Somewhere between Prague and Paris
 

Perhaps I'll get greater response here than on the Czech Republic board. DH and I booked flights for October into Prague and out of Paris. We have 13 nights and can split our time between the two, flying from one to the other. This is our first trip to Prague but we have visited Paris (and love it). As we are planning we wondered if it might make sense to take a train (without too many changes) and spend a few days someplace between the two cities. We would love to hear suggestions you might have for such a spot. We are 50-somethings, love walking cities and towns, good simple cooking, bakeries, gardens, art museums, and one of us loves shopping. We're open to sleeper trains (private compartment). Thank you for your suggestions.

I imagine there must be interesting cities to visit in southern Germany or Switzerland for a railtrip between Prague and Paris.

By using the web site of the German passenger railway company, you can see various rail and bus travel options between those two cities: http://www.bahn.de/i/view/USA/en/index.shtml

You can find a basic map of the main European train routes in a PDF linked from here: http://www.seat61.com/Europe-train-travel.htm#map

Somewhere in Germany would be the obvious choice. Nuremburg, Munich, Cologne, Stuttgart.

Use www.bahn.de to check schedules.

Have you been to Vienna? It's one of my favorite cities and it satisfies your criteria. It might be a little out of the way, though.

that's a very long train ride between Prague and Paris and I can't think of any great place that is in-between the two in a fairly direct route. Maybe Amsterdam. It's really sort of NW, but I think the train route from Prague up there may be easier than trying to get west, anyway. And of course the high-speed train from there to Paris is easy. Otherwise, I guess you'd be taking Bavaria or western Germany as the most likely suspect (stuttgart or something) Or Belgium, of course. Maybe Luxembourg could be in that general route.

Vienna isn't even in the same general direction from Prague as Paris, it's SE.

I think any train between Prague and Paris is going to have a fair number of changes.

You could fly to Vienna, spend a couple of days there, then take a train from there to Prague. Check the usual discount flights as well as AirBerlin for the best price. A sidetrip to Budapest could be interesting as well if you can fit that in.

You say little about what TYPES of places you like o my suggestion for a CITY that will giove a very different experience from both Pris and Prague and offers good connections to Paris: Berlin

Thank you for the additional suggestions. Berlin is worth considering but I'm afraid Vienna is out of the way. We could fly also fly to Belgium or the Netherlands from Prague then take the train to Paris.

that isn't an easy question. I think Germany seems the most logical decision, perhaps Berlin or Munich.

<i>Perhaps I'll get greater response here than on the Czech Republic board.</i>

FYI, "Czech Republic" and "France" are NOT separate boards - they are simply tags on the <b>Europe</b> board. Tags allow users to filter the long Europe list to see just countries they're interested in. And actually, you should just tag <i>one</i> post with <i>both</i>, as I have requested be done here. You do this by holding down the Command/Ctrl key (Mac/PC accordingly) before clicking the additional tag. You're allowed up to 5 tags for one post.

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Paris has always been my favorite European city, but Berlin quickly became a close second, if not a tie. I think it would match all of your interests!