Imprint Danube Cruise

Dear Imprint Travelers, Imprint Tours had a successful launch of our European river cruises in 2015. Our flagship cruise is the Danube (next sailing:  Sept 2017).  River cruising is a burgeoning style of travel and we have successfully adapted it to fit the Imprint's philososphy.

We have created Imprint's distinct group dynamic within the context of river cruise travel. Even though our groups share a ship with other travelers we dine together and customize our sightseeing. We love the concept of a "moving hotel." Upon check-in you will be able to unpack once and settle into your state room for most of the tour. Each day we'll have a great sightseeing experience in a different European city. Instead of being subject to the optional, expensive shore excursions provided by the cruise company, we will custom build our own and include them in the tour price. Our local guides will be “hand-selected” and Imprint’s values will drive the choice of sights, itineraries, and experiences. All this at below market rates, making Imprint's cruises the best value available.

Included are all meals on board (including wine at dinner), midnight snack, 24-hour coffee station, daily live music, complimentary bicycles for free time explorations, whispers audio for all shore tours, and excursions as noted below.

Our signature cruise/tour is a 8-day Danube cruise anchored with 2 nights in Salzburg and a 3 night Prague finale.  Our 2015 maiden voyage fulfilled all our expectations.  River cruising is a welcome and worthwhile addition to the Imprint Tours portfolio. Furthermore, it represents a softer, gentler way of traveling and gets us back to our European roots.  If you are interested please let us know: info@imprinttours.com.  We’ll add you to the dedicated River Cruise mailing list for periodic updates and advance announcements.

Our itinerary looks like this:

Day 1   Salzburg – get acquainted meeting and dinner together

Day 2   Salzburg - walking tour historic Salzburg

Day 3   Passau – Sound of Music and Salzkammergut tour; board the cruise for dinner

Day 4   Melk/Vienna – tour Melk Abbey

Day 5   Vienna – city walking tour with Hapsburg Treasury & Kunsthistorisches Museum

Day 6   Budapest - walking tour Pest; evening cruise and Hungarian folklore show

Day 7   Budapest – Walking tour Buda; cooking class

Day 8  Bratislava – Old Town walking tour; wine tasting

Day 9  Linz - Postlingbergbahn panorama excursion

Day 10 Passau/Prague (depart cruise) -  Cesky Krumlov en route

Day 10 Prague – tour Prague castle

Day 11 Prague – city walking tour and Jewish Quarter

Day 12 Tour over after breakfast

Santorini Part III

On Saturday of Easter weekend we were all ready for a relaxing day – on dry land.  We’d all had plenty of down time during the cruise portion of our tour, but it was nice to be on terra firma.  Most tour members simply relaxed at our fabulous hotel.  But certainly some heard the Siren call of Fira town with its glittering jewelry stores, boutique clothing outlets, and fun souvenir shopping.

A sizable group ended up at the pool serviced by a bar.  As usual with this group, there were a lot of laughs.  And even though the water was quite cold this early in the season, there was a very healthy participation in a spontaneous performance of water ballet.  Watch for the video.

That evening we adjourned to Venetsanos Winery, another impossibly picturesque venue for a wine tasting.  Santorini is famous for its wines.  The volcanic soil is perfect for grapes and the locals had solved the significant wind problem by training the vines in wreath-like circles close to the ground.  The grape clusters are assisted into the ring interiors for shelter.

The “wreath” technique further serves to help irrigate the vines with the collection of morning dew each day before the winds pick up.  Quite ingenious (impossibly so?).  We tasted a crisp clean white, a rich tannic red, and a super-sweet Vin Santo which is used for communion on the island.

All the while we enjoyed another stunning view of the caldera. However, our luck had finally run out with the weather and high winds and heavy cloud cover kept it from being an ideal outing.  After tasting we retreated inside the unique winery.  Venetsanos was the first commercial winery on the island.  The designer used gravity to transport the juice into descending vats, cut from the terraced hillside, and eventually piped down to the harbor below where huge barrels were filled and exported to France, Russia, and other parts of Europe.  Quite as ingenious as the ancient solution for wind and aridity.

