Editor’s note: while I haven’t done a cruise on the Rhine, regular readers of The Royal Tour will probably remember time I spent in the region, based in Bonn. You can visit my guide to the amazing city here, and see my favorite castle experience here. Jackie, however, puts the whole length of the river…
When I was a teen, I decided one day that I was going to read the encyclopedia from start to finish. My family had a World Book set (this dates me, I know), and I picked up the A volume and sat down to begin. As you might imagine, I didn’t get very far, and…
Let me start by saying that intra-European flights are among my least favorite ways to travel. I much prefer trains, and tend to plan my trips to have reasonably short distances between stops, ones easily traversed via rail or bus. It’s cheaper and more convenient, liquids are acceptable to bring (as is whatever weight my…
Germany is awesome! This past fall, I was lucky enough to spend close to three months exploring the country. I stayed in six different cities spread all over both east and west, north and south, and took several day trips to yet other places. After all this time, it is safe to say I learned…
Munich is one of the largest cities in Germany, and the de facto capital of the southern part of the country. It sits along the Isar River, near the foothills of the Alps. It also has one of the largest airports in Germany, making it a reasonably likely entry point for visitors to both Germany…
It is a beautiful fall afternoon in Munich’s English Garden, and the city has come out to enjoy it. An area larger than New York’s Central Park, the English Garden is a vast urban green space of wide lawns, man-made streams created by diverted water from the Isar River, monuments, tall trees, and beer gardens.…
Munich is, comparatively speaking, a modern city. While some cities trace back to Roman times, Munich itself is only mentioned as a city with a bridge over the river Isar from the year 1158. However, over the centuries, it went from a tiny settlement of Benedictine monks to the capital of a Germanic kingdom. Any…
This is my favorite way to travel. I love to find a long-term (at least a few weeks) home base to explore, and to use it as a hub to see some of the region. This trip has been too much of a whirlwind - with too many location changes - to do much of…
The history of Germany is so different from that of most of Western Europe. While countries like Spain, France, and the Netherlands have existed for centuries, in some cases even with relatively unchanged borders, Germany as a country didn’t really exist until 1871, when the German Empire was born, led by the northern kingdom of…
Warning: this article is graphic, and deals with some disturbing subject matter. It is vivid deliberately; the horrors of war - and especially of war prior to guided munitions - is something we must not gloss over. We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs,…