Bavaria!
9 DAYS
Rothenburg ob der Tauber 1 • Munich 2 • Innsbruck 1 • Lucerne 2 • Heidelberg 1
Basic Inclusions
Accommodations
Accommodations in centrally-located three-star or four-star hotels. Rooming on a triple basis. Double rooms: $50 per person per night.
Meals
All breakfasts. One lunch. All dinners. Stadtkeller Swiss folklore dinner and show on Day 7. Lunch in Titisee on Day 8.
Transportation
Round-trip transportation on scheduled airline. Deluxe touring motorcoach. All public transportation tickets included where applicable.
Guide
Services of a specially-trained passports Tour Director throughout. All tips are included in the Program Cost. Whisper headsets included.
Travel Protection
Passports provides a Post Departure Travel Protection Plan that includes coverage for Trip Interruption, Trip Delay and Emergency Medical Expenses.
Tour Summary
Itinerary Includes
Unlimited public transportation
Days 1-2: Home - Rothenburg ob der Tauber
Day 3: Rothenburg ob der Tauber - Munich
Tour director-led walking tour in Rothenburg ob der Tauber
The Romantische Strasse, Sightseeing stop in Dinkelsbühl
Day 4: Munich
Half-day city sightseeing in Munich: Local Guide, Visit to the Nymphenburg Palace and Gardens
Excursion to Dachau: Visit to the Dachau Memorial Concentration Camp
Day 5: Munich - Innsbruck
Guided tour at Neuschwanstein Castle
Tour director-led walking tour in Innsbruck
Day 6: Innsbruck - Lucerne
Sightseeing stop in Vaduz, Liechtenstein's capital city
Day 7: Lucerne
Optional Excursion to Mt. Pilatus: Cable car and cog railway ascent to summit, Lake cruise to Lucerne
Tour director-led walking tour in Lucerne
Stadtkeller Swiss folklore dinner and show
Day 8: Lucerne - Heidelberg
Rhine Falls from Laufen Castle's Belvedere Platform and Panoramic Elevator, Scenic Drive through the Black Forest, Sightseeing stop at the lakeside town of Titisee, Lunch in Titisee
Day 9: Heidelberg - Home
UNPARALLELED STANDARD OF EXCELLENCE
Detailed Itinerary
Days 1-2: Arrival, Frankfurt, Rothenburg
A dream comes true as your wide-bodied jet thunders off the airstrip, Europe-bound. Time for a meal, a movie, and a nap. Soon, it gets light again, first off the left-hand side of the airplane, then everywhere. It's morning over Europe! Your destination is Frankfurt, the largest city in the German state of Hesse.
Enjoying the comfort of the modern Autobahn, view little villages and farms as you approach the unforgettable medieval city of Rothenburg, which peers down upon the River Tauber from behind 16th-century city walls.
Overnight: Rothenburg ob der Tauber
Day 3: Rothenburg Walking Tour, Dinkelsbühl, Munich
Enjoy the car-free Old Town as you step back to the 1500s on a stroll that includes feudal walls, towers, and the Street of the Nobles, Herrengasse. See comfortable burgher houses that mark the birth of the German middle class.
Board your coach to follow the Romantische Strasse, famous for its castle-topped hills and rural greenery.
Pause along the Romantic Road to view the ramparts and watchtowers of the enchanting town of Dinkelsbühl.
Journey on to Bavaria's capital city, Munich. You'll be struck by your first impression of the city and its landmarks, which have been beautifully restored to their pre-war conditions.
Overnight: Munich
Day 4: Munich City Sightseeing, Excursion to Dachau
A sightseeing tour in München takes you around the impressive Theresienwiese, site of the famous annual Oktoberfest. In the center of the city discover the grand set-piece boulevards of the Ludwigstrasse and Maximilianstrasse with their Neoclassical palaces, and the monumental Feldherrnhalle where, in 1923, Hitler failed in his attempt at the coup d'état known as the Munich Putsch. See the student area of Schwabing, Königsplatz, the Residenz, the Frauenkirche, whose 300-foot-high onion-domed towers symbolize the Munich skyline, and the historic Marienplatz. The tour ends with a performance of the red-coated mannequins in the Town Hall Glockenspiel.
A half-day local guide, well-educated and specially-trained on the history and culture of Munich, will accompany your group.
Visit Nymphenburg Palace, once the summer residence of the Bavarian sovereigns. See rooms decorated in their original Baroque style from the 17th century, as well as Rococo and Neoclassical decor. The gardens were landscaped in the 18th century by an employee of André Le Nôtre, who designed the gardens of Versailles.
