Czesky Kremlov from Prague-CK Shuttle?

A friend of mine did a day trip from Prague to CK, and regretted not making it an overnight. According to her, the travel to and from takes up so much time, you really don’t have enough time for the town.

If my time didn't a!low an overnight stay in CK, I would skip it and just take the train from Prague to Budapest. Even better would be to stop for a couple of days in Vienna. They are all great cities.

I agree. No day trip to Cesky Krumlov. Overnight. Plenty of buses from Prague to C.K. There is one direct train and many with change in Ceske Budejovice. You can take shuttle from C.K. all the way to Budapest. That could be expensive. Or take shuttle just to Linz and then by train. Or all by public transportation. Bus leaves C.K. at 11:40, arrives to Kaplice train station at 12:00. Train leaves Kaplice at 12:38, arrives Linz 14:07. There you change to rail jet train which leaves Linz at 14:16, arrives to Budapest Keleti at 18:19. There are many other connections, this one is one of the fastest by public transport. You can check them all and choose which one suits you:
http://www.idos.cz . You can switch it to English.

If you are going to Cesky Krumlov, definitely stay overnight (I recommend two nights, i.e. one full day). I would not try and see it in only a partial day. Upon leaving CK you could take the shuttle to Linz, Austria and the train to Budapest is about four hours from there. That's a 5.5 hour day of travel not counting time in between modes of transit, too much for me but you might consider it. (I did an Budapest to Prague itinerary in 2011 entirely by public transit, but with stops in Sopron, Olomouc, Telc, Cesky Krumlov in between). The problem with covering two cities far apart on limited time with one itinerary is that you miss so much in between. Prague is good for three nights minimum and Budapest is four or five (for me definitely five on a first visit). Unless you have that much allocated to each city, I would not recommend the gymnastics required to tack on CK. You would just end up with a not quite adequate visit of any of them.

Thank you for the tips! So we plan to take the direct train from
Prague to Cesky then stay overnight there. Next day we will use CK shuttle early morning to go to Budapest? What do you think of this itinerary:
Prague-4 nights
Cesky-overnight
Budapest-2nights

We have been to Vienna before.

We did a very similar trip, but Prague, CK, Vienna. I agree with the other posters: spend at least one night in CK. We spent two nights, and it worked out great. We took a late afternoon bus from Prague (we got ticket in the main train station in Prague, while passing thru the station), and arrived early evening. Great dining option in CK, but some popular places were booked; we ate at our hotel and had a great meal. Spent full day exploring CK, booked our van trip to Vienna as we passed one of the several tour agencies in CK, and then had the van pick us up at our hotel in the morning. We were in Vienna by noon, and had almost full day in Vienna then. I agree that you could easily take the van ride to Linz, and then train from there to Budapest.

Another tip: we were in Prague and CK during the last week of April (2 years ago), and had 3 days with flurries! Bring layers! CK was quite chilly, but pretty looking down on the village from the castle through the snow! I think those cold days made our Czech dinners even more cozy and delicious! Vienna, 3 hours from CK, was 65 each day--perfect. Don't know if you will be there in early May or late May, but the weather could be very different week to week in spring. Check the forecast before you leave for both Prague and Budapest and pack accordingly. Very glad to have a sweater and a fleece.

We spent 3 nights in Prague and 3 in Vienna before and after the 2 in CK. While we had more we wanted to see in both places cities, we were glad we spent 3 nights in Prague and then 2 in CK, rather than 4 and 1.