Our final day of the tour was the climactic best.  Orthodox Easter had arrived and we had made arrangements to share Easter Dinner in a family Taverna.  We arrived shortly after noon and were taken to the back garden area to see the Easter lambs being slow roasted on long spits.  Traditionally, the spits were hand-turned with each family member taking a turn.  But mechanization has replaced the elbow grease in recent years.

After being warmly welcomed by the family and seeing the cooking operation, we were seated outside under a vine covered arbor.  Wine and mezedes (“little morsels” or appetizers) flowed freely and most were quite full when the main course arrived.  But everyone made room for the lamb – tender, succulent, and full of flavor.  The meal was completed by a special Easter pastry baked by the grandmother.  There were kisses and hugs all around when we finally pushed back our chairs and reboarded the bus for the trip back to our hotel.  I think most people retired for a nap (I did) but a few took another refreshing dip in the pool.  That evening, one last impossible-vista happy hour next to the lower pool closed out our tour together.

Santorini Part II

On Friday (Good Friday) we left our gulets for the last time.  We bid farewell to the cheerful and hard-working crew and met our bus in the new port.  We were transferred up the zig-zagging road to our luxury resort hotel, the Volcano View.  Like everything in Santorini, our new home is greatly influenced by the unique geology.  The hotel boasts that uniquely Santorinian architecture of descending rooms that are partially built IN-to and partially built ON-to the bedrock of the caldera.  Semi-cavelike, the rooms are all individually shaped, finished, and furnished.  Maia’s and my room had a huge bathroom cut back into the hillside with a mini-amphitheater like shower niche.  It was a cross between the Flintstones and the Hollywood Bowl.  So unique.  So fun.  We had our pick of 3 or 4 pools (I never did get an accurate count) and multiple gazebos, terraces, and balconies for enjoying the sunsets.

But we didn’t tarry long.  This was our biggest sightseeing day.  We started with charming Megalochora – Santorini’s big-little village.  Big because the name means “Great Village”, little because, well, its tiny.  Our impossibly charming guide Eugenia (yes, impossible is the best description of EVEN the guides in these islands) walked us through the village explaining the traditional architecture,

weaving in local tales, and pointing out the pistachio and almond trees as we went. Then we took a lunch break at Perissa, the islands sweeping arc of black sand beach.  We reboarded our bus and headed south to Akrotiri, the Minoan era archaeological site. A quick overview of the island's signature red sand beach afforded lots of photo snapping prefaced our visit.  Once again, effervescent Eugenia breathed life into our Akrotiri visit.  She helped understand this ancient culture and the circumstances of their Pompeii-like demise.  Our penultimate stop was Oia – the crème de la crème.

On the world’s most beautiful island, this is the most beautiful town.  Tumbling down the hillside like Fira, Oia has enlisted the use of many more pastel colors in its town palette and it is crowned by a ruined fort.  Moreoever, the community here is more artistic and less commercial (except the prices!).  Lots of boutique shopping, original art and crafts, and plenty of view spots for sunset.

The day had turned blustery so it was a little easier to tear ourselves away from this Santorini jewel and head for our climactic Holy Friday stop.  Easter is the biggest holiday on the Greek calendar and Santorini is a famous place for its festivities.  Topping that list is the Epitaph procession of the island’s highest village, Pyrgos.  The locals use canisters filled with oil and straw to line the meandering path that winds through the village to Agios the village church at the top.

At the appointed hour, the priest brings the Epitaph out of the church for its ceremonial descent through the village.  At that moment the canisters are lit and the whole hillside becomes a flickering blaze of living lights.  We arrived as the crowds were gathering.  Eugenia led us up the tiny alleys to the church and the kastro ruins above it.  Having seen the layout, she explained the procession and its significance.  Then we returned to the lower edge of town where she had booked us into a wonderful restaurant with an unobstructed view of the hill-top town.  We were warm, dry, comfy, and enjoying some great Santorini wine when the village crown ignited into dancing light.  What a spectacle!

Santorini Part I

We steamed into the magnificent Santorini caldera at the end of a morning’s motoring from Ios.  Our gulets moored in the Old Marina and we disembarked to have some lunch in the port.  The we reboarded La Finale for a tour of the caldera.  We sailed under the gravity defying villages that cling to the edges of the great island basin.  Each picture postcard perfect with the classic sugar-cube architecture and blue-domed churches that define the Cyclades.