Set out for a town located a mere twelve miles from Munich.
Enter KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp, which has been preserved as a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.
The town of Dachau itself, paradoxically, has long been renowned for the beauty of its scenery and the gaiety of its summer festival.
Overnight: Munich
Day 5: Neuschwanstein, Innsbruck Walking Tour
Today, follow a scenic route into fantasyland.
Enter the dream castle built by Bavaria's "mad" King Ludwig II. About Neuschwanstein, the model for Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty's castle, it is said that Ludwig employed a stage set designer rather than an architect. The result is pure theatrical fantasy, stimulated by the King's fancy for Wagnerian music: from artificial grottoes to ornate rooms to dazzling views of the Alps from the belvedere.
Your coach takes you to the Austrian mountain resort of Innsbruck, which hosted the Winter Olympic Games twice, in 1964 and 1976.
The city's historic center is concentrated in a few small blocks. Your tour director will introduce landmarks such as the Hofburg Palace (summer residence of the Hapsburg monarchs), the cathedral, the Little Golden Roof, Maria-Theresien-Strasse, and the rococo-style Helblinghaus.
Overnight: Innsbruck
Day 6: Liechtenstein, Lucerne
More majestic scenery today as you travel through Austria's Arlberg Alps to the postage-stamp-sized Principality of Liechtenstein. A fragment of the former Germanic Confederation, it became a sovereign state in 1719 but now functions as an economic satellite of the Swiss Confederation, to which it is linked by monetary, postal and diplomatic conventions.
Enjoy a photo stop in Liechtenstein's capital city, which is famous for its Postage Stamp Museum!
Cross the border into Switzerland, traveling through its historic cantons to William Tell's country.
Overnight: Lucerne
Day 7: Optional Excursion to Mt. Pilatus, Lucerne Walking Tour, Stadtkeller Dinner and Show
This excursion takes you to the top of the world with the ascent to the summit of Mt. Pilatus, nearly 7,000 feet high. Up one side of this towering peak by cable car; down the other side, through mists and tinkling cowbells, by a narrow-gauge cog railway train (the steepest in the world for this form of traction).
Enjoy a 60 minute lake cruise across the "Lake of the Four Forest Cantons" from Alpnachstad to Lucerne.
Explore Lucerne's Old Town. You may want to feed the ducks from the ancient wooden Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge). Pause at Thorvaldsen's Löwendenkmal (or Lion of Lucerne), near the remarkable Glacier Gardens. See the large and noble Jesuitenkirche, one of the landmarks that show that the rural alpine areas in central and southern Switzerland remained Roman Catholic following the Reformation.
A fondue dinner and folklore performance are included tonight at the Stadtkeller. Brightly colored skirts, yodeling, and ten-foot mountain horns set a joyous context you'll long remember.
Overnight: Lucerne
Day 8: Rhine Falls, Black Forest, Titisee, Heidelberg
Stop in the Swiss town of Dachsen to visit Schloss Laufen, built on a rocky spur above the colossal Rhine River Falls. Goethe described the spectacle of the river plunging from a height of seventy feet at the foot of this medieval fortress as "the Source of the Ocean." Take in the view from the castle's Belvedere Walk and Platform, but don't miss the panoramic elevator.
Travel through the wooded landscapes of the mountainous Schwarzwald.
Pause in a small town located on the picturesque shores of the glacial lake Titisee, and you'll understand why it has become a favorite destination.
Enjoy lunch at a quaint restaurant.
Continue to the seat of Germany's oldest university (1386) , which inspired Sigmund Romberg's operetta The Student Prince.
This evening, explore the town at leisure. The stout of foot may want to follow the "Philosophers' Walk" up the hillside for a commanding view of the city.
Overnight: Heidelberg
Day 9: Frankfurt, Departure
Board your coach for the ride to Frankfurt.
Auf Wiedersehen! Memories of Glockenspiels, Cinderella castles, oom-pah bands, fastidiously clean villages and fast, sleek automobiles all blur together as you bid adieu to Germany at the bustling Frankfurt airport.
You'll arrive home eager to share your adventures with family and friends.
CUSTOM TOURS
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Rothenburg Walking Tour
Munich City Sightseeing
Nymphenburg Palace
Neuschwanstein Castle
Tour director-led walking tour in Innsbruck
Lucerne Walking Tour
Scenic Drive through the Black Forest
Travel to Heidelberg
Going Places Blog
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