Hello Experts.... hope you can help plan our trip...
party of 5 - (3 adults, 1 youth, 1 minor)
fly into Frankfurt on 7/1 am. where is the train staion? how do you get there? taxi ($$$)?
was thinking of going straight to paris via train (how? which one?) for 3 nights.
then train to Venice (how/which one?) for 2 nights.
then train to Prague(how/which ones? via munich for 2 nights
then train to Leipzig/Eisenach/Frankfurt/Baumholder area - maybe need a car? 2-3 nights... do these train stations have place to hold luggage?
where can i find train schedules? what pass would we need?
assume trains best for long trips, but not sure... also any hotel recommendations and any other advice would be appreciated.
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Your itinerary underscores the tragedy of the standard two week US vacation (most of Europe is at least double that). I%26#39;m exhausted just thinking about your trip, but hey, you%26#39;re young, or had better be.
You can take a train from the airport to the Frankfurt train station, but if you%26#39;re going straight to Paris, you can probably just stay on the train and go directly to Paris. Try this site to give you a sense of times for all the places you want to visit and discounts you might be eligible for.
reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en…
At the train stations you can get your travel itinerary printed out once you buy your ticket, or look for the yellow posters on the station walls telling of travel times to major cities. The ticket offices will also have lists of travel times from your originating city to your destination and return.
You shouldn%26#39;t have any trouble taking the train to all of the places you%26#39;ve mentioned.
Check out hotel recommendations by typing in the city at TripAdvisor, and that will bring up the top ten recommendations and much more, depending on your pocketbook.
I hope you like trains. You%26#39;re going to be spending a lot of time on them. Driving these distances will be expensive because of gas prices.
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When George W. Bush came to visit Germany yesterday evening he brought his own helicopter to take him places. Looking at your itinerary I hope you%26#39;ve got access to one, too.
Depending on your actual arriving time you either take a train straight from Frankfurt airport to Cologne and from Cologne to Paris. Or you take S-Bahn lines S8 or S9 to downtown Frankfurt (Hauptbahnhof) and cath the high speed direct train to Paris there. Journey time is just under 4 hours.
From Paris to Venice fly! (www.skyscanner.com)
Venice to Prague fly, too!
From Prague take train to Dresden and visit for half a day. Then on to Leipzig. For the American forces area in the Palatinate mountains (Baumholder, Ramstein etc.) you%26#39;d need a rental car. pick it up in either Leipzig or Frankfurt. If you drive from Leipzig to Frankfurt move either Eisenach or Bamberg into your schedule. Both are must-sees on the route.
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Would it be too controversial for me to suggest that you land in Frankfurt and then drive somewhere within that vicinity to concentrate on a small area? You could spend 2 weeks (or 4 or 6) just travelling in the state of Baden Wurrtemburg, or else go down the Romantic Highway and make a loop through Bavaria. If not that, then up the Rhine and back to Frankfurt, or go northwest a little and see Bambert, Nuremburg, Regensburg, Salzburg, Munich, Wuerzburg and back to Frankfurt. Many many options when you start and end your trip in Frankfurt.
If you add the time you spend on trains, planes, and time in the airports or train stations you will be eating up valuable vacation time when you could be concentrating in one area and seeing sights that are so beautiful, historical and fascinating you won%26#39;t believe it.
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Regarding the post by Rotling-- the website mentioned is the one for the German Rail service timetable and fare in english. You may wish also to check out bahn.de/p/…international_guests.shtml This is also the German Rail Service but is the international passenger homepage and can answer a bunch of questions that you have about costs, types of tickets, accomodations etc. Also check out Brian%26#39;s Guide to Getting Around Germany at gettingaroundgermany.home.att.net/verkehr.htm which covers a lot of topics in Eurrope overall, such as trains, metros, driving , autobahns etc.
On arriving at FRA, the train terminal is downstairs in front of Terminal 1. Easy to find, and actually consists of several well marked stations, one set of platforms serving the actual intercity and regional rail service and the other serving the local light rail that will take you downtown to the main train station.
If you are really planning to hop off an international flight and jump immediately onto a train to Paris (a fairly long trip), make sure that you give yourself plenty of time to clear customs, passport control and pick up your bags. While the first two are fast, baggage claim is sometimes a very long process!
Trains are really not all that cheap in Europe, but are great for sightseeing. On the long legs that you mention (Paris-Venice and Venice-Prague) you may really be better off, as another poster mentioned, flying. Try checking Air Berlin or some of the other european carriers
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DB timetable
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en
From: FRA airport
From: Frankfurt
To: Paris
For 1st July you can still buy cheap special tickets for Frankfurt (not Frankfurt Airport!) to Paris. They are still available for the connection Frankfurt Hbf dep 16:58 Paris Est arr 21:15. EUR 29,00 pp instead of EUR 99,00 pp.
