Hi y'all,

following upon a recent thread and DH's strong desire to visit Krakow, I'm putting together a plan for ? May 2008 to drive round eastern europe.

The very basic itinerary is as follows:

Prague [been before so would stay only 1-2 days before setting off, possibly at the end of the trip too]

Vienna - 3 nights

Krakow - 3 nights

Dresden- 3 nights

back to prague.

i've picked prague as the start/finish as we can fly there from Bristol [nearest airport] we 've been [once] before so it's a bit of a known quantity, and it's cheaper for car hire than krakow which is the other choice.


we would probably have 14 nights altogether, so where would you stay in between? - thinking in particular about driving up through slovenia between vienna and Krakow, and then whether to drive the Krakow-Dresden leg in Poland or the czech republic.

any thoughts greatly appreciated.

regards, ann

Bratislava is very close to Vienna and is a lovely old city. It's "shoppers paradise" because it's so close to Vienna (and prices in Vienna are twice as high). Sopron, Hungary is also close to Vienna and is one of the oldest cities in Hungary. Both are excellent daytrips from Vienna.

Easyjet fly direct from Bristol to Krakow, there are car rentals at the airport, I saw the flight was delayed when I was waiting for my flight to Gatwick yesterday, you will need far longer than three days if you can spare more for exploring Krakow, I just scratched the surface in four days, don't forget Auschwitz and the salt mine are close and are a must, as is the birth place of Pope John-Paul.
there are many sights to see within the city, go and enjoy it is a beautiful city.

If your flying in and out of Bristol I would not fly in and out of Prague. As you have vienna as the first stop I would fly into Budapest it is alovely palce stop for a day or two, Then get a train to vienna esay to do and not long trip. Then from Vienna you could train to Brno in the czech republic for a couple of days.
http://www.brno.cz/index.php?lan=en
. You could fit in a day trip to Bratislave on a train from Brno it is about a hour on the train. Lovely place, and so cheap to eat and drink in. Then pick up a hire car when you are reday to go on or if you wanted to explore a bit while in Brno. Travel to Karkow, you could stop off Olomouc and Ostraava ares on route to Karkow. The on to Dresden and then on to Prague to fly home from Prague.

I know typing too fast and not checking my spelling sorry

I forgor to add th Besky mountain range is a really beautiful place it shares the boarders with Czech and Poland sao you may want to look at if you could find in driving that area on your travels.
http://www.travel.cz/guide/572/index_en.html

Hi,

thanks to you all for the ideas.

Out of Bristol, our main choices are Prague, Krakow, Budapest and Berlin. for our itinerary, Berlin is too far north i think, we've been to Budapest and have no great desire to return, And car hire out of Prague appears to be cheaper than Krakov.

one-way car hire is not attractive because of the high drop-off fees, so I've more or less ruled that out, though I suppose we could hire in Brno and drop off in Prague for not very much extra?

Bratislava is definitely on the provisional route, - not sure about Brno?

the mountains between Czech R and Poland are a new and good idea.

I'll be getting the map out and borrowing a book from the libaray next, I think.

thanks for all the feedback,

regards, ann