Poland + Brno + Vienna itinerary and time allocation help, please.

We spent a week in Krakow and enjoyed all of it. It is just lovely to walk around and some of the places you are mentioning, like Kazimierz and old town do not necessarily take a lot of time unless you are stopping a lot to shop. We loved walking along the Planty green belt around the city. If you pass the Basilica of St Francis, pop in, it is a very unique church, highly recommend looking in, especially if your daughter is interested in Art Nouveau Art. Even though we were interested in Nowa Huta, it did not really live up to our expectations, personally, I would prioritize other sites. The Schindler Museum always had a line, even with tickets and was very crowded, so consider that when allotting time. We were just there in May.

Gdansk also has a ton to see, in addition we really enjoyed the Emigration Museum in nearby Gdynia if you have the time, A short train ride and walk to the museum. The St Mary Co-Cathedral may also interest your daughter, it felt more like a museum than a church to us and you are also likely to pass it in old town. The WW2 museum is huge and pretty emotionally draining , took us half a day. We spent about 4 days in Gdansk and easily filled it without Malbork, Westport or Sopot.

Enjoy.

I like your itinerary a lot!

A very memorable way to do Nowa Huta is with a Crazy Guides tour. Get picked up at your hotel in an old East German Trabant or Soviet Lada and ride in Warsaw Pact style to the communist-era development. I went for the Deluxe tour which includes lunch; on my tour, we went to a milk bar near Nowa Huta and tried a variety of pierogi and other treats. It's a bit pricey, but it's a cool experience. The guides tend to be young, too. My guide was a college student studying in China who was "home" for the summer. https://www.crazyguides.com/

It's cool that you are including Brno, which rarely makes it onto itineraries. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm spending 7 nights there in October. Austerlitz was on the initial planning list but didn't make the final cut. I guess my Napoleon fandom is nowhere near your daughter's level. Forum member Fred, however, will be delighted that Austerlitz made your cut.

The Musikverein is a great place to see a classical concert. It's Habsburg wonderful! I wouldn't recommend one of the "Best of" shows with musicians in period costume, but if you can find something more interesting, it really is an excellent venue.

With two nights in Brno, you only really have one day unless you take a later train to Vienna.

I was there a couple of months ago and enjoyed it. If you can't add any nights to Brno, my suggestion would be to take a later train to Vienna and spend most of the day in Brno. It's only about 90 minutes from Brno to Vienna.

1) Former camp of Stuthoff is reachable by bus from Gdansk. Just in case you are interested in that part of WWII. You allocated 4 nights in Gdansk, that does sound about right.

2) Torun is famous for sweetbread and Mokolaj Kopernik. A full day in it is usually what most travel agents do, so I suppose it is enough to see the main sights.

3) Krakow 6 nights might be too excessive, but if you do 2 day trips (salt mines and Auschwitz) that does sound reasonable. At this time in your itinerary you will probably need some downtime too.

4) Brno 2 nights is one day? Castle and Austerlitz? It might be packed but doable. Will you be driving to Austerlitz?

5) How long in Vienna for you and your daughter?

Some parts of your itinerary might call for a rented car, some might be better on an organized tour. Have you considered these modes of logistics yet?

pln -other than the Schindler museum being crowded, what did you think of it? Thanks for the recommendation for the St Mary Co-Cathedral, I really appreciate it! I have considered the Emigration museum, wondering if I should prioritize it if my family isn't from that area?

Dave - I've looked at Crazy Guides for Nowa Huta and am definitely leaning that way! Eager to hear how you spend 7 nights in Brno. Sounds fun. I would like to make a dedicated Czechia trip "someday." Full disclosure, Fred is the one who suggested Austerlitz for my daughter and it sounds like the train schedules or routes make it easier than when he went.
For the Vienna concerts, I'm looking at
Conductor Herbert Blomstedt
Vienna Philharmonic Franz Schubert Symphony No. 7 in B Minor, D. 759 (“Unfinished”) Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 7 in E Major, WAB 107
and Chamber Music in the Brahms-Saal (I love Chamber Music):
Fanny Cäcilie Mendelssohn Bartholdy String quartet E-flat major
Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartet in F minor, op. 95 "Quartetto serioso"
Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowsky Piano Trio in A minor, op. 50

considering these concerts as being appealing enough to shift our trip dates to accomodate them.

Frank II - thank you! Yeah, it's not a ton of time in Brno. The Napoleon connection would be the main thing we're planning on there.

