Europe for a month
- Started
- Last post
- 38 Responses
- raf0
Warsaw, 11/11/11 (Independence Day)
- joseprieto0
Amsterdam tomorrow... Any advices? Been to madrid, barcelona, figueres, toulouse, marseille and paris so far.
http://byefornow.tumblr.com
:)
- 20020
dont forget to drop by greece
- joseprieto0
So I started a tumblr about the trip... if you guys want to follow it :D
Im leaving in like 5 hours!!!
http://byefornow.tumblr.com
cheers
J
- akrok0
American Citizens do not need a visa when they travel to Italy for business or for personal travel. The stay in the Schengen area should not exceed 90 days in a 6 month period. Please note that the American visitor will need to present a valid American passport (valid three months beyond intended stay), proof of sufficient funds and a return airline ticket.
- Ickle0
If you have plans to come in Romania , visit Timisoara :)
For accommodation check this : hostel-costel.ro ^_^
It's worth it !!!!!!
- popfodders0
Never been, would love to travel though... That trip to Spain was cancelled. FUCK
- NegativeSpace0
^ We did most of our Europe trip with that in mind. Only a couple flights, and no trains over 5 hours or so.
With the exception of a couple night trains which saved us a night in a hostel/hotel. We took an overnight train from Zurich to Vienna, and from Berlin to Copenhagen and it worked out great.
The smaller airports aren't always far, but even main airports. Barcelona, its probably going to take you 40 min to an hour to get to the city center. London Gatwick is going to be at least 30-35 minutes. Add to that the cost of the ground transport. Sometimes a train makes more sense because you also don't have to factor in showing up 2 hours ahead of time to deal with that bullshit. We showed up 10 minutes before trains left and maximized our time in each city.
- chrisRG0
My personal rule is:
If the train trip is less than 4 hours I'll get a train, otherwise I'll get a flight.
- shaft0
You guys are exaggerating with small airports being far from larger cities.
First of all, a lot of cheap airlines fly to main airports, e.g. Madrid, Sevilla, Dublin, Porto, and others, especially in parts of Europe where most cities don't have a "spare" airport.
Secondly, provincial airports are always connected by bus or train and in many cases it's not more expensive to take a cheap flight and a taxi than to fly a "regular" airline.
This said, you lose the opportunity so see a lot of countryside landscape by not taking the train.
- joseprieto0
I dont think I need a visa with my american passport... do I? shit... I didnt think of that
- I must stress I don't know about US visas, but my GF is non-EU and she has to go through schengen shit each timeRanger
- we dont want americans without visa in europe, for my part i dont want americans at alljadrian_uk
- Ranger0
Trains everytime for me. But I should add that I hate flying. As a result though I've spent the last few years going to various places within Europe on trains. If you can book early enough then you can get really cheap tickets, if you go on overnight trains you save on hotels.
This week I'm finishing work in London on Weds, jumping on a train to Paris, will have a meal there, get on an overnight down to San Sebastian in Spain which will arrive early the next morning. Hassle free, cheap and always a bit of an adventure.
Like others have said the trains generally take you straight into the action.
Check out your visa situation though if you're coming from outside the Eu.
One other thing, if you get a 10 in 22 days ticket or similar, make sure you fill the ticket in before you get on the train. We got through France, Germany, Hungary, Austria just giving the ticket over to the inspectors and they filled it out. Nobody said we were doing it wrong until we got to Italy where unfortunately we ran into a corrupt little powercrazed arse of a collector. He wanted us to give him 50 euros each in cash which was half of the fine. We didn't, it all got a bit messy, police got involved. Kind've put us off Pisa. Got a night boat over to Barcelona form there though which got things back on track.
- Definitely fill out the ticket with the travel date. Also make sure you have the pass validated on your start date.NegativeSpace
- Continuity0
Conversely, not all cities are well-served from airports.
One time I took a coach from Belgrade to Ljubljana to fly out to Brussels, and it turns out that the only way (besides by car, which I didn't have) to the airport was by an infrequent rickety city bus that I reckoned dated back to the old Yugoslavia days, ca 1960s, which the driver apparently mistook for a Formula 1 car. That was harrowing.
The airport itself, was a small box smack-dab in the middle of a ginormous corn field in a valley, roughly an hour out of town at top Yugo-bus speed.
- Continuity0
Oh, one thing in favour of both trains and landing at major airports is that quite often, there are proper strain stations at airports. If if there are, then there are direct public transport connections to train stations.
For example:
• Heathrow: take the tube to King's Cross/St Pancras for an onward train journey to the continent;• There are TGV platforms for onward journeys to the rest of France at Paris-Charles-De-Gaulle;
• You can catch direct train connections to the rest of the Netherlands from Amsterdam Schiphol
Etc, etc. Def worth looking into.
- Second sentence should be, 'If there aren't [...]'Continuity
- NegativeSpace0
Train for sure. Like its been said, you will end up making up the additional cost in ground transport to get from the smaller airports into the city centers. Trains are far better for taking you right into the thick of it. When we traveled for 2 months, we only used a couple budget airlines for some of the bigger jaunts we had to do (ie: Paris to Madrid, Lisbon, to Barcelona).
Since you are going to be in Italy, and want to relax, I would recommend visiting Cinque Terre. It is situated just south of Genoa, and north of La Spezia. Beautiful grouping of 5 quaint towns nestled into the cliff-sides along the Mediterranean with a trail that connects them all. Amazing place to visit, and wonderful food.
- Continuity0
One little thing about all the budget airlines (besides shit service, cramped quarters and punishing luggage policies): they tend to land in small airports in the middle of nowhere, with connections to the city that aren't really anywhere near as good as they would be flying into a major airport (Heathrow, CDG, Schiphol, et cetera).
So, if that's what you're going to go with, be prepared for a bit of a hassle and possibly additional expense in leaving/going to a small airport.
- shaft0
With Ryanair it's wise to use a Mastercard Prepaid card—the only kind that has card fees waived.
Buy general travel insurance and uncheck insurance box with low-fare airlines.
Why don't you pop down to Dublin for a day or three?
Also, I noticed Ryanair flights to/from Oslo are strangely cheap these days, could be cheaper to fly there across Europe and back a few hours later than direct to a neighbouring country—my gf just did that.