My husband and I are going with a convention to Prague this summer and have decided to take about 10 days before and 4 days after for sightseeing around the rest of Europe.

We're planning to leave July 16 and be travelling home sometime on August 4th of this year.

We've been reading travel books and talking to ppl who have travelled these areas, but I'd love any travel advice anyone could offer us. We're particularly concerned about Eurail vs renting a car especially for the early part of our trip.

Some places that interest us a lot are FRANCE--Loure Valley and Paris as well as the trip through the Alps to ITALY--We want to see a LOT of Italy so we figure it might deserve its own trip in the future, but this trip we thought we'd sick with what would be on our way anyway. Possibly the Cinque Terre since it is close to the French border and maybe Venice. GERMANY--want to see Ludwig's castles, maybe Munich, and the Romantic Road up to Rothenburg. Also we would like to see Venice and maybe Budapest--since we are that far east we'd like to visit some of the highlights of places we may never get to again. Not sure how I feel about Amsterdam.. ..really liked what we saw on a brief layover a few years ago, but the travel guides have me concerned about the drug culture. Unless our flight is into London I think we are going to leave the British Isles alone this time because we LOVED our honeymoon in Ireland and think the Isles deserve a trip of their own in the future also.

Any advice on how to work this trip to make rail or car convenient and any suggestions for stretching the limited budget would also be extremely appreciated.