Gather for a festive Celebration Dinner with your fellow travellers at a local Berlin restaurant. Enjoy German cuisine and wine in a convivial setting, with time to share favourite discoveries from the tour.

This hosted evening is more than a routine meal: it is a chance to experience Berlin’s dining culture together and mark the journey’s close. Regional food, good conversation and the city’s winter atmosphere give the occasion its character.

Insight Vacations

• 3 Dinner (D)
• 7 Breakfast (B)

• Business class coach with extended leg room
• Top-rated dining, from farm-to-table to local restaurants
• 4 & 5-star stays

Meet your Travel Director and fellow travellers over dinner at a local Kraków restaurant. Share regional dishes and conversation in a relaxed setting that introduces Poland through its food as well as its people.

This hosted meal offers a taste of Polish hospitality, with time to get acquainted with the group before exploring the cities and Christmas markets on the tour. It is an included dining experience, rather than an independent restaurant visit.

Walk around Kraków’s Cloth Hall and the Christmas Market in Rynek Glówny, the city’s vast medieval main square. Browse wooden stalls for decorations, Baltic amber and Highland woollens, with Gothic spires rising above the festive lights.

A Local Expert also traces the streets of the medieval Old Town, explaining how royal patronage, merchant guilds and university life shaped Kraków. The square’s long trading history gives its present-day market a particularly fitting setting.

Ascend Wawel Hill with a Local Expert to see the Renaissance castle and step inside Wawel Cathedral. Explore the cathedral’s chapels and memorials, and learn why this hilltop complex has been central to Polish royal and religious life for centuries.

The cathedral is the burial place of Polish monarchs and statesmen. Its successive additions reflect changing dynasties, while its more recent history includes Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, who served as Archbishop of Kraków.

Explore Kraków’s historic Kazimierz district and continue into Old Podgórze to see Ghetto Square and surviving sections of the ghetto wall. The visit brings together places associated with the city’s longstanding Jewish community and its persecution during the Second World War.

Kazimierz was a centre of Jewish religious and cultural life for generations. Across the Vistula, the remaining wartime sites in Podgórze call for a quieter kind of attention and offer important context for Kraków’s complex history.

Visit Auschwitz, the site of the Nazi German concentration and extermination camp near Oswiecim. Encounter a place of remembrance whose surviving buildings and grounds bear witness to the persecution and murder carried out here during the Second World War.

This is a sombre historical visit, distinct from the tour’s festive experiences. It offers space to reflect on the people imprisoned and killed at Auschwitz and on the importance of preserving evidence of the Holocaust for future generations.

Taste traditional Lower Silesian gingerbread during a MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® experience in Wroclaw. Sample treats made with ingredients sourced from nearby farms and discover recipes that bring lesser-known regional varieties back into use.

Gingerbread carries a long festive association in this part of Europe, but this tasting focuses on the particular food heritage of Lower Silesia. By supporting the revival of local recipes, the experience connects a seasonal flavour with the community that preserves it.

Taste your way through Prague’s Malá Strana on a progressive Dine-Around evening. Enjoy Czech soup, a taste of pear brandy or the herbal liqueur Becherovka, and beef goulash with bread dumplings and wine at local venues.

The experience also takes in the Charles Bridge and Kampa Christmas Market, where mulled wine and a festive treat add to the evening’s flavours. Malá Strana’s historic streets make this a chance to discover Czech food in its city setting.

Explore Prague Castle with a Local Expert, walking its courtyards and visiting the imposing St. Vitus Cathedral. Discover the seat of Czech rulers and the cathedral whose towers form such a prominent part of Prague’s skyline.

The castle complex brings together centuries of architecture and political history above the Vltava. This included Insight Choice experience is one of two alternatives: travellers select it instead of the guided Jewish Quarter visit.

Walk Prague’s Jewish Quarter with a Local Expert to learn how its community has shaped the city’s history. Visit the Old-New Synagogue and Jewish cemetery while hearing about the district’s traditions and stories.

Josefov preserves landmarks associated with centuries of Jewish life in Prague, offering a perspective distinct from the city’s castles and churches. This included Insight Choice experience is one of two alternatives: travellers select it instead of the Prague Castle and cathedral visit.

Meet a stallholder at Prague’s Christmas Market in Old Town Square and savour a mug of Svarák mulled wine with a trdelník pastry. Browse the decorated wooden stalls beneath the square’s Christmas tree and Gothic skyline.

The tasting adds a personal encounter to the market visit, introducing two flavours commonly enjoyed during the Czech festive season. Set among some of Prague’s most recognisable historic buildings, the square combines everyday local celebration with a striking architectural setting.

Explore Dresden with a Local Expert, seeing the Frauenkirche, the vast Procession of the Dukes mosaic, the cathedral, Semper Opera House and Zwinger Palace. Learn about the traditional German Christmas pyramids associated with the festive season.

Dresden’s historic centre tells a powerful story of destruction and reconstruction: the Frauenkirche, rebuilt decades after the Second World War, is its most visible symbol. Baroque landmarks and seasonal traditions give this guided visit both historical depth and a distinctly Saxon character.

Discover Berlin with a Local Expert, travelling along the Ku’damm and through the Tiergarten to see the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate. The route also takes in Unter den Linden, the State Opera, Museum Island and remnants of the Berlin Wall.

These landmarks reveal strikingly different chapters of the capital’s story, from imperial avenues to Cold War division and reunification. The Memorial Church’s damaged spire remains a peace monument, while the restored Reichstag represents Germany’s modern parliamentary life.

Soak up the Christmas atmosphere at Gendarmenmarkt, one of Berlin’s grandest squares. Take time to explore the festive stalls and seasonal displays against a backdrop of monumental architecture in the heart of the German capital.

Berlin’s Christmas markets are a social winter tradition, bringing crafts, food and warm drinks into public squares. Gendarmenmarkt’s formal setting gives this visit a different feel from the medieval market squares elsewhere on the tour, with the city’s historic centre close at hand.

Visit the Wieliczka Salt Mine on an optional excursion from Kraków. Descend into an extensive underground world shaped by generations of salt miners, with chambers and sculptures carved from the rock salt itself.

Mining at Wieliczka stretches back centuries, and its underground spaces preserve both industrial heritage and remarkable craftsmanship. This experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour; ask your Travel Director for the available visit details.

Explore Wroclaw’s Christmas Market with an orientation in Rynek, its historic main square. Thousands of lights frame the surrounding facades as stalls offer local crafts, decorations and seasonal treats, with time to browse at your own pace.

The market’s setting is part of its appeal: Wroclaw’s richly ornamented centre reflects the city’s layered history. Beyond the square lies a city of islands and bridges, a distinctive backdrop to one of Poland’s best-known festive markets.