Hi,
after completing my PhD, hopefully soon ;)
I'm planning a month long holiday around central and
eastern europe.
As I never done this before I'm not sure where to go
or how much to cram in (as it is supposed to be
a holiday). So I'd appreciate andy thoughts on
the following route (note that this is off the
top of my head, so forgive the spelling mistakes)
Location Day
London->Paris 1
Geneva 2
Interlaken 3
Zurich 4/5
Munich 6
(Somewhere in Austria) 7
Viena 8/9
Bratislava 10/11
Budapest 11/12
(Somewhere near Tatras) 13
Krakow 14
Warsaw 15/16
Gdansk 17
(Somewhere in Germany) 18
Berlin 19/20
Prague 21/22
(Somewhere else in Czech.)23
(Somewhere in Germany) 24
Paris 25
Home
That still leaves a few days for spur of the moment
desicions. Any thoughts?
Graeme
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I guess you'll need a long rest after that "holiday.."
Hey there, just glanced over your itinerary and I'm thinking you should spend another day in Budapest (fabulous city with lots to see) and maybe head off to Sofia, Bulgaria for a quick jaunt. It's got some neat architecture and interesting people to run into. However, don't forget to take your cyrillic dictionary. I would also add a day onto Prague. I've been there ten times now and I still haven't run out of things to see, places to go and people to meet. Have a great trip!
Whenever you arrive somewhere, you`re gonne have to find
a couple of things. One of them is food, that doesn`t take
too long. Accomodation however, is quite a drag. You should
take into consideration that you`ll spend at least a couple
of stressful hours on necessities on each of your
destinations. Sure, it`s part of the fun, but you will get a
lot more quality time with fewer destinations.
I couldn't tell by your post, but are you allowing travel
time? While I know you want to pack as much in as possible,
I think you should pick a few cities, spend more time there
& take day trips. You will be exhausted just from moving
around. Your major cities just cannot be done in 1 or 2
days--unless you want to say "I've been there" and I agree
with the above post that accommodations are sometimes hard
to find & you spend too much time just looking for sleeping
quarters. You will go back to Europe--look at your
interests & pare your itinerary. If you choose to go ahead,
you will have a good time just leave time at home afterwards
to relax.
Too Ambitious...
Sure those are a lot of great places, but if you want to do
anything more than just saying, "oh yeah, I've been to
Munich," but then find when someone asks you about any
sights in those cities that you have no idea what they are
talking about, then you are going to need to chisel this
list down. I have traveled to all of these cities, some of
them multiple times.
1) Traveling between those cities will take a fair amount
of time in itself. Read about travel times in a guide book.
2) As stated above, finding food and accomidation also
takes time, sometimes a great deal of time depending upon
the month in which you are traveling.
3) Buy one or two good guide books on these countries and
do some research. You will find that some cities warrant
several days, while others may not carry very much interest
for you.
4) Your own interests could very well vary greatly from my
own, but if I were to try to follow your itinerary loosely,
I would try something more like this....
Paris 1, 2
Interlaken/Zurich 3,4,5
Munich 6,7,8
Salzburg 9, 10, 11
Vienna 12, 13, 14
Budapest 15, 16, 17
Prague 18, 19, 20
Gdansk/Krakow 21, 22, 23
Berlin 24, 25, 26
Paris 27, 28
You'll notice that I simply took away a few of the places
you had listed, and you are definitely going to have to do
this. This is just my suggestion.
Good luck, enjoy the trip, and take a little bit of time to
see each city, otherwise your journey will be a complete
blur.
Reading your responses to the original post you have
worried me slightly that we will be trying to cram too much
in on our trip this September. Take a look and see what you
think- we will be travelling by night train between most of
these places.
Fly to Oslo,
Take night train to Bergen
Return from Bergen via Flam to take in scenery
2/3 days in Oslo
2/3 days in Stockholm
Copenhagen
Hamburg
Berlin
Prague 2/3 days
Krakow 1/2 days
Budapest 2/3 days
Zagreb (travelling through maybe sleep there)
Venice 2/3 days
Florence with day trip to Pisa
Fly home out of Rome.
We are planning to spend any extra time in Italy or if we
run short of days we will fly out of Venice. Are we trying
to do too much??????
Graeme, if someone told you that they were familiar with
Leeds then admitted that they had only spent 36 hours
there, you'd see them as some kind of fraud. No-one gets to
asorb or begin to understand a place in that time. If,
however you are ticking off places +photo +Tshirt then it's
a good introduction and places can be earmarked for return
visits.