Grand Tour

how much can you see of Europe in five weeks?

The Grand Tour began June 30 in London and ended August 3 in Brussels. It was therefore a rather compressed tour, but my travelling companion and I managed to visit a dozen countries in that time. More importantly, despite our frequent arguments, we were still friends at the end. We started in London, crossed over to Paris, then went down to Barcelona. Next was Nice (and Monte Carlo on a day trip), Rome, and Florence. Then Switzerland (we went to several places in Switzerland so it's easier just to list the whole country), followed by Munich (but our purpose there was to get to Neuschwanstein castle). After that came Vienna, Prague, and Berlin. And finally Amsterdam and Brussels. Brussels was an appropriate place to end, since we could cap our tour with a visit to Mini Europe - and see it all again, only on a much smaller scale. And then there was the chocolate... :)

Although we planned out our route well in advance and split up the task of booking accommodations and train tickets, we didn't decide what we wanted to see in each city. In theory, that's a good way to travel - you don't feel you have to stick to a schedule. But when each morning you decide what you feel like doing that day, and some mornings you've just stepped off an overnight train and so haven't had much sleep... well, we didn't necessarily see as much as we could have. Of course, much of what we could have seen were museums and such, and we agreed that we didn't particularly want to see many of those, anyway. Instead, at virtually every stop, we ended up going to see a palace or a castle of sorts. Does that make it a Royal Grand Tour?

Kej