On our starboard bow we were able to observe the steaming lava dome that makes up Nea Kamani island.  After our sightseeing idyll we docked once again and everyone made there way up to Fira in the convenient cable car to enjoy a sunset and a caldera-view dinner.

Maia and I had a drink in a bar, a picture of which is featured in all my Greece talks, photographed years ago (see the featured image at the top of this blog).  You can’t get more picturesque with a wrought iron balustrade and a weathered statue of Venus backed by the amazing western vista of the great watery crater.

A word more about Santorini in general before I continue describing our activities.  Santorini is impossibly beautiful.  Impossibly breathtaking.  Impossibly romantic.  I have been saying it for years, and this latest visit cemented my opinion:  in all my travels, this is the most beautiful spot on earth.  I’m not usually willing to take definitive stands, but this island is just impossibly wonderful.  It is the perfect combination of nature at its magnificent best and culture in the form of the impossibly quaint and attractive whitewashed buildings, colored domes, and picture perfect bell towers that make up the Cycladic architecture.  You can even ride a donkey up to town if you desire – impossibly quaint.  Yes, it is overcrowded, expensive, and overdeveloped for commercial tourism.  But there is a very good reason for it:  the world, like me, clearly views Santorini as impossibly irresistible.  We had lots of activities planned for our 3+ days here, but we really needn’t have.  It is enough to sit in a comfortable bar or restaurant and enjoy the beauty that surrounds you.

Astypalea and Ios

Astypalea turned out to be a serendipitous surprise.  We had planned to simply spend the night there as a necessary stop en route to Amorgos.  But sailing the Aegean means one is always subject to the whims of the sea.  Zephyr is the Greek god of wind, and he had other ideas for us.  After breakfast we began our journey to Amorgos.  But no sooner had we rounded the headlands into open sea but we were blown about like corks on the water.  The captains immediately turned back.  It was the right decision for safety reasons.  But it turned out to be the right decision in every way.

Astypalea is a gem!  You guessed, it – an impossibly beautiful town spilling down to the harbor from a hill-top kastro (fort).  Within the broken walls of the fort two picturesque blue-domed churches have been built.  And if that were not magical enough, a row of white-washed, red-capped windmills line the saddle that leads to the hill, lining up for an impossibly lovely photographic composition.

Wow!  What a horrible place to be stranded for an extra day.  That night the winds dropped and the seas calmed.  We had lost too much time to include Amorgos, but the calm seas allowed us to comfortably sail all day to arrive on Ios at the end of the afternoon.

Ios was never on our itinerary.  But our first day delays and a lost day to high seas meant we had to be flexible in our planning.  We had understood from the beginning, when dealing with the sea and weather, one has to be ready to compromise and adopt new plans.  We motored into Ios harbor as the sun was once again lighting up the sugar-cube buildings and domed churches.  Some of our tour members headed to the nearby beach to swim while others explored the town.  We had a free evening and people were quite ready to be off the boats for dinner.  I remember Ios from 35 years ago.  It was little more than a backpackers venue for partying.

Much has changed.  There is still a very young vibe, but it has been tempered by some gentrification.  The winding, narrow streets (designed to frustrate invading pirates in the day) reveal cute boutique shops and trendy restaurants in addition to the many bars and nightclubs I remembered.

My group found a lovely little restaurant with garden and courtyard tables under trellises and grape vines.  The food was exquisite and the staff treated us with kindness and warmth.  After dinner we were treated to samples of Mastik (sweet liquor) and the local Tsipouro (Greek grappa).  It was a lovely evening.  In the morning we cast off and motored to our final destination, the magical island of Santorini.

Nisyros

Nisyros is a unique island in the Aegean. It is almost perfectly round and is an active volcano. In fact, a majority of this small island is an immense caldera. We arrived after about 5 hours of sailing in the early evening. We had dinner on board and some tour members wandered into town to explore as well.

