Munich to Paris
9 DAYS
Munich 3 • Strasbourg 1 • Paris 3
Basic Inclusions
Accommodations
Accommodations in centrally-located three-star or four-star hotels. Rooming on a triple basis. Double rooms: $280 per person.
Meals
All breakfasts. All dinners.
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 and pays for a Post Departure Travel Protection Plan that includes coverage for Trip Interruption, Trip Delay, Medical Expense and Evacuation and more.
Tour Summary
Itinerary Includes
Unlimited public transportation
Days 1-2: Home - Munich
Arrival transfer
Day 3: 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 4: Munich
Excursion to Neuschwanstein: Guided tour at Neuschwanstein Castle
Day 5: Munich - Strasbourg
Tour director-led walking tour in Ulm, Ulm Cathedral, Tour director-led walking tour in Old Strasbourg
Day 6: Strasbourg - Paris
Departure transfer, TGV Train Strasbourg-Paris, Arrival transfer
Seine River cruise
Day 7: Paris
Paris City Sightseeing, Excursion to the Palace of Versailles, RER train to Paris
Photo stop near Notre-Dame Cathedral
Day 8: Paris
Optional Excursion to the Loire Valley: Visit to the Château de Chenonceau, Lunch in Chenonceaux, Visit to the Château de Chambord, Chambord HistoPad interactive tablet
Ascent to the second level of the Eiffel Tower: Optional Eiffel Tower Summit (subject to availability)
Optional Capitaine Fracasse dinner cruise
Day 9: Departure
Departure transfer
UNPARALLELED STANDARD OF EXCELLENCE
Detailed Itinerary
Days 1-2: Arrival in Munich
Depart the U.S. for Europe via scheduled carrier. This is the big day! Watch the morning light gather slowly, first off the left-hand side of the airplane, then everywhere. It's the next day, and Germany!
You'll be struck by your first impression of Munich and its landmarks, which have been beautifully restored to their pre-war conditions.
Overnight: Munich
Day 3: 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 4: Excursion to Neuschwanstein
Today's excursion takes you along 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.
Overnight: Munich
Day 5: Ulm, Strasbourg
Today, travel west to Ulm, the birthplace of Nobel Prize laureate Albert Einstein, and an important commercial center due to its location at the meeting point of the great Stuttgart-Munich highway and the Danube River.
Enjoy a walking tour with your tour director, who will introduce city landmarks including the Stadthaus, known for its avant-garde (and controversial) architecture, the elegant Rathaus and the picturesque "Crooked House" built in the 15th century.
Visit the beautiful Münster, whose spire is the world's tallest church steeple at nearly 530 feet.
Your coach takes you across the French border to the city of Strasbourg, a busy port on the Rhine River where France's national anthem, La Marseillaise, was first sung in 1792. Strasbourg is now one of the European Union's capital cities.
A walking tour in the historic district will allow you to marvel at half-timbered houses and medieval streets. See the mighty single-spired cathedral, the lively Place Kléber as well as the covered bridges and canals in the neighborhood called La Petite France. You will also hear about the Château des Rohan, and the modern district with European Union entities such as the Parlement Européen and the Conseil de l'Europe.
Overnight: Strasbourg
Day 6: Train to Paris, Seine River Cruise
Today, travel aboard a TGV train to Paris, the "City of Light!"
Settle into your hotel, then have a look at one of the world's most beautiful capital cities.
Time permitting, you may want to head to Montmartre, Paris' highest hill and its most celebrated bohemian district. Artists still flock to the charming Place du Tertre, as they did when Toulouse-Lautrec painted the French Cancan dancers at the famous Moulin Rouge cabaret. Visitors enjoy panoramic views of the city as they make their way to the Sacré-Coeur, the white-domed basilica that anchors the Parisian skyline.
See Paris transformed into a wonderland like no other during a cruise along the River Seine.
