London, Normandy, the Loire Valley and Paris

This ten-day itinerary draws a single coherent line across two of history's most consequential landscapes: southern England and northern France. It begins in London, where students spend two full days tracing the long arc of British history from the Tower of London and Westminster to the neighborhoods that shaped modern democracy and empire. Then, on Day 4, the group crosses the Channel and arrives in Caen — the pivot point of the tour. Here, where the Normandy campaign turned the tide of the Second World War, the weight of what students have read in textbooks becomes something far more tangible. From Caen the itinerary moves west to the walled port city of St. Malo, then sweeps south through the Loire Valley — a corridor of Renaissance châteaux that tells a parallel story of French political power and artistic patronage — before arriving in Paris for a full day in the French capital.