In the morning Imprint had organized a tour of the volcano. We boarded a bus and were driven up, up, up to the caldera rim and then down, down, down into the immense crater. Within the great bowl is smaller, still active volcanic crater. We snapped pictures from its rim and then followed the meandering path down into the cavity.Its walls are streaked with yellow and brown, a sulfurous smell pervades the air, the crater floor feels a bit spongy to walk on, and steamy fumaroles emerge from one corner. For those who have never seen an active volcano it was pretty impressive. We continued our sightseeing back up, up, up to a scenic overlook which boasted an impossibly cute sugar cube and blue-domed chapel. We snapped photos, ogled the view, and oohed and awed.

We completed our island tour with a stop at yet another impossibly charming village, clinging to the lip of the caldera for more stunning views and picturesque streets, buildings, and locals. On a tip from one of those locals, we all tried the local drink specialty – Soumades. It reminded me of an Italian soda with almond syrup flavoring. A bit sweet for my taste, but still a worthy cultural connection experience. Back to the harbor for lunch and then sailing on to Astypalea.

Gulets and Symi

Day three of Imprint's GIT was time to board our two gulets, or Turkish yachts.  The 140 foot Halis Temel and the 105 foot La Finale were our floating homes for the next 6 days.  Engine troubles on the HT combined with extra administrative “hoops” due to the refugee crisis meant long delays for us this day.

But we eventually were able to sail and made for our first stop, the island of Symi. The boats were wonderful. Everyone had lots of room to spread out as each boat had ample public spaces.  The cabins were rather ample for boat accommodations and everyone had a private bathroom with shower. One of the great pleasures of the tour was relaxing together either in the saloon or on the comfortable deck spaces of the respective boats.  The crew was attentive and cheerful at all times.

With all the delays we arrived in Symi’s harbor well after dark.  You could tell it was a beautiful place by the twinkling lights of the harbor town spilling down the steep hillsides.  We anchored outside the harbor and the crew assembled a late dinner for us.  The next morning we were greeted with a lovely spectacle.  The early morning sun illuminated the picturesque town in spectacular fashion.  Many pastel colored buildings, intermingled with the classic white and blue ones, literally glowed in the early light.  Symi has a particular architectural imprint – most of the buildings in the Hora sport façades that resemble nothing more than Greek temples.  All seem to have pediments and many have columns.  Its rather remarkable – and unique.  Church bells began to ring and we were reminded it was Sunday morning, and the Sunday preceding Orthodox Easter as well.  LOTS of bells!  We felt like they were welcoming us to Symi.  We spent the morning exploring and shopping, had some lunch, and departed for the next island, Nisyros.

Rhodes

We gathered together in our beach-side Rhodes hotel before going out for typical Greek fare at a local taverna.  For starters we had Greek Salad (of course), dolmades, tzatziki, meatballs, and fried zucchini balls.  Then it was a choice of chicken or pork souvlaki before finishing off with classic baklava for dessert.  Yum.  Greek food is so savory, filling, and downright satisfying.  And it doesn’t hurt that Greek wine and beer are also very good.

This tour of the islands was unlike any we’ve ever done at Imprint.  I guess we would call it the “un-tour”, meaning the heart of the tour, 6 days underway on chartered yachts, stopping at out of the way Greek islands (those underserved by the ferry system) made for exciting days of individual discovery and explorations but little in the way of typical organized tour activities.  We did not have sights to see, museums to visit, or walking tours to enjoy.

Instead, we had amazingly lovely islands to wander and explore, mostly on our own.  But our first full day on Rhodes was the exception.  We had a funny and charismatic guide, Kostas, who introduced us to his island.  First we drove south to the magnificent Acropolis of Lindos.

The fortified “high town” is not of a scale of the famous one in Athens, but Lindos makes up for this shortcoming with its spectacular location.  The ruins top a rock promontory that overlooks the blue Aegean and an impossibly cozy and picturesque cove – the Bay of St Paul.  After exploring the ruins with Kostas we had free time for lunch and then a return to Rhodes Town.

The Old Town of Rhodes is a World Heritage Sight.  It is decidedly medieval in character.  That is due to the fact that Rhodes was a key stepping stone to the Holy Land during the Crusades.  One of the major crusading orders, The Knights of St John, chose Rhodes as a major outpost.

