Eastern Europe

Have absolutely no idea. E. Europe is a very large area. Please reread the question you posed to see if you would be able to answer it if you were in our shoes. If you at least gave us a sense of which countries you are going to, we may be able to make a suggestion.

We'll see Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Croatia, Romania. I almost always fly into Amsterdam and then fly to Vienna. I'd like to fly into an airport non stop from Minneapolis that would make a logical beginning/ending to our trip. I have only flown into Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Paris, so I'm a bit ignorant of other cities that have international airports that might fly nonstop from MSP. I apologize for the vague post.

Based on the list of countries, I would say start in Prague and end in either Croatia or Romania. Or you can reverse these. Prague, Vienna, Budapest all are in a logical line - Romania and Croatia get tricky. I don't think you will get any direct flights to any of these countries from MSP. My guess is fly into AMS and connect. Regardless of where you start and end, you should be able to have it all booked on one ticket unless the price dictates otherwise.

Arnold makes a good point. Croatia and Romania are difficult to include on this itinerary together, but if you choose one you could tackle some of the country. Starting in Prague or Vienna you could wind down to Budapest and then into Croatia or take a train to Romania and spend a few days. Either way you could get a connecting flight back to Vienna- but I would not try to do a circle tour as that is simply not feasible with these countries.

if you decided to fly out of bucharest, then you have to stop by another european city. i flew in the spring via amsterdam back to Seattle.

Here is what I did. I found very cheap flights to London and then flew on easy jet. Easy jet is similar to Southwest Airlines in the States in that you don't have assigned seats. THe price from London to Budapest, Prague and Berlin were all under $40 US dollars. I flew into Budapest and out of Prague. That way you don't have to backtrack. Hope this helps.

@Debra - I believe the only European cities to which you can fly nonstop from MSP are Amsterdam, London, and Paris.

If you do decide to go to Romania it was an easy train ride from Budapest to Timasoara (sp) then you could get a car and travel the Transylvania area... it is beautiful and a wonderful country to visit. Reasonably priced as well.

At the end of November we are flying non-stop to Frankfurt then on to Budapest - I'm in Dallas, don't know if Minneapolis has same service. When we visited Prague we flew to Atlanta then onto Prague - that was terrible......storms in Atlanta. We got out okay but our friends from Cleveland got delayed one day....their luggage 3 days!!!! I think it's always best to find a non stop to somewhere in Europe then go on from there as you can always catch a train if you have to.

I certainly second what Colleen posted about flying from your home airport non-stop to anywhere in Europe and then go from there. We fly out of Seattle every summer for the last 10 years and we did not fly non-stop this year (Aug) for the first time having to stop in Texas both going and coming. Well, we will not be doing that again even on a frequent flyer ticket as was this years trip. Maybe we are just getting a little older (or wiser) to endure that length of a trip taking 27 hours to get back to Seattle from Vienna.

Thank you so much for all of the great posts. I'm putting them all together to email to my travel partner...my son. Thanks again!