I plan to drive to Prague and would like to stay in a small quaint town outside of Prague where I can take public transportation into Prague. I hear that Praque is very difficult to drive into and I prefer small towns in any case. Any recommendations? If so, any suggestions on hotels?

can't help with the towns, but i can tell you that prague is very easy to drive into...don't let that deter you

but, driving out is another story...

I would recommend Kutna Hora, about 45 minutes outside of Prague. KH is an historic town with a very nice old center. There are easy train and bus connections into Prague.

Unless connections have improved considerably lately, I would not call them easy. I would try to stay in alot closer than that. No further than the outer subway stations. I'm sorry that I don't know an exact place for you. Kutna Hora is a fine place to visit, but I would not consider it a handy place from which to see Prague.

We stayed in Karlstejn, small town, easy to take the train (cheap fare) into Prague. Karlstejn has an interesting castle and good restaurants in the area.

Karlstejn is a good place. Even closer, just south of Prague, and a nice little village to stay in, is Zbraslav. There are only a couple of hotels there, and it's kinda like dropping back in time. connections by bus to Prague are very good as it's on one of the main highways into town. Good luck.

Hi- Just got back from Prague last Sunday and can confirm that driving into our hotel was a hair raising adventure. My normally intrepid husband (who spent 10 years driving the entire Chicago Metro Area) sweated about 5 pounds off trying to get to our hotel just outside of old town. We had a map, but it did not indicate the closed and one way streets. If we had gotten step by step instructions from our hotel it wouldn't have been too bad, but I did not think that far ahead. I agree with the above poster, the metro would be as far out as I would want to be - there is so much to see in Prague - why spend a big portion of the day on transport in?

I didn't drive in Prague but it didn't look that bad to me -- you don't have to drive into the heart of Old Town, for example, but stay more on the fringes -- there is real easy access along the river going out of town to what I think is the NE (near the Florenc sations, Vinohrady, etc direction). Probably other ways, also.

I've been to Kutna Hora and think it's a nice day trip but also can't imagine staying there for touring Prague. It just seems you'll spend hours every day getting to and from, as well as most other places. I also wouldn't stay anywhere but on a metro line preferably, then maybe tram line. There are nice suburban areas of Prague such as Smichov, Vinohrady, Vysehrad that I wouldn't think would be so difficult to get into by car and much closer in.

We too tend to like smaller towns, but don't so that to yourself with Prague. Staying in the heart of Prague is marvelous. If you stay in the center of the city you can walk everywhere (assuming you like to do lots of walking). We had a rental car and drove right into the heart of Prague and it din't seem any worse to us than any other major European city. We had reserved a spot for our car when we made the hotel reservation; in fact we chose our hotel based upon the availability of parking for a car. In its courtyard our hotel had the tiniest car park I have ever seen. They jockeyed the cars around according to who was leaving when. We did not use the car again until we left 4 days later. We got directions at the hotel and were able to find our way out of the center of the city and to the road to Kutna Hora (which I agree is way too far away to communte from).

I agree that you will be better placed in a suburb, but can add Litomerice or Nymburk.
Litomerice is ninety minutes by train north of Prague. The reference library of a city near you may have the Thomas Cook European Timetable. This shows
Nymburk 0803 to Prague Hlavni 0846, Prague Hlavni 2045 to Nymburk 2121, probably with a bus later
Kutna Hora 0745 to Prague Holesovice 0848 but no evening train back: you would take a bus
Karlstein, busses only

You will find bus and rail times, in English, on http://www.jizdnirady.cz

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