The crusading orders were established to create and defend transportation routes for pilgrims wishing to visit the sacred sights of the Holy Land. The entire Old Town is enclosed in crenellated fortification walls, a moat, and its narrow streets are lined with the palatial headquarters of the various crusading orders.  The Palace of the Magistrates is the highlight and Kostas gave us a guided tour.  It is one of the best medieval experiences in Europe and it fired our travel and historical imaginations.  Those activities filled most of our first full day and a free evening allowed our travelers to seek out their own tavernas for more savory Greek fare.

Delphi and Meteora

For many on Imprint's Greek Island Tour (GIT), the tour began with an optional two day extension.  We gathered in the shadow of the Acropolis for dinner in a favored Athens restaurant.  An early start the following morning set us on the path for a busy day and a half of exquisite sights.

First stop – Delphi.  The “Navel of the World” is one of those unique places where one feels the specialness of the place.  Call it what you will – an aura, a presence, a vibe, an energy.  However you define it, it is present here.  Perhaps it is simply the fact that Delphi echoes in the Western imagination as a place of historical and cultural resonance.  To be perfectly honest, the sight itself is not that impressive.  But a small, exquisite museum and hand-picked ace guide Penny bring the scattered stones and reconstructed buildings to life.

After our “strategic insertion” visit of a few hours, we continued north through the rugged mountains of central Greece to a second World Heritage destination.  Meteora is nothing short of astounding. The name comes from the Greek word meaning to float in the air (meteor, meteorological).  Unique not only in Greece but also in the world, the towering spires of conglomerate stone provide a unique and mysterious landscape.

Stunning by themselves, six the stone towers are topped by monasteries, dating back to the 15th century.  The resulting combination of stunning nature and amazing architecture is quite simply breathtaking.

Seeking refuge from the profane world, Orthodox monks secreted away in the natural caves of the area all the way back to the 9th century.  Eventually more permanent structures were built on the tops of the inaccessible peaks.  By the 12th century there were rudimentary monasteries built.  By the 14th and 15th centuries, the Byzantine empire was crumbling and the Ottoman Turks were threatening the region.  More and more monks sought refuge at Meteora and more monasteries were built.  At one time they numbered more than 20.

We arrived at the end of the afternoon when the last rays of sunshine lit up the stacks in a golden glow.  We had chosen to stay in a smallish hotel in Kastraki because the view from the hotel is so splendid for the evening.  A majority of my group grabbed a bottle of wine or tasty Greek beer for an impromptu happy hour atop a great boulder behind our hotel.  It is hard to describe how magnificent and striking are these spires – so I will simply let the images do their 1000 words of talking.

The following morning we visited one of the pinnacle-topping monasteries, Varlaam. But I’m sure the highlight for everyone was the stunning views from amongst the forest of towering spires looking back across the valley.

It had been hard to imagine the previous evening that the view might actually be better, but the early eastern sun again made the stones pop with color and the great plain we had traveled spread out beyond.  We learned about the old mechanisms of accessing the monasteries (net baskets on ropes and winches), the current life of the monks still in residence, and the story of the frescoed church interiors from our local guide Dina.  The rest of the day was largely a travel day as we had to cover lots of miles to arrive at the Athens airport for our late afternoon flight to Rhodes and the start of the GIT.

The "Impossible" Island Tour

  This week we successfully completed Imprint’s initial Greek Islands Tour (GIT).  Long in the planning, the tour went off with minimal bumps in the road, or rather waves in the sea, lots of laughing, some interesting history, some amazing cultural connections, and a seemingly unending stream of impossibly picturesque Greek islands.  That is why I’ve chosen to call this missive “The Impossible Island Tour”.  Because daily, if not hourly, I found myself describing what I was seeing as impossibly picturesque, impossibly lovely, impossibly charming, impossibly cute, etc.  [Adjective alert!  There are simply not enough available: cute, picturesque, lovely, charming, photogenic, and amazing will be overused.]

All in all, it was an amazing two weeks.  In the coming few weeks I’ll be sharing installments describing the day by day activities and highlights of the tour.  But for now, I will simply give a quick overview and get some images posted.

I have long held that Meteora is one of the most breathtaking and unique travel destinations not only in Greece but in the whole wide world.  So I was not about to create a Greek tour that did not give the opportunity for people to see this impossibly spectacular destination.  So for those opting for the

tour extension, we gathered for dinner in Athens, then headed for Meteora in the morning.  As Delphi is essentially on the way, we made a quick stop there, entertained by our engaging and charming local guide Penny.  We arrived in Meteora at the end of the afternoon as the sun was just starting to warm up the western facing towers of stone.  The following morning we had our tour of one of the monasteries (as many as 24 in the past but only 6 still active today) before making a beeline to the airport to join the rest of the group on the island of Rhodes.

