Have you checked out the Trip-planning feature yet?

The cities you’ve picked are all relatively easy to get to, so central Europe isn’t really that hard. The map in the trip planner will help. Your order will work, but some things to think about…

1. You may want to take an overnight train from Venice — that makes Munich, Vienna or Budapest (in summer, I’m not sure the direct overnight runs year round) your best option for a 1st stop. Salzburg also works, although it’s not a true “overnight” since it arrives in Salzburg at 4:00 AM (overnights are routed to give you 8 hours “sleep” and arrive for a morning business appointment).

2. Vienna-Salzburg-Munich is a “straight shot.” You can easily spend the day in Salzburg as a stopover.

3. Innsbruck is a nice day trip from Munich for an alpine day trip. Be sure to take the slower train ( 2 3/4 hours as opposed to just under 2) one way in day-light as it’s a more scenic route through the alps as opposed to the valley route.

4. You may want to fly from central Europe to Amsterdam —which may make the last leg where you want to start planning. Use www.whichbudget.com to see which low fare airlines fly which routes. I’d start looking for the reverse (Amsterdam to ?) flight to check routings. Plan your trip around the best (cheapest?) flight you find. See our “cheap flights” forum for more help on this one.

Thanks! So would Venice- Munich-Salzburg- Vienna-Budapest-Prague-Berlin make the best use of my time? Fitting Budapest in is really what I am questioning.

The trip planner also only supports 17 cities (we have more) and takes about 10 minutes to load on my computers (as does this site in general). Thanks!

yup — the site is really slow right now (are you listening MIM??). Fitting in Budapest will probably mean some back-tracking but it’s less than 3 hours from Vienna, so backtracking through Vienna isn’t a big problem. I’d probably do Venice-Vienna (overnight trrain)-Budapest-Salzburg (you’ll pass through Vienna again on the way, I think) Munich, Prague, Berlin, fly to Amsterdam.

I don’t care for Vienna but it’s a very convenient transportation hub. I find nearby Bratislava cheaper, more interesting and much friendlier (others disagree), but less convenient from a transportation logistics standpoint.

I like Budapest, so I’d try to fit it in….

I agree, the site is really slow right now. Thank goodness for Oldlady’s trip-planning capabilities.