Madrid to Prague & Christmas to New Years Eve
(28 Reviews)
100% Recommended
Debbie Linder
Nashville, TN
Luxury travel, river cruise & vacation specialist
I was born in Chicago and eventually moved to the western suburbs. We traveled quite extensively as a family and I was always looking forward to the next trip. So I was hooked at a very young age. I started in travel and worked for a leisure agenc...
I was born in Chicago and eventually moved to the western suburbs. We traveled quite extensively as a family and I was always looking forward to the next trip. So I was hooked at a very young age. I started in travel and worked for a leisure agency for 20 years. Totally by surprise and out of the blue I was contacted by a Corporate agency with over 35 million in sales to open, develop and run a new division of their agency geared toward vacation travel. It was an amazing job! My knowledge and expertise really took off with the vacation side for their agency.
I have an extensive following so with my "regulars" and now all of these endless new clients I was seeing burnout. After several years, I decided to open my own agency and create the business I wanted. Golden Travel Inc was born. Yes, the name is a tribute to my love of Golden Retriever's!
For 25 years I worked extensively with the 101st Airborne to organize a local "get together" in their area. They were a group like no other and loved to talk of their experiences, some of my phone calls lasted hours! Once a year we would arrange a group trip with their children and even grand children back to Bastogne and Normandy where we had several wreath ceremonies to commemorate those that were lost and also private events where they could rebond year after year. Many of them had made friends with locals during the war and wanted to go back to visit them. Maybe they just offered them a cup of coffee during the night, but they never forgot. We made that happen, time and time again. In the early years, several made the jump on to the beaches in Normandy. As they got older and less were able to do that, we had 1 jumper that in his mid 90's made the jump onto the beach every year. I remember he told me, "parachutes had come a long way" I could feel the smile on his face.
We leave no stone unturned when it comes to creating the dream.
I have been a travel professional for 42 years and love my job.
My areas of expertise include but is not limited to:
- Europe
- River Cruises
- South America
- African Safaris
- Egypt
- Galapagos
- Machu Picchu
- Russia
- Mexico/Caribbean
- All inclusive resorts
- Ocean Cruises
- Customized European Tours
Whether you travel as a single, couple or groups of friends and family I can customize your journey to include highlights of each destination but also the hidden gems that you don't read about in a brochure. My reputation is about details and custom itineraries.
I am foodie, so taking food tours and cooking classes all over the world I find that food is the breakthrough for each destination. Its a great start on the local culture and the back round of food is what makes each country so unique. If you really want to dive in to the local way of life, I can arrange dinner with a local at their home almost anywhere in the world. That's a once in a lifetime experience!
In our first meeting we will discuss what excites you about travel and then I will work out a truly unique itinerary that highlights all of your desires. We will work things out at a leisurely pace so you have time to wander and explore on your journey.
We provide a beautiful itinerary for all of our clients on all of their travels. We provide this on our app but also as a PDF if you prefer to have things printed.
I feel so fortunate that I have spent my life travelling. There are still those that say, "when I retire" or "someday". Now more than ever in this new world we are living in, we see that tomorrow is not like yesterday. We've all spent a year of our lives basically putting that dream on hold. Its just lost time. So when we can get going again, lets do it - DON'T PUT OFF THAT DREAM!
As your travel professional the first item I want to talk about with you, will be having the proper documentation for your travel. If you don't have a passport and you need it for your destination then we need to get that going. Passport expiration dates are extremely important as different countries have different rules. We monitor entry and exit requirements for your travel travel throughout the world.
Passport, inoculations and visas can change and we are always on top of that. Now more than ever with COVID countries entry and exit requirements are changing daily. This is a changing environment and you need a professional to help navigate this changing world.
I have already had clients that had to change up their last minute plans to get COVID testing when it wasn't required 3 days ago. Hopefully it will get easier but until then I've got your back!
Can Be Reached At
1-630-365-6210
Heidelberg/Speyer market - the shadows of castles
We wanted to be in Europe for Christmas and New Years Eve but then my birthday is early December so we decided "why not" lets just spend a month and see all the Christmas Markets and have the full experience.
