We are planning our first trip to Czech Republic. After spending several days in Prague, we are thinking of renting a car to drive to and stay in Cesky Krumlov for a few days. Then drive to see some castles: Konopiste, Karlstejn, and Krivoklat while spending the nights nearby. We also want to drive to Kutna Hora and spend a night or two. Have you done this?
We would like your suggestions, cautions and experiences about driving in these areas. What do you think of using Cesky Krumlov as a "base" and make day trips from there? Thanks much

I"m confused about your itinerary. I think using Cesky Krumlov as a base is fine, as it's a small town. But you can't use that as a base to take day trips to Karlstejn, Konopiste and Krivoklat castles as they are near Prague. Also, Kutna Hora is up about an hour's drive east of Prague, it wouldn't make sense to go from Prague down to CK and then back up to Kutna Hora. Maybe that wasn't the order you were thinking of, and you weren't planning on using CK as a base for those castles you named. I guess if you want to rent the car after Prague and then tour those castles from west to east and make a semi-circle around Prague, you could do it. But you would not go to CK and then go back up to those castles and Kutna Hora. I would rather see some other places than all those castles, though (like Karlovy Vary or Plzen).

I suppose you could if you had to leave out of Prague, though.

CK would be okay as a base to places like Ceske Budejovice, Hlbloka castle, Tabor, Trebon, Telc or even Brno, etc.

I have driven in Czechy. It is quite simple, but watch out for police speed traps.

Hi, Christina---my writing was confused about our plans and direction of travel. Would it be better to do the castles and then drive to CK? We also want to see Kutna Hora. We enjoy natural beauty, historical places and want a relaxed pace. We will have about 11 days for this entire trip. We thought we would start in Prague (no car there) and spend 3 or 4 nights staying in the Mala Strana area. Then we would venture out.
Would it make better sense to stay a couple more nights in Prague to see the castles as day trips? And then drive to CK for a couple days and then to Kutna Hora?
Please tell us about Karlovy Vary and Plzen.
What castles do you suggest for us to explore?
Thanks very much.

Driving in the Czech Republic truly is easy - much more relaxed than Italy, for example. Good for you for looking beyond Prague! I adore Prague but there is definitely much more to the country.

In addition to the places you have mentioned I would add Zvikov Castle (southern Bohemia, 15 miles north of Pisek). It is not touristy and in a pristine forested area. Very pretty. And Pernstejn Castle is interesting (http://www.zamky-hrady.cz/2/pernstejn-e.htm). It is a perfect fairy tale castle (20 miles NW of Brno)!

Kutna Hora is worth a night but as mentioned not a great base for the castles and such. It is still a neat place to see including the bone church (ossuary) at Sedlec.

Have you looked into Telc? It is a gorgeous little town with a huge town square with fabulous architecture. I highly recommend it. Very pleasant to wander around.

Karlovy Vary isn't my favourite town in the country - perhaps it is because it is your typical spa town. However, it is very pretty and many people seem to like it. Plzen doesn't really interest me, either, but some would disagree. I think it is because there are more worthwhile areas to spend my time in that beautiful country. Cesky Krumlov is much more charming in my opinion (although very touristy, especially during the day). It is pure magic in the evening.

I really recommend going north of Prague for gorgeous scenery - very unique (Cesky Raj). Hruba Skala is incredibly interesting and boasts lots of very lovely walks.

What you could do is go south of Prague, stopping at a couple of castles on the way. Then you could stay at Cesky Krumlov and see Hrabu nad Vlouto Castle as a half day trip. Then you could work your way over to Kutna Hora, spend some time in Telc and work your way up north, seeing other castles along the way. Then you could continue north of Prague to the Cesky Raj region (mentioned above).

Hi, Travel2live2: Thanks for your great suggestions and we really appreciate it. This is our first time to the Czech Republic. I see that we need to purchase a good road map of Czech. Any suggestions about that? We are not "spa" people but are more awed and inspired by natural beauty, lovely towns and
vistas. We welcome any suggestions.
MnJ

Hi! Glad to help. I just love the Czech Republic and feel that not enough attention is given to the countryside. Sounds like you and i have similar tastes - countryside, vistas, scenery, nature, etc. As I mentioned above the Cesky Raj region is really pretty and unique. http://www.cesky-raj.info/en/nature/rocks.html may inspire you. The rock formations and walks below are utterly fantastic. Tons of photographic ops, that's for sure!

When we were last there we found very, very few tourists in that area. We also stayed in an absolute gem of a B&B (no website, though). It was set way back from the road in solid forest with a pond in front. Behind the house (we had it to ourselves - the owners lived about 250 m away) were really gorgeous tall rock formations. All for 50 euros per night. We sort of happened upon it.

When are you going? How long do you have in addition to Prague? Have you contacted many of the TI offices? When I plan for trips I contact each TI office in the radius of anywhere we think we are going. Sometimes we get so much mail that I have to go pick it up! But it is helpful in planning. When we last went we received an excellent map from one of the TI offices - I cannot recall which one. If I remember correctly we also had a great map with our rental car.

