Glimpse of Europe

You'll arrive in Amsterdam beneath a crooked procession of gables, their carved dates and painted flourishes high above narrow doors, each facade leaning as though the houses have spent centuries confiding in one another. Choose today’s Optional Experience and travel to a working windmill, where you step beneath age-darkened beams, hear the old timbers creak and follow the great wooden gears overhead. In the workshops, you stand beside local artisans as practised hands move over well-used tools, sharing the warmth and good company the Dutch call gezelligheid.

Across the German border, Cologne Cathedral rises above the square as you trace its dark stonework from ranks of carved figures to twin spires. In Boppard, you step aboard your Rhine cruise as the boat hums beneath you and the river slips past slate-roofed villages. Rows of vines climb the steep banks, while castle towers crown the bends once guarded by feuding lords. At your hotel, you join your travel companions for dinner before settling in for the evening.

Through Germany’s Black Forest, you’ll follow winding roads beneath dense firs, passing steep-roofed farmhouses in deep green clearings. At Schaffhausen, you pause beside the Rhine Falls, where the river crashes over the rock, white water churning below and spray rising through the roar. Across the Swiss border, you continue towards Lake Lucerne, watching wooded slopes descend to a broad sweep of water with mountains lining the horizon.

With your Travel Director, you’ll move through Lucerne’s Old Town, stopping beside the weathered timbers of Chapel Bridge before meeting the sorrowful gaze of the Lion Monument, carved into rock in memory of the Swiss Guards who died defending Louis XVI. The rest of the day is yours in a city once celebrated on Europe’s Grand Tour. Choose an Optional Experience to cross Lake Lucerne by boat, then climb by railway and cable car into the mountains, where the lake may gleam far below beneath the peaks. Later, you can join an Optional Experience at a Swiss folklore show, where yodelling and the long, resonant call of the alpine horn fill the room.

Leaving Lucerne, you’ll travel north beside the Rhine past Basel and into France, watching one final reach of the river from your window. Burgundy’s vineyards roll across the hills towards Paris, broken by pale villages and narrow lanes. The evening is yours in the capital, or you can join an Optional Experience combining a Seine cruise with a drive through the city, listening to water brush the hull as lamplight quivers beneath the bridges and glowing windows line your route through Paris.

With your Travel Director, you’ll travel along the Champs-Élysées beneath rows of century-old chestnut trees, circle the Arc de Triomphe and look up through the Eiffel Tower’s intricate iron lattice. On your own, you can browse Parisian shopfronts or climb Montmartre to Place du Tertre, watching artists work in charcoal and oils in the hilltop quarter once frequented by Picasso and Dalí. For the evening’s Optional Experience, you take your seat at a Paris cabaret, where brass and percussion snap into the can-can as layered skirts flare across the stage.

After breakfast, you say goodbye to your fellow travellers as your European holiday comes to an end.