Road Trip in Eastern Europe

Well, your driving time will appear to take a good part of any day your are changing locations. SO limited "touring and site seeing" for that day. With that in mind, some of those stops may really end up being one day to see that location. Prague - so much to see! Definitely need a few days there. Krakow, truly wonderful. This fall, our favorite activities there were Schindler's Warehouse, Museum after walking around the Jewish quarter, Also, we took a tour of the Nova Huta Communist development in a Trabant - loved that tour with Crazy Guides! Budapest, again so many things to see and do. We thoroughly enjoyed getting to a concert at Matthias Church at night! Seeing "the shoes" on the waterfront near the Parliament moving. Very much need a few days here too!

What are the best ways to enjoy the town for a teenager.

Maybe the first question should be whether a teenager will enjoy being cooped up in a car with his parents for very long travel days.

Let me try and illustrate.
1. Arrive Krakow about 2pm. By the time you reach the hotel its 4pm. Walk, dinner, sleep. So why did you start here, well to save $800 on a drop off fee. But the day rental, the hotel, the gas, the time … all maybe close to $800.
2. Wake and eat breakfast and at 9am taxi to car rental company. 10am depart Krakow having seen nothing of Krakow. Drive time to Prague is 6:15, but there are any number of interesting stops along the way. For a list a good cheat is to go to Daytrip.com and put in the trip. They will offer you stops along the way, and you can get an idea of what’s worth seeing. Figure one stop of 90 minutes plus lunch, so now your trip is 8:45 and you arrive in Prague at 6:45 pm. Find a place to park the car, get checked in, clean up, then about 7:30 head out walk a bit and have dinner.
3. Today you get to see a city you have traveled to. Most spend 3 full days in Prague, you have one. Parking the unused car only cost 140 euro in Prague.
4. Wake, eat breakfast and hop in the car to Tihany on Lake Balaton at 9am. Since you will be driving right past Cesky Krumlov, that’s a logical stop for 2.5 hours with lunch. Probably worth 4 hours or even a full night but you have an 8 hour drive to finish. At 7:30pm arrive Tihany. Another hour to find your airbnb find a place to park your car and get cleaned up. Dinner and bed.
5. Today you have time to see the largest lake in Central Europe. Beautiful too. Or you can see Tihany, great place and maybe if you keep moving you can get to one winery. So “seeing some wineries” is seeing one … maybe.
6. After breakfast you head for Budapest. Will take you about 3 hours to reach Budapest, park the car and get to your hotel and check in. There are some interesting stops. Let’s say you find another winery on the way. Add 3 hours to the trip for that and lunch, so by 3pm you can start seeing Budapest. The unused car will only cost you 210 euro to park for three nights. You have 2.5 days to see the city. You know that’s not great, but its not insane either. You are one full day short of a good visit.
7. In Budapest
8. In Budapest
9. Back to Krakow. After breakfast. Start at 9am. The pretty drive is through Kosice and eastern Slovakia. Figure 6.5 hours but there are so many good stops, with slight detours, lets call it 9 hours or 10 with lunch. So arrive Krakow at 7pm, return car and check in, eat, sleep.
10. You finally have a day to see Krakow
11. Fly home.

My suggestion. Fly into Budapest for 5 nights and do some day trips. I know a guide that can take you to the wineries, introduce you to them. You can do 3 in a day. A few have wonderful accommodation for a night so you could make it an overnight trip and do some other sightseeing as well; like Tihany on the lake. Good guide. Then fly to Prague and do the same. If you wanted to add Krakow there is a night train out of Prague (regiojet) and I think an entire sleeping cabin is under 200 €. Just steal a night from Budapest and 2 nights from Prague.

For 10 days/nights, my suggestion would be just Krakow and Budapest and move by train. Both destinations are glorious and there is so much to see and do in both. The really great thing if you stay somewhere for a few days is that bits of the language start to stick and locals remember that they saw you yesterday and are even more friendly! I travelled extensively(in Asia and Australia) with my children from ages 12/7 thru to when they were 20/15 and we loved public transport and interacting constantly with locals.

I would forget flying in and out of Krakow. It makes little sense for your itinerary.

Instead, I suggest flying into Budapest and out of Prague or vice versa. Use the multi-city tab to plan this and not two one way tickets. It's known as an open jaw ticket and shouldn't be much more than a round trip.

This way you are not backtracking but going in one direction. This will save time.

If you wanted to do some exploring between Prague and Budapest, then 10 days is going to be sort of a short trip but …
I did an estimate of the cost of a car rental for the road trip part of this and I came up with not less than 1250€ or more than 1500€ (Stix). With a hired driver 994€ (daytrip.com)

Day One: Arrive Prague
Day Two: See Prague
Day Three: See Prague
Day Four: Prague > Karlstejn Castle > Sazava monastery / lunch > Ceske Budejovice > Cesky Krumlov for the night. With all of the stops you should be there by 5pm (320€ with a contracted driver)
Day Five: A day in Cesky Krumlov. Worth it. No transportation costs, no parking costs.
Day Six: Cesky Krumlov > Melk / lunch > Pannonhalma > Budapest. With all of the stops you should be in Budapest by 6pm (664€ with a contracted driver - ouch).
Day Seven: See Budapest
Day Eight: Depart on Wine Tour
Day Nine: Return from Wine Tour (sorry, don’t know her price. I am betting 350€ to 500€ for a two day tour, but that’s a wild guess). Here, if you wanted you could rent a car. But its still going to be a few hundred euro.
Day Ten: See Budapest
Day Eleven: Depart

Mr. E nailed it.

Thank you too all. I think we’ll take the advice and fly into one city and out of another and use the sleeper cars to go between. Make it a 12 day trip as well because I really want to go to Krakow as well.

RegioJet does do the sleeper from Krakow to Prague that the three of you can do in on compartment for under 200 euro. And the Czechs have a night train to Budapest for a couple of hundred euro for three in a compartment. These are great ideas over 12 days.

I have never been to Krakow, for some reason it keep eluding me. But thats my short coming, it think its a brilliant place to go. The word is that you need not less than 2 full days and 3 is much better.

Prague, well, for Central Europe you kinda got to see it. My tolerance was 2 full days but if you throw in a day trip down to Karlštejn Castle you get to see some beautiful country and its good use of another day in Prague. Thats 3 full days in Prague. Prague does have one of my better hotel experiences; the Ventana Hotel. I doubt there is another as nice and well located. But a tad pricy. But for the benefits I didnt mind. Gone twice and would do it a third time. I know it sounded like Prague isnt my favorite but I have been twice. No comment.

Budapest. Here is some information that might be helpful. There is more on my profile page https://community.ricksteves.com/users/50322

• Events in Budapest https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/hungary/updated-budapest-events-for-january-june-2026
• Theater and concert venues https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/hungary/updated-budapest-performance-venue-list
• Hotels https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/hungary/budapest-updated-hotel-list
• Food https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/hungary/restaurants-in-budapest-revisited

You mentioned wine once. Hungarians love their wine. You dont see much exported becasue most of the vineyards are mom and pop places but this has been great wine country since the Romans settled the area. When you have real dates I can look and see if we have anything local going on. There is usually some sort of wine tasting event on the river or in a hotel or restaurant at least 3 times a month. Sort of a nice local thing to do. Or as I mentioned before I know a guide. There are interesting wineries close to town.