November 3, 2003 -- Sure it's chilly in the Czech Republic from November until spring, but it's also considerably cheaper and the City of a Thousand Spires becomes more spacious as the tourist crowds thin, making it easier to get a piping hot bowl of goulash in you to stave off the cold.
You can get a five-day/three-night air/hotel package from $399 for starters, from Austrian Airlines Vacations valid for travel between November 1 through February 29 except for the period between December 15-January 4, which is blacked out for the holidays. This price is for departures out of Washington, D.C. and New York and includes your roundtrip airfare, (with one stopover in Vienna either direction), three nights in the hotel, daily breakfast buffet, hotel service charges and hotel taxes. In addition, you get a Prague Card, giving you unlimited free travel for three days in Prague via public transport plus free admission to 40 museums and tourist sites. The hotel is the Alfa, a three-star, superior tourist class establishment, a bit east of the city center. Vacation extensions are available, too. You must book at least 14 days in advance of travel. Contact Austrian Airlines Vacation Center (based in Atlanta) online at www.imtc-travel.com, by phone at 800/790-4682 or via e-mail at info@imtc-travel.com. Single supplement is $89.
Continental Journey's Prague Getaway package doubles your stay to six nights, but increases your base price by a C-note starting from $499 with daily departures on SAS out of Newark. The package includes your roundtrip airfare and lodgings, morning meals, an optional city tour, a card good for seven days' access to public transportation, hotel taxes and ground transport to and from the Prague airport. This deal is valid through March 31, 2004, the package also allows for upgrades to four- and five-star lodgings for costs of from just $100 to $400. The lowest price is based on double occupancy and applies to midweek departures and returns (you'll have to pay $50 more per person for weekend travel). Add-on airfares from SAS gateways are $125 from Washington, D.C. or Chicago and $155 from Seattle, other add-ons in the United Airlines system also available. Similar six-night getaways to Berlin, Budapest, Krakow, Munich, Vienna and Warsaw cost $589 to $829 for tourist class hotels. Contact Continental Journeys at 800/601-4343 or 818/995-8643, fax 818/995-8673, info@continentaljourneys.com and website www.continentaljourneys.com.
The cost jumps quite a bit with this multicity combo. Insight Vacations, based on Long Island, has an upscale package starting at $1,220 per person, including air from New York, to Vienna, Prague and Budapest this winter. It's eight days/six nights and visits many of the major sights in those three cities, including a tour of the State Opera in Vienna. Contact them at 888/680-1241 or visit them at www.insightvacations.com. You can order brochures online at www.orderinsight.com.
