Eurotrip - college freshman
 

Two of my friends and me are planning a trip to europe for next summer. We are going to try and leave somewhere around May 15th and return the first week of June. After some brief searching on orbit.com it seems like a round trip flight to Lisbon would be out cheapest way into Europe (around $950pp on Air France).
From Lisbon our path might be..
Lisbon - Barcelona
Barcelona - Munich
Munich - Amsterdam
Amsterdam - Paris
Paris - Madrid
Madrid - Lisbon

We are considering Milan,Prague and Cracow, I guess we are looking for feedback on our train schedule. The only cities that are absolutely on the schedule are Madrid and Barcelona.
Also Lisbon is not that important of a city, it just seems like the cheapest way into Europe.
We ommitted London from this because we didnt want to get killed over conversion by going $ to Euro to Pound to Dollar.

Overall our budget is $3-4k

I have been to Spain before along with one other person and we can speak Spanish.

Re: Eurotrip - college freshman
 

I don't know where you are located, but I think you can get much cheaper transatlantic airfare than 950 r/t. Check out Aer Lingus, they generally have the cheapest transatlantic fares. Usually, I can get a r/t ticket from JFK, BOS, IAD, or ORD to Dublin for about 500 bucks. It's usually about 650 r/t from LAX. Then, you can buy a cheap ryanair ticket (less than 100 euro r/t) to wherever in Europe you really want to go. Air France is a nicer airline, but you can save some money by flying with Aer Lingus.

In my opinion, you can't go wrong with any of the cities you listed. Also, I liked Seville quite a bit. It's definately worth a day or two if you can fit it in your schedule.

Re: Eurotrip - college freshman
 

Aer Lingus seems liek the way to go considering we are from Boston. I found some tickets for around $550 which seem pretty good.
So it looks like we will spend a day in Dublin, then fly to Madrid. From Madrid to Barcelona, with a possible day spent in Valencia.
From Barcelona I feel like we could take two routes, either going to. Marseille then Paris then Amsterdam. Or we could go Barcelona to Milan to Munich to Paris to Amsterdam.

Then from amsterdam we would have to take a flight back to dublin for our return trip. It seems liek there might be an easier way of doing this, I just dont know how.

Also if people have any advice for liek hostels, restaurants or sites to see in any of our cities feel free to say.

Re: Eurotrip - college freshman
 

I found a better option if you are willing to pay a little bit more on flights.

Since you are leaving from Boston, I checked prices on Iberia (another one of the cheaper european carriers) and found the following itenarary:


Departure, May 14 2008 (flight doesn't operate on thursdays)
-IB6166 BOS-MAD, Departs 19:20 and arrives 7:20 on the 15th

Return, June 4th 2008
-IB3215 AMS-MAD, Departs 8:10 and arrives 10:35
-IB6165 MAD-BOS, Departs 13:40 and arrives 16:35

The Iberia website is showing this as being 877 per person.

I think it would be a good pick if you want to avoid the hassle of using another airline to go DUB-MAD and AMS-DUB. The cost might be pretty similar as well.

Re: Eurotrip - college freshman
 

www.eurotrip.com

the forums there are good.

Re: Eurotrip - college freshman
 

FWIW I wouldn't sell Lisbon short. I've been in about a dozen European countries and Portugal has thus far been my overall favorite.