Kootah - thank you for the Stutoff recommendation. I'm sure we'd enjoy more time in Torun that just a stop but I can't let this inflate into a month long trip, either.
For Brno and Austerlitz, I'm planning on a small group day-tour experience. Not planning on driving anywhere. If we miss the castle, we miss the castle. I edited my original post and I'm planning on 4 nights Vienna.

Thanks! These are helpful, specific suggestions and I do appreciate them.

Krakow

The question wasn't pitched to me 🙂, but I thought the Schindler Museum was great. As you may know, the museum deals with Krakow's experience of WWII. Visitors do get to see Schindler's office as set up during WWII. Nearby is the Pharmacy Under the Eagle, a corner pharmacy in the Warsaw Ghetto run by Roman Catholic Polish pharmacist Tadeusz Pankeiwicz, one of Yad Vashem's Righteous Among the Nations. A worthwhile read at some point over the next year: Pankiewicz's The Krakow Ghetto Pharmacy, a short book detailing his experience of the ghetto and what he saw from pharmacy's windows.

Yay! Crazy Guides tour. I think it will be a nice mother-daughter experience.

I have many trip reports on this forum. Krakow? Check. There was that time I got kissed my a man at 4 am on Krakow's main square.

When you see the price of Crazy Guide's Deluxe Communist Tour in 2018, you will see how the cost of travel in Poland has changed over the last 8 years. If I had a child, it would still be worth it to do the tour at the current price.

Brno

Ah, it makes sense that Fred would point you in that direction. He loves his European history. I met up with him in Berlin once. Our activity? Going to a cemetery where he taught me about all the people buried there. During COVID, we began having long phone conversations about European history and travel. Good guy.

I will offer you a private guide for Austerlitz, too. Feel free to do it on your own, of course, but sometimes a good guide is rather helpful when looking at battlefields and war memorials to give context. Helena Svedova has good reviews and offers what appears to be a nice, efficient tour of the sites that includes transportation between sites. I'm not doing the Austerlitz tour with her; I'm doing the full-day version of this trip with her. I can give feedback about her after that tour in October. (Edit: I missed that you were planning to do a small-group tour. That works, too!).

One of my favorite YouTube channels is the Honest Guide, done by two guys in Prague. If you haven't found that channel and/or the Brno videos with hints for off-the-beaten-path experiences (though pretty much everything in Brno is off the beaten path), here they are:

• 13 Reasons to visit Brno instead of Prague
• Honestly? This is My Favorite City

Vienna

Oh my. That Vienna Philharmonic performance looks excellent. I would definitely go for that. I like Bruckner a lot. The chamber music performance in the Brahms Saal at the Musikverien looks very good, too. I agree with you. I would consider those concerts appealing enough to shift the dates of your trip.

I like the Augarten a lot for a late afternoon/early evening stroll. There are little garden plots for the locals, large open grassy fields for relaxing, much room to walk and Flaktürme (enormous anti-aircraft towers from WWII that were too large and stout to try to blow up). It's a good place to see Viennese being Viennese. Nearby is the Prater, an area of amusements that includes the Riesenrad (Ferris Wheel) that was in the film The Third Man.

Dave- thanks for all the suggestions! So glad you've gotten to visit Krakow before. Thanks for the book suggestion, too. My husband and daughter bought me a 2 volume Polish history set for Christmas and I'm working on those, too. Oh I know prices have gone up. 8 years ago I wasn't doing any travel. Our first family vacation was in 2021 (driving to the next state though to be fair it was a good destination).

Thanks for the tour guide suggestion for Austerlitz, too! I'll look at that. And then I found 2 guided group tours, too. Just need to decide.

Should I think I have a good chance for getting tickets for the Vienna concerts? I signed up for email alerts for when the tickets go on sale. I'll look up those Honest Guide videos, too.

You probably will include this anyway, but in Nowa Huta, be sure to visit the Arka Pana church after reading about its origins. Seeing it and the river pebble cladding placed by locals moved me to tears.

When I was in Vienna, I landed a ticket for the Spanish Riding School to see the training for the dancing white horses. I had a gallery ticket as it was a) the cheapest b) still available on the day. I cried during the event- it was so beautiful.

I spent a week in Brno a few years ago. It was my base for taking trains and buses to visit other interesting towns. I took a train to see the Punkva Caves. It was amazing. The town of Mikulov has a castle where Napoleon stayed after the Battle of Austerlitz.

