Flight Options Part 2

Did some research on the cost of flying city to city in Europe. I added Berlin just in case we find cheap round trip flights to/from there from Chicago. I'm just guessing that might be a good option.

I would prefer to travel via train, but I thought we should at least look into flying some parts of the journey just so we can weigh our various transportation options. We can combo train, plane, car, boat, jet ski, etc. as we see necessary.

I priced things out on or near Sept. 1, 2011, obviously I can't know exactly what day works the best. If non-stop was available, I selected that, even if there was a one stop that was much cheaper. I assumed that if we couldn't get non-stop, it wasn't worth comparing to the train.

Scroll the embedded table below or view the full sized table here.

Train Options

I did some research re: train options between the cities that we are looking to explore.

Based on my research we can travel between the cities we want to go fairly easy via train and fairly cheap.

I'm thinking that we can fly in/out of Warsaw/Krakow and travel to Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, Prague, and back to Warsaw/Krakow via train.

Vienna to Prague is 4 1/2 hours via train for $147 a person.
Warsaw to Budapest is $274 a person.
Krakow to Budapest is $167 a person.
Prague to Warsaw is $143 a person.
Prague to Krakow is $200 a person.
We can do these legs overnight since they are longer.

It's a no brainer to do Budapest, Bratislava, and Vienna because they are so close together.

Flight Options

I know we've both looked into this a bunch, but thought I'd get something written down. I just looked through a series of dates and airports to get a feel for flight prices. I used a 12-day Wed.-Mon. trip like we did for Scandinavia. Not that we have to do the exact same thing again, just needed a starting point.

I have no idea how much flight prices will change from now until then, but I wanted something so we could start thinking about cities and the order we'll see them. We  likely will not go to every city on this list. I looked a round trip and one ways. I'd love to find a cheap non-stop round trip, but did not have much luck there. Two individual segment one-way tickets is more expensive than a round trip, but we have to factor in the train or plane ticket to get us back to our round trip airport. For example, if we fly into Prague and then travel on, we'll have to get back to Prague to fly home if we do a round trip. Getting back there costs money.

Scroll the embedded table below or view the full sized table here.

Set Up and Ready to go

Here we are, up and running. I tried the "travel" template, seemed appropriate.

Anyway, we can use this blog to chart our progess. Here's what we have so far:

Where: Europe
When: Fall 2011
Who: Eric and Shannon
What: An Awesome Vacation
How: By any means necessary

In September/October 2009 we visited Scandinavia - Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. We absolutely loved it and have pretty much been talking about going back ever since. After weighing some options, we decided Fall 2011 and eastern Europe would be best. Our current city options include:

• Bratislava, Slovakia
• Budapest, Hungary
• Vienna, Austria
• Prague, Czech Republic
• Krakow, Poland
• Warsaw, Poland

Eh, I think that's it. Maybe another city in one of those countries, maybe Germany if necessary.

Here's what we need to do in the short term -

• research flights
• research destinations
• save money
• drink beer
• research family background
• save vacation time
• have fun with all of it

The purpose of this blog is to discuss those things, track our planning for posterity sake, collect our research before we forget, and maybe get a little bit silly.