Overnight: Paris
Day 7: Paris Sightseeing, Excursion to Versailles, RER train to Paris, Notre Dame
Set out on a coach tour of the city in the company of a local guide. On the Right Bank of the River Seine, see Napoléon's Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Elysées, the Place de la Concorde, and the exuberant Opéra Garnier. On the Left Bank, discover the Eiffel Tower, the Invalides, the Latin Quarter and Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Enjoy a bit of relevant French history today at the palace where the Sun King, Madame de Pompadour and Queen Marie-Antoinette all come to life. In this ultimate example of Baroque architecture, you will marvel at the lavish decoration, abundant gilding and exuberant ornamentation, particularly in the Royal Apartments of Louis XIV and in the Hall of Mirrors. Imagine the sense of self-importance that must have inflated the ego of these kings and queens.
Then, take a stroll around the Main Gardens.
Return to Paris using the efficient RER transit system.
View Notre-Dame de Paris, gutted by the fire of April 15, 2019, but still standing, solemn and magnificent with its iconic towers miraculously preserved from destruction.
Begun in 1163 and completed in 1272, this cathedral has presided over centuries of glorious and somber French history, including its desecration during the French Revolution. In 1831, Victor Hugo launched a campaign of restoration with a novel he titled Notre Dame de Paris. Because he saw the cathedral as the main character, he strongly objected to the title of the English edition: The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Overnight: Paris
Day 8: Paris, Optional Excursion to the Loire Valley, Eiffel Tower
Enjoy some free time in Paris.
For a change of pace, go have a look at 21st-century Paris at the Quartier de la Défense, on the outskirts of the city. Admire la Grande Arche, a feat of modern architecture with its hollow cube large enough to contain Notre-Dame. See how it is situated in near-perfect alignment with the Arc de Triomphe, the Place de la Concorde and the Louvre (you may want to take the elevator to the top for a better perspective). Check out Les Quatre Temps, a huge shopping center located nearby.
You may wish to visit the Musée de la Parfumerie Fragonard housed in the Théâtre des Capucines, a theater built in 1900 that was transformed into a museum in 1993. Its collections illustrate the history and manufacture of perfume. A mini-factory with a 19th-century copper distilling apparatus demonstrates the extraction of essences. Visitors also learn all about the esoteric artistry of the "Noses."
An excursion takes you into the very essence of the history and culture of France. See two of France's loveliest châteaux, which define the sophistication of the Renaissance.
Discover the prettiest of the Loire Valley châteaux, which spans the River Cher. In 1547, King Henri II gave this property to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. On her orders, splendid gardens were added and a bridge was built to link the castle to the other bank of the Cher. The famous gallery later erected upon that bridge by Queen Catherine de Medici served, during World War II, as an escape route between Nazi-occupied northern France and unoccupied southern France.
Lunch is included on this excursion.
Enter the largest of the Loire Valley castles (440 rooms and 80 staircases). At the age of 25, King François I decided to build a sumptuous residence, and he did. However, over the 32 years of his reign he only spent 42 days at Chambord!
Today, visitors marvel at the park (enclosed by a wall 18 miles long), at the grand façade, and at the famous Double Helix Staircase (Grand Escalier), which leads to a roof adorned with 200 chimneys!
Let the 3D and virtual reality technology of your HistoPad Chambord fill up castle rooms as they were in their heyday, back in the 16th century, while you listen to automatically triggered commentaries.
Take an elevator to the deuxième étage of the most famous cast iron structure ever built, la Tour Eiffel, for an unforgettable panorama of Paris.
Ascend to the third level of the tower.
This evening, dine in style and see illuminations transform Paris into a wonderland like no other as the Capitaine Fracasse cruise ship takes you along the River Seine.
Overnight: Paris
Day 9: Departure
Au revoir, Paris!
Most good things must come to an end. With souvenirs tucked in your suitcase, and your phone full of photos ready to be processed, you're eager to share your discoveries with family and friends.
CUSTOM TOURS
All tours can be customized to your particular needs.
Or start from scratch - we will build your dream tour!
Munich City Sightseeing
Excursion to Neuschwanstein
Tour director-led walking tour in Ulm
Tour director-led walking tour in Old Strasbourg
Seine River Cruise
Paris City Sightseeing
Excursion to Versailles
Eiffel Tower Level Two Ascent
Going Places Blog
Journey through our Côte à Côte itinerary video, from the historic streets of Paris to the sunlit shores of the Côte d'Azur. Experience the cultural richness and scenic beauty of France in this captivating tour video.