Can you recommend places to stay in Vienna, Salzburg, Zurich

I could give recommendations in Salzburg and Vienna. But, with a car, I doubt that either has parking available or even convenient. If you are planning numerous side trips during your travels between primary cities, stick with the car. If not, I would strongly suggest using trains.

Okay, I'll recommend Pension Suzanne in Vienna – about a half block from the opera house – public pay garage parking is another block or two down, but it's very expensive & you may have a real tough time finding a spot there. You can't get much more centrally located than this pension. In Salzburg, I'll recommend Altstadthotel Weisse Taube right in the old center. It's been a few years and this may have changed, but you can't drive into the center due to the automatic arm gates that can only be raised if you have a permit card that can be read at the gate. So, you'll have to park in one of the public garages right outside of the center – there are at least two as I recall – I know there's one nearby for sure, because I parked there. You'll need to park first and then walk to your hotel. Parking is much cheaper than Vienna.

That's a tough situation. Usually I would say take the train by all means because parking will be an absolute nightmare in the big cities. Next I would say if you absolutely must have a car travel to the remote towns and villages. As for Zurich...why did you chose Zurich of all the beautiful places in Switzerland? If your parents can physically get on and off the train then I would suggest you can take the train with taxi pickup from the station to your B&Bs. In Switzerland the trains are run wonderfully well and you can actually send your baggage ahead of you so that you don't have to carry it on the train with you. That's another recommendation. But car + big cities + lowered mobility is going to present problems along the way wherever you choose to go.

Thank you for the advice. We are changing our minds with regards to renting a car, and using trains. As for Switzerland, we are flying out of Zurich, but we are open to staying else where.

We have just returned from Vienna and Salzburg. My parents who are in their late 70's were part of our party. We traveled only by train. Train travel does include alot of up and down steps with luggage. So be sure that your folks can handle that. Also steps can be an issue with B&B's, some don't have elevators and sometimes even with an elevator there are additional stairs to get to the room.We stayed at the Weiss Taube in Salzburg. The breakfast was great and the location was close to the Resdensplatz.

Hi Margaret We are travelling to Austria (Vienna and Salzburg)and Switzerland (Interlaken, Murren) in Sept and just bought our train pass on Rail Europe. They have a wonderful promotion for the Switzerland portion of your trip. During the months of Sept and October the Swiss pass is two for one (4 day consecutive or 4 day Flex Pass). We elected to travel first class and the pass was 200 Canadian each. I believe regular class was 129.00 (CDN) each. In addition to rail travel, it provides discounts on other attractions. The chap I spoke with at Rail Europe helped us to figure out whether this was a good purchase for us. We booked our Austrian rail tickets on line at a significant discount (ie Salzburg to Buchs -where we start to use our Swiss Pass to travel to Interlaken) was only 19 Euros each for first class. Certainly worth considering. They have a 1-800 number that you can access and our passes arrived two days later.
Happy travels.

The Der Salzburger Hof hotel is about a block from the train station and it also has a car park. The restaurant serves fine Indian food as well as local cuisine. The cost was 157 Euros for two nights. addresses: [email protected] or wwwdersalzburgerhot.at.

Good choice to use trains rather than a car. I concur with the Salzburg recommendation of the Weisse Taube. In Vienna, we stayed at and very much liked the Best Western Kaiserhoff. The most elegant breakfast (included) we have ever had, including champagne.