Good luck!

Thanks a lot Janisj and Wekiva for your advice, I am sure that will be helpful! I will keep your advice in mind when doing my plan!
Thanks again