Lodging & train reservations

Ah, yes.  This^ will be the view out of our kitchen window in Venice.  ::sigh::

This post is just to mention that we've confirmed our reservations for the following legs of the trip:

• Apartment in Barcelona (this apartment in el barrio gótico -- we'll be able to walk to La Rambla and tons of veg*n restaurants, and we're right near an urban site of preserved 13th-century Roman ruins!)
• Flight from Barcelona to Zurich
• Lodging in Zurich, at a pension near the Hauptbanhof.  Lodging is surprisingly hard to find in Zurich unless you're a millionaire (or unless you don't mind staying in a totally sleazy hostel in the loud and drunken party district).  So, we're modifying our dates and leaving for Milan earlier.
• Train tickets from Zurich to Milan
• Lodging in Milan (this cute apartment)
• Lodging in Venice (this two-bedroom apartment, right in the center of the island, a five-minute walk to the train station and a 10-minute walk to Piazza San Marco!) 
• Four-person "couchette" on an overnight train from Venice to Vienna (aka SLUMBER PARTAY)
• Lodging in Vienna
• Train tickets from Vienna to Prague
• Lodging in Prague at a little B&B (near the Radlická subway stop)
• Flight from Prague to Cologne
• Lodging in Cologne (this huge studio apartment near downtown!) 
• Lodging in Amsterdam (this funky studio apartment in De Pijp!)
• Lodging in Paris (this apartment in the 7e arrondissement, a short walk to Rue Cler and its eponymous market, below!)

Thank maude I have Alexis to plan this trip with, because there's no way I could do it alone.  It's positively overwhelming.  The boys are basically just sitting back and letting us take care of everything, which has its pros and cons. ;)  Anyway, here are some of the most useful links we've found in our planning.

Train tickets

There's not yet a single, centralized site or locale for making train reservations for the entirety of the EU, so one needs to do a little hunting and pecking to buy train tickets.  (For the convenience of my readers, I've linked to the English versions of the sites below.)

• eurail.com — Train schedules throughout Europe (go to the Planning tab) as well as general traveling information
• raileurope.com — Train schedules throughout Europe; also pulls up prices (which are kind of high; you can find better elsewhere)
• oebb.at — Austria rail
• sncf.com — France rail
• deutschebahn.com — Germany rail
• trenitalia.com — Italy rail
• nshispeed.nl — Netherlands rail
• renfe.com — Spain rail
• sbb.ch — Switzerland rail

Airfare

Airfaire in Europe can be surprisingly cheap, especially since you're likely buying a one-way ticket and not traveling too far.  I've bought tickets for this trip and previous ones from these carriers:

• opodo.com (the European version of Orbitz or Travelocity)
• vueling.com
• tuifly.com
• ryanair.com
• easyjet.com

Lodging

• homeaway.com — Worldwide apartment rentals by owner.  Through this site, we found our Barcelona, Paris, and Vienna apartments; last fall, we also used it to find our Portland house (actually, to be specific, Pamela found it).  Great resource, very legit.
• vrbo.com — Worldwide apartment rentals by owner.  Also very legit, but navigating the site isn't quite as intuitive as HomeAway.
• airbnb.com — Worldwide apartment rentals by owner.  Has a strong "young urban explorer" vibe.  Pretty good resource, although owners can be non-responsive sometimes.  We found our Milan, Cologne, and Amsterdam apartments on AirBnB.
• only-apartments.com — Worldwide apartment rentals, although most listings are in Europe
• apartmentsapart.com — Short-term apartment rentals all over Europe
• waytostay.com — Short-term apartment rentals in several major cities, including Barcelona, Paris, Madrid, London, Rome, Prague, Vienna, Brussels, etc.
• pillowapartments.com and rentbcn.com — Barcelona apartments
• clickappart.com — Paris apartments
• apartmentinvenice.it — Venice apartments
• apartment.at and viennacityflats.at — Vienna apartments

I'll update these links as we make more plans.  And to close out this post, here's a joke one of my professors told when I lived in Paris:

In heaven:

• The food is Italian
• The organization is Swiss
• The government is British
• The lovers are French
• The transportation is German

In hell:

• The food is British
• The organization is French
• The government is German
• The lovers are Swiss
• The transportation is Italian

Oh lawlz. :)  

Do you have any good travel or reservation websites to recommend?

Tickets purchased, itinerary drafted

Today was the official start of our adventure: we bought our airfare to and from Europe!  We're flying straight-through both ways, into Madrid and out of Paris.  I'm really excited about flying nonstop, as it will minimize our travel time and my potential air malaise.

For those readers who care about such things, we'll be on a Boeing 767.  We'll be sitting next to a window on both flights.  This is about what our view will look like inside the plane, although we'll be a little closer to the front:

Aaaand we'll be drooling at first class from our coach seats:

Here's our draft itinerary:

• July 2: Arrive in Madrid at the mind-numbing hour of 6:30 am local time
• July 4: Barcelona
• July 7: Meet up with our fabulous travel companions, Alexis & Phil, in Zurich
• July 10: Milan
• July 13: Venice
• July 15: Take an overnight train (quad cabin! it'll be a giant sleepover!) to Vienna.  I'm sure our train will look precisely like this photo, complete with the random bottle of beer (or is it mini-champagne?) next to the circa-2001 Mac that surely every cabin comes equipped with:

• July 19: Prague
• July 22: Cologne; Mark's wedding; possibly meet up with Jolteon
• July 25: Amsterdam
• July 27-29: Paris; visit with Marine and family, hit up the Pompidou (and the nearby organic vegetarian restaurant le Potager du Marais—see, I'm already planning our food), le quartier St. Michel, and possibly my old stomping grounds
• July 30: Fly home

If you have any must-see suggestions for any of these cities, or any nearby day trips, please comment and let me know!