Eastern Europe Transportation Prague-Vienna-Budapest-Krakow

Hi Nanci....you'll love all these places, they're great. You have alloted the right amount of time for a relaxing trip.

Be sure to do the mineral baths in Budapest at both places Rick recs---fab!

Cesky Krumlov and Karlovy Vary are great places in CZ.

Krakow is very nice.

Take trains to Prg,Vienna, Budapest for sure and then you might want to fly to Krakow. I haven't done the night trains due to all the horror stories of not being able to sleep, theft, etc.

As far as guides go, I can't help you there as we're not guide and tour people, we prefer our freedom and just follow Rick's guidebooks as they are right on. Be sure to get his Eastern Europe book-it's good!

My first comment would be to drop one of those cities. 4 cities in 13 nights/14 days is quite a bit. Remember that going from city to city, finding your hotel, and packing and unpacking all take time. We visited Krakow, Prague, and Vienna in 15 days and thought that it was about the right amount of time.

If you want to include all 4 cities, I would suggest taking one night away from Prague and giving that night to Vienna.

Cesky Krumlov is beautiful and certainly worth to visit. Instead of Trebic I would see Kutna Hora. It's about one hour by bus or train from Prague and there is quite more to see there.

My wife & I visited these same cities in May over 18 days, plus Berlin. I agree that 4 nights in Prague might be too many (prepare for lots of tourists), and would add a night to Vienna instead (or Krakow since you're flying out early morning); 3 nights in other cities suited our style--enough time to explore and get lost, and not too rushed. Don't recommend the overnight trains, but believe it's the only way between Krakow-Budapest via train--difficult to sleep due to noise, frequent stops, middle-of-the-night passport checks. Loved Krakow and Vienna. Eger, Hungary, is interesting for its wine caves--a 2.5 hr train ride from Budapest.

We traveled by train between cities--on our own without a guide, using Rick Steves' plus other travel book suggestions. In Vienna, follow RS's "tram tour" around the Ring, very informative and cheap (24-hr metro ticket is only 1.50 Euros). Consider an Eastern Europe Railpass (5 travel days in 30 days).

Krakow to Budapest is a long train ride. Save time and fly. I believe we flew Hungarian Airlines and the fare was less than US100.

My husband and I are doing almost that same trip starting next week! We fly into Vienna, train to Bud., night train to Krakow and night train to Prague, fly out of Prague. We have 3-4 nights per city. I am doing all arrangements on my own as we had specific dates to be certain places and will have our teenage daughters with us the first two cities. I have recommendations for tour guides in Bud and Prague which I heard really make the city more meaningful. Of course we travel with Rick's guide book the whole way and I have read a lot of other books already. If you email me after Aug 10th, I can share some specifics with you.