1st time europe- Itinerary tips welcome! Vienna, Salz, Luxembourg , Ile de Re

Have you looked at the length of the train journeys on bahn.com ?

I see that this is your first post. Welcome aboard.

Where will you be trying to reach from Nantes or LaRochelle?

Is this a first trip for you or your mother since she left Salzburg?

Any kids along?

No kids
This will be the first trip for mom since she was a child
I've looked at a few of the train trips. The longest looks like from luxembourg to La Rochelle. I will check out Bahn again to total, thats a good plan.

I included Nantes just as the departure airport. One final night.

What time of year? I'm 67 years old and a basically healthy, though not athletic, traveler. I typically walk from 6 to 8 miles a day and occasionally hit 12 or 13. For me 2 or 3 nights would be a short stay. I try very hard to have at least 4 nights somewhere. I do that by picking bases that offer both sights of their own and (unless we're talking about Paris, London, etc.) opportunities for day-trips. I just find the business of checking in and out of hotels and rolling my suitcase to and from train stations a drag. That doesn't mean your mother will feel the same way, but we are about the same age and may prefer to settle in a bit longer than you are proposing. Also, she probably doesn't walk as much as I do at home; I do not own a car.

I'm always a bit concerned when I see an itinerary listed like yours is, with the same day attributed to both the departure and arrival cities. At a glance, that tends to suggest you have a lot more time at each location than is really the case. I'd rather see it listed like this:

Day 1: Arrive Vienna (2 nights). Palaces, horses, treasury. [Is Day 1 the day you fly in? That's not a full day.]
Day 3: Salzburg (3 nights). Possible day-trips to Zell am See and Innsbruck.
Day 6: Luxembourg (2 nights). Battle of the Bulge Cemetery, castles, hiking.
Day 8: La Rochelle/Ile de Re (4 nights). Or possibly stopping in Strasbourg for a night or two.
Day 12: Somewhere (2 nights).
Day 14: Fly home. [Or do you fly home on Day 15?]

So now we can see that you have just one full, relatively non-jetlagged, day in Vienna, plus a few hours on your arrival day when you may be zombified. As I've gotten older, it has become even more difficult for me to sleep on the overnight transatlantic flight, and jetlag hits me harder. Maybe your mother will be luckier.

Large cities like Vienna are harder to get oriented to, and you're allowing very, very little time there. I don't think you have enough time for what you want to see. Then, less than 48 hours after your arrival you're going to packing up and heading to Salzburg.

In Salzburg you have two full days plus some hours on Day 3. That would be generous just for Salzburg, but you're considering two day-trips, which seems as if it leaves little time to relax in Salzburg. But I've never been to Zell am See and am not knowledgeable about traveling there from Salzburg. Still, two day trips would seem to make for an awfully short visit, given that it's your mother's birthplace.

Luxembourg City has some historic architecture but isn't usually part of a first- or second-trip itinerary. Do you have a family reason to visit the Battle of the Bulge Cemetery? Do you plan to rent a car here? Castles (plural) and hiking sound as if public transportation could be a challenge. And you have just one full day here plus a few hours. Too much on your plate, I think.

Strasbourg has a beautiful historic area, and nearby Colmar and the little wine villages are popular. I think most people would find them more engaging than Luxembourg, though I don't know about the castles around Luxembourg and am not much interested in that sort of thing anyway. A short stop in Strasbourg would probably not give you time to see anything except Strasbourg. I think more nights would be advisable so you could make Alsace a real destination.

I'm running out of room so I'll make a separate post with comments about La Rochelle and Ile de Re.

jessers907 great that you're taking your mother back to where she was born. But you're trying to cover a lot of ground in a short time. Consider that each time you go from one location to another, it will cost you most if not all of that whole day just in transit and logistics. Its very tiring too. Two nights anywhere only gives you one full day to see anything. Have you or your mother ever dealt with jet lag? It can make the first couple of days less than optimal as well.

As you've found out, flying out of small airports can be very expensive, and you end up having to make more stressful connecting flights somewhere. Maybe you could end the tour taking the train to Paris and flying out from there. I'd skip the too short visit to London as not being worth the time and cost of getting there. I'd skip Strasbourg too, and concentrate on the places with family connections. Just my opinion.

Oh, and you are looking at multi-city (aka open jaw) fares?

Continuing...

La Rochelle and Ile de Re are pleasant spots. La Rochelle has a good-sized historic area that I enjoyed wandering around. There's also a specialty chocolatier, Cacao & Macarons (warning: loud music on website), which I highly recommend. The chocolates are not cheap, but they are very good.

Because there's a bridge to Ile de Re, you can zip back and forth more easily than if the only option were a ferry. Check the bus schedule to see whether there are issues on particular days of the week, and be aware of seasonality. I bet the buses don't run as often outside high season.

The deal with transportation on the island is that the main bus from La Rochelle stops on the outskirts of the larger towns (maybe on the outskirts of all of them?), and then you take a local shuttle that heads into the center. I only had time for St.-Martin, so I don't know how the shuttle business works on other parts of the island. It appeared the shuttle schedule at St.-Martin coordinated with the schedule of the bus from La Rochelle, but I'm an impatient sort, so I walked into the center of St.-Martin. It was a pleasant enough walk but not a particularly fast one. If you're interested in that distance, use Google Maps to find St-Martin-de-Re, zoom in and locate the restaurant La Coccinelle. Just north of it you'll see a small aqua bus icon; I'm nearly certain that's where the bus from La Rochelle stops. It's about 3/4 mile to the waterfront by the most efficient route. The part of the island I saw was flat, so there's that.

If you want to see more of the island than St.-Martin and plan to depend on public transportation, you would probably do better to sleep in St.-Martin rather than in La Rochelle, because I think you'll want to spend 2 days on the island due to the family connection. I assume island hotels are more expensive than La Rochelle hotels.

I doubt that you will find a departure point in western France with fares close to what you can get out of Paris or London, but that is specific to your origin. If you haven't used one of the airfare search websites like Google Flights, do that so you know what your options are.

It will take about as long to get to Nantes by train as to Paris. Adding in the time to get to the airport will probably make Nantes a bit faster, but arguably not enough to matter. On the other hand, if you end up with one day to spend at that last stop, it's certainly easier to attack Nantes in that amount of time than Paris. And I did enjoy Nantes. It is larger and less intimate-feeling than La Rochelle, but it has some nice architecture and is very lively. It feels more like a working city than a holiday spot.

To get to London you'd need to take a train to Paris and pick up the Eurostar there. The Paris-London link can be quite fast and not expensive if you buy your ticket way, way ahead of time. Unfortunately, you'd need to change train stations in Paris. It's doable (I have done it), but it's a bit of a pain with luggage in tow if you're under any time pressure. You must be sure to allow adequate time for security procedures before boarding the Eurostar. If you haven't padded your schedule quite a bit, are you going to take the time to look around for an elevator, or will you head for the stairs? Take it from me, unless your mother does upper-body workouts, she may struggle a bit carrying her luggage up a flight of stairs.

Equally unfortuantely, you will also face a cross-Paris transfer on the way to La Rochelle from eastern France.