EUROPEAN SAMPLER WITH LONDON EXTENSION - 2010

11 days incl. travel, or 10 days from London to London (HDL)

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Vacation Overview

This is an exciting sampler of some of Europe’s main highlights. Start with two nights in London, where guided sightseeing includes a visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Changing of the Guard (if held). Board the Eurostar train to Brussels, followed by a comfortable drive to Amsterdam. Here, a leisurely canal cruise shows you the sights. In Germany, visit Cologne’s impressive twin-spired gothic cathedral, take a cruise down the romantic Rhine River, spend the night in beautiful Heidelberg, and travel through the Black Forest, home of the world’s most famous cuckoo clocks. Cross the border into Switzerland and visit the thundering Rhine Falls before spending two nights in lakeside Lucerne. On through breathtaking alpine scenery and the Burgundy wine area to Paris, where guided sightseeing includes all the highlights as well as a ride up to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. Return to London from Paris by Eurostar train and spend one night in London.
In the rare event that the Eurostar train is unavailable, alternative services will be provided.

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Things to see on your vacation: View Vacation Photo Slideshow

A Vacation Story Eiffel Tower

Imagining Paris without the Eiffel Tower is like London without Big Ben or San Francisco without the Golden Gate Bridge. But no sooner had the architect Gustav Eiffel beaten his 700 competitors in the design competition for the 1889 Centennial Exposition, celebrating a century since the French Revolution, than a vocal outcry began to halt construction of the edifice. Three hundred famous French artists and writers signed a petition in the newspaper “Le Temps” denouncing Eiffel’s radically modern design as “useless and monstrous,” a blight upon the elegant fabric of the City of Light. Others critics were even more vicious, describing the proposed tower as a “tragic street lamp,” a gymnasium apparatus…incomplete, confused and deformed,” “a giant ungainly skeleton,” “a half-built factory pipe,” “a carcass” and even “a hole-riddled suppository.” Nature-lovers argued that it would disturb the flight patterns of Parisian birds. Even as the iron lattice began to rise, Parisians continued to refer to it by the less-than-flattering nickname, “the metal asparagus.” Of course, no sooner had the tower opened in 1889 than the rabid criticism evaporated.