General Info Eastern Europe

Page Contents

  1. Guidebook used
  2. Itinerary
  3. Means of travel
  4. Guides
  5. Weather
  6. Money
  7. Tipping
  8. JFK Notes

Guidebook used

We used “Rick Steves Eastern Europe”, Seventeenth Edition as our only guidebook.  We have used Rick Steves books on other trips and have been happy with his suggestions and guidance.  Just before leaving, we took advice in the book and tore the book into sections and brought just the sections we needed, like sightseeing and eating sections for each city.

Itinerary

We traveled to Eastern Europe in 2018 and visited there from 5/25 to 6/5 with the following timetable:

  1. London – 1 night
    1. NOTE: We did this because British Airways flights leaving on Saturday, 5/26, would have put us in Prague at like 6 pm on Sunday.  By leaving one day earlier and stopping over in London, we were able to enjoy a dinner in London at one of our favorite restaurants AND get an EasyJet flight to Prague that got us there by noon on Sunday.
  2. Prague – 3 nights
  3. Budapest – 2 nights
  4. Vienna – 4 nights

Before we left, we had booked all hotels (and prepaid 3 of 4) and domestic transportation.  We had ideas of what we wanted to visit in each location, but did not have a fixed schedule.  However, what we did different on this trip is that we scheduled private tour guides for 4 hour tours in each place (except London).  We used Rick Steves recommended guides, although in some cases, the guide listed was busy and referred us to someone else.

Means of travel

  1. JFK to London – British Airways business class
  2. London to Prague – EasyJet coach
  3. Prague to Budapest – Czech Airlines coach
  4. Budapest to Vienna – first class train
  5. Vienna to London – British Airways coach
  6. London to JFK – British Airways coach

NOTE on British Airways:  We had some “issues” with British Airways.  First, we used mileage points to book our flights.  In addition to a large number of points, we had to pay over $2k for the flights which were only business class on the trip to Europe.  On top of that, we were told that for the return leg of Vienna to London, there were NO business class seats available (booking in January for a June flight)!!  But, coincidentally, when we checked in at the Vienna airport, we had the option to pay over 300 Euro’s to upgrade to Business Class.  GIANT RIPOFF IMHO.

Guides

We arranged our guides by using recommendations from Rick Steves.  We made contacts with the guides in early April for a late May/early June trip.  We could not always get the exact person he references, but at least got recommendations for an alternative from his suggestions.  In one case, we never got contact info for the guide which I assume is a way for organizations to protect themselves from losing their cut of a guide job.  Here is the info we have for each guide used in each location.  We would recommend all of these guides to any English speaking small group.

Prague – We made the contact through Prague Walkers (PragueWalker.com; PragueWalker16@gmail.com) – Our guide was Nora

Budapest – Initial contact was to Andrea.Makkay@gmail.com.  She arranged Orsi Sztankay and we were only given her phone number (36 20 373 6877)

Vienna – Our initial contact was to to Adrienn Bartek Rhomberg (Bartek-rhomberg@chello.at).  She referred us to Kathy Lambroglou Zmasser (Kathy.Zmasser@chello.at).

Weather

With an end of May/start of June timetable, we expected the weather to be warm but, there was no way to predict rain, etc.  For the second year in a row, we lucked out with 11 days of good weather with only two minor episodes of rain in Vienna.  Temperatures were mostly in the 80’s during the day.

Money

Money was a bit of an issue in this trip because each location used a different currency.  Taking advice from Jeff Mann, a US expat who travels extensively in Europe, we used ATM’s in the airport to get some local currency and tried to use credit cards for most purchases.  This worked well with the following exceptions:

    • London – We used an ATM that was before baggage claim and security and I think we got a bad exchange rate.  After that experience, I waited until we got into the main airport entry area to find an ATM.
    • Budapest – I misunderstood the ATM and select 120 HUF which ended up giving me almost $500 worth of HUF.  Needless to say, we used cash a lot in Budapest.

We exchanged $400 into Euro’s at our local TD Bank a few days before we left.  We did this because each of of our private tour guides wanted payment in cash and the amounts were in Euro’s even for Prague and Hungary.  As I did not want the possible hassle of finding how to get Euro’s in countries where Euro’s are not the standard currency, I got some before leaving.  I am not sure this was really necessary, as Euro’s seem to be readily accepted but one might take a hit on the exchange rate.

Before departing, we had notified all credit card companies NOT to reject any transactions from any of our destinations.  We also found out if there was an extra service charge on transactions outside the US and were surprise to find out that some of our cards charged between 1 and 3% service fee for each purchase.  We then only used cards that had no foreign transactions fees.

TIpping

We always asked if “service” was included and if not, tipped about 10%.

NOTES ON JKF Airport
  • As I stated in our Spain 2017 trip, JFK is a giant ripoff.  But, this time, we had business class tickets so we were able to use British Airways business class lounge.  But, even that was wall to wall people and we really had to hunt for a place to sit.  But, then it was free food and drinks, so that was good.
  • We drove to JFK from our home in Goshen, NY, which ideally would be a little over an hour’s trip.  But as we were traveling on the Friday evening of Memorial Day weekend during rush hour, it took a little over two hours.  But, we had allocated enough time, so all was good.
  • We used JFK Parking which worked well.  They got us to the terminal quickly and on our return, their pickup van was there in just a few minutes after we called.  And they had a special where the 4th and 7th days were free, so parking was just $185.  A limo would have been that amount each way.

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