Driving in Austria is easy and renting a car is an absolute must-do to be able to see all of the Salzkammergut lakes district and makes getting around so much easier.
Being the ignoramus I am, I though it’d be best to get a driver and car from Prague to Linz, thinking they’d be a border to mess around with. Had I known that there are basically no such thing as borders in the EU, I’d have hired a car from Prague and drove down from there ourselves. Anyway, wherever you end up, and if you’re planning on visiting the Salzkammergut lakes district, you most definitely should hire a car. There’s buses and trains in the area, but the schedules are limited and it’s not like hop on, hop off, type thing. Hiring a car was the best decision I made (of course it was all my decision, only bad decisions are made by Mum!), and gave us untold freedom. I actually really liked driving in Austria for the most part and there’s not much traffic around.
After quickly realising what a great decision I had made by renting a car and driving in Austria, upon getting to Hallstatt the rental car sat in the car park for 3 days and we didn’t use it, but after that it totally saved the day. You should know that in Hallstatt, there’s public car parks at the end of the town that you MUST park in. Only authorised vehicles are allowed inside the town. There’s more info here on that. A note about the hire car company we used – rentalcars.com. Do not use these guys, just look at the all the bad reviews the receive. We booked an Audi A4 and got a Skoda. We booked a car seat but didn’t get one and the amount we were driving in Austria, we really should have had one. Now granted, when you book is says Audi A4 or similar, but an Audi A4 and Skoda are not really similar to be at all. The Skoda was actually ok, but definitely not Audi. When I got back I contacted the company and they offered a discount off my next booking with them. No thank you! Stay away from rentalcars.com and book a rental car with another company.
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