Rhodes is the biggest and most diverse of the Dodecanese group of islands.  Just off the Turkish coast, it boasts one of Europe’s most charming medieval old towns, well preserved crusader fortifications, a crusader palace, a lovely night energy, and miles of beaches.  South of the main town is the impossibly picturesque Acropolis of Lindos.

Smaller than Athen’s more famous hill, Lindos makes up for it with its spectacular seaside venue.  We had a local guide who brought the islands’ history and culture alive for us on a day long tour.

After two nights on Rhodes we were ready to head out to sea on our two gulets, or Turkish yachts.  Our lovely boats were very comfortable and staffed by hard working and pleasant staff.  Our first island “hop” was nearby Symi and our first impossibly cute harbor village.  Spilling down the step hillsides to the blue Aegean were pastel colored houses, all resembling nothing more than little Greek temples.  Amazing.

An afternoon’s motoring brought us to little known Nisyros.  Perhaps lacking the impossible charm of other stops, Nisyros was certainly fascinating.  It is perfectly round and dominated by an immense, still active volcano.  We toured the smaller active crater within the giant caldera and then visited the impossibly photogenic village of Nikia perched on its rim.

Another afternoon of sailing brought us to Astypalea.  I had meant to simply spent the night here en route to Amorgos.  But the winds picked and high seas turned us back the following morning and we ended up spending the day.  What an amazing bit of travel serendipity!  Astypalea is impossibly beautiful and charming.  Sugar cube houses spill down a steep kastro-topped hill to the harbor.  If that weren’t picturesque enough, they’ve built two blue-domed churches within the ruined fortifications.  But there’s more.  Along the ridge of the hill’s saddle, a row of gleaming white, red-roofed windmills completes the postcard vista.

Our lost day of sailing meant Amorgos had to be skipped, but calm seas meant we were able to make excellent time and sail all the way to Ios.  Ios was a backpacker party island when I visited 35 years ago.  It has been gentrified since, with boutique shops and restaurants dotting the meandering narrow lanes of the whitewashed harbor village.

On day six of our gulet adventure we motored for the jewel in the Greek island crown – Santorini.  Impossibly beautiful!  Impossibly picturesque!  Impossibly romantic!  Santorini is simply the most beautiful place I’ve ever been, bar none.  We did a scenic cruise of the sea-filled caldera, had an island tour that included the Minoan archeological site of Akrotiri, red and black sand beaches, the impossibly quaint village of Megalochora, and the impossibly stunning artist hamlet of Oia.  But the highlight of this magical place was the Orthodox Easter activities of the weekend.  On Good Friday we witnessed the famous Epitaph

procession of hill-top Pyrgos.  Locals line the procession route (rooftops, walls, curbs, everywhere) with canisters of oil-soaked cloth which are lit when the ikon emerges from the church at the top.  The entire hill turns into a shimmering, living scene of flickering fire light.  It is impossibly magnificent.  We visited the procession route and church for explanations from out guide Eugenia, then retreated to a wonderful view restaurant to watch the spectacle unfold.  It was impossibly memorable!

On Saturday we enjoyed a free day for island explorations or relaxation on our caldera-rim-clinging resort.  On Easter Sunday, our impossibly charming local guide Eugenia had arranged for us to enjoy the traditional Easter meal in a family taverna.  We literally feasted with lots of wine, tasty mezedes (small appetizers), and traditional spit-roasted lamb.  It was a fitting climax to our amazing two weeks in the islands.

This was a tour we will be repeating regularly in the future.  In fact, the next time around will be in September or October of next year.  Mark is on your calendars.  Come share the impossibly charming, beautiful, picturesque, jaw-dropping Greek Islands with Imprint.

For more wonderful images, Maia was posting on Instagram throughout the tour.  If you would like to see them and/or follow Maia’s future photographic journeys with Imprint - Create an account on Instagram; search Maia’s username (maia_coen); select “follow” at top of page.