On the up in the east

By Sarah Turner, Evening Standard

Last updated at 18:02 21 October 2002

Our more sophisticated clients," says Ted Wake, of city-break specialists Kirker Holidays, "love going to the cities of the former Eastern bloc, especially those who enjoy having the best seats at the Prague State Opera. At £25 a ticket it's the cost of interval drinks at Covent Garden."

But it's not only the culture that is keenly priced in the former Soviet Union's satellite countries. A three-night break in Prague's newest luxury hotel, the Josef, costs about £470pp - rather than the £900pp a couple might have to shell out for a similar weekend at the Paris Crillon.

The Josef, which opened this summer, owes its blisteringly contemporary design to Eva Jiricna (the Czech architect who conjured up London's Joseph shops) and combines uncompromising stone baths with a full range of towelling dressing-gowns and DVD-related modern comforts.

While food in Prague was once geared towards the dumpling, things have now moved on. The neo-Californian sushi at steel and cut-glass Barock and the fusion specialities at Pravda, both on the appropriately named Pariszka, cost about £20 per person, while drinks at urbane jazz bar U Maleho Glena are about £1 a go.

It's a similar story in Budapest, where backpackers have been joined by those looking for bargain luxury, and it's difficult to spend more than £30 for two on a menu of goose livers with apples in a rosepetal sauce at a restaurant such as Kisbuda Gyongye when staying at the old-style glamour of the Gellert.

The five-star Grand Hotel Royal (formerly a Gestapo HQ) complete with a belle èpoque spa uncovered during renovations, opens later this month. Next year, the Four Seasons luxury hotel chain will be making its debut with the 179-room Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace: enjoy the brand's international comfort for markedly less than European and US rates.

With Hungary poised to join the European Union in 2004, no-frills airlines bmibaby and Ryanair are eyeing up Budapest as a possible destination, and the Association of Independent Tour Operators reports a 25 per cent increase in companies featuring Eastern Europe in the past 12 months.

If Prague and Budapest are the best-known citybreak destinations in Eastern Europe, Krakow in Poland - a mix of medieval squares and Baroque palaces - is catching up fast.

"It's a lovely city, very sophisticated, with a great jazz scene and opera house,î says Wake at Kirker, which now features six hotels in the city, including the Copernicus, a 29-room, four-star hotel with a vaulted swimming pool in its 14th-century cellar.

Chlopski Jadlo restaurant in the old town serves haute comfort food, while the city's other small luxury hotel, the 12-room Wentzl in the main square, has well composed French cooking and Havana cigars in its restaurant - even if main courses at about £14 err on the London side price-wise.

Cultural types searching for the Prague of 10 years ago are increasingly making for the countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which explains why Scantours has doubled its business to the Baltic republics with their churches, cobbles and old towns.

Vilnius in Lithuania is the buzziest of the Baltic capitals, thanks to the university at its centre. The Swedish owners of the four-star 60-room Neringa have newly scrubbed it up, keeping the Soviet-era murals of sickles, hammers and happy workers, but partnering them with western-style comforts such as keycards, bathtubs and plenty of pine.

In the old city, Lokys serves up good game, while nearby Stickli mixes French and Lithuanian cuisine. Dedicated clubbers are quids in, with two bars vying for popularity: Bix, started by one of Lithuania's hottest bands (don't let that put you off), and SoHo, which has a warren of drinking dens, outside space in summer and fingerpainting competitions on Wednesday evenings.

Seducing increasing numbers of weekenders, the waterfront Latvian capital of Riga - the biggest, most metropolitan city in the Baltic - is rammed with fashionable cafés, among them the Seattle-style Monte Kristo and the Zeppelin. Check in at the row of medieval buildings that houses the 80-bedroom Konventa Seta.

In the exceedingly cute Estonian capital of Tallinn, there is the four-star Domina City (once the city's KGB headquarters), while the style-conscious are making for new three-star Taanilinna, which opened this May - 20 bedrooms in a converted medieval building, with disabled access, vaulted cellar bar and sauna.

The best restaurant is generally acknowledged to be Egoist, a capitalist temple to lobster carpaccio and pan-fried foie gras - at a fraction of Paris prices.