Starting To Plan

I really liked Brno. It has a very nice historic area and is much less touristy than Prague. However, Brno is a sizable city, and you may prefer to focus on smaller places since you're already including Prague and Vienna. Olomouc is farther off your direct path. It's a very nice university town (covered in Rick's book and possibly in one of his videos). It was very quiet at the time of my summer 2018 visit, but it would surely be livelier in the fall.

There has been considerable discussion in the Czech forum of smaller places that sound lovely, but I haven't been to any of them yet.

There is also Cesky Krumlov: https://youtu.be/WXK6DtiFVek
And I enjoyed a couple of castles
Zvikov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ99HHCqQLg
Karlstejn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9uzcw94x_M

Outside of Vienna if you need a day trip and want to say you crossed another border:
Sopron (1 hour train): https://youtu.be/v3yzYKqCWzM
Gyor and Pannonhalma (1.5 hour train): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvVb2jcRnVk
Budapest (3 hour train): https://youtu.be/5pqFIZvWtmU

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Here is Ricks official stance on the subject of Tour dates"

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Both James and acraven beat me to it. We loved Cesky Krumlov, my sister still talks about it 6 years later. And my husband has been to Brno and would like to get back there.

Back in 1999, we rented bicycles in Vienna and started pedaling west, along the Danube riverside path. Back then, you could rent bikes from one Austrian train station and turn them in at another, allowing an “open-jaw” bike tour. It sounds like the train station bike rental program is no longer available (that’s a shame), but a bike ride is still possible now, if you can get wheels.

We pedaled over several days, visiting such places as Zwentendorf an der Donau, Durnstein, Krems (memorable picnic in a park), and Melk. We planned to catch a train to eventually get to Prague, and determined that to fit in a visit before we had to catch our plane home. Ybbs, Austria was the farthest we could go by bike before needing to go by train from there.

Reaching the town center of Ybbs, thinking the train station must be somewhere near downtown, the tourist information office in the middle of town told us that the train station was some distance outside of town! We rode furiously to make the station and turn in the bikes before the train for Český Krumlov arrived. Made it just in time!

Once underway, the train moved swiftly and smoothly thru Austria, and then stopped at the border with the Czech Republic. There, they changed engines, as we passengers sat in the cars. Starting up again, the train lurched and creaked, and moved much, much slower. This was going to take a while.

We spent the next 2 days in Český Krumlov, including a visit to its fantastical castle, and to the Egon Schiele myseum. We then headed farther north, for a stop at České Budějovice, before continuing on towards Prague.

acraven, James, Barb and Cyn,

Thank you for the ideas! Whether this trip happens in the Spring, Autumn, or 2022...or 23...or....
It is fun to plan again!

Kutna Hora is now at the top of my list!

We stopped at Kutna Hora on the way the Cesky Krumlov from Prague. We hired a driver through CK Shuttle. We toured the silver mine (advance reservations) and the church. He then drove us to CKrumlov.