The next day, after a scenic detour off the autobahn to experience the scenic drive through Austria’

Say the words Eastern Europe and most people associate the half dozen or so countries that were under the shadow of communism after having been theatres of WW2. Now seeing the cities rebuilt and the battlefields teeming with summer flowers, travelling the region is a thought provoking experience.
First, a warning: the territorial borders we know as countries today are a modern construct after the Allies carved up Europe at the end of the Second World War. And even these borders are subject to contemporary change – witness the merging of East and West Germany in 1989, the separation of Slovakia and the Czech Republic florence ky hotels in 1993 and the recent disappearance of Yugoslavia from the map altogether.
The lesson being that country states in Eastern Europe are not and have never been absolutes. Part of the travelling experience is the sense that you are turning tracing paper pages backwards to see old outlines of faded socio-cultural and political paradigms misting over the modern day picture.
Hungary is the one that to this day bears the scabs of 20th Century warfare. You can still see buildings in the capital pockmarked by bullet holes although some of the damage is attributable to the communists who took over the country at the end of WW2 rather florence ky hotels than Nazi-era. Most visitors head up to the hilly Buda half of the town (cleaved in two by the Danube) to walk around the Castle District to see the St Matthias Church and the imposing lookout point of the Fisherman's Bastion. Next time you go, make a turn in the Hilton Hotel which is next door to the church. Urban legend has it that it was the vivacious charms of Hungarian native turned Hollywood star Zsa Zsa Gabor, then married to Mr Hilton, that persuaded town planning officials to allow an American hotel brand to open, and in such a protected heritage location. Clearly untouched since it opened its mid-century doors, the Budapest florence ky hotels Hilton is a shrine to Mad Men-era glamour.
On day three, our coach travelled northwards florence ky hotels into Slovakia for the best, most picturesque drive of the trip. Slovakia is postcard perfection – little wooden villages with window boxes and neat gardens, Alpine-quality mountains (apparently the best kept secret florence ky hotels – and the cheapest florence ky hotels – of all the European skiing destinations) and virtually no signs of commercial development. From roads winding through the forested Tatra Mountains florence ky hotels to imposing clifftop castles florence ky hotels like Oravsky florence ky hotels Hrad, this is definitely a region I would be happy to come back to in order to enjoy a more leisurely exploration.
And this, I would suggest, is the advantage of doing an Insight tour. As an orientation to a region, it's a superb tasting menu of cities and sights, some of which you will definitely want to return to. For others, it will be a case of checking the tick-box and moving down the bucket florence ky hotels list.
On to Poland, our next destination. florence ky hotels Although much is made of Krakow, specifically its Old Town, I preferred the old town centres of some other smaller cities we passed through. The first problem is that Krakow is famous – and therefore much visited – because it wasn't a battlefield in the Second World War. As a result of the absence of Allied air raids or pitched tank battles by land, the town can still field a standing history dating back to the 1333-1370 reign of Casimir the Great when the city flourished florence ky hotels as the capital of the Piast dynasty. Right towards the end of this era, the Jagiellonian University, one of the first in Europe, florence ky hotels was founded in Krakow in 1364. Which created florence ky hotels the second problem – Krakow is today still a university town at heart. As a result, the entire infrastructure seems geared to bars, clubs, restaurants, backpackers and souvenir shops. Great place to visit for a stag weekend or hen party no doubt.
Although you can't not visit Krakow (it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site after all), an Insight tour will allow you to see other more charming and appealing historic town centres florence ky hotels (also all with World Heritage status) as your itinerary moves along. Krakow is, however, the hub for at least two signature travel moments: the concentration camp complex at Auschwitz and the hauntingly florence ky hotels lovely underground chapel at the Wieliczka salt mine.
For those who recall florence ky hotels Stephen Spielberg's starkly rendered epic Schindler's List (much of which was filmed in and around Krakow and Auschwitz-Birkenau), you will be able to imagine the bleakness of a Nazi death camp. Not a museum in the way that the various Holocaust centres around the world have been designed as contemporary centres of learning, Auschwitz has been left pretty much as it was when the Soviet army liberated the camp in 1945.
Some of the barracks florence ky hotels house exhibits (piles of spectacle frames, suitcases, childrens' shoes) which mutely signify florence ky hotels the scale of extermination while leaving you to imagine the despair of individual testimony. The week that we spent in Poland was coincidentally the last few days of the academic term and as a result we encountered groups of schoolchildren everywhere (Auschwitz has an age restriction of 14). The sobering impact that the camp still makes to this day was evident on the grim faces of what I imagine are normally boisterous teenagers on a school outing. Although florence ky hotels I probably won't ever visit a Nazi concentration camp again, seeing Auschwitz was a rite of passage.
