Eastern Europe Trip 2016
 

Dear All,

I would like to plan an Europe Trip ( Eastern Europe) with my wife next year spring. I have selected few city / country we would like to visit. But we do not know where we should start and which destination should be the last? I hope some one can give us some advise and will be very much appreciated.
- Prague ( Czech)
- Vienna ( Austria)
- Budapest ( Hungary)
- Munich ( Germany)
- Lucerne ( Switz)
- Zurich ( Switz)
- Zagreb ( Croatia)
- Plitvice Lakes ( Croatia)

TQ

Maxz

Travel issues, train or car. Open jaw flights might be best.

Have a look at seat61.com to understand trains and bahn.de to get an idea of train times and costs.

Then knowing where you come from might help.

I'd do the top 6 by train then get to venice and drive down and return to fly out of venice

I'm sorry - but these places are all central europe - not eastern europe - despite what the tour companies may say. (Eastern europe would be Russia and Ukraine.)

As for you list of places we really need more information:

How many weeks do you have for this trip?

What are your main interests in traveling (history, art, architecture, scenic beauty, hiking, fine dining, clog dancing, flying kites?)

What is your time frame?

Are you planning on using car or train?

Hi Bilboburhler,

Thanks for the advice, we prefer travel by train. We enjoy the very much travelling by train actually.

We are flying in from Malaysia, but we haven't decide which country should be our inbound. I am thinking may be Zurich.

Hi Nytraveler,

Sorry, you are right, is central Europe,

We planned to use 3 weeks to travel around all the city mentioned above. Is it sufficient? Or too rush? May be you can advise me on this. We would like to travel by train, if the distance are too far from 1 city to another, we don't mind to take flight. Me and my wife have visited France, Italy, Holland and England in year 2011, So we are very happy with the train system in Europe, it shouldn't be a problem for us .

Myself, i like history, art, architecture, scenic beauty
My wife, she like shopping.... hahaha

Thanks

I would plot all of these cities on a Google Map, then from that find the most logical way to connect them. I suspect Munich-Prague-Vienna-Budapest-Zagreb will connect well together, and you might fly out of Zagreb.

Have you been to Ljubljana, Slovenia? It is wonderful - a 2.5 hour train ride from Zagreb. You might consider adding it somewhere in your itinerary.

There is no train to Plitvice Lakes from Zagreb - you will either need to take a public bus, rent a car, or take a private tour. Zagreb is about two hours (by car) from Plitvice. You could visit the park as a day trip from Zagreb, but it is best if you can spend a night and start out first thing in the morning to see the park before it gets crowded with tour groups.

I must admit that I have difficulty imagining how you can see all these places in just 3 weeks -- I would think this itinerary would take at least 4 weeks, if not more, and even then it would be a bit rushed for my tastes -- but we all travel for different reasons and at different paces, so only YOU can decide if it will work for you.

I recommend that you get some good guidebooks (always a good investment, IME, or spend some time with a few in your local library), identify the things you most want to see in each location, note their opening/closing times, and mark them on a calendar. Then pencil in your transportation, add some time on either side (for getting to/from your lodging, checking in/out, packing/unpacking, getting oriented, etc.). Then see how things fit together. You might end up deciding to cut a destination or two....

Good luck!