We have a month (or so) to spend in Europe, May 2015. Planning to spend 14 days between Budapest, Prague, Vienna and Slovenia and another 7 days (or so) in Northern Italy. Can anyone suggest an order for our trip? I've read its a good idea to start in the East and fly home from a western city - which is yet to be determined. Plan to explore flight sights like fare watcher and kayak, but need a destination to start with! We will be flying from New York or Miami. We are traveling medical professionals without a particular home base at the moment.
Enjoy the posts here and have all RS guide books.
Deb
Posted by
Magyarország / Rep of Texas
20023 posts
Either direction. Just get the best fare on an open jaw ticket. I would guess the order would be (or in reverse) Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Ljubljana, Milan. Check events in each city and try to time it to see or do something special
Posted by
Huntsville, AL, USA
8312 posts
I would suggest you start in Ljubljana and follow James' itinerary in reverse. Due to geography, ground transportation into Italy can be difficult, and budget air carriers don't go from everywhere to everywhere.
You can fly from Prague to Pisa on Air One, a discount air carrier.
Posted by
OP
Naples, Florida
18 posts
Thanks, gentlemen for your replies. I've been reading this forum for a few weeks and was counting on some ideas from you. Thanks for the suggested order of my main cities and for the idea to depart from Milan. We hope to do ground transport with GoOpti from Ljubljana to Venice as suggested on this forum and tripadvisor. James, can you clarify what you mean by "open jaw"? I think its arrive and depart from different cities? We have now determined to depart from Miami. Doing a search with kayak or yapta.com I am getting many options from a Portuguese airline TAP, I think - and its taking us through Lisbon of all places - not exactly on the way, and adding many hours to the flight. I have lots of time to watch this.
Deb
Posted by
New York, NY, USA
11294 posts
Yes, "open jaw" means arriving and departing from different cities. To find these flights, use the "multi city" option on Kayak, Matrix ITA, or airline websites. Don't book two one-ways, as that's much more expensive.
If you want, you can even book a multi-city fare with four different cities. For instance, while you can do Miami to Budapest and Milan to Miami, you can also do Miami to Budapest and Milan to New York if you want or need to.
If you're looking at Kayak, the filters on the left allow you to choose connecting airports, flight arrival or departure time ranges, total trip time range, length of layover range, etc - very handy. For instance, once you've done the main search and gotten the hundreds of choices, you can ask it to only show flights that leave Europe after 9 AM and have a layover of less than 4 hours. This saves a lot of time wading through pages of options you know you don't want.