So we started with 5 nights in Madrid (since that is where our miles took us) and really had the usual city tours pre-planned. No food tours this time since we had already picked out every restaurant we were going to!We look for the oldest everything and this time was no different. All great restaurant choices:
Botin - https://www.botin.es/en/home/
La Bola - https://labola.es/Churreria1902
Churreria 1902 - https://www.chocolateria1902.com/
Christmas Markets in Madrid were very Piñata like. Colorful and lots of candy filled everything, pretty popular too since everyone was buying them. Plaza Mayor is the main square and although during the day there are many streets with in and out access, at night the Police had 1 street in and another out. All about crowd control and very well done but we felt like cattle.
We took advantage of one of our days and took the train to Segovia to see the famous Roman Aqueduct. Took the 6am train for plenty of time to spend the day in the amazing city. There is so much to see and a total walking city. Lots of shops and restaurants and again we had picked out our place for lunch - reservations are needed as it is the place to go and famous for their suckling pig: https://mesondecandido.es/
We flew to Budapest where we had been several times before. But of course we went to our favorite Gerbeaud and had the usually chocolate something and coffee. https://gerbeaud.hu/#hero Straight down the pedestrian street you come to the Central Market which was beautifully decorated and full of all the goodies one finds in these markets. We head for the paprika first! It is walking distance to the dock where we boarded the Viking Ingvi for our Danube Waltz sailing. Viking docks right in the center of Budapest on Pest side.
We had been to most of the cities on this itinerary but it was summer so it was exciting to see everything all holiday upped! Our ship stopped at Bratislava, which was a bit of a dark city. They had lots of holiday happenings but not nearly as many lights as most cities. Our ship docked about 1 mile from town and although it was a very safe walk back to the ship it was dark! Next stop Vienna, what can I say, may family lives here and it is one of the most beautifully decorated cities in Europe, so many of palaces and every single one was decorated differently. Then on to Krems, home of Gottweig Abbey and then we headed for Linz where more of my family live. We had not been here before. Its an absolutely beautiful city with a main drag of high end shopping and Christmas markets at both ends. Our cruise ended in Passau the confluence of the 3 rivers, The Inn, Ilz and the Danube. I have to admit sailing into this Christmas village was so much more beautiful than the summer!
We rented and car and headed to the Romantic road for our drive to Innsbruck. We walked to the car office, picked up the car, drove back the ship, loaded our luggage and we were off. First stop Nordlingen which is a city inside a meteor crater, 9 miles across. https://www.bavaria.by/visit/noerdlingen/ Had to see it! It was daytime, did a little shopping and on to the next town.
Next top Augsburg which has the ONLY live advent calendar in the world. Had to overnight here to see this event. The windows in city hall are filled with dancers that come out to create the live calendar. The market surrounds the city hall and it was something to see.
On to Neuschwanstein Castle https://www.britannica.com/topic/Neuschwanstein-Castle In the middle of nowhere and here is this castle. You park down below and take a bus to the top. Many say Walt Disney created the Magic Kingdom after his visit here-I don't doubt that . You can also visit the Hohenschwangau Castle which is the smaller castle and not nearly as elaborate. King Ludwig II that built Neuschweinstein was raised in Hohenschwangau. They say he went mad!
Then on to Innsbruck where we spent 3 nights and dropped the car. Its such a fun ski village, although we didn't ski we did take the Funicular to Seegrube which is at the top of the Nordkette. It was snowing on 12/24 and it fell at the rate of a foot an hour, more than I have ever seen. Had lunch with a group from Capetown that had never seen snow. They were in disbelief in what that was all about. Spent Christmas up there too.
Took the train to Vienna to visit family and then on to Prague for New years Eve.
Christmas was big in Prague but NYE was bigger. Fireworks in 6 directions and they spare no expense. Had an amazing dinner at Mlynec - highly recommended. Its right by the Charles Bridge so after dinner we had front row right on the river for all the fireworks. https://www.mlynec.cz/en