Imperial Highlights

You’ll arrive in Munich through bells over Marienplatz and laughter spilling from beer-hall doors. After settling into your hotel, you join your Travel Director for an orientation tour through streets of painted signs, gabled roofs and church towers rising above the old center. In Marienplatz, you stand between the Old Town Hall and the New Town Hall as the Glockenspiel performs its famous tale of a royal wedding, jousting knights and the coopers’ dance. Later, the evening is yours to explore. Perhaps you’ll take a seat at an outdoor Biergarten, where long wooden tables and cold beer welcome you into Bavaria.

• Munich Orientation

Beyond Munich, your first stop is Regensburg, where the Danube runs beside a UNESCO-listed medieval center of stone arches, steep roofs and carved doorways. You look up at the Gothic cathedral as its towers rise over the town, then move through streets where cool stone, painted signs and the scent of bread from nearby bakeries pull you further into the Bavarian city. Crossing into the Czech Republic, you wander beneath sharp spires and around lamp-lit corners. Later, you can choose tonight’s Optional Experience to explore the illuminated city.

Following your Local Specialist through Prague Castle’s courtyards, you pause inside the Cathedral of St. Vitus, where colored glass scatters red, blue and gold across the chapel walls. In Old Town Square, you stand among carved clock faces and Gothic towers as the warm scent of cinnamon drifts from pastry stalls nearby. Your free afternoon leaves room to return for the Astronomical Clock’s hourly Walk of the Apostles, perhaps with a freshly baked trdelník in hand. Or choose an Optional Experience lunch cruise on the Vltava, passing riverside palaces, bridges and Prague Castle.

• Prague City Tour

Leaving Prague behind, you'll travel through Moravia’s southern landscapes towards Slovakia, watching villages, fields and church roofs pass beyond the glass. In Bratislava, you explore the Old Town, where the 15th-century Old Town Hall stands among pastel buildings, narrow passageways and cafe awnings. Then Budapest waits further along the road, split between Buda and Pest across the broad sweep of the river. Your evening is free, or you can choose an Optional Experience private dinner cruise, tasting Hungarian specialties as you drift past Parliament, stone bridges and shimmering riverside lamps.

• Bratislava Orientation

In Budapest, you explore a city of tiled rooftops, carved doorways, see steam rising from bathhouse vents and smell the paprika warmth of Hungarian kitchens in the air. With your Local Specialist, you trace the city’s many influences on a sightseeing tour through grand boulevards, historic squares and neighborhoods shaped by centuries of movement between east and west. The rest of the day is yours to spend however you choose. You might join an Optional Experience to Szentendre, a medieval town on the Danube known for artists’ houses, church towers and lanes lined with galleries. Later, another Optional Experience invites you to dinner, where you sit down to Hungarian dishes among bright embroidery, traditional dance and live music.

• Budapest City Tour

Before leaving Budapest, you may step inside the Hungarian Parliament, where red carpeting climbs the Grand Stairway, frescoes cover the ceiling and the Hungarian Holy Crown rests beneath the Dome Hall. Back on the road, you cross the hilly Transdanubia region towards Győr, watching vineyards, farmhouses and chapel towers pass between Hungary and Austria. Vienna waits at the end of the day with polished stone, coffee house windows and opera house doors lit for the evening. As evening falls, you arrive in a capital of galleries, concert halls and candlelit dining rooms, where you can spend the night among grand avenues, old cafe tables and velvet-seated concert halls.

At Schönbrunn Palace, a guided Optional Experience can take you through the former Habsburg summer residence, past gilded rooms and patterned parquet, as you glimpse crystal chandeliers scattering shards of dancing light across the rooms. Later, with your Local Specialist, you explore Vienna through carved balconies, baroque doorways and quiet courtyards tucked behind grand streets. This evening, another Optional Experience pairs dinner with the music of Mozart and Strauss, as violin and piano notes fill the room.

• Vienna City Tour

Following the Danube Valley towards Salzburg, you watch the river slip between wooded hills, village roofs and pale church towers. In Salzburg, your Local Specialist leads you into a city of music and pale baroque stone, where you cross Mirabell Gardens among fountains, statues and low box hedges curling around bright beds of red and yellow flowers. Later, the afternoon is yours to spend deeper in the Old Town, passing wrought-iron signs on Getreidegasse, lifting your eyes to church domes and stepping inside the Cathedral where Mozart was baptised. You can also visit his nearby birthplace, where portraits, letters and early instruments trace Mozart’s childhood in Salzburg.

• Salzburg City Tour

Leaving Austria, you return to Bavaria, breathing in cool alpine air as the road rises towards high mountain country. On your Optional Experience through the Bavarian Alps to Berchtesgaden, you climb above 1,500 meters, passing dark pine slopes, carved chalet balconies and gray-white limestone peaks above the road. Or visit the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s former retreat, where you learn its infamous history while standing high above the valleys of Bavaria. Later, you return to Munich for a final dinner with your fellow travelers, raising a glass to 10 days of cathedrals, castles, river cities and mountain roads.

With the warmth of your Bavarian hosts still with you, spend your last hours in Munich sharing favorite memories from days of painted squares, alpine roads, candlelit music and old stone cities. Say farewell to new friends, take one last taste of Bavaria with you and head for home.