The great EU road trip

Week 3: Czech Republic and beyond

Jonathan Thompson

“Please be careful,” says the manager as she hands over the keys. To be fair, with our unshaven faces, flip-flops and puffa jackets, we don’t look much like the regular clientele at this particular property – the Imperial Suite in Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace where, incredibly, paying punters can now live like emperors for the night.

And what a suite it is. Situated in the East Wing of the Unesco-listed palace, our apartment for the night covers no less than 167 sq m, with two cavernous bedrooms and a warren of supporting parlours, corridors and salons. Once the main palace gates are locked, we have the entire 1,441-room building and its official museum to ourselves for the night; not to mention 400 acres of landscaped grounds.

We’re 5,000 miles into our epic road trip around Europe taking in every EU country in a calendar month – and this is easily our most luxurious accommodation to date.

Sadly for us, we have to leave as dawn breaks in order to hit our next mark – a wild swimming lesson in Lake Bled, across the border in Slovenia.

The nature of our trip means we’re always moving at speed. We make an exception for picturesque Lake Bled where we huff and puff across the half-mile between its grassy shore and the island at its heart in just under an hour.

From the lakes and valleys of Slovenia, we make for Croatia’s capital, Zagreb, and one of the strangest tourist attractions in Europe: the Museum of Broken Relationships. A permanent exhibition dedicated to international heartbreak and the ghosts of relationships past, its collection opens with a toy bunny (unboiled) and contains everything from an unused wedding dress to a used stun gun. Visiting it is cathartic and strangely uplifting.

From Croatia, our itinerary takes us through Hungary (for lunch in the genteel town of Szeged), the golden meadows of Romania and across the Danube via car ferry to Bulgaria. From here, it’s a straight shot to Istanbul.

Turkey, of course, isn’t an EU member, but we have to cross it to reach Cyprus. The only car ferry to the island goes from the remote southern Turkish town of Tasucu, but this allows us to spend the night amid the incredible “Fairy Chimneys” of Cappadocia en route.

The Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph ruled between 1848 and 1916. Over the past seven days we’ve driven the entire length of his empire

slept in his bedroom. Not bad for a week’s work.

Follow Jonathan Thompson’s journey at telegraph.co.uk/ travel, or on Instagram or Twitter: @JT_Travels

Jonathan Thompson takes to the waters of Lake Bled