we are booked for cruise departing 22 october from monte carlo so spending 3 days prior to cruise in nice. following cruise, we disembark in venice 1 november.. and spending 3 days in that city.
trying to decide if i could RT from one city in europe -- e.g. vienna; munich and then go by rail? bus/ (asking for best route) .... trying to avoid very busy airports like frankfurt and paris.
thanks!
Milan would be most convenient if you want a single airport.
Have you considered an open-jaw itinerary? Perhaps fly into Nice or Marseille and fly out of Venice? Is there any particular reason you don't want to use the airports of the cities near where your cruise originates and disembarks?
If you have not yet seen "attractive" ticket pricing for the open-jaws flight plan, then look for terms like "multi-city" or "advance search" when comparing airfares.
Trains tickets aren't free nor necessarily as speedy as you expect. Rick’s Train Travel Time & cost Map gives you an overview of faster train travel times in hours, as well as regular (full-price, not advance-discount) 2nd-class fares.
If you book a multi-city flight as Laura suggests, it will not be significantly more expensive than a standard round trip flight, and will save you time and money getting to and from the ports.
Go to Kayak Flights Multi-city Search: https://www.kayak.com/flights?mc=y
For your first leg, put in your home city as your "From" and NCE (Nice airport) as your "To." Remember that you land in Europe the day after you depart from North America, so if you want three days in Nice before the cruise, you will have to fly out 4 or 5 days before.
For your second leg, put in VCE (Venice airport) as your "From" and your home city as your "To." Again, check dates carefully.
See what comes up. On the left, you can choose connection airports, and if you don't want Frankfurt or Paris, you can uncheck them. I have no problem with changing in Frankfurt, but I know others do. Munich, Amsterdam and Zurich are three airports that get good marks for plane changing. But since we don't know where you're flying from, we don't know what options you will have. You can also select duration of connection (you don't want too long or too short), or limit airlines or airports used - very handy.
Once you have a flight, try to book directly with the airline, as it's much easier to deal with them rather than a third party if anything goes wrong.
At the time you are going, I don't know if there are any nonstop flights from the US to Nice or Venice. In high season, there is a nonstop from JFK to Nice on Delta, and nonstops to Venice from JFK on Delta, Atlanta on Delta, Philadelphia on American, and Newark on United. Otherwise, you'll have to change somewhere in Europe to get to these cities. It's still easier than getting from Vienna airport to the train station to your cities.
If you want to see who flies into any airport in the world, go into Wikipedia and enter an airport such as "Nice Airport" It will tell you every airline that flies into any airport and where the non-stop flights are. Someone within the industry maintains this website, and any flight changes are remarkably quick and accurate.
Nice Côte d'Azur Airport has a bunch of airlines flying non -stop to one place. Delta flies there from JFK sometimes. The big budget airlines are EasyJet and Norwegian Air Shuttle.
What's your home airport(s)?
I don't understand why you don't just fly into Nice and fly home out of Venice?
I don't understand why you don't just fly into Nice and fly home out of Venice?
A train ride from Vienna to Nice would take 16-19 hours and require 3 changes.
