Our family is looking at taking 7-10 day trip to Europe to celebrate my 50th Birthday. We’d love to travel at our own pace and love “living like a local”. We’ve rented a car and driven through Bavaria (loved it) and over to Salzburg.
Looking for suggestions to do a rail trip or another rental car road trip that takes us through Switzerland, more of Austria, or places like Prague, Slovenia, Poland etc.
Question
50th Birthday Trip in late April or early May - 7-10 days & need ideas
You could do for example Prag - (Vienna) - Graz → Switzerland or you could do detour to Slovenia before going to Switzerland. There is a night train from Ljubjana to Zürich.
It all depends a bit on your interest, do you plan to do hiking or are you more interested in exploring cities.
If you love hiking i would recommend spending a couple days in Switzerland. (a lot of hikes can be easily reached by train.)
Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia are great to do by train using eurail as you dont necessary have to deal with reservations. (With the exception of night trains)
It also depends a bit on how far/long you want to travel.
+8Do you mean 7-10 travel days, or is your holiday only about 7-10 days?
If it’s the latter, I’lld suggest to not stuff it too full and stick to one or two regions, especially if you want to “live like a local”. Don’t stuff too much in one holiday, but take your time to savour it. Keep it simple, one or two, maximum destinations and take your time to savour it all.
I really like Slovenia, small country, wonderful nature. The lake Bohinj region is very nice(forget the over touristic lake Bled) and perfect for a couple of days of mountain-outdoor holiday. Slovenia is perfectly combinable with the (southern part of) Austria, with cities like Graz, Villach,… or the Northeast of Italy.
If a rail pass will be good value, depends on your exact travels, but if you only have a limited time and visit a few destinations than normal tickets are probably a better deal.
Poland is also nice, but I wouldn’t really go there for the nature. More for a couple of city breaks, more for culture, history and gastronomy and a (Warsaw, Kraków, Gdansk, Torun,… all well worth a visit).
Read yourself a bit the ins and outs of train travel in Europe: https://www.seat61.com/european-train-travel.htm here. It’s much more relaxing (and probably cheaper) than a rental car.
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