Help me plan a 10-14 day European roadtrip for early February.

January 22, 2009 1:13 AM

Help me plan a 10-14 day European roadtrip for early February.

I'll be starting and ending in Prague.

Must include Paris for at least 1 day.

I'm intentionally leaving out any other preferences because I want you to post your own ideas as opposed to repeating what I've already considered. I'm pretty cool with anything from sleepy to outrageous. But if you need more info, I'll provide it.

posted by meantime to travel & transportation (12 comments total)

How are you getting around? Train? Car? Plane?
posted by Grrlscout at 2:39 AM on January 22

It may be a little too late for your schedule, but Carnevale in Venice starts on Feb. 14th. In any case, Venice is lovely in February, although of course you'd have to park the car.

An ambitious itinerary might include one or more ferry-trips: you could drive from Prague to Northern Spain (via Paris) then take the Santander-Plymouth ferry to England, drive across England to Newcastle, then take the ferry from there to Kristiansand in Norway, or to Gothenburg, then head down to the south coast of Sweden & hop on a ferry to Germany or Poland, & from there back to Prague. Or even Gothenburg-Stockholm-Helsinki-Talinn-Prague, etc.
posted by misteraitch at 2:43 AM on January 22

The Newcastle-Kristiansand ferry no longer runs, sorry...
posted by Harald74 at 2:59 AM on January 22

And anyway it was Newcastle-Stavanger.
posted by Harald74 at 3:01 AM on January 22

So much for that idea, then! I did take a Newcastle-Kristiantad-Gothenburg ferry trip once, but that was about 7 years ago... I see that Newcastle-Amsterdam is still a possibility, though. In any case, North Sea crossings can be pretty rough, and there will be many pleasanter travel options than that. Also, generally speaking, ferries are more liable affected by bad weather & will be best kept out of any time-critical legs of the journey.
posted by misteraitch at 3:20 AM on January 22

10-14 days. thats not enough time. I just spent 2 weeks driving around france and it was a bit of a rush (and we barely did any of France at all.)

Well according to Google its a 9hr drive from Prague to Paris. (~1,000km).

How much driving to you want to do and how much do you want to 'experience' along the way?
posted by mary8nne at 3:35 AM on January 22

Ferries also take more time than you might imagine. Newcastle-Amsterdam or Hull-Amsterdam is an overnight trip. An incredibly fun overnight trip, as the party starts before you leave port.

If you're coming in from Prague, and you're into driving, you might want to check out the Nürburgring. A friend of mine and his racing enthusiasts club do this once a year... they love it! They drive over from the UK en masse to do this, though. A couple of the guys in his group fly over and get a car/hookup when they land.

What about Salzburg?

Or making your way to Pula, maybe via Budapest? Once in Pula, you can follow the curve of the Adriatic to Italy/Venice, past Trieste, then making your way through the north of Italy towards France... catching the motorway up to Paris or down to Spain... then up to England and over to Amsterdam?

If you're interested in quirky/different, give a beer spa a go. There's one outside Salzburg a friend of mine loves, one outside Innsbruck that's great, as well as one in Prague and Berlin.
posted by Grrlscout at 3:50 AM on January 22

Ferries take too much time out of a short trip in my experience. A fortnight is not a lot of time if you want to cover a lot of ground in Europe. Trains and budget airlines would be my choice for getting around but it's not clear from your question how you want to do things.

I'd look at something like Prague-Dresden-Berlin to start with. From there you could head to Paris via Cologne or Amsterdam. Alternatively, you could head south from Prague to Vienna, then go through Slovenia to Venice and then head back north through Munich.

Oh, and make sure you make the short trip from Prague to Sedlec.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 4:10 AM on January 22

If it was me, I woud:

- head south from Prague, going through places like Cesky Krumlov and Budejovice and even some of the smaller towns (though if you're actually based in Prague I might save that until the spring or summer and go out through Brno, Bratislava and Vienna, which is longer but much faster);

- pass into Austria and head through Linz, then Salzburg (Austria - at least to me - is cloying and boring and associated with men who keep their daughters locked in the basement, so I'd just pass through);

- swing down into Slovenia and Croatia, through Ljubljana, around Lake Bled and maybe do a day of skiing or winter hiking somewhere around there, then down into the Istrian peninsula for some truffles and other great food (seriously, one of the best places in the world to eat right now);

- cut across northern Italy - Trieste, Milan, Torino - into France and Lyon and up to Paris;

- and finally back across Southern Germany - Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Nuermberg - and into Prague.

Obviously, you're not going to spend a lot of time everywhere, but pick a few spots - like the Slovenia/Istra region - and you won't feel rushed. Personally, I love driving in Europe. The distances between things are much less than what Americans who grew up with the long car road trip are used to (the fast road from Prague-Ljubljana is an easy-ish day's drive), and much less than what it felt like when you did the Eurorail trip in college; the roads are great and, especially in the North, there's a nice etiquette to driving and passing at high speeds so you don't get stuck behind a motorhome going 50mph in the fast lane. Get a decent-sized and powered car if you can, especially if you have a couple of people and luggage; you'll need to accelerate and economy-size cars get blown around easily at high speeds.
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 8:36 AM on January 22

You can drive fast and cheaply in Germany. No tolls, no speed limit. So if you're driving, you should get as much driving done within Germany as possible. This could mean: Dresden (1 day), Berlin (2 days), Hamburg (1 day), Amsterdam (2 days), somewhere in Belgium (2 days), Paris (2 days), Geneva (1 day), Munich (1 day), back to Prague. Or fuck Dresden and Hamburg, spend more time in Berlin, Amsterdam, and Switzerland generally.

Switzerland is a beautiful country if you like snowy mountains.
posted by creasy boy at 9:30 AM on January 22

By the way: via michelin.
posted by creasy boy at 9:32 AM on January 22

Don't miss Dresden, don't miss Berlin and use all 14 days.

Google says this route is 36 hours of driving: Prague, Dresden, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Lyon, Milan, Zurich, Innsbruck, Prague. Nine cities and eight countries (Nine if you sneak into Lichtenstein). Even with extra stops, that is probably less than four hours of driving most days.

Maybe you'd rather do an 36 hour southern route: Prague, Linz (Austria), Zagreb, Venice, Milan, Geneva, Paris, Luxembourg, Prague. Nine cities and nine countries.

Plan for 2-3 days of zero driving, and make up for those by driving six hours some days.
posted by soelo at 11:12 AM on January 22