evan89

First time poster here, hoping the community can help me out with planning a trip to Europe with my girlfriend. This will be her first time in Europe and my second. We are planning to go for roughly 10 days (regrettably a fairly short trip) in the beginning of December. Our primary goal is to see some beautiful European cities around the holidays (hoping for at least slightly less crowds outside of the markets), visit Christmas markets, eat some killer food, and enjoy each other's company. I will also be asking her to marry me on this trip, after 3 years I think she is thoroughly convinced I will never ask, so it will be a big surprise for her.

We are considering the following cities, and from what I understand each has a unique Christmas/holiday feel.

Frankfurt
Munich
Vienna
Prague
Bratislava
Budapest
Salzburg

I am not expecting to see all of these cities, and ideally would like to cut it down to three at most (possibly four if a short stop in Bratislava to visit friends counts) Prague is the only city we are certain we want to visit given the amount of time we have for the trip, thus the extra day there.

My initial thoughts as follows:
Day 1 - Land in Prague in the morning (redeye), drop off stuff and spend remainder of the day exploring
Day 2, 3 and 4 - Prague
Day 5 - Morning departure to Vienna
Day 6 & 7 - Vienna (likely taking a day trip to Bratislava one day)
Day 8 - Morning departure to Munich
Day 9 & 10 - Munich (possible daytrip to Salzburg?)
Day 11 - Departure back home

Is this a doable itinerary? Should we be considering other cities? Thoughts on which cities are "must sees" this time of year?

The thought of attempting to cram so much into such a short trip seems unjust to me, but I want to see as much as we can, while still maintaining a schedule that isn't too chaotic. From what I remember Bratislava is roughly an hour bus ride from Vienna, and Munich about 1.5 hours from Salzburg making a day trip to either fairly doable assuming we feel as if we have had enough time to explore Munich and Vienna.

Thank you so much for any feedback!

greg

Day 8 - Morning departure to Munich
Day 9 & 10 - Munich (possible daytrip to Salzburg?)

If you are taking a train for Vienna-Munich, the train stops at Salzburg anyway. Munich-Salzburg is 100 minutes (www.bahn.com)
Why do you want to come back to Salzburg from Munich, consuming 100 x 2 = 200 minutes additional travel time plus additional trip to Munich Hbf and back when you could have stopped at Salzburg as a freebie stop from Vienna?

evan89

Valid point, and good to know. If that is the case then freebie trip would be the way to go! Less wasted time, less wasted money, and still get to see it. Thanks for the feedback

evan89

So updated itinerary per Greg's advice, is this doable? Should I change anything? Should I swap a city? Spend more/less time in one?

Day 1 - Land in Prague in the morning (redeye), drop off stuff and spend remainder of the day exploring
Day 2, 3 and 4 - Prague
Day 5 - Morning departure to Vienna
Day 6 & 7 - Vienna (likely taking a day trip to Bratislava one day)
Day 8 - Morning departure to Munich, with a few hours stop in Salzburg
Day 9 & 10 - Munich
Day 11 - Departure back home

jan47ete

We did Christmas markets a few years ago as part of my bucket list. Went to Prague and Vienna and LOVED both. I was very sorry not to have done Budapest and plan on doing that Sept/Oct 2017. My trip is already planned out and some hotel reservations made. Will be in Vienna and then take the early train to Bratislava, leave my carryon at the train station and then in the afternoon head to Budapest. I had thought of staying in Vienna an extra day and day tripping to Bratislava but I felt it was to much back tracking for my trip.

Sounds like a lovely trip for you both--an memorable!