Just a couple ofhttp://www.outsideprague.com/telc/telc_main_square.html Telc pics...

http://www.blansko.cz/en/kras/show_big.php?pic=8 is gorgeous - a lovely cave walk at Punkva Caves. And more inspiration: http://www.cavemk.cz/fotogalerie-moravskeho-krasu/ and http://www.moravskykras.net/en/macocha-abyss.html.

Sorry - just one more thing. This is not a road map but this website contains useful information on sites.

http://www.aboutczechia.com/castles_chateaus/map.php

Hi, Travel2live2. We will check out the web sites. We will be going in late April/early May 2009.
I hadn't thought of the TIs---suggestions? We are daashing out of the house...thanks again.

1. Czech out the Czech superthread:
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threadselect.jsp?fid=2
2. Contact the embassy, and/or the NYC consulate, for tourist materials. We got some for our 1st visit that were very helpful.
3. The TIs are an excellent place to go. Generally they seem to ask how much you wanted to spend; our strategy is to start at the top end of the prices and work down, because they've lots of cheap places that are mediocre. Found a great place near Buchlovice that way.
4. We aren't spa people either, but Karlovy Vary was an interesting 2 hours since it reflected people's adherence to a way of life from the 1880's

Hi everyone

Is it just as easy to drive in the Czech Republic in December? We are hiring a car and will be driving to Cesky Krumlov from Salzburg, then a few days later we will drive on to Prague, and then after a few days we will drive to Dresden.

We recently took a trip to Central Europe that is similar to some of your thoughts and possible plans.

We (me, DH and DS, 13 years old) like history and culture, old castles, and wanted to see the more rural areas of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.

We flew into Prague, then from there, picked up a rental car for about 9 days. We drove from Prague to the lovely little town of Telè and spent 2 nights there. On the way to Telè, we visited Køivoklát and then viewed Karlštejn, but did not go in. From Telè, we visited the castles of Landštejn, Roštejn and the Renaissance chateau in Telè, as well as the sgraffito-filled even-smaller town of Slavonice, right on the Austrian border.

From Telè, we drove to the university town of Olomouc, further east in the Czech Republic, in the region of Moravia. On the way, we visited the castle of Pernštejn. We spent two nights in Olomouc, spending time in the town and visiting Bouzov castle. After Olomouc, we drove east into Slovakia, then south into eastern Hungary, finishing our trip back west in Budapest.

The castles were all spectacular, though I think our favorites were Køivoklát and Landštejn. Telè is small and not touristy at all; Olomouc is bigger but also not touristy. But there was almost always someone who spoke English, and all the menus had English (and German, usually) translations, so we didn't have to rely on the little Czech that I managed to learn before the trip.

The driving was easy, and the road conditions were good. We did get lost A LOT, however, even with very good maps and a Tom-Tom GPS system. (And we have driven a lot in other rural areas in western Europe.) Partly because when we were there, in late May, there was a lot of seasonal road construction, and we were sent on detours at least once a day! Also, some of the castles we visited were a ways off the beaten track. But we would still chose to drive, and being a lost a little bit was ok with us.

Someday we'll visit Cesky Krumlov, but with our itinerary, it didn't really fit in (also, it sounds pretty touristy). We also considered Kutna Hora, but again, it didn't fit with everywhere else we wanted to go.

As pointed out already, Cesky Krumlov isn't a good base for the other places you want to visit. We chose our base towns based on seeing different parts of the Czech Republic, nearness to castles, and appeal of those towns.

We spent 4 days in Cesky Krumlov and 2 in Karlovy Vary in 2002 and were absolutely delighted. I was very grateful to the person on this forum who convinced us to drive rather than try to take trains of buses. It was easy, no problems, and the countryside was lovely.

I have read that Czech Republic has a high road accident problem,mostly due to speeding and alcohol, so just be aware and have a good trip.

Thanks again for all the great information. Question---what road map publisher did you use? We will take our Nuvi GPS with us.
From what company did you rent cars?
Autoeurope?

MnJ

We drove in CR in May. The roads were good, and it was easy navigating with map and GPS. You can look at my travel report (Maitai's Central European Excursion). We drove from Prague to Cesky Krumlov to Olomouc to Krakow to Vienna.

We used Michelin map #731, which covers both the Czech and Slovak Republics. We also had Baedeker map of the Czech Republic, which a Slovak friend had given us. They were both pretty good.

We rented through AutoEurope, and picked up the car from the airport, as we'd heard that driving in downtown Prague was not a fun experience.

We drove from Germany to Prague downtown in June 07, then a few days later to Cesky and on to Salzburg. I prefer Salzburg as a base over Cesky, but it depends on where you want to go in the area.

The driving is not difficult, but the directions to get to where you are going can be. Most of the street names are four feet long and hard to pronounce. I did not have Nav on the rental car but I had printed out my route on mapquest. We were two couples so my friend was able to read the directions to get us to the hotel. He was having a bad time trying to read out the street names...but we made it!

My recommendation: Pay extra for a navigation system or buy a Garmin with Europe loaded (good one on sale at Costco now that has both US and Europe for $199) prior to leaving. Driving into downtown Prague gets a little confusing because of the streets. A Nav would be well worth it.

The driving out of major towns and around the countryside is easy.