I think you have a great chance at getting tickets for the chamber orchestra and a good chance at getting tickets to the Vienna Philharmonic event. i would suggest being on the purchase websites for both at the moment sales open, just to be sure. If you don't get an initial ticket, there should be some sort of wait list. Austrians are great about returning tickets they do not plan to use, so you can end up getting tickets closer to the concert if you don't get them initially.

Is your 2-volume history of Poland God's Playground by Norman Davies? In the fateful year of 2020, I had a 3-week trip through Poland planned, and I had been reading Polish history for around a year before the planned departure date, including Davies' tome at the recommendation of Fred, as I recall. Several of us on the forum were headed to Poland in 2020, and we started a thread where we shared what we were reading and watching: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/books-movies/poland-reading-and-viewing.

Jennie - thank you for the Arka Pana church recommendation.

Kootah - thanks! Mikulov might have to be another trip (probably will). I would like to visit more of Czechia another time. I checked the Spanish Riding School but they don't have any availiability for our dates.

Dave - thanks for that link with all the Polish books! That is great! And yes, it's God's Playground. Too bad there are typos in volume 2. Those really distract and bother me, unfortunately. I've read Michener's Poland several times. I know I've mentioned this on other threads, but I was in Poland for about 2 weeks each, 1998 and 2002. I have the DVD the Pianist but not the book. I know this is a different thread, but one of my favorite books is The Endless Steppe. Autobiographical account of a young girl whose family is exiled to Siberia for being Captitalists. They lived in Poland although it's now the capital of Lithuania. It's written for probably upper middle school interest but I've given it to my mom, my mother in law, and recommended it to so many people.

pbscd -- Thanks for the book recommendation! I'll look into it.

My wife and I stayed 5 nights in Vienna in 2025, and 5 nights in Krakow in 2017, visiting most of the sites you list. Our trip reports might be useful reference.

• Vienna (parts 1-4): https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/trip-report-austria-bavaria-aug-sep-2025

• Krakow (bottom half of part 2): https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/poland-wroclaw-boleslawiec-krakow-aug-2017-part-1-of-2

Thanks Geoff! I had read your Vienna and Bavaria report earlier but hadn't seen your Krakow , Wroclaw report before. What site or sites did you use to search for apartments? I don't know what we're going to do for lodging.

What site or sites did you use to search for apartments?

Hi. I searched many sites. For Poland (2017) we rented from places we found on VRBO (Krakow) and Booking.com (Wroclaw).
For Vienna (2025) we rented an AirBNB. For the rest of our stays during the 2025 trip we rented directly (often after finding on Booking.com), through Booking.com, or through AirBNB.

I envy your upcoming trip!

Geoff, or anyone else, do you have a sense regarding Airbnb use in Poland if it's pretty ok? I know it's sure frowned upon in Paris, London, and Amsterdam or at least I've read about it pricing out locals from apartments and I don't want to do that.

Checked out The Endless Steppe on Amazon... got a softcover version for a fairly inexpensive price... looking forward to reading it.

Also... noticed I messed up the link on "Honestly" Brno video. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nXsttB-1Rk

Fixed above, too.

I hope you like the book, Dave!

I did find the video you mentioned, thanks for recommending his channel!

Well, I'm leaving for Munich in 3 weeks so next June planning is on the back burner but still very much in the works. I have actually booked all my hotels except Gdansk and have Google flight alerts set.

Well, now I found an excellent looking concert in Wroclaw on Friday June 4 that might require some hotel swappage. Downside of booking everything early, I guess. I have Wroclaw booked June 6-8. Unless I just add to Wroclaw, or is that excessive to have 4 nights there?

I think having 4 nights in Gdansk is wonderful - so much to see. Just love this city!
Consider a tram ride to Oliwa Cathedral and get hear an organ concert. There is also a large park which is beautiful (OK, I did get a bit lost, but beautiful walk!) Loved the Food Tour with Bart in Gdansk. And consider not only St. Mary's, but St. Bridget's Church - known as the Solidarity Church and has an incredible amber alter. This stands behind St. Catherine's - both wonderful. The European Solidarity Centre cannot be missed!
Krakow Yes! to Nowa Huta with a Crazy Guides tour - great experience. And we loved the Schindler Museum.
This is a wonderful itinerary!

