What are your day trip tips for these European capitals?
Simon Calder answers your questions on perfect anniversary getaways and the Spanish power outages
Q We are spending 10 days spread across Prague, Vienna and Budapest. What are your top day trip recommendations for each city, please?
Ellen J
A If you enjoy lager, the day trip for you from Prague involves a 90-minute train journey west to Plzen. This is the home of the Pilsner Urquell Brewery and claims to be the birthplace of pale lager. (There is a “Pilsner Urquell Experience” in Prague, but it is far from the real thing.)
In addition to the beer dimension, Plzen is a handsome and interesting city. Just outside the impressive main station (Hlavni nadrazi), visit the modern tourist information office – which handily has a free-to-climb tower to help you get your bearings. Look out for the sombre monument to the “terror of communism” – Moscow dominated Plzen and the rest of Czechoslovakia for four decades until 1989.
From Vienna, the obvious choice is Bratislava: the Slovak capital is only around 65km away. Take the Twin City Liner ferry down the Danube from Vienna: it sails daily at 9am and takes 75 minutes.
Bratislava’s star attraction is the magnificent St Martin’s Cathedral, where a long succession of Hungarian monarchs were crowned. Admission is free, though tourists are not allowed on Saturday afternoons or Sunday mornings. At pavement level in the city centre, look out for a couple of entertaining statues: one gentleman tipping his top hat to passers-by, and another seemingly emerging from a manhole cover.
Bratislava is cheaper than the Czech, Austrian and Hungarian capitals, so you may wish to stay for dinner before catching the one-hour train back to Vienna.
From Budapest, make another Danube river trip to the town of Szentendre. It offers a fascinating blend of Baroque architecture plus influences from Greece and Serbia; people from the Balkans fleeing the Ottomans settled here.
To reach Szentendre, take the HEV suburban railway – the train takes about half an hour. Coming back, if it’s between Thursday and Sunday, take the Mahart ferry back down the Danube to the Vigado ferry stop on the Pest side in the heart of the capital. Departures are at 1pm and 5pm, and the scenic trip takes 75 minutes.
Q I was hoping you could help with a suggestion or two... or three? April 2026 is our 25th anniversary. We haven’t done a “big” trip since our honeymoon to Walt Disney World. We were looking to splurge a bit and enjoy a week to 10 days somewhere a little different to the usual Greek island break we have, with a bit of adventure and a bit of relaxation.
What I’ve found so far is we are too late for the northern lights, too early for a safari, and hitting rainy season everywhere else. Pretty much open to going anywhere, except America at the moment.
Sam St C
A April is cherry blossom season in Japan, but with rich attractions much closer to hand, I don’t recommend a longhaul trip. I have just returned from a splendid week afloat with Sail Croatia. The season of voyages around the cities and islands of the Adriatic coast begins in the third week of April. Each day begins with setting sail at 7am, then there is breakfast at 8am, a swim stop in a quiet cove at 11am and lunch on the move at 1pm – with a mid-afternoon arrival at the day’s destination for sightseeing, drinks and dinner.
If you are lucky with the weather and a relatively low number of fellow guests – as was I – you can enjoy what amounts to a private yacht experience for around £2,000 per person, including tips and return flights to Split. Yet the weather could be tricky, and anyway it would be close both geographically and experientially to the Greek islands.
For a trip that is guaranteed to be different and memorable, I recommend a circuit of Morocco followed by time before and/or afterwards on the coast. Intrepid is one of several companies to offer a tempting one-week tour, costing around £1,100.
It begins in Casablanca, the commercial capital of Morocco and a city I adore for its life, colour and style. You spend two days in the chaotic and joyful city of Fez, where the souks have barely changed in centuries. Day four is a Sahara jaunt, including a camel ride and a desert camp. A couple more days take you through mountain landscapes that may look familiar from Hollywood movies, before ending in Marrakech – which is rather too touristy for my liking, but has some impressive monuments.
I would precede the trip with a night in the capital, Rabat – a much-overlooked city just an hour by train from Casablanca. And end it with a couple of days on the beach at Essaouira, two hours west of Marrakech and one of those dreamy, edge-of-the-world locations.
Q I know you don’t have a crystal ball, but I just wanted to ask your advice about travelling to Spain given the awful power failure. I’m due to fly out imminently to Valencia. I’m meant to be going for five days, meeting up with friends. Ryanair hasn’t told me the flight has been disrupted so far, and I imagine airports have working generators. But I am a bit worried about the disruption if (or when) I get there. So far, I have thought about taking an extra power bank and more cash. What do you think?
Emily H
A Monday’s power outage across Spain and Portugal caused misery for countless millions of people, among them (I calculate) about 250,000 British tourists currently in mainland Spain and Portugal. Hundreds of flights were cancelled after the electricity supply failed, most of them to and from Lisbon. Madrid and Barcelona were the two other badly hit airports.
At Valencia, Ryanair cancelled six arrivals and departures (to/from Lisbon, Marseille and Pisa) on Monday and a further eight trips on Tuesday – services to/from Nuremberg, Bologna, Seville and Santiago. UK flights have survived intact, and while there is never any absolute certainty I would be pretty confident of an on-time flight to Valencia: as of 7pm on Monday, the average delay in arrivals was only five minutes.
Getting there (and through the airport red tape) is only the first hurdle, of course. The Foreign Office travel advice is fairly general and not particularly helpful. It says: “We are aware of reports of power outages across Andorra, mainland Spain and mainland Portugal and are monitoring the situation. There may be travel disruption, check with your tour operator or airline for more information before travelling. Follow the advice of the local authorities and monitor local updates.”
Your practical planning sounds more appropriate. After such a calamitous failure, it may take some days for electronic payment systems and ATMs to be working correctly. And a modest power bank (in your cabin baggage, not checked luggage) could well come in handy. With friends in the city, you are in a stronger position than many visitors, since they will have all the latest information.
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