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?