Train is more comfortable and for many legs of your tour it will be faster (city center to city center) than the plane. You may even find some legs where the cost of getting from city center to the airport and from the airport to city center is nearly as expensive as the train ticket. You can usually grab a train any time to anywhere but you have to plan flights in advance — perhaps a long time in advance in your case.

Since you have “free” airline travel, I’d fly for any trip that’s more than 4 hours by train. Take the train for the shorter ones. Any flight takes 4 1/2 to 5 hours when you add time to get to and from the airports, check-in time and security time. Look at a “base city/day trips” type of itinerary. Plan (and make the flight reservations) to spend 3 to 5 days in each base city. Spend 1 to 3 days (depending on the city) touring and getting to know the city and then take 1 or 2 day trips (by train or bus) to nearby places. This is actually a trip where I’d recommend reading Europe by Eurail as it’s based on this concept and has good information about airports, getting to town from the airport and the train stations in major European cities.

Be sure and check which specific airport you’ll land at — a few are a 1 1/2 hour bus ride that costs 18 euros or so.

Thanks for your help! So I guess my question would be, what cities have airports located closest to the city centers? It seems like for all intents and purposes train would be better. the only train ride I have now that is considerably longer than 5 hours is from paris to barcelona

Where do you fly into/outof….
What cities are you interested in visiting?
How long is your trip?
Do you foresee a problem getting a seat on the plane on the specific days you want to travel?

the main places I want to hit are Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, other than that things are completely up in the air. If I can’t get a seat I could spend an extra day in the city I am in, I am entirely flexible. I am thinking however, it may be worth just getting a euro flex pass and not having to worry about going from airport to city center like you had mention. There are several places in between those cities I wouldn’t mind visiting, such as Bruges and Luxemborg.

I think I’d book flights to and from Barcelona — it’s probably a long ways from anything else that’s a must-see on your itinerary.

You could easily do a Brugge and Luxembourg loop from Amsterdam, or do a Paris, Luxemboug, Brugge, Amsterdam swing by train. If you’re not going to visit too many countries where rail travel is expensive, a select pass or even a 2 country pass might be a better deal than a flexipass. Cover France and Benelux and then maybe Germany, Switzerland, Austria, depending on your interests. I prefer not using a railpass in Italy and a pass may not be worth it for Spain.

When I first began to travel to Europe, flights between European cities were prohibitively expensive, sometimes more than the trans-Atlanic fare I’d paid! That situation began to change when Ryan Air, followed by imitators, arrived on te scene. My early travel experiences were, therefore, by train, and I often used rail passes in those days. I loved the whole experience of rail travel— the stations, the fact that most trains are fast and on time, I loved seeing the scenery passing by. I also loved the freedom that I had to change plans, and to make a sudden decision to stop at a town I might otherwise have missed (I was headed to Milano, and the next stop was Verona, a place a girl I’d known told me about, so I made a sudden decision to get off—- great decision!). As a first-timer, you’ll tend to focus on big and famous cities, like Paris and Barcelona, without realizing how much there is to see/experience between them, and the train can at least open up that window of opportunity for you! It’s often hard to balance time constraints with the chance to see more places—- and even I use flights when necessary!

Back on topic. Amsterdam airport is a quick easy ride from city center. Both Paris airports are easy to get to, but the trip may take up to an hour.

I don’t know if it helps… I’m still in the planning stages of my trip in September- and it’s my first time.

My trip is mostly Germany and surrounding countries, but was told to be sure to see Barcelona while I’m there, and then figured can’t miss Paris and Amsterdam. So I’m flying to Frankfurt (my central location), and then starting my trip to fly to Barcelona, and then train to Paris and then Amsterdam. After that I did it city after city, based on logical routes. But for me Paris, Amsterdam, and Krakow are my most problematic cities (excluding switzerland) .

Don’t know if these cities were on your itinerary- but they have been the most problematic for my trip planning. For Barcelona I’m flying RyanAir- which is cheap, but it is a bus ride from airport to city center which I believe is 21 or 26 euros.

hope this helps a little… guess it all depends on where exactly you want to go. But it looked like a pretty long train ride from Germay anyways.

I did the train ride to Barcelona thing last year It was a bit of a hassle, but most of it was on a night train, so it wasn’t a big deal. The main thing I regret though is missing so much stuff in between Barca and Germany. Basically the main reason I flew into and out of Barca was I got a great deal on a plane ticket to there, but the bulk of my trip was in Germany/Austria. Went up to Brugge, then took the Thalys to Paris, and a night train basically from there to the Spanish border (about 12 hours I believe) and switched for another hour or two.

In retrospect I wish I would’ve saved the Mediterranean stuff for another trip, because I would have loved to see stuff like Carcassonne and Pont du Gard, but missed it due to doing a straight-night shot. And who knows when I’ll be going back that way again, ya know? I’m going back to Europe in a couple weeks, but won’t be anywhere near that area.

Although this time, unlike last year, I’ll actually be flying a lot in Europe (three flights!). Probably coulda cut one of them out if I had planned a little better, but whaddya gonna do?

London, Paris and Brussels are all in the city center. You can literally walk to the center.