If you buy the special (soon - I was surprised to find it still available) just buy normal tickets Frankfurt Airport to Frankfurt Hbf (EUR 3,55 - 11 minutes). Otherwise you can buy tickets from Frankfurt Airport directly to Paris.
Your minor (%26lt;6 yrs) will be free. With your youth one it depends on the age. %26lt; 15 yrs olds are free in Germany if travelling with a (grand)parent.
Paris - Venice - Prague
http://www.whichbudget.com
Leipzig - Eisenach
Here you could use the Saxony Ticket for. A mini group (2-5 persons) day ticket covering all regional trains in the states Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. EUR 26,00.
area/railroads covered:
bahn.de/regional/view/mdb/pv/dbregio/ausflue…
Validity:
Mo-Fr 9am till 3am next day
Sa,So midnight till 3am next day
You can select at the DB timetable as means of transport %26quot;only local transport%26quot; to get connections you can use with this ticket only.
%26gt; Leipzig/Eisenach/Frankfurt/Baumholder area
%26gt; do these train stations have place to hold luggage
Baumholder has no train station, only buses. To explore the Baumholder area and the sights of this region a car will be the better idea.
The other 3 stations have luggage lockers. In Germany the main stations in cities and bigger towns have normally always lockers.
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I%26#39;m intrigued as to why you want to go all over the place, to so many countries but only city in each (except in Germany) and everything in 2 weeks (and with jetlag). I know Europe is on a different scale to the States and I know about your limited vacation time, but even so..... 2 nights in a place means only one day to do anything with all this moving around between places.
While I wouldn%26#39;t necessarily say just do Germany (though it%26#39;s true you could), you could do Germany and Prague in a more leisurely and surely more enjoyable way.
Italy has so many delights, I%26#39;d leave Venice for another trip. Same is true for Paris.
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I%26#39;ve been thinking about this a bit more. The problem isn%26#39;t really that you only have two weeks vacation time, it%26#39;s the fact that air fares are so high to cross the Atlantic and you want to pack so much in as a result. In fact most Europeans only take 2 weeks holiday in the summer, or at most 3: the difference cp the States is that Europeans still vacation allocation to use at other times during the year and cheap air fares in Europe means that they may go on several shorter breaks.
The Spaniards do still tend to take 3 or even 4 weeks in the summer (normally August, as many companies more or less close down then). However few of them holiday outside Spain and most %26quot;stay put%26quot; in one place not that far from home (most Catalans stay in Catalonia for example). I read recently that only 14% of Spaniards take summer holiday abroad, which is exactly the same figure as for Americans! People travel further afield on on 4 or 5-day tours when there is a long holiday weekend, or in Holy Week.
The figure for the French and the Germans vacationing outside their country was almost 50% and I suspect for Britons it%26#39;s even higher than that.
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You will have around five days spent on the train or getting to/from airports if you take flights. A group of five is not the easiest to travel with at this pace. What a shame you won%26#39;t consider a more abbreviated itinerary. For instance, why Leipzig, etc. after Prague? why not Passau? Have you developed a theme to your trip (Medieval or WWII history, hiking and biking, castle hopping)?
I have no problem with covering only a few major cities and leaving out the incredible possibilities in between, especially in two weeks , but only if you have studied the other possibilities. I would leave out Prague to Leipzig for this trip. Paris to Venice is possible, and a return via Innsbrueck would give a short pass through Austria, and then a brief view of Germany as you return to Frankfurt, possiby through Munich.
I%26#39;ve taken family members on a tEurope train rip which included too many of everone%26#39;s %26quot;favorite%26quot; and found everyone became too tired and jaded very quickly. That was years ago, and now I either go by myself, or it%26#39;s %26quot;my way or no way%26quot;, which works, because I%26#39;m the one who can translate! :.)
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--I like my typo--%26quot;Europe train rip%26quot;....how appropo!
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thanks for all the info....
is skyscanner down?..... i haven%26#39;t been able to get to it for 2 days... is there another similar site?
we kinda have a theme in germany.....
Riddle: Eisenach is the beginning and Leipzig is the end... why?
baumholder is for the old air force days....
flight plans have change.... we took out venice and maybe prague because we saved over $2K flying into london....
then we%26#39;ll BritishA to Paris then train up to frankfurt (rent car for sight seeing) and then BA back to london...
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