After days of stalking the tour portal, I finally got our tour roster and hotel list for our Berlin, Prague and Vienna tour that starts 9/24. Our guide will be Jana Kratka. It finally feels like it is real! This will be our 5th RS tour. I am trying a new system of organization for this trip. I downloaded an app called "Keep" on my phone and it works like sticky notes. I opened a note for the trip and then made a section for each day where I listed ideas of what to see and where to eat. I plotted all these points for each city on a Google map file so I can see where they are and group things close together. I find that I always try to do the things that matter most to me first and work down my wishlist from there, and in so doing make a lot of unnecessary trips across the city. I am curious to see if it works.
For anyone interested (because I live vicariously through hearing about other peoples' trips), here is our itinerary:
9/22: Arrive in Berlin, spend one night pre-tour
9/23-9/25 Berlin on tour (4 nights total Berlin)
9/26 Dresden on tour (1 night)
9/27-9/29 Prague on tour (3 nights)
9/30 Cesky Krumlov on tour (1 night)
10/1-10/3 Vienna on tour (3 nights)
10/4-10/6 Budapest on our own (3 nights)
10/7-10/9 Krakow on our own (3 nights)
10/10-10/13 Lisbon on our own (4 nights)
10/14 fly home
We booked a transfer from Vienna to Budapest, even though it is easy and cheap by train, because we wanted to stop for a couple of hours in Bratislava without worrying about luggage. We will also stop in Gyor on the way. We will arrive in Budapest around 3 and have 1 evening and 2 full days (I know we could stay busy for much longer than that). We also booked a transfer from Budapest to Krakow, because because we thought it might be nice to see some countryside. We will be stopping at Oravsky hrad along the way. We will be in Krakow for one evening and 2 days. We will go on a half day trip to Auschwitz on one morning. Then we fly to Lisbon. We will go to Sintra on one day leaving us one evening and 2 full days for Lisbon.
I know we could spend much longer in any of these destinations, but we kind of like seeing the highlights of many different places and then deciding where to come back to (although, if I'm honest, the more we travel the longer our wishlist gets, so we don't return to many places yet!) Hope everyone is enjoying planning for their next adventure!