Sounds awesome! I chose Bruges over Brussels and don’t regret it for a second. Might consider staying the 2 days there? Paris is massive and can always have more than 2 days if you have them, but that seems like a great compact holiday

I agree with aussie09 that you’ll want more time in Paris and the Bruges is probably a better choice than Brussels. I’d plan a 1/2 day stop in Brussels on your way to Paris — the medieval square is an easy walk from Centraale train station.

Is there a reason for your two days in Vienna? That’s what I’d cut to get an extra 2 days in Paris. When you figure that at least 1/2 of every other day is spent “in transit” this is pretty rushed. Remember there’s a lot of time spent in finding/getting to your hotel, checking in, getting oriented so you can get to what you want to see/do, figuring out the best way to see/do everything you want, etc. in EACH new city. You may end up spending only 1 day actually seeing the things you want to see. Then you have to pack-up, check out, get to the train station and start again the next morning.

Understand that traveling in a party of 7 will have stresses that you can’t even imagine in advance — travel is MUCH more intense “ 24/7 closeness” than merely living together. That’s one reason for spending more time in fewer cities — it’s much easier to split up for a day so everybody gets a better shot at seeing/doing what they really want. You can take a day trip while others are visiting “one more cathedral and one more museum.”

I would follow the above suggestions of staying in Bruges instead of Brussels and of adding the two days in Vienna to Paris. I would also suggest going to Salzburg for two nights instead of Innsbruck. Innsbruck imo is only REALLY an awesome place if you intend to ski, something you prob. wont be doing in July. Plus you will have had your awesome mountain dose in the Lauterbrunnen, Salzburg just has more to offer than Innsbruck and is more compact and scenic than Vienna.

I agree !! 2 days in Paris are not enough. I have spent 2 weeks there and it was amazing. We had something to do everyday. A place you must see are the catacombs. And, if you are planning on going to Versailles while in Paris, it will take at least the half of one day. If you want to enjoy the musical gardens it could take up to an entire day to visit Versailles.

Have a good eurotrip

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Really appreciate it.

Aussie09: Our original plan was to stay in Bruges and then come to Brussels via Gent. As it turned out our flight lands in brussels – that’s why i’ve mentioned it in my itinerary. Also, I have some friends over in brussels who’ve very kindly offered us their van for the 2 days . So we’ll just go over to bruges i guess.

Oldlady: I’ve added one day from Vienna to paris and we’ll probably end up spending the unscheduled day there as well. Can’t cut out Vienna completely because that’s where we board our outward flight. As for travelling in a large group, i can understand your point. We’ve tried our best to divide sections where my grandparents can take a break and we can take small trips based on our own interests.

Tigrouflip: we’re going to salzburg now!

Stephanie-and-pascal: Will see if we can fit that in. Thanks for the input and your English is not weird

Cheers.

Salzburgs is a beautiful city (especially if you like Mozart). If you’re a fan of the musical “The Sound of Music” (you may not but your parents granparents might) you can do a short bus tour of some of the places in the movie or do your own walking tour
http://www.visit-sal…

I’d plan a 1/2 day stop in Brussels on your way to Paris — the medieval square is an easy walk from Centraale train station.
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We preferred Antwerp over Brussels by a wide margin, you may want to look into that as well.

Hey guys,

I would be really grateful if you guys can go through my travel plans for the trip and provide suggestions to improve it.

As far as I understand, my trip can be broken down into the following main sections:
1. Brussels to Bruges (One way train fare arnd 12 euros)
2. Bruges to Paris (Thalys – 44 euros)
3. Within Paris (My friends in Paris have told me not to think beyond the metro)
4. Paris to Interlaken and onto Lauterbrunnen
5. Lauterbrunnen to Lucerne (Golden pass line – with a stopover in meiringen/reichenbach falls.. Holmes fans! )
6. Lucerne to Innsbruck via Zurich, onto Salzburg
7. Salzburg to Vienna

I tried to figure out the best option/combination between a eurail pass (select, 4 Countries, 5/6 days), swiss pass (4 days), austria pass (3 days) and point to point tickets. I came to the conclusion that the Swiss Pass and the austrian pass make sense for us both from the economy and convenience point of view.

My key concern here is the Paris-Interlaken-Lauterbrunnen trip. This is a long trip, which we have to do during day-time (couldn’t find any night trains) and I can see two options:
1. tgv (paris-geneva/lausanne) + golden pass line from montreux to interlaken.
2. tgv (paris- bern) + bern-interlaken
Currently I’m getting fares between euro 60 – 80 for the tgv on both lines (upgrades to 1st class included in the 80 euro fares). Here’s my question: Is option 1 worth the extra time?

Secondly, I have an option to spend 1 day in innsbruck + 2 days in salzburg or all 3 days in salzburg (in which case, we stop for a couple of hours in Innsbruck on our way from zurich). Which one do you guys recommend?

Lastly, is it a good idea to do a 1-day trip to venice from salzburg? (Leave early morning from Salzburg, reach venice early afternoon and then come back by an overnight train). Basically, my mum really wants to go to venice but i wasn’t able to fit it into the itinerary which is already very cramped. So I was thinking that maybe my parents could take this venice trip while we went to the ice caves and roamed around salzburg.

I know it’s a long long post but I hope some of you do finish it and actually reply!

Cheers

Salzburg is fairly small, so 3 days might be a bit much, I’d go for the 2 days + 1 in Innsbruck OR …Munich is only 2 hours from Salzburg and the trains run pretty much once an hour. Much better than trying to get to Venice for only a few hours.

I like Salzburg (I’m moving there for university in a couple months) but I think really a day and a half is all the tourist needs; from there you can go to Hallstatt for a nice relaxing day or two. Definitely one of my favourite places in Europe

Just make sure you save a few hours for the Augustiner Braustubl!

http://www.augustine…