On my adventures through the Old Continent I was fortunate enough to have knowledgeable tour guides through some of Europe's most famed cities. The tour company New Europe is a tourism company with a presence in cities ranging geographically from Jerusalem all the way up to Edinburgh. These tour guides are fun, well-knowledge history buffs who love to show tourists through their city they love. I was lucky enough to go on these tours 4 times in 3 cities (I'll explain that math later.)
Starting off was Paris, my personal favorite city to be in because our tour guide from New Europe made it my favorite tour. Arnoud (pronounced R-no) was the guide of Paris and he made the whole experience fun. Originally from the States (which was appreciated because it was the first native English I had heard in weeks) married a French lady and ended up moving to Paris and had plenty of facts to share about the city. Because he was originally from California, he was able to relate some of Paris' stories to our culture such as comparing the French king who loved to party to Charlie Sheen. While passing a bridge he then mentioned how this king had portraits of his friends made and plastered on a bridge, this as