Eastern European Road Trip — During a summer abroad in college, I spent six weeks taking classes in Innsbruck, Austria, with weekends free to explore. I made it to six countries that summer, and heard about a seventh from nearly every traveler I met along the way: Croatia. I never got there. It took twenty-five years, a husband, and two kids old enough to appreciate a good waterfall, but in the summer of 2023, I finally closed that loop.
We’d already done one multi-country trip across Western Europe and nicknamed it Epic Europe. This one earned the sequel title honestly: Berlin to Dubrovnik, cutting through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia along the way. Berlin got the job as our starting point for one reason — it was the cheapest transatlantic flight we could find, not because it had anything left to prove to us. We’d been before. Croatia, on the other hand, had been waiting twenty-five years, and I wasn’t going to shortchange it.
The route worked out to just over 2,100 kilometers of driving, which is the real reason this trip needed three weeks instead of two. We picked up the rental car in Berlin and dropped it in Dubrovnik, which meant paying a one-way surcharge that made our eyes water a little (total cost $3,372 for 23 days). Skipping the drive all the way back to Berlin was worth every euro.
Eastern European Road Trip Itinerary
- 2 days — Berlin, Germany
- 3 days — Prague, Czech Republic
- 3 days — Bratislava, Slovakia
- 3 days — Budapest, Hungary
- 3 days — Bled, Slovenia
- 1 day — Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia
- 2 days — OmiÅ¡, Croatia
- 3 days — Dubrovnik, Croatia
Every stop on this list except Berlin used to sit behind the Iron Curtain. That history isn’t just trivia here, it’s the reason this itinerary works as well as it does. Decades on from communism, these countries still see a fraction of the tourists that flood Paris or Rome, which means shorter lines, lower prices, and scenery that hasn’t been fully discovered yet. Lake Bled, in particular, still felt like a secret when we caught it on a weekday. Weekends, from what I hear, tell a different story.
Berlin, Germany
Two days in Berlin were about survival more than sightseeing. We landed exhausted off an overnight flight, got handed the wrong rental car at the airport, and slept until 5 p.m. before we did anything resembling tourism. What we did manage — Checkpoint Charlie before the tour buses, the Reichstag’s glass dome, a friend who happened to be in town — was enough to make the Cold War feel like something that actually happened here, not just a chapter in a textbook. Here’s the full two days in Berlin.
Prague, Czech Republic
My third trip to Prague, my family’s first. In 1997, Old Town Square felt like a secret. In 2023, it doesn’t — annual visitors have gone from 2.6 million to over 8 million since the numbers were first tracked, and it shows. We still loved it. We just loved it while dodging crowds, wandering the Old Jewish Cemetery, and soaking in a literal tub of beer, because apparently that’s a thing you can do here. Here’s the full three days in Prague.
Bratislava, Slovakia
I picked Bratislava off a basic Google search and low expectations. We left with one of our favorite stops of the entire trip. A bronze sewer worker named Cumil watches passersby from a manhole cover, a UFO-shaped bridge tower looms over the Danube, and the National Wine Museum pours you into a genuinely dangerous 100-minute tasting. Add in prices that felt like a rounding error after Prague, and Bratislava had no business flying this far under the radar. Here’s the full three days in Bratislava.
Budapest, Hungary
By day eleven of our Eastern European road trip, we weren’t sure how much energy we had left. Budapest found it for us. We crossed the Danube in both directions, soaked in a century-old thermal bath, and toured a castle by torchlight. We also picked up a traffic ticket and a bottle of Hungarian herbal liqueur nobody in this family will ever finish. Worth it. Here’s the full three days in Budapest.
Bled, Slovenia
This is the one you’ve seen on every travel feed you’ve ever scrolled past — the church floating on its own tiny island, the castle on the cliff above. We showed up braced for disappointment. Instead, a marble-sized hailstorm was the only thing that could pull us away from the water. If we could return to just one stop on this entire trip, it would be Bled. It’s that good. Here’s the full three days in Bled.
Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia
We were in the park by 7 a.m. and out by 11:30, having covered over 13 miles and made it to Veliki Slap, Croatia’s tallest waterfall, ahead of the tour groups. One day was genuinely all it took. It was also all we needed to understand why this park has a reputation that precedes it. Here’s the full day at Plitvice Lakes.
Omiš, Croatia
Omiš made the itinerary for a boring reason: Craig doesn’t drive more than three hours at a stretch, and we needed a stop between Plitvice and Dubrovnik. It earned its place anyway. A pirate history going back to the 12th century, two cliffside fortresses, and a seafood restaurant where the lobsters get walked tableside before you order them. Seventeen days into the trip, this was also the first night everyone had their own bedroom. Small victories. Here’s the full two days in Omiš.
Dubrovnik, Croatia
The finish line of our Eastern European road trip, and the reason the whole itinerary existed in the first place. Twenty-five years after I first heard about it from other backpackers in Innsbruck, we walked the two kilometers of medieval walls, ducked into the shade whenever the limestone streets turned into a skillet, and found our way to the beaches when the Old Town got to be too much. Full post coming soon.
Six countries, twenty-three days, one rental car, and a college promise finally kept. If you’ve only got time for one stop on this list, make it Bled. If you’ve got three weeks, do the whole thing.
3 Days in Prague – History, Beer & Bones