France or Eastern Europe for 3-5 week trip

As unlikely as it might sound but I want to mention that Belarus will host military exercise Zapad 2025 in September. In military circles and podcasts it is discussed if Russia might use this as chance to test NATO by a smaller offense, e. g. by occupying the Suwałki Corridor which partly belongs to Poland. No intention to start a political discussion.

Any answer to your questions would really depend on what you want to do or see on your 3-5 week trip. For example, if you are very interested in art or fine dining, then France might be a better choice. You mentioned hiking, however; that can be enjoyed in France, Poland, or Czech Republic, depending on what parts of those countries you would be visiting.

Provide more background on your interests, and we can provide more advice

Interesting mentioning the possible war " games"; we would love to visit Ukraine but that is obviously out.
We lenjoy meeting locals, trying local food from small restaurants, of course art and history .
Visiting very old libraries is always a thrill for me. Many years ago we had an impromptu private tour of the Salamanca library in Spain. We are also retired farmers so visiting an interesting small farm might be fun too.

One factor to consider is how inexpensive Czechia and Poland are. We loved our nearly 3 weeks there last summer; the culture there is markedly different from anywhere in western Europe. That said, we're spending several months in France this summer. There's so much we haven't yet seen in France. And we're not even visiting Paris, except to catch our flight home.

Any fear of imminent danger in Poland due to war games is Belarus unreasonable at best. I leave it at that, so the thread doesn’t go sour.

A trip that started in Paris and some look sees around France for let’s say 10 nights, then on to Prague (non-stop flights from Paris start at about $50 and take about 1.5 hours) for some look sees around the Czech Republic for 10 nights then on to Krakow (non-stop flights start at about $40 and take about an hour) to start a 10 night tour of Krakow and a look see around Poland would be a great 4.5 week trip.

Poland and the Czech Republic just touch on “Eastern Europe”. It’s a magnificent, beautiful and greatly unspoiled region. I know, I live in Eastern Europe. I have never been to Poland, but we have a contributor here TexasTravelMom who went last year and she does great trip reports. So look for it or maybe she will chime in with a link to it. Since you are willing to fly within Europe you can reach a good many destinations quickly and inexpensively and that way see what you are most interested in.

Here are my top 5 in Eastern Europe, some are countries some just a city: 1 Budapest + Hungary (of course, home + a couple of one and two night side trips in Hungary) https://youtu.be/1nd5AtZIrTk?feature=shared 2 Ukraine (Ukraine is out of the question? No, not really. Lviv last time I checked was a US State Department Level 3 zone and its not far from the Polish Border. I can help with that if you are interested) this one is an old tourist video https://youtu.be/uaMkZJJoXcI?si=Xlum0Q9AAcQ_VVUa . If it looks interesting the second one tells what its like to visit today https://youtu.be/oYkRd-2GtbQ?si=D1WaPD0085VIDTm2 3 Montenegro (very affordable and very beautiful. Could be as little as 4 nights along the coast or could be 10 days or more if you are into the hiking, rafting and sights of the high country) https://youtu.be/CAGbR-_iEGE?si=p8KvLF_fDevm994O 4 Sarajevo + Bosnia & Herzegovina (culturally it’s hard to beat the experience. 3 nights in Sarajevo and another 3 in some of the smaller but fascinating cities) https://youtu.be/uhVJkWrSm08?si=1513Uf6sytFF-Vam 5 Bulgaria (very affordable from Sofia to Nessebar and all points in between … amazing. 10 days to 3 weeks) https://youtu.be/N1-Jmq7BLFE?si=S27s29rbI90ORGYn

I agree that Poland and Czechia will stretch the budget. You can tour Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Copernicus studied there. https://maius.uj.edu.pl/en_GB/zwiedzanie

Poland is a very large country with great destinations all over the place. You could easily spend the entire 5 weeks there. At least in the major tourist destinations of Gdansk, Warsaw and Krakow, I've been impressed by the quality of the food. There's a wide variety of ethnicities represented. This is by way of saying I wouldn't just allocate ten days to Poland.

acraven, I dont disagree with that at all, and I havent been there. The OP appeared to be floating a bit so i just threw out more ideas to look at. 3 to 5 weeks you can do a lot with and that makes decisions harder. Do I get a taste of a little or a lot or drill down deep in once place? What if I dont like the one place? What if I regret not spending all my time in one of the places I visited?

We should all have such problems.

Thank you for all the input and unique ideas. We are reading several Rick Steves books, from our library, on France vs Poland /Czech Republic/Hungary trips. So many choices. A relative lived in Lyon France and has so many suggestion- so that is tempting me. Maybe I will be lucky and be able to travel to both areas in the near future.

That's great you're doing your research, Robin, and welcome to the Forum. I don't know if you've taken a look at the many RS videos / suggestions for regions on this website - Here are just a few ideas, watching as many of Rick's videos as possible will give you a good starting point. And because you mentioned Lyon...
https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/read/articles/sightseeing-in-hilly-lyon
https://www.ricksteves.com/europe/france

This was interesting, but there is so so much more on here about Poland - https://blog.ricksteves.com/blog/category/poland/page/2/

I would sit down with my travel companion and outline what we liked about travel, staying somewhere versus needing to move every few days, why such a short amount of time in Paris (day one landing is mostly shot with jet lag, so that leaves you 3 days and are you traveling on that 4th day? In which case it's at most 2.5 days?). Are you keen museum types, or just wander have a coffee-types, foodies.... you get the idea! As others have mentioned, you could easily spend 5 weeks in either Poland / Czech or France. Don't discount travel days - If you choose to do all 3 countries, that means at least ??? days of travel, and a multi-trip journey hopefully flying into Paris and out of ?? Then comes figuring out train travel, how many days, how many nights in each place.....

Interesting what Acraven said about Poland, if you use the search bar above, you will get some great trip reports on Poland, and for that matter France as well.

If I were traveling for 5 weeks, I would budget in 'rest' days, (perhaps one per week?) without anything to do except laundry! Good luck and hopefully as your thoughts solidify, you will update us with your plans!

Another vote for Poland. If you have the desire to visit Poland, the simple answer is: do it.

I have been there on 3 major trips, 2001, 2003 and 2005...all lovely and enjoyable. Places visited were Warsaw, obviously and likewise Krakow too in 2001. In 2033 it was Gdansk and Malbork, in 2005 we (the Mrs, MIL, and I ) focused on Torun and a small town NW of Torun in the area of the lower Vistula, Chelmno.

Everywhere by train and by bus Torun to Chelmno. No flying , avoided that option. All 3 trips started from Berlin on the day train and were in July.

Since 2005 I've visited , revisited some of the border towns on the German-Polish border, ie on the eastern side of the Oder River, which in and of itself is quite fascinating, eg. east of Frankfurt an der Oder and Küstrin-Kielz.

Sociologically, very interesting and revealing being in these areas devoid of outside visitors. Service industry personnel are usually tri-lingual, some more, some less.

Bottom line: One basic regret pertaining to the 3 major trips, not enough time. Another day or two would have added to the lovely experience.