Munich, Vienna, Prague - How many days each?
 

My best friend and I have booked our tickets to Europe for May 2005. We have decided to visit Munich, Prague, Vienna, and a quick stop in Salzburg before I head home to Canada and she continues on (she is backpacking for a few months). We will have a total of 12 nights and 11 full days (not including the day to get there and day to get back) so I am wondering how to break up this time. We know we will only be spending 2 nights in Salzburg at the end (before I head back to Munich for my flight home on May 18th) so that leaves 10 other nights to break up between Prague, Munich and Vienna. We fly into Munich May 7th, arriving at 9:30am. Our two possible itineraries so far:

2 nights Munich
4 nights Prague
3 nights Vienna
2 nights Salzburg

OR

3 nights Munich
3 nights Prague
3 nights Vienna
2 nights Salzburg

I guess my question is, is Prague worth 4 nights or should I add one of those nights to Munich?? Just looking for people's opinions on these two cities...

Thanks!

Hi Amanda,

We did 2 night Munich, 4 nights Prague and 5 nights Vienna when we went there.

Prague is worth 4 nights.

((I))

We were in Vienna, Prague and Munich last June: 5 nights Vienna (because of my husband's conference schedule), 3 nights Prague, 4 nights Munich. We traveled by train from Munich to Fussen and Salzburg, on two different day-trips, but not spending the night in those towns.
Personally, I don't think Salzburg rates 2 nights, but others will certainly disagree. We saw all we needed to see in one day there.
We wished we had 4 nights in Prague, as 3 wasn't quite enough for Prague in our opinion, and 5 was one too many for Vienna on our schedule. Because we took the day-trips from Munich, 4 nights was fine, otherwise we could have done Munich in 3.
All personal opinion, of course.
Any way you do it, you'll have a great time. We had gorgeous weather the first week of June, with blue skies and flowers blooming.

I like your first pass. Of the 4 cities, I find Munich to be the least interesting and prague the most.

Hello Amanda23,

I have not been to Munich or Salzburg, so cannot comment on their merits compared with Prague and Vienna.

I don't know how you intend to get from Munich to Prague (plane, car or train). If you plan to catch the train, might I suggest spending the second night that you've allocated to Munich on the train from Munich to Prague?

I see there's a train that departs Munich around 23:00 and gets into Prague around 08:15, and it does not require a change of trains. To my mind that would be a fruitful way of spending the night, and it certainly would beat spending the same amount of time on a train during the day.

Similarly, if you catch the train from Prague to Vienna, you can avoid making a dent in your daytime sight seeing by catching an 18:00 train that gets into Vienna around 22:30.

In case you're interested in travelling by train, you can look up timetables at this website, if you're not already familiar with it:

http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en

Hope that helps.