16 Day Central Europe and Balkan Itinerary
Day 1-3 Paris (I recognize is not central Europe, however lot’s of international flight options to start your trip)
Day 4-5 Lyon (I would recommend a different town perhaps Annecy or Strausbourg)
Day 6-7 Dubrovnik
Day 8-10 Split
Day 11-12 Vienna
Day 13 Bratislava, Slovakia
Day 14-16 Budapest
However, unlike your average itinerary I am going to highlight what I think is worth skipping and what I would recommend to anyone else travelling to these areas.
Day 1.5 Paris
Paris is usually what I pick as the starting point for Europe, since it is one of the main airports that has affordable international flights. I also love Paris more each time I come back and can say there is always something new to explore. This time I visited with two friends who had never been so we visited many of the top TikTok locations. Here are the honest reviews.
Le Relais de l'Entrecôte
First of all it’s not all you can eat like I somehow assumed from the TikTok’s I had seen. You get two servings of steak and fries, plus a salad and bread for 30 Euros. I would say decent value for the money although it is only rates at 4.2 stars on Trip Advisor. Best steak I ever had? No. But not the worst food I had in Paris either. If you want to try, you can find the link here.
At this point if you flew a long way to get here it might be bed time.
Day 2
In our second day, we visited Versailles. I’ve heard mixed reviews about it, especially with travel time and cost (35 Euros if I remember correctly).
The train ride wasn’t horribly long and only about 4 Euros and the town itself is cute. Versailles grounds are large (the gardens especially) and in my opinion worth visiting once although I would argue once is enough.
What I would recommend for next time, and what I hope to see is Opera Garnier which is allegedly more cost effective.
Depending on how long you choose to stay in Versailles, you will likely have time to do dinner and wander around the Eiffel Tower in the evening.
We had dinner close to the Eiffel Tower at Le New York (nothing stellar about this place other than the location), which allowed us to venture over to the tower at our convenience. Staff here was super friendly.
Day 3
On this specific trip, we ended up losing a day in Paris due to a missed flight. However, since I’d been before this is what I would recommend as the third day.
I would wake up early and do Montmarte, the art district and one of my favourite areas in Paris. Here you can see one of the iconic shots in Emily in Paris, La Maison Rose.
Day 4 - 5 Lyon (a day and a half)
In the next leg of our tour, we visited Lyon, recognized as the third largest city in France. We visited this city since we were attending a concert, but we had some time to travel around and see the city’s main sights.
Since Europe is on the pricier side and we had to cut costs we did the 6 hour version of what could be a 2 hour train ride if you took a direct/fast route. This meant leaving at noon and arriving in Lyon closer to 7 in the evening.
Things that went well. The 24 hour train pass for 6 euros was well worth it as the train/tram go everywhere ce the main station all the way up to the main church. That being said, using the train and wandering half the streets we saw we finished seeing the whole city in about 2 hours including finding the secret tunnels.
To be honest, there are nicer towns and areas in France so I wouldn’t be travelling out of my way to see it.
I would also not recommend where we stayed - the Eklo because although it was budget friendly it had mold.
The coolest thing was the secret tunnel network which we snuck into most are actually closed.
Day 6 Dubrovnik
Day 6 we flew from Lyon to Dubrovnik on a 2 hour flight on Volotec. I was VERY pleasantly surprised by how easy flying here was, no customs and our AirBnB link here.
Day 7 Bosnia and Herzegovina
Full day trip explanation here.
Day 8 Split
Day 9 Split
Day 10 Split
Day 11 Vienna
Day 12 Bratislava
With close proximity to Vienna, we took a 55 minute train from Wien HBF that took us into the Slovakian capital. If you’re reading along with this series from our 1 day in Vienna itinerary, our checkout time at our hotel was noon, and check in time in Bratislava was at 2 p.m. meaning the 12:45 train was perfect timing wise on our 25 CAD train.
It is worth noting that a trend we were finding is that while these tickets were available on Trainline, and we had some comfort in knowing that it was prebooked the day before, these tickets are often cheaper to book from the train station directly.
Once we had arrived at the Bratislava-Petrzalka train station, we grabbed a 4 Euro Uber to our accommodation at VIP Apartments which I booked on Expedia.
Since we had just got off the train we only grabbed one or two quick photos before making our way over to the Old Market Hall - Stara Trznica for lunch.
After getting lost in the streets and grabbing a cappuccino to go, we decided to venture out of the main area to visit the iconic Blue Church. The walk was about 1 kilometre from where we were and outside of the Old Town (something we didn’t expect). That being said, the area of the city felt safe and we covered the majority of the other attractions fairly quickly.
