Sites & attractions

🇫🇷 Paris

Arc de Triomphe

Napoleon's triumphal arch atop the Champs-Élysées, over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, with a rooftop terrace looking down twelve radiating avenues.

🇫🇷 Paris

Berthillon

Family-run ice cream and sorbet on Île Saint-Louis, made the same way since 1954 — Paris's most beloved scoop.

🇫🇷 Paris

Catacombes de Paris

Underground ossuary holding the bones of six million Parisians, laid out in eerie patterned walls beneath the 14th arrondissement.

🇫🇷 Paris

Eiffel Tower

Book elevator tickets ahead. Go for sunset; stay for the sparkle on the hour.

🇫🇷 Paris

Le Marais wander

The oldest aristocratic quarter — Place des Vosges, narrow medieval lanes, the Jewish district on Rue des Rosiers, falafel, vintage.

🇫🇷 Paris

Les Invalides (Napoleon's Tomb)

Napoleon's tomb under a gilded dome, plus one of Europe's best military museums.

🇫🇷 Paris

The Louvre

The world's largest art museum. Plan, book ahead, and don't try to see it all.

🇫🇷 Paris

Marché des Enfants Rouges

Paris's oldest covered market (1628), now a tight warren of food stalls — Moroccan, Lebanese, Italian, Japanese, French.

🇫🇷 Paris

Notre-Dame de Paris

The Gothic cathedral on Île de la Cité, reopened December 2024 after the post-fire restoration.

🇫🇷 Paris

Opéra Garnier (Palais Garnier)

The opulent 1875 opera house that inspired The Phantom of the Opera: a marble grand staircase, a gilded mirrored foyer, and a Chagall-painted ceiling.

🇫🇷 Paris

Passage des Panoramas

The oldest of Paris's 19th-century covered shopping passages — gas-lit in 1816, now full of stamp dealers, bistros and tiny shops.

🇫🇷 Paris

Pierre Hermé Bonaparte

Flagship boutique of the patissier who reinvented the macaron — go for the Ispahan and the seasonal flavours.

🇫🇷 Paris

Sainte-Chapelle

Royal palace chapel from 1248 wrapped in 15 floor-to-ceiling stained-glass windows — one of the great interiors in Europe.

🇫🇷 Paris

Seine River Cruise

A ~75-minute sunset boat ride past Notre Dame, the Louvre, and the Eiffel Tower.

🇫🇷 Paris

Stohrer

Paris's oldest pastry shop, open since 1730, right on our Rue Montorgueil doorstep. The birthplace of the baba au rhum.

🇫🇷 Paris

Palace of Versailles

Louis XIV's seat of power. The Hall of Mirrors, the gardens, the sheer scale of it.

🇨🇭 Lucerne

Chapel Bridge (Kapellbrücke)

The wooden covered bridge with a medieval water tower — Lucerne's icon.

🇨🇭 Lucerne

Château Gütsch

A white fairy-tale hotel-castle perched on a wooded hill above Lucerne. Ride the little funicular up for the view.

🇨🇭 Lucerne

Confiserie Bachmann — Schwanenplatz

120-year-old Swiss chocolatier on the lakeside with a 'flowing chocolate wall' you can watch through the window.

🇨🇭 Lucerne

Etter Distillery (Zug)

A 150-year family distillery in Zug, makers of the famous Zuger Kirsch cherry brandy. Showroom, shop, and tastings. A short train hop from Lucerne.

🇨🇭 Lucerne

Jesuit Church (Jesuitenkirche)

Switzerland's first large Baroque church (1666), with a luminous pink-and-white interior right on the Reuss.

🇨🇭 Lucerne

Lion Monument (Löwendenkmal)

A ten-metre dying lion carved into a cliff face — Mark Twain called it 'the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world.'

🇨🇭 Lucerne

Lucerne Altstadt — frescoed squares

Car-free medieval old town with painted facades on Weinmarkt, Hirschenplatz and Kornmarkt — basically a walk-in fresco gallery.

🇨🇭 Lucerne

Mount Pilatus — Golden Round Trip

Lake boat, world's steepest cogwheel railway up Pilatus, panorama gondola down — a half-day Alpine loop from Lucerne.

🇨🇭 Lucerne

Rathaus Brauerei

A brewpub built into the Town Hall cellars on the Reuss, a few steps from the Chapel Bridge. Brewed on-site, with a riverside terrace looking at Pilatus.

🇨🇭 Lucerne

Museum Sammlung Rosengart

Three floors of Picasso and Klee — the personal collection of Lucerne dealer Angela Rosengart, who knew Picasso for decades.

🇨🇭 Lucerne

Swiss Museum of Transport (Verkehrshaus)

Switzerland's most-visited museum — trains, planes, cable cars and a planetarium, with a chocolate experience attached.

🇨🇭 Lucerne

Victorinox Flagship Store

The Swiss Army Knife brand's Lucerne flagship on Hirschenplatz. Pick a knife, personalise the scales, walk out with a souvenir that actually gets used.

🇨🇿 Prague

Angelato — Rytířská

Small Czech gelateria using only natural ingredients — daily rotating flavours, no stabilisers, the city's reliable scoop.

