Interrailing Advice

remus808

Leaving on tuesday for 4 or 5 weeks.. Have a good idea of a route but would appreciate some feedback on a few decisions that have to be made.. Heres a rough idea of the route I'm thinking of.. the one's in brackets are the one's I'm thinking of cutting out..please advise

Amsterdam -> (Hamburg) -> Berlin -> (Prague) -> Krakow -> Budapest -> Bratislava -> (Llubljana/Zagreb) -> Split -> Hvar -> Dubrovnik

Will be including day trips to Vienna (from Bratislava) and Lake Bled (from Llubljana) hopefully..

The main decisions really are whether going to both Prague and Krakow are possible (creates an awkward route).. And how to navigate from either of those down into Croatia... I think my two options there are going Bratislava -> Budapest -> Zagreb, or Budapest -> Bratislava -> Llubjana... any advice on which would be better? Hoping to spend 5-7 days in different parts of Croatia once I get there..

ViperMAN

karmabass,

Your thread subject is Interrailing advice, so I presume you have interrailing tickets? If so it doesn't really matter which route you take as long as you see everything you want to see. Money wont matter (as you have the rail paid for) and the difference in journey lengths between routes are minimal enough.

Going to Prague/Krakow isn't really out of the way, in fact it looks like a natural route unless you plan spending ages on a train. Prague isn't my favorite city but the architecture is unreal. While Krakow is the up incoming Prague (with a day trip to auschwitz a wee bit away).

In my opinion you have to go through Llubljana just to see Lake Bled...amazing. Split isn't anything spectacular (although Diocletian's palace is rather cool) so I'd recommend spending time island hoping off Croatia until you get to Dubrovnik. Hvar is one of my fav places in Europe. Other nice islands include Brac and Korcula. Rent a wee boat in one of these and see all the smaller islands around them, great fun to go out for a day with a picnic and a few drinks (DISCLAIMER: not 2many doe, driving a boat while drunk is not advised)

So in short the route should be determined by where you want to see!

kdouglas

Would definitely recommend spending a couple of nights in Bled, it's definitely somewhere I would hate to have only a day to spend in, was there last year while interrailing, had only planned to stay for 2 nights, ended up staying 4 and i'm heading back there hopefully in september while interrailing again.

Out of your list of destinations I was also in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Bratislava and Ljubljana last summer.

Berlin is great, really love Germany myself, unfortunately I injured my foot while there last year and didn't get to see as much as I wanted, starting my trip off there this year.
Prague is good also, plenty to see and you could spend hours wandering all the streets, it does seem to be very popular with stag parties though, but otherwise a great city. I'll also be returning there this summer.
Only stayed in Vienna one night last year, it was mainly a stop-over on my way to Prague, but plan on heading back there again this year to see more of it, it seemed quite nice.
Bratisalava is OK, I had a great time there because of the people I met, but was a little disappointed with the city itself, not sure why though to be honest, it may have been because I'd just spent 4 days in Bled and absolutely loved it, then Bratislava just didn't compare.
Ljubljana is a very nice city, think I spent 2 or 3 days there last year and that was enough time to be honest, while it's very pretty, it is rather small (pop. 250,000)

chele

Hamburg has lovely people, but it is an expensive city and not much in it. Unless you are thinking to go the Heide theme park in sotau then I see no reason why u wud add that expense to yourself. Heide park is unreal though, but dnt stay in hamburg if u want to go there - id make it a day trip and put bag in a locker at train station for the day.



vienna is stuffy and snobby!! I think unless u are passionate about architecture u shud take a rain check and go and explore much cheaper and nicer places

breadmonkey

I'd advise you to axe Split. Very dissapointing imo. The concrete beach there makes seapoint look like some sort of Hawaiian paradise! Dubrovnik is meant to be great but traveling there will be quite time consuming. (Although maybe you're flying home from there?)

I'd get rid of Hamburg and add that time onto Berlin because it's such a great city.

Haven't been to Bratislava but a group of the lads went there recently and none were really impressed. A fair few got battered and none said they'd like to ever go back.

Doubs

Krakow - Prague - Bratislava is (or was) the common route when I was interrailing 2/3 years ago. From what I remember we overnighted from Krakow to Prague and it worked out pretty well. Absolutely loved Krakow, Prague is a savage city aswell, wasn't too impressed by Bratislava (seemed pretty dangerous/dodgey). Also did Budapest which was great, and Dubrovnik, equally great.