need help with transportation and itinerary suggestions!

Sienna,

just my opinion and what i found out so far about Malta.

Its a cool place to visit from what ive read, but unless you have booked your flight there, good luck finding something now. Have you looked at any flights to/from Malta when you want to go?

Im going there this September and had found some inexpensive flights < 50 Euros but that was in December of 2014 and now they are all gone. Im still going but at 250 Euros with one layover in Munich. So i would strongly suggest you nail down your itiniary ASAP and if you plan on going, dont wait for your ticket to sell out. You may want to figure out where you can get some inexpensive flights and see if those places made your list.

happy trails.

One of the websites that I use that is also frequently suggested on this forum is Rome2Rio.com.
Type in your starting city and ending city and it gives you EVERY transportation option, time to travel, and approximate cost of each. It's a great planning tool that will help you tremendously for getting to each place on your itinerary especially if you are on a budget.

Rome2rio is great but prices are full fare, you may be able to find tickets for less on the national rail sites - R2R has links.

Try Student Agency bus. they are a Czech company and we used them bratislava to budapest, 9€ this past July. They were clean, new buses and right on time. We ordered our seats online a few months ahead, paid and didn't think about it till day of departure. We definately will use them again.

Split and Dubrovnik are near each other but you would have to fly from Budapest. You could find a train to Ljubljana, Lake Bled and postonja caves then on to plitvice lakes.

Hi,

Thank you all for your advice!

I noticed that there weren't much talk about Salzburg, is it way out of my budget or a city with not much to see?

@fabris

If I take that bus, I'd have to get to Bratislava first. Are you suggesting Vienna-Bratislava-Budapest, or CeskyKrumlov-Bratislava-Vienna- Budapest, or...?

When you mention a train to Ljubljana, do you mean Budapest-Ljubljana? If not, where would you suggest taking a train from

I loved Salzburg. I just wish I had more than 2 nights there. Take a bike tour. So fun! http://mariasbicycletours.com/
Hallstatt is a cute little town just south from Salzburg.
Lake Bled was awesome. Check out the Jazz Hostel, and the gorge online. I went rafting there too.
Fussen Germany was one of my favorite towns. The Old Kings hostel was great. You can walk to the famous Neuschwanstein castle.

Check their website studentagencybus.com. They are a Czech company and have connections to various European cities. You don't need to go from Bratislava. I just wanted to give you an idea of one route with very inexpensive price. student agency does not go into Croatia (I couldn't find Slovenja either). but if you go to their website you see connections to Norway, Sweden, Italy , Austria to name just a few countries. they are very good and CHEAP since you mentioned you were on a budget.

try Seat61.com or even Rick's link here under transportation for train tickets from Budapest to Ljubljana. We were traveling from Budapest to Zagreb and ended up taking a bus (the people at our hotel helped us). It was the only connection we didn't make from the States before we left.