My wife and I are planning rail trips. We prefer morning departures for two people. Feb. 24 Venice, It. to Zagreb, Croatia; Feb. 26, Zagreb to Budapest, Hungary; Mar. 2, Budapest to Lubljana, Slovenia; Mar. 4, Lubljana to Venice, It. What can you advise?
Posted by
Chicago/Rural WI
811 posts
Hi Ben, Have you booked your airline tickets yet? If not, I would strongly - strongly - suggest booking a flight into Venice and out of Budapest, or vice versa if you are set on this itinerary. That way you could much more sensibly go Venice - Ljubljana - Zagreb - Budapest (or reverse) rather than having to backtrack a great distance. I also noticed that your full day in Ljubljana (March 3) is a Sunday and just wanted to note that just about everything will be closed so you may want to re-work that. If you care to share, I'm also interested to know how you decided on these destinations? I only ask because, for instance, there is sooo much more to Slovenia and Croatia (well, and Hungary and Italy, of course) than their capital cities that if you were open to it, it may be worthwhile to cut out Budapest (as much as I love it) and focus more time in a smaller geographic region. As for trains, you can find schedules on the Deutsche Bahn website (it's the German rail site but should show comprehensive schedules for most or all of Europe): http://www.bahn.com/i/view/USA/en/index.shtml
Posted by
Boscombe, Dorset, UK
964 posts
Sounds like a wonderful trip.
Can I suggest posting on the Transportation thread? I think you might get more answers.
Posted by
Magyarország / Rep of Texas
17908 posts
One of the responses was a good indicator as to why studying each country is important. The comment was that on Sunday in Ljubljana many things are closed. When you get to Budapest Sunday is a good day, but Monday many things are closed. I also agree with the open jaw ticket and would suggest flying into Venice and out of Budapest. Budapest is a great place to decompress after a long or hectic journey. You show three days in Budapest which is a good minimum but with an open jaw ticket you can maybe get one more day in Budapest and that would be ideal. Oddly enough, the winter is the season for the high arts and not a bad time at all to visit. But you do realize that its going to be a little "cooler" in Central Europe in February than what you might expect in FL?