My husband and I have been planning our summer vacation with LOTS of help from this website. We currently have a rental booked in Paris for two weeks in July--this is the anchor of our trip. We have five days before and five days after available to us to explore other areas. We've secured a (cancel-able; and if we cancel, we'd like to do so asap so that we don't inconvenience the owner) rental in Florence for the five days before. However, we've realized that flying into and out of several places might be very difficult.
What we would like to:
1. see two other cities in two other countries, one before and one after.
2. travel cheaply via air AND/OR rail from city to city. cheaply is the key word here--so is 'easily'. they seem to go nicely together. for example, having to fly into one town and than take a train to another is both expensive AND difficult.
3. ideally, spend one of our 'extra weeks' in the city we fly to AND from upon arriving from the US. it is always cheaper to book a flight and a hotel using mega-sites than it is to book a flight alone.
for example--we were looking at flying INTO amsterdam, then flying immediately to Florence, then flying to paris , then taking a train to Amsterdam, where we would stay for another week before flying out of Amsterdam. The flight and the room in Amsterdam would have been booked together for maximum savings. But we're open to other places, if they are easily accessible (we originally wanted to do a crazy whirlwind tour of all of Europe, until we realized how expensive a rail pass was!)
Can anyone suggest a good itinerary that would allow this sort of planning? Feel free to ask questions--I'm online planning this trip for several hours a day. Seriously. It is a part time job!