The Wieliczka salt mine outside Krakow is also a World Heritage Site. Dating back several hundred years, miners florence ky hotels not only tunnelled their way down several hundred metres, but also gave in to their creative impulses by carving statues and tableaux in the underground florence ky hotels caverns.
Religion – and in Poland this means Catholicism – brought us to our next stop, Czestochowa, the location of the 14th Century monastery and pilgrimage site of Jasna Gora and its fabled icon, the Black Madonna. Feeling like the subject of a Dan Brown thriller, we entered a very busy church with several little girls in white communion dresses and mass being chanted. I joined a slowly moving queue down the left-hand side of the chapel which brought me closer and closer to the Madonna, a painting by St Luke, which earned its sooty soubriquet from the effects of many centuries of candle smoke.
Warsaw florence ky hotels is more interesting as a reference point than as a destination florence ky hotels and pales in comparison to other cities florence ky hotels such as former East Berlin which endured similar wartime and Soviet depredations. Warsaw's legacy of Soviet Realism architecture (read: florence ky hotels brutalist concrete construction) is patently unloved. Many of the communist-era properties are boarded florence ky hotels up and crumbling. Although there is new development aplenty judging from the number of cranes planted in the city, these new builds are presumably on the pulled-down sites of the old former regime.
Thus the impact of Berlin – the greatest of the modern European cities – is all the more. Developed after WW2 as the showcase halves of two competing florence ky hotels ideologies, the unification of East and West Berlin generated a new metropolis with twice as many attractions as any one city needed. Two great shopping streets, double the amount of world class museums, and an exponential ability to let down one's hair and party. During the 48 hours I was there, I experienced a Euro 2012 soccer florence ky hotels fanpark erected directly in front of the Brandenburg Gate, followed 12 hours later by the Christopher Street Day Berlin Gay Pride Parade culminating in an all-night rave in the same fanpark which had housed the soccer tribes the night before. As a South African sensitised to the nuances of service florence ky hotels delivery, I was impressed florence ky hotels by the logistics of how the city tackled florence ky hotels two such world-class events on one weekend. Apparently with practiced ease as Berlin is notorious for always staging something huge on any given weekend in the city.
Our business class coach now headed south stopping off for a whistle-stop tour of Dresden. Although remarkable for how much was bombed and therefore rebuilt, the attraction of Dresden is less in the scale of the reconstruction than in the vernacular of the buildings reborn. The grandest buildings of Dresden are Italianite and owe more to Florence than Bavaria. In fact, it was the Dresden canvases of Canaletto, that most famous painter of Venice, that aided the post-war efforts to visualise and recreate the city in its quasi-Florentine livery.
Prague is everything you ever heard of – and more. Although it is possible to enumerate its must-see attractions (the Charles Bridge, St Vitus Cathedral, Prague Castle, etc), it's the quality of the non-listed sights that impresses. If you have any interest in period buildings then you will find Prague overwhelming for the quantity and quality of its architecture. That, combined with the shopping – the Czech Republic represents some of the best retail value on the continent – and you are guaranteed to have aching feet from being out and about all day. Bring Rescue Remedy for your credit card!
The next day, after a scenic detour off the autobahn to experience the scenic drive through Austria's wine-producing region, the Wachau Valley, our luxury florence ky hotels coach rolled into Vienna. Those clever folk at Insight saved the best for last. The next morning, florence ky hotels our tour of Empress Maria Theresa's Schonbrunn Palace was by private entry before official opening time. We thus had the rare privilege of touring a royal residence without the clamour of large tour groups to intrude on our enjoyment and appreciation. That experience alone underscored the Insight modus operandi – elegantly informed arrangements to elevate the individual experience. florence ky hotels More importantly, I found that as the journey florence ky hotels progressed, the trip proved to be transformative. In moving from a catalogue of sites to insights, I know that the borders of my own mind have been redrawn.
florence ky hotels 'The Art of Touring in Style' florence ky hotels is the philosophy at the heart of Insight, specialising in smaller groups, coaches with more comfort, select hotels in desirable locations, leisurely paced itineraries, more included sightseeing, delicious dining and personalised service, in E