🇨🇿 Prague

Charles Bridge (Karlův most)

Prague's 14th-century stone bridge over the Vltava, lined with 30 baroque saints and bookended by two Gothic bridge towers.

🇨🇿 Prague

Cukrárna Myšák

1911 Prague pastry institution off Wenceslas Square — větrník cream puffs, špička cones, and proper Czech coffee.

🇨🇿 Prague

Moser Gallery — Na Příkopě

Bohemian crystal at its most serious — the Moser flagship is set in the carved-wood interiors of an 1880s palace apartment.

🇨🇿 Prague

Municipal House (Obecní dům)

Prague's grandest Art Nouveau building, a 1911 concert hall dripping with Mucha murals, stained glass, and mosaics, a minute from our hotel.

🇨🇿 Prague

Old Jewish Cemetery & Josefov

Tilted layers of 12,000 weathered headstones in Europe's oldest surviving Jewish cemetery, ringed by six historic synagogues.

🇨🇿 Prague

Old Town Square & the Astronomical Clock

Prague's medieval heart: a ring of Gothic and baroque facades around the famous Astronomical Clock and its hourly parade of apostles.

🇨🇿 Prague

Petřín Lookout Tower

An 1891 mini-Eiffel on a wooded hill, 299 steps up to a panoramic view across Prague rooftops to the castle.

🇨🇿 Prague

Pilsner Urquell Brewery (Plzeň day trip)

The birthplace of pilsner, 1842. Voted Europe's best brewery tour: 9 km of cellars and unfiltered lager poured from an oak barrel. A day trip from Prague.

🇨🇿 Prague

Powder Tower (Prašná brána)

A blackened Gothic gate-tower from 1475, one of the original entrances to the Old Town and the start of the royal coronation route.

🇨🇿 Prague

Prague Castle & St. Vitus Cathedral

The largest ancient castle in the world, dominating Prague's skyline.

🇨🇿 Prague

Sedlec Ossuary (Kostnice v Sedlci)

A small chapel in Kutná Hora decorated with the bones of 40,000 people — chandeliers, garlands, coats of arms, all in human bone.

🇨🇿 Prague

St. Wenceslas Vineyard

The oldest vineyard in Bohemia, on the slope just below Prague Castle. Free to wander, with a pergola wine bar and a sweeping view over the Old Town.

🇨🇿 Prague

Strahov Monastery Brewery

Monastic brewing beside Prague Castle since the 1400s, revived in 2001. A heritage beer hall with hearty Czech food, right on the castle route.

🇨🇿 Prague

Strahov Monastery Library

Two of the most beautiful baroque library halls in the world — Theological and Philosophical, frescoed and gilded, on a hill above the castle.

🇨🇿 Prague

U Fleků

Prague's oldest brewpub, going since 1499: one legendary house beer, centuries of history, vaulted halls.

🇨🇿 Prague

Pivovar U Medvídků

A beer house in a building dating to 1466, home of X-Beer 33, billed as the world's strongest lager. Historic Old Town hall with a small working brewery upstairs.

🇵🇱 Kraków

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum

The site of the largest Nazi death camp. A guided memorial visit; book weeks in advance.

🇵🇱 Kraków

Good Lood

Kraków's beloved natural-ingredient lody — five rotating daily flavours, no stabilisers, almost always a queue.

🇵🇱 Kraków

House of Beer

Kraków's biggest craft multitap, a few steps off the Main Square. The place to track down Grodziskie, Poland's revived historical smoked-wheat beer.

🇵🇱 Kraków

Kazimierz wander

Kraków's former Jewish quarter — moody, mural-covered, packed with cafés, klezmer venues and seven historic synagogues.

🇵🇱 Kraków

Pijalnia Czekolady E. Wedel

Drinking-chocolate lounge from Poland's most-loved chocolate house (founded 1851) — thick enough to stand a spoon in.

🇵🇱 Kraków

Planty Park

A 4 km green ring around the entire Old Town, built on the line of the demolished medieval walls in the 1820s.

🇵🇱 Kraków

Rynek Główny (Main Square)

Europe's largest medieval town square — the heart of Kraków's Old Town.

🇵🇱 Kraków

Schindler's Factory Museum

Oskar Schindler's actual enamel factory, now a dense, immersive museum about Kraków under Nazi occupation 1939–45.

🇵🇱 Kraków

St. Florian's Gate & the Barbican

The medieval north gate of the Old Town and the round brick bastion that guarded it, right across from our hotel at the head of the Royal Route.

🇵🇱 Kraków

St. Mary's Basilica & the Veit Stoss Altar

Gothic twin-towered church on the Main Square with the largest medieval altarpiece in the world — opened at 11:50 daily.

🇵🇱 Kraków

Sukiennice (Cloth Hall)

Renaissance arcaded market hall in the middle of the Main Square — Polish amber, wool, wooden toys and folk crafts under one roof.

🇵🇱 Kraków

Wawel Royal Castle & Cathedral

Poland's royal hill above the Vistula: the castle, the coronation cathedral, and a riverside cave that ends at a fire-breathing dragon. A ~15-minute walk from our hotel.

🇵🇱 Kraków

Wieliczka Salt Mine

UNESCO underground city — 700 years of mining, with a 100m-deep chapel carved entirely from rock salt.