How to travel? LDN>PARIS>AMSTERDAM>VENICE>ROME>FRANKFURT

Jenny - LDN - Paris on Eurostar is £39($57) if you want to depart at 7:30 am or £89($131) at 8am on Aug 21st. These fares on the Eurostar are as of 6/17/10.

Paris to Amsterdam will be €35($43) departing on Aug 25th. This fare on Thayls is as of 6/17/10.

Venice to Rome will be between €50-75($61-92) depending on the train.

Edit *****
These fares may increase, the longer you take to book your travel.

Without doing a lot of homework for you. I would suggest that the train would work best for London/Paris/Amsterdam. Then a discount airline to Venice and train to Rome and a discount airline to Frankfurt.

That is an awful lot of territory to cover. You will spend about half our time or a bit more check in and out hotels, inside of planes and trains, waiting to travel and traveling. I assume you are plan to spend about a full day in each city.

First, when are you taking this trip? Booking well in advance can get you discount fares for both trains and planes.

Second, I strongly urge you to cut out some cities. As it stands, you have nearly as many travel days as you do sightseeing days. To me the most logical cities to cut would be Amsterdam and Venice. You can fly on budget airlines from Paris to Rome. You can take a night train from Rome to Munich and a day train from there to Frankfurt. Or you can fly Ryanair (a budget airline) from Rome Ciampino to Frankfurt Hahn.

However, if you include all of your cities, then I suggest that you go London-Paris-Amsterdam-Rome-Venice-Frankfurt. You can fly easyJet (a budget airline) from Amsterdam to Rome, but there are no budget airlines that fly Amsterdam-Venice. You can take a night train from Venice to Munich and a day train from there to Frankfurt. Or you can fly Venice Treviso-Frankfurt Hahn on Ryanair.

For the sake of clarity, fares on the Eurostar depend upon how early you book tickets, not upon the departure time. As more seats are sold for a particular train, the price for the remaining seats goes up. If I were to book tickets today for travel in October, I could get a fare of $57 US for any train all day long.

The standard 2nd class fare for Thalys trains between Paris and Amsterdam is 123 EUR. If you book well in advance (up to 90 days allowed), you can get a Smoove fare as low as 35 EUR.

Thanks for all the advice so far. Ideally, I'd like to fit in all these cities. I'm having trouble deciding what to do! I would cut out frankfurt, but I already bought a return flight home from frankfurt. I don't know...if it's worth paying the fee to change the flight...just to fly home from venice/rome. Since me flying to frankfurt and transportation..etc. pretty much adds up to the same thing.

I listened to the above advice... about switching the order of venice and rome. smart!

So far this is my itinerary from August 19-Sept 02
Arrival in Heathrow: 9:25 am
Departure in Frankfurt: 2:25pm
London (19-21) 2 nights > Paris (21-25) 4 nights > Amsterdam (25-27) 2 nights > Rome (27-30) 3 nights > Venice (30-01) 2 nights > Frankfurt (01-02) 1 night

Here's a possible itinerary.

19 August: Arrive in London

23 August: Morning or afternoon Eurostar train to Paris

28 August: Morning Thalys train to Amsterdam

30 August: 13:40 flight to Rome Fiumicino on easyJet

3 September: Morning in Rome; afternoon train to Venice

5 September: 12:35 flight from Venice-Treviso to Frankfurt-Hahn on Ryanair

6 September: Fly home from Frankfurt

I really appreciate everyone's help again. I got the go-sign to extend the trip until Sept 6, giving us more days. How many nights days would y'all recommend in each city?

HI Jenny, so happy you can extend trip,, it frankly looked too stressful for me as you had it. . remember two nights in one place means often only one full day of sight seeing, and that is not enough for many places.

I would personally take 5 nights at least in Paris and Rome and at least 4 in London, , Venice can be enjoyed in two( its really all about just being there isn't it) ,, each of the larger citys will have many optional daytrips out of town to consider,, so you really can't go wrong adding days on to the big city stops.In London there is Bath, York , Hampton Court, Windsor Castle , Salsibury or Canterbury , Stonehenge, Oxford, Cambridge and Brighton to consider. IN Paris there is Versailles , Chartes, Chantilly, Loire Valley and Normandy( both really worth an over nights) and Giverny( Monets gardens) and Fontinbleu,, plus my new favorite, Provins( UNesco World heritage site, Medival walled city) , from Rome I am not as familiar with daytrips as I have only been twice, both times for 5 days and still think theres lot to see, but I am sure others can easily list off many great daytrips.

The less you move hotels the better, the less you pack the better, the more you sit and enjoy a cafe/beer or wine , the better. Have a nice trip.