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New Itinerary - Thoughts?

Posted by (Newton, MA, USA) on

I appreciate all the responses on my last itinerary so am trying again.

  • Day 1/2: Prague (flying in, hotel 2 nights;
  • Day 3/4: Prague in morning, Milan flight later afternoon(Easyjet - cheaper, less time consuming than train anywhere, hotel 2 nights);
  • Day 5-7: Train Milan to Interlaken (stay in Lauterbrunnen 3 nights and explore region);
  • Day 8: Train Interlaken to Bacharach (1 night Bacharach)
  • Day 9/10: Explore Bacharach, Boat to St Goar, explore, later train to Cologne (hotel 2 nights, some event that is surprise for me is going on May 31 so we have to be in Cologne at least 1 night);
  • Day 11: Early train Cologne to Amsterdam (Hotel 1 night);
  • Day 12: Flight Amsterdam to London (to be booked), London to home (already booked)

That's about 6 days (I count the Bacharach/St Goar/Cologne portion since the boat and train rides are so short) of exploring without traveling. We are intent on seeing Prague and wanted to see Salzburg or Munich but the train schedule has changed significantly since last year and there aren't good night trains out of Prague. There is a night train to Salzburg 12:44am to 6am we could take and that is not optimal but we'd consider it instead of the Milan flight. On a calendar the Milan flight saves us a lot of time (even with check in at airport, etc)and the return train to Switzerland is scenic. We are traveling extremely light - likely each a carry-on bag only. Thanks for your thoughts! We are going about this from the "blitz" approach but we don't want to lose our minds in the process.

Posted by
1158 posts

You want to visit small cities in Europe and not so spectacular in my opinion.I wonder why. 6 days is very shor time to travel by train.
You only need a day in Milan, in Cologne you need a few hours. Amsterdam might be worth 2 days and some time in London.Also you can do Prague in one day.
I don't know anything about Bacharach/St Goar.

Posted by
289 posts

Bea - We would prefer the smaller towns to big cities and frankly we don't want to spend our vacation in museums. If we are going to Switzerland we are going to see the Alps, not the big cities since they do not interest us. The trip is not 6 days - you misunderstood - we have 6 days of NON-travel time - 11 days in between our flights to/from the US.

Point taken on Milan (don't know much about it to be honest), of two nights in Cologne - one is just sleeping there and there is something going on in Cologne on 31st of May so we'll be there for that. Perhaps we stay in Bacharach 2 nights instead of 1 and explore more of the Rhine River/Castles. We fly into Prague midday one day, get a full day to actually explore, next morning get breakfast and get a flight to Milan so we won't be in Prague very long.

Posted by
289 posts

Thanks Kent!

Good thoughts and we have done a ton of research about what we want to do/see,etc. and wanting to do it all without renting a car. This morning we discussed just axing Prague and doing Eastern Europe on its own properly some other time. Getting to Prague is easy but getting out has proven very difficult.

We are going to explore leaving our trip as is except the first 4 days - either exploring northern Italy (not necessarily Milan since we do know there isn't much there) overall or France (Eastern, Provence region?), then going via train on to Switzerland. I hear you on Cologne as far as highlights - I don't know what's going on there May 31 but am refraining from a google search since it's something my boyfriend found out about. We could even go back down the Rhine a bit and explore more for most of the day we're in Cologne since the "Cologne event" is really in the evening.

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