London and Paris

Day 1

Toronto – London

Depart Toronto on an overnight flight to London departing in the evening.

Day 2

London (D)

Arrive in London. After you have cleared immigration and customs, you will be met and transferred to your hotel. En route, enjoy a tour of Windsor Castle. Before arriving at the hotel, you will have an orientation tour of city’s major attractions. London is a masculine city of ever-erupting ideas and trends, scene of pageantry and display, home of thinkers and speakers, birthplace of English drama, where more than 40 theatres remain in operation the year round.

Look out for Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square, Parliament, Big Ben, Whitehall, Downing Street, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Tower of London and much more.

Remainder of the time is at leisure so you can acclimatize yourself to the time change.

Dinner and overnight at the Royal National Hotel or similar.

Day 3

London - Oxford - Stratford - London (B/D)

After breakfast, board your coach for a full day excursion to Oxford & Stratford. 57 miles from London is Oxford, a city well over a thousand years old, the earliest colleges – St. Edmund, Hall, Merton, and Balliot – date from the 13th century. Oxford University consists of 28 colleges, five of which are for women. It’s difficult to decide where the university ends and the town begins – the scattered colleges, quads and chapels blend in harmoniously with workaday buildings, giving every street scene dreaming spires and domes. Continue on to the small town of Stratford in Warwickshire, where Shakespeare was born in 1564, he returned to marry and live there after his wild and creative years in London had earned him the solid bourgeois he was at heart. You can trace his life story in Stratford, from his birthplace on Henley Street to the Shakespeare Centre, to Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, to his tomb in Holy Trinity Church. You will also visit the Royal Shakespeare Theatre which occupies a perfect position on the banks of the Avon. There’s still an aura of Old Elizabethan England among Stratford’s timbered inns and 16th century houses with their oddly protruding upper story. At the end of this tour, board your coach and return to London.
Dinner and overnight in London.

Day 4

London (B/D)

Breakfast at the hotel. Today, use your supplied Hop On-Hop Off ticket which allows you to visit many of London's famous monuments and museums. Departing from Piccadilly Circus at 9:00 a.m., and at 20 minutes intervals, buses pass Trafalgar Square, where you can visit the National Gallery, rich in early Italian (da Vinci, Raphael, Botticelli and Titian), Dutch and Flemish (Rembrandt, Rubens, Hals, Van Dyck), Spanish (Velasquez and El Greco) and 18th & 19th century British (Constable, Turner, Gainsborough and Reynolds). The National Portrait Gallery, historical collection of contemporary portraits of famous British men and women, from the Tudors to modern times. Board the next bus and journey to St. James's Palace built in 1532 by Henry VIII. Passing Buckingham Palace (changing of guard 11:30 a.m., alternate days phone 071 799 2331 for correct day). Bus continues to Westminster Abbey where you can also visit the Tate Gallery (British paintings from the 16th century to the present day). Next stop is the House of Parliament and Big Ben, the Law Courts (open Monday to Friday 10:40 to 16:30), St. Pauls Cathedral (open daily except Sundays 9:30 - 16:15, entrance fee) via the Monument, Tower Bridge. The last stop before returning to Piccadilly Circus is the Tower of London first built of wood by William the Conqueror in 1067, it was converted to stone a decade later. From 1300 it became the Royal Jewel House and contains also one of the world's greatest collections of armour. Its most historical role was as a prison to a score of leading historical figures including the little Princes, Thomas More, Anne Boleyn and Sir Walter Raleigh. It is impossible to visit all these attractions in one day, so you must be selective with regard to which sightseeing attraction you want to visit in depth.

This evening, enjoy one of London’s West-End theatre shows.

Dinner and overnight in London.

Day 5

London (B)

Entire day of leisure.

Day 6

London - Paris (B/D)

After breakfast at the hotel, meet your guide for a tour of Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Following the tour, travel to St. Pancras Station where you will board the Eurostar train headed for Paris.

Upon arrival in Paris, you will be met and transferred to your hotel. En route, enjoy a guided sightseeing tour of this unique city including a visit to Notre Dame Cathedral. See Les Grands Boulevards, l’Opéra, Place de la Concorde, Les Champs Elysées, l’Arc de Triomphe, Tour Eiffel, and much more.

Dinner and overnight in Paris.

Day 7

Paris (B/D)

This morning travel by Metro to the Louvre Museum where you will meet your guide.

This former Royal Palace, transformed by the Revolution into a museum, lays claim to the title of "most beautiful museum in the world." You will enter through I.M.Pei's pyramids which are highlights of the major modernization program and in the course of their construction the medieval foundations were unearthed and are displayed as an integral part of the museum's collection. Containing over 200,000 works of art in 225 galleries, it is impossible for you to view them all so you must be very selective. Some of the most famous exhibits are: Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the soaring 3rd century BC statue Victory of Samothrace, the celebrated Vénus de Milo (2nd century BC) and the realistic Egyptian Seated Scribe.

The remainder of your day is at leisure.

After dinner, use your supplied Bateaux Mouches ticket and see an illuminated Paris from the river Seine.

Day 8

Paris (B/D)

This morning, use your supplied train tickets and head to Versailles. Your supplied audioguides will help lead you through the tour. Versailles, the creation of the French monarchy at the time of its greatest splendour. Consisting of the great palace, the gardens and the Trianons, it is a wonderful harmonious composition of building and landscape, a unique expression of the vitality of French art during the 17th-18th century. Between 1682 and 1789, Versailles was the seat of government and France's political capital. Today the chateau of Versailles seems outrageously large, but in 1682 when Louis XIV took up residence it housed about 15,000 noblemen, servants, and hangers-on who moved in with Louis. Built between 1662 and 1690 it took 26,000 labourers and soldiers to construct. See the Grand Appartement, Hall of Mirrors, King's and Queen's suites, as well as many other sights.

Dinner and overnight in Paris.

Day 9

Paris - Toronto

AU REVOIR FRANCE ET A BIENTOT! Transfer to the airport for your flight home arriving the same day.