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14 Days - Italy Austria Budapest

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Facts:
1. Family of four with twin boys age 8.
2. We have been to Europe over Christmas for 13-16 days each of the last two years.
- Trip 1: Rome (5 nights), Venice (3 nights), Florence (4 nights) (flew to Paris), Paris (4 nights).
- Trip 2: Rome (4 nights) (flew to Budapest), Budapest (3 nights), Vienna (2 nights), Prague (4 nights) (Flew to London), London (mistake stop as we missed flight).

Trip - December 26 - January 10.
We leave and return from LAX.
Fly into Venice and Fly out of Vienna (tickets were crazy cheap)
Kids are game for anything.
We love food and just enjoying the City, but do the major art and tourist stuff.
We would like to balance the trip with at least 1 "cheaper" destination - ie. Budapest, Prague, etc.
Taking planes in the middle of the trip is a bit of a buzz kill so we have decided not to do that anymore.

Suggested Trip
1. Arrive Venice 4 pm (3 nights.)
2. Leave early and take train to Verona (2 nights)
3. Leave early and take train (Brenner Pass) to Innsbruck (1 night) [Kids want to go up mountain and see the snow.]
4. Leave early afternoon and take train to Salzburg (2 nights) [Wife needs to do Sound of Music Tour]
5. Leave early and take train to Budapest (3 nights) [We loved Budapest and its so cheap] [I have seen tickets for under $90 for all of four of us.]
6. Leave early and take train to Vienna (3 nights) [take day trip to Bratislava].
For those who love to evaluate itineraries, what are your thoughts? I don't know if we need to stay in Innsbruck. Could we do it as a quick stop-over so the kids can take the tram up the mountain? We could buy separate train tickets and give us 4-6 hours in Innsbruck. Also - Cesky Krumluv / Prague seems like an interesting alternative to Budapest. The smart people here will probably say skip Budapest and/or Prague and just do the Italy / Austria route with more days in each place. But - I like the idea of saving some money in the cheaper spots, which I believe offset the extra travel costs. It's a tough call. I hate staying somewhere only 1 or 2 nights because of the hassle of checking in and checking out, packing, etc. But - it's tough to say no.

Thoughts?

Posted by
17908 posts

Here is another way to look at it ... maybe. Why not set up three camps. One in Italy, one in Austria and one in Hungary; that way you only do a couple of big moves and you have "homes" and you aren't checking into a new place ever two days. From these camps run day trips and even an overnight trip possibly. This way you can sort of live the culture and not just travel through it.

Poke around and see from where in the Milan/Verona/Venice area you can get a discount flight to either Budapest or Vienna. Then do the short train trip between Budapest and Vienna. I know there are wizzair flights to Milan and Bologna, nonstop, to/from Budapest for under $75. I use google flights and put a city for the origin and Europe for the destination and then choose one way and nonstop and all the options become apparent on a map. Great way to look at possibilities.

Posted by
11315 posts

Seems like a lot of moving around. I would add a night to Venice and day trip to Verona. I would also skip Innsbruck and add that night to Salzburg. It just is not worth one night. If you skip Verona and add a night to Venice, you'd still have another night to allocate. Perhaps add that to Vienna since you are using a whole day to go to Bratislava.

Posted by
92 posts

Verona is worth a stop. We spent the day in Verona enroute from Padova to Innsbruck. We arrived by train early in the morning and left our luggage at a luggage storage location in the train station, spent the day sightseeing and then picked up our bags in time for our late afternoon train. You could definitely spend more time in Verona but we did have a very enjoyable day and it fit in with our travel plans.

Posted by
7175 posts

From what I've read, Bratislava is a less inspiring destination than your others. Perhaps ditch the daytrip and spend a 2nd night in Innsbruck to experience the Tirol in winter.

Venice - 3 nights
Verona - 2 nights
Innsbruck - 2 nights
Salzburg - 2 nights
Budapest - 3 nights
Vienna - 2 nights

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