Let’s go travel Central Europe

by ccue on June 9, 2024

Like many travelers, I am more often attracted to visiting new countries and new cultures miles away from where I live. It is a guilty pleasure to count the number of countries traveled.

I cannot think of a better birthday treat than traveling with family to charming and beautiful new countries for the first time. In this fortnight, we visited three capitals in Central Europe: Berlin, Germany; Prague, Czech; Budapest, Hungary.

Over the years, I came to enjoy the travel experiences more than checkbox as many attractions as possible. I became aware of my “spotty” and non-photogenic memories. And I no longer have the energy of youth. The children need their space. The four of us had some sub-itineraries that fit in our preferences and travel styles. If you are like me, I find a flexible itinerary works the best to experience what each city is famous for, and find time for at least one fine dining and some shopping.

With this approach, we fixed the travel logistics weeks before. We identified a good list of attractions and made a very small set of cafes and ticket reservations. Our travel itinerary remained open until the day.

There is no direct flight from SFO to Berlin. For the convenience and price-performance, we decided to fly from SFO to LHR (Heathrow airport) in London, transition to the much modest STN (London Stansted airport) via a 90-minute shuttle, and fly from STN to BER (Berlin Brandenburg airport). We allowed plenty of time for airport to airport transition. Just hours before departure from San Francisco, our flight from SFO to LHR was canceled. The notification of cancellation arrived after midnight local time, and it took a few hours of scramble to get a different airline and different flight to get to LHR within an hour of the original arrival time. Drama aside, we arrived at Berlin as planned.

May | Central Europe : Berlin, Prague, Budapest

Day 1, May 3, SFO to LHR, STN to BER (24 hours with 8 hours of layover in London)

Day 2 to 6, Berlin, Germany; stay at Adina Apartment Hackescher Markt
- Day 2, arriving, BBQ kitchen dinner
- Day 3, Berlin Philharmonie performance; Neues Museum and Museum Island; East Side Gallery/Berlin Wall
- Day 4, Reichstag Glass Dome tour;, Brandenburg Gate; Europa & Bikini shopping center, dinner
- Day 5, Facil Michelin 2-star; Sanssouci (no worry) Palace
- Day 6, Berlin Hlf to Prague Hl.n (~4.5 hours)
Day 6 to 10 , Prague, Czech; stay at Marriott Prague
- Day 6, Old town; Charles bridge at dusk
- Day 7, Old town; Charles bridge in early morning; Klementinum library and astronomical clock tour; city library; Prague castle; Circus in the park
- Day 8, National museum; Wenceslas square; Cafe Imperial early dinner; Palladium shopping
- Day 9, Farmers’ market; Old Town Shopping; Bond cafe; Dancing house dinner
- Day 10, Train to Budapest, with stops at Brno (where Gregor Mendel and his peas experiment to discover heredity) and Bratislava, Slovakia

Day 10 to 14, Budapest, Hungary, stay at airbnb on Vaci Utca
- Day 10, arriving from Prague; check in airbnb on Budapest’s major thoroughfare Váci Utca
- Day 11, Anna cafe breakfast; Buda castle; Castle district; Fisherman’s bastion; Matthias Cathedral; Vigvarju restaurant dinner inside Concert Hall
- Day 12, Cafe Gerbeaud breakfast; Szechenyi bath house; Hungarian Parliament tour; Costes dinner; Danube night cruise
- Day 13, Taste of Canton (粤之味) Chinese Dim Sum; Boris Godunov at Opera house and shops
- Day 14, Dohány Street Synagogue tour, BUD to LHR

Day 15, LHR to SFO
- Big English breakfast, Gordon Ramsay plane food, LHR; LHR to SFO.

There is the commonly asked question “which city do I like the most?”. I found these cities are all charming in their own unique ways, each bringing once-in-a-life moments for me and my family to cherish for a very long time. Here I share my experience in each city.