My husband, niece and I will be in Vienna for Easter, arriving on Thursday prior to Easter. Our initial plan is to stay 4 nights in Vienna, with a side trip to Budapest for the day (not overnight), drive to Melk for the scenery, stay overnight in Melk or Krems and then drive to Prague for 2 nights departing from Prague back home. Does this drive from Melk to Prague sound feasible and how long should it take us. Any other advise on lodging, sites in the country between Vienna and Prague, etc. would be helpful. Also, has anyone had any problem picking up a car in Austria and deposting it in the Czech Republic?

Where is home? (I ask only because I wonder what are your options for flights into/out of Austria/CR).

I have never heard of a "favorable" experience renting a car in Austria and returning it in the CR - - seems like there will be a hefty drop charge, if you can do it at all.

We enjoyed a similar itinerary (8 nights) last May - - 2 nights in Vienna, then rented a caron Vienna departure, three nights in Prague, one in Poland (near Jelenia Gora), one in Cesky Krumlov, and one in Graz (Austria) - - returning the car, and taking advantage of the ultra-cheap flights on ryanair.com back to London (Stansted).

We hade ulterior motives for wanting to finish the trip in the UK (unrelated to cost), but this plan did provide us with a cheaper overall transatlantic airfare (open jaw into Vienna, return from London).

We did find the route/travel time estimate info from viamichelinc.com (I think that's what I used) to be accurate for Austria and the CR.

Best wishes,

Rex

We are coming from the US. After researching flights it now looks like we will do the trip in reverse, fly into Prague, then onto Vienna, which means we would have to get a car in Prague and drop off in Vienna after traveling through the country and staying in Melk. Sounds like your experience with car rentals in this situation is not good. Everyone on this site says to take the train but with 3 of us the car seems a better choice.

You might look into the Prague excursion pass offered by www.raileurope.com - - cheaper than two tickets (i.e., one to get into Prague, and one to get out of) even at the best prices (it's evidently subsidized by the CR to get people to visit the country). You could consider flying into Munich, Berlin or Dresden, train to Prague (where you will not need nor want a car) and then train onward to Austria, and rent your car there for use (solely) within Austria.

Heads up: I zoomed over to the Raileurope site to check out the Prague Excursion pass. One of the conditions is that the pass must be used in conjunction with another Eurail product, so it would only be of use to you as an add-on to another type of pass. Here's the URL:
http://www.raileurope.com/us/rail/pa...rsion_pass.htm

Wow. I wonder if that is new - - or if I simply never noticed it before. Might know - - I had mentally filed it under "almost too good to be true".