We Finally Have an Itinerary!! Now the Details....France, Switzerland and Italy in May
 

Hi Everyone!

After many hours of contemplation, research and a ton of wonderful advice on this forum we finally have an itinerary we are going to stick with (knock on wood).

Fly to Paris (May 16)
Paris x 7 (May 17-23)
Bern x 5 (May 24-28)
Como x 4 (May 29-June 1)
Venice x 5 (June 2-6)
Fly Home (June 7)

We begged our bosses for one extra day off and that eleviated some of our time angst in Switzerland!

But now its down to the nitty gritty of booking everything and flights are our first concern.

Looking on Kayak we found an open-jaw ticket for $1360 (not including tax?). That is for:

$1360 USD
Air Canada /
Lufthansa YEG 6:30a to Paris CDG 9:40am (1 stop)
VCE 7:05a to YEG 3:22p (2 stops)

Is this a good price? Should we go through a travel agent? We are on a tight budget so the cheaper the better. Is it better to book now or wait awhile?

As for train tickets...should we book there far in advance? We try the das bahn site, but it doesn't tell us how MUCH the journey costs..?

Any help would be much appreciated!

MollyB

I like the itinerary Molly but those airfares are scary. Check the Swiss rail site at sbb.ch for fares but you may be too far out.

Thanks bob! After playing around on that Swiss site it is giving me fares....CHF is the same as Sfr's right?

Should we book our Paris-Bern, Bern-Como, Como-Venice train legs in advance? Do we have the tickets mailed to us in Canada or do we pick them up once we get there?

I found a Bern-Paris train for the times we want for 138CHF.

I will keep looking for flights - we aren't sure how much it should cost. It LOOKS upon third viewing that tax was included and the tickets were through Obitz...is this a secure way to travel or do sites like this have lots of cancellations, dropped flights and changes?

Cheers,

Very Excited Molly!

Hey Molly,

CHF is short for Swiss Francs in German. I think it goes something like Schweizer Franken. Your itinerary looks wonderful, happy travels!

Ok, I don't get it? How do you get simple fare info on the Swiss Rail site without entering all of your info and practically buying the ticket? There must be a simpler way....?

MB

Oh - sorry MBeethoven we cross- posted! Thanks for the info- we are really looking forward to this trip!

MB

Hi Molly, here are a few thoughts from a fellow Canadian...

For your transatlantic flight- I would keep your eyes on the Air Canada website. They may have another sale come up- in December they had a short sale and my parents got rt tickets YYZ to LHR for $550 inclusive, for January travel. A few weeks ago Air Canada had *another* two day sale and I got a rt ticket YYZ to CDG for $550 inclusive, for travel in late April. I learned of this sale through Travel Zoo- you might want to sign up to get their email alerts, or just make sure to check Air Canada's page every day.

Another possiblity is Zoom Airlines, which flies into Paris. Another good place to look for flights is on the Travel Cuts website. If you google both names you'll have no problem finding the websites.

This is could put a possible crink in your itinerary, but you may want to compare the costs of flying open jaw into Paris and out of Venice, with the cost of flying roundtrip out of Paris- and taking a low cost airline from Venice to Paris, and shifting one night of your itinerary to Paris for your last night before flying home. It may not be cheaper, or not enough in savings to justify to the upheaval, but it's always something to consider if open jaw prices are really high.

regarding CHF...

CH means Confederation Helvetia which is the ancient designation for Switzerland derived from latin. It is basically the abbreviation for Switzerland...and is used quite frequently

CHF - denotes the Swiss Franc (french-speaking) or Swiss Frank (german-speaking) like USD denotes US dollar...

Molly
Do you plan on doing day trips out of Bern while you are there? You have 5 nights there, which IMO is a bit long. Day trips are pretty easy to do as Bern is fairly centrally located in Switzerland. I would recommend visiting Lucerne and maybe the Interlocken area, both of which are fairly close to Bern.

Have fun planning! Sounds like a nice trip.

Carol

You can get to Lac Leman area on a day trip from Bern. Down to Vevey and Montreux (Lausanne or Geneva). see Chateau de Chillon, vineyards of Lavaux, open air weekly market...

To get price info from the swiss rail site, you may have to email the customer service dept. I did so and didn't even expect a reply, but low and behold the next day I had a personal email giving me the info.

Our 1st class tickets Bern to Florence came to about $100 CND each. We bought them ahead of time from Travel Cuts over the phone, and they arrived in the post two days later. Buying from Travel Cuts is essentially buying from Rail Europe- it is a bit more expensive than if you wait to buy in Europe, but it can be nice to save some time and effort while on your trip.

Keep in mind that.....Everyone Doesn't have to do the same thing all the time. Sometime too many people trying to satisfy themselves and everyone else causes too much stress. Give yourselve permissin to speak up and say if something does not interest you. Always have a central safe meeting place.

I haven't found AC to be particularly competitve in pricing.

I have flown out of Buffalo instead on Toronto in order to get better pricing. Look at that as a possibility. If airfare $$ is critical, having flexibility is key. You could even do a Sothwest flight out of Buffalo to another departure city.

Zoom is a good possibility, Air Transat and Skyservice are others.

Thank guys!

We are going to be vigilant in looking for the best airfare possible as this trip is already stretching our financial limits (by going from 2 weeks to 3+1 day!). Still you only live once and we will remember the trip far more than the money we saved in years to come (that is my theory anyway).

I will look into all of the airlines suggested thank you.

Carol - yeup we have several day trips planned from Bern - Neuchatel, Fribourg/Gruyeres, Lucern and we are playing with a day trip to Thun and its nearby castles. That gives us half a day + evenings in Bern itself - but, we'll see how we feel. We are still playing around with this part- we may trade something up for Chillion or Luasanne as suze suggests.

Apres_Londee - I'm happy to hear the Swiss Rail site got back to you! Though I wish it was a bit more user freindly. Of course it is more than possible that I am the one missing something...lol!

Thanks again,

MollyB

Hi MB,

Also check prices at www.1800flyeurope.com.

I think that you might find better schedules if you fly into Venice and out of Paris.

You might also want to consider flying into Zurich, visiting CH and Venice and then flying www.myair.com to Paris.

((I))

Molly,

For the train transportation you might want to look at Rick Steves website (www.rickstves.com). His site has a good deal of info on train fares, train pass info, etc. Depending on your final itinerary, you may want to get some kind of rail pass. DH and I have visited Switzerland several times. We always get the Swiss Saver Pass as it includes trains, post buses, city buses in select cities and entrance to 400 museums in Switzerland. It covers most trains from border to border. We will use it this coming summer when we visit Switz. and Italy. We make onward train reservations went we arrive.

We have been in both 1st class and 2nd class on the trains. We now travel only 2nd class to save money.

My only advise regarding Switzerland is to get up to the mountains. Easy to do from Bern. You can go via Interlaken to Wegen, Murren or Grindelwald. From there you can go higher.

Also check out vayama.com for airfare. I'm about to book a JFK-Venice, Geneva-JFK flight for $724/pp in late April/early May. The same trip is $760 on Kayak and at least $100 more than that on some other sites.