Thank you, marnamc2. Have you ever been to Wroclaw? It was just yesterday I found the Mussorgsky concert and really want to see it. But it means going to Wroclaw earlier, probably just adding the 2 nights so we have 4 there, because of the 2 concerts in Vienna at the tail end. Planning on flying out the day after the 2nd concert My dates are getting pretty inflexible because of the concerts but I have a BA in piano performance (just sharing that to support that I really do love classical music) and I think it'd be worth it.

Of course flights are not at their reasonable prices this far out and I do accept that they just won't be that great since Vienna is a pretty expensive airport to fly out of for us.

Dave thanks for the information about Brno. I might be interested in going there because of its connection to Gregor Mendel.

cala--

There is a lot Mendel stuff in Brno! I think you could pretty easily build a day around him.

@ pbscd.....Are you including Warsaw in the final itinerary? I know you're still engaged in the planning for this trip a year from now. Should you include Warsaw, which would be suggestion in light of the Poles connected with Napoleonic history.

Of all of Napoleon's allies, the Poles were the most loyal and enduring, they stuck with the Emperor until the very end , they went into exile with him on Elba, and they were at Waterloo. I suggest you might want to see the Polish Army/Military Museum in Warsaw, which would cover the military history of the Poles connected with Napoleon.

The Polish National Museum in Krakow covers that too, lots of Napoleonic military realia,

On Brno: In the Zentrum , ie ca. 30 minute from the train station, is the chateau., which the Czech retain the historical German name, Schloss Austerlitz. The Napoleon Exhibition is there, pretty thorough, balanced. I'm sure you daughter would absolutely delighted, captivated and fascinated perusing this exhibit on this dramatic event as was I , took me one hour to finish going through everything, would have been even longer had I not been approaching closing time.

I would suggest that this exhibition is not be missed. I spent 2 daytrips here, well worth the energy and time., very helpful and nice female staff speaking both German and English depending on whom your interlocutor is.

And I welcome feedback on what I have listed as priorities, too. I love classical music, we both love history. And she is more into art than I am, though I do enjoy it

Given your daughter’s interest in art, visiting the National Museum in Gdansk may be worthwhile. It houses Hans Memling’s highly regarded Last Judgment Triptych.

Mendel would be an added draw to Brno for sure.

Fred, I don't think we have time for Warsaw this trip. I would like all my family to visit Poland at least once because it's very special to me so it's one place I definitely plan on returning to. We've talked about a family trip to Poland or more recently considering Germany, in 2-3 years. But when we do make it to Warsaw, we'll be sure to visit the military history museum there. And thank you for the Brno suggestion. We will be eager to visit the Napoleon exhibit there at Schloss Austerlitz.

Marco, thank you for the art suggestion in Gdansk! Actually, Memling has been our composer this school term (12 weeks) and we have those triptych prints on our fireplace mantle right now. Would love to see it.

For an art lover, Vienna is a real paradise. Of course the obvious ones are the KHM, Albertina and the Belvedere. All have different highlights (KHM - Archimboldo, Bruegel; Belvedere - Klimt; Albertina - the Batliner collection). But for a more serious lover of art, here are five more options that you/your daughter might now have thought of:

1. Academy of Fine Arts at Schillerplatz - Here you will find the Last Judgement Triptych by Hieronymus Bosch. I could look at this for days.

2. MAK - The Museum of Applied Arts has fascinating exhibitions, but the permanent collection of Thonet chairs is very special.

3. Leopold Museum - The upper floors which focus on the Jugendstil era are probably now my favorite floor of any museum anywhere.

4. Wien Museum - My favorite Klimt painting is here and the art shown tells a great story of Vienna. Plus it is free.

5. Ernst Fuchs Museum - In the Otto Wagner Villa (Otto Wagner, if you know, you know), the building of course if a stunner but the art and small garden are very unique.

Thank you, Emily! The first 3 were already on our list (she loves Archimboldo and we day tripped to Lens from Paris to see his 4 seasons this year in May) but the others will be added. I think she's going to love Vienna. I'll be there in less than 2 weeks with my husband (leaving in a week starting in Munich).

Definitely (please) go to the Van Cleef and Arpels exhibit at the MAK when you are here in a few weeks.

Emily, I'll write that down! We have quite a bit of margin in my plans. Trying to avoid packing every minute and more just having a good time (do have marriage of Figaro tickets and a concert in Vienna).