Woman Travelling Solo: Paris, Switzerland, Italy, Krakow and Prague

According to www.skyscanner.com, you can find direct flights to Krakow from Rome, Pisa, Bologna, or Milan.

Once in Krakow, it's easy to get to Auschwitz with a package tour that includes transportation. Or you can take the PKS bus to Oswiecim, which sometimes gets filled up. You must reserve your visit to the museum of Auschwitz but you can't reserve this bus. Get details on both options at Krakow's Tourist Information office.

Other commenters may want to know in what month you will travel.

We had a car so drove to Versailles. While I am sure there are public transport ways to get there, maybe consider booking a tour from Paris, which will also allow you to skip the line (looooooong line).

Narrow it down some more. You'll use 1/2 day each time you move. Unless you are going to walk around all day with your backpack, you will have to go from the train/airport to your hotel to drop your pack on arrival, and go from your hotel to the station/airport when you leave. This takes time, especially if you're using public transportation and/or moving through a city in rush hour. Basically 2 nights in a town gives you one full day to see it.

Example: if you use your only day in Paris to see Versailles, you won't have time to even see all the monuments in Paris from the outside.

Never mind getting to Auschwitz from Krakow (which is easy - there are directions on the Auschwitz website), how are you going to get to Krakow from "somewhere" in Italy. How are you going to get from Krakow to Prague.

You aren't giving yourself any time to just engage in the culture and digest, as you put it.

" How to get to Versailles". A quick Google will give you precise instructions..

" Where do I want to go in Switzerland?"
" Where do I want to go in Italy ?"

Seems to me you would benefit from reading a good Europe guide book. I, for one, do not know where you WANT to go in Italy or in Switzerland. It does seem to me that your itinerary, as laid out in your post, allows no time for travel between places. You can usually expect a change from one country to another to take at least half a day., so that is about 2 days (4 half days) taken up with that. Are you flying home from Prague or do you have to go back to Paris for your flight home?

Your plan needs a good rethink.

May I suggest that you do some research either online or books?That will help narrow it down. For example,Versailles is pretty much an all day event. It's always a nightmare there.It's not right in the central area of Paris and requires travelling time.

Could you add a day more in Paris? 2 days won't allow much time for seeing sites. :)
Check out the hop on hop off bus if you've got limited time, it'll take you to all of the sites in one swift tour, and you're able to hop off the bus at any one site you'd like to see longer. :)
Best money I'd spent in Paris. (The tour I took was located in front of Notre dame)

Check out vayable.com (for fun different personalized tours)

I believe tickets for Versailles are sold at the train (metro) station, and are on the RER line, so a little more expensive, and heard weekends at Versallies are tourist full and crazy?
In Italy I'm sure you could get away with one day in Venice, and go to Rome from there. :)

In Switzerland have you thought of hitting the Alpine slides? They look like so much fun!

For your itinerary have you thought of starting in Russia and ending in Italy, that way your travel is more cohesive and well planned, I'm assuming that you're flying out of Russia and that's why the plan for ending there?

Sounds fantastic! If you try the Alpine slides I'd love to hear about it!

I understand that Auschwitz is an important 'must do' for some people - it was for me - but I think going all the way to Krakow just for that is not a good use of your travel time. Krakow takes a pretty long time to get to from just about anywhere, even if you fly, so you'll eat up a lot of time in travel to and from for just one day, and you'll spend the bulk of that day going to Auschwitz so no real time to see Krakow itself. Just like 2 nights (1 full day) in Paris and using it all up to see Versailles, 2 nights in Krakow and using it all to go to Auschwitz is not really the way most people want to see these cities. I suggest you reduce the number of places you intend to go and spend a little more time enjoying them.

Definitely get a couple of good guide books and do some further research on travel times from one place to another and be a little more realistic about how much you can see in your time frame. It might help people here to give you more precise information if we know when you are going and how you plan to travel from place to place.

If you want to visit Auschwitz, do it. I went to Kraków just to visit Auschwitz, and Kraków was a bonus. Don't worry about how most people would visit, if Auschwitz is important to you, you're not "most people", anyway. Kraków is lovely in the evening. Have dinner at Hotel Ester, in the Jewish quarter.

Thank you all for responses!! I am editing now and will be sure to update with my actual itinerary to get some input-- thank you!!

K