Travel Tale of Trafalgar Tour’s Bohemian Highlights 13-27 June 2009

In 2009, I decided to start travelling again. It was the first time I was on a plane in seven years and the first thing I learned was that a lot had happened to the airline industry.

Nope, I’m not talking about the tighter security or the war on nail clippers. I’m talking about seat back video screens.

It’s amazing how a few hours of movies or TV can make a long flight, well, fly.

I decided to take a tour for my first trip outside of North America in almost twenty years. I had done a couple of tours in high school, and knew that as a solo traveller, it was the way to go. I dropped into a travel agent and asked them to suggest the best company to travel with. They handed me a thick brochure from Trafalgar Tours.

I went home and was like an eight year old with a Sears catalog before Christmas. My initial thought was Greece, but it was a bit long. Then I saw the Bohemian Highlights.

The last time I travelled in Europe, there was an invisible line that I could not cross. As a member of the military, I needed permission to cross into Eastern Europe, so visiting Warsaw, Budapest or Prague was out of the question. There was something surreal about looking at a map of Europe and realizing that the entire continent was mine to explore.

The Bohemian Highlights was the ideal tour to start that exploration. While current versions of the tour start in Frankfurt and drive to Berlin, I was lucky enough to take the tour when it started in Berlin. From there, the tour did a circle of Eastern Europe and included stops in Warsaw, Krakow, Budapest, Vienna and Prague. Each stop was for two nights so that meant at least one full day of sightseeing in each city.

I should note that even though I did this tour in 2009, very little has changed. The hotels and timings may be different, but many of the sites visited are the same.

I wrote this tale as I travelled so it is very detailed. You can start with the Travel Day and Day One or navigate to individual days using the Table of Contents.

All the photos can be found on my flickr page.

Enjoy!

 

🙂