-Day 1 Overnight flight to France (Paris)
Day 2 Bonjour Paris
Details: Meet your tour director and check into hotel
Your 24-hour Tour Director will meet you at the airport and remain with your group until your final airport departure. You’ll also have a private coach and driver while touring .
Details: Paris city walk
This city was made for walking. Stroll grand boulevards with sweeping views of the city, pristine parks with trees planted in perfect rows, and narrow streets crowded with vendors selling flowers, pastries and cheese. Then head to the Île de la Cité, a small island in the Seine, to see Notre Dame Cathedral. Please note Notre Dame Cathedral is currently closed due to fire damage.
Details: Notre-Dame Cathedral
View the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Work began in 1163 on a spot that had been a holy shrine since Roman times. Over the centuries, the cathedral has been the scene of some of France's most momentous occasions, including the coronation of Napoleon.
Day 3 Paris landmarks
Details: Paris guided sightseeing tour
What's that huge white arch at the end of the Champs-Élysées? The Arc de Triomphe, commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 after his victory at Austerlitz. Your licensed local guide will elaborate on this, and other Parisian landmarks. See some of the most famous sites, including the ornate 19th-century Opera, the Presidential residence and the Place de la Concorde, where in the center you’ll find the Obelisk of Luxor, a gift from Egypt in 1836. Spot chic locals (and tons of tourists) strolling the Champs-Élysées. Look up at the iron girders of the Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 World's Fair to commemorate the centenary of the French Revolution. See Les Invalides (a refuge for war wounded) and the École Militaire (Napoleon's alma mater).
Details: Seine River cruise
See the city from the water on an hour-long cruise along the River Seine. The Seine cuts right through Paris, dividing the city in half. See the Eiffel tower rising up on the Left Bank, the walls of the Louvre on the Right Bank. A guide will point out other monuments and architectural marvels as you pass, many of which are illuminated by clear white light at night.
Day 4 Paris--St. Malo Area
Dinner
Details: Travel to St. Malo via Normandy
Tall granite walls surround the old town of St. Malo, which was once a stronghold for privateers (pirates approved by the king). The Saint-Malo Cathedral, in the center of the old town, is built in Romanesque and Gothic styles and features stained-glass windows depicting city history.
Details: Arromanches D-Day Museum visit
Ingenious military engineering allowed the Allied forces to land at Arromanches on D-Day. Barges towed 600,000 tons of concrete across the English Channel, sinking them to create an artificial harbor, and then 33 jetties and 10 miles of floating roadways allowed the troops to land in France. Learn about this feat and other at the Arromanches Museum, where dioramas, interactive displays, and models detail the Allied landing.
Details: American Military Cemetery and Memorial visit at Colleville-sur-Mer
Visit the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer that honors American troops who died in Europe during World War II.
Day 5 St. Malo Area--Loire Valley
Breakfast
Travel to Loire Valley
Details: Mont-St-Michel visit
Stop to see Mont-St-Michel, an enormous abbey that seems to rise up out of the water, completely isolated from any connecting land. Perched on an enormous rock just off the Normandy coast, the granite Abbey of Mont-St-Michel actually is linked to the mainland—by a narrow causeway that is covered with water during high tide. The Benedictine Abbey was founded in the 10th century, and has undergone many transformations since. Now it is a memorable complex of various buildings and styles—including rounded Romanesque arches and lacy Gothic vaulting—all culminating in a dramatic pointed spire. A major pilgrimage site for centuries, it was turned into a prison during the French Revolution, and the Benedictines did not return until 1966.
Day 6 Loire Valley--Paris
Château de Chenonceau visit
Chateau d'Amboise visit
Travel to Paris
Day 7 Paris--Lausanne
Travel to Geneva on the TGV (Europe's fastest train)
Travel to Lausanne
Dinner
Details: Geneva Tour Director-led sightseeing tour
Mary Shelley wrote her famous novel "Frankenstein" in Geneva, and the city itself might be said to reflect the stitched-together nature of Frankenstein's monster - a cosmopolitan population with a traditionally Swiss focus on banking, a history of both austere Protestantism and extravagant bohemianism, cutting-edge internationalism wedged around Old World style. Explore the contradictions with your Tour Director, who will lead you to the immense United Nations, the beautiful Lake Geneva (look for the Jet d'Eau, which shoots water up to 450 feet in the air), and the charmingly crowded medieval Old Town.
Day 8 Lausanne
Breakfast
Visit Montreux
Chocolate factory visit
Dinner
Details: Château de Chillon visit
Emerging grandly from Lake Geneva, the stately Château de Chillon is one of Switzerland’s most famous castles. The medieval fortress, an array of turrets, towers, and heavy stone walls, once served as the rather un-summery summer home of the Dukes of Savoy. In the 1800s it became a state prison, made famous in a poem by Byron. Today you can still see where the Romantic poet scratched his name in a column of the prison dungeon.
Day 9 Flight home from Geneva
Breakfast
Details: Travel to Geneva
Geneva is situated in a prime Rhône Valley position at the southwestern corner of Lake Geneva, within view of the pinnacle of the Mont Blanc. The city's strong French influence shows itself everywhere, from its mansard roofs, iron balconies, sidewalk cafes, and French signs. Geneva is a cosmopolitan city and home to more than 200 international organizations, including the European headquarters of the United Nations.
Tour Includes:
- 7 overnight stays in hotel with private bathrooms
- Round-trip airfare
- Full European breakfast daily
- Dinner daily
- Full-time services of a professional tour director
- High-speed TGV train
- Guided sightseeing and city walks as per itinerary
- Visit to select attractions as per itinerary
- Tour Diary™
- Local Guide and Local Bus Driver tips; see note regarding other important tips
- Note: On arrival day only dinner is provided; on departure day, only breakfast is provided
- Note: Tour cost does not include airline-imposed baggage fees, or fees for any required passport or visa. Please view our Terms & Conditions for a full list of items that may not be included in the cost of your tour.
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