Europe including train

[Fluffycloudsfloatinginthesky]

Trying to decide what to do this year. Wondering about a 2/3 centre holiday. Flying in then train between and fly home from the end.

Budapest is on the list of places I might like to visit. Anyone done this and can suggest good cities to combine with. I have started looking at the man in seat 61 website as well.

Alternatively my youngest is desperate to go to Paris so we could start with Eurostar although I hate the place!

We did an epic Spain rail trip over 2 weeks: Barcelona-Madrid-Seville-Malaga. Might be too hot for a summer trip though!
My DSis has combined Budapest with Vienna.

The Eurostar also goes to Brussels and Amsterdam!

How long for and which month?

We did Budapest and Vienna last Easter, linking by train, worked really well. It’s a direct train that takes about 3.5hrs. Both cities were lovely, we preferred Budapest to Vienna but it did rain most of the time we were in Vienna, so I think that affected our perception a bit!

Probably end of October. Easter is possible if prices not too much higher as it's shorter notice.

I've done a trip to Budapest by air, then travelled by sleeper train to Zurich, spent a couple of nights in Zurich, then took a train to Paris before getting the Eurostar home.

Budapest was amazing and the sleeper train was good but I wasn't a big fan of shared bathroom facilities. We arrived in Zurich on a Sunday morning and I was grateful that we had booked a sightseeing trip across the lake and up into the mountains because it seemed that most of the shops and cafes weren't open on Sunday.

I've also done Munich by air with a train to Vienna. I loved Vienna but it was a lovely, dry autumn weekend.

Possibly Eurostar to Paris or Amsterdam or Brussels with an onward trip to Bruges to do everything by train. I thought Bruges was lovely.

Fly to Milan, book a day trip to Lake Como while you are there and then get the train to Tirano to connect with the Bernina Express train through the Alps to Chur. Chur has beautiful scenery and is fantastic for walking, eating and relaxing. We then got a train to Zurich and flew home but you could do Chur->Zurich->Paris->Eurostar.

We flew to Naples last October, stayed in Pompei, train to Rome, then flew back from Rome. If you want to give more time to train travel Rome to Munich is probably doable, and Munich to London takes 10-12 hours.

We flew to Prague and then did Bratislava, Budapest and Vienna (you could skip Bratislava if short on time) then came back via Munich to Brussels.

This year I am planning - Brussels - Innsbruck - Rimini - 10 days in Puglia - then Verona and Munich on way back. Previous trip it was cheaper to buy individual tickets. This time is isn't so I am getting an interrail ticket and just making seat reservations.

The sleeper from Munich to Rome was 14 hours and hugely expensive when I looked at it for May.

We did some interrailing last summer, and took trains between Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest.

We’re thinking of doing something similar. Flying to Basel and then making our way back via Strasbourg, Metz, Luxembourg, Brussels and then Eurostar back to London.

This map gives you a good idea of rail links across the continent. Budapest is pretty well connected. You could take a few different routes. https://www.oebb.at/dam/jcr:b5ed7b7f-6949-43bf-a2f9-9624a043ee93/karte-interrail-map.pdf

Thanks for all the suggestions. Yes I see can do a sleeper with Prague and then it's quite a quick trip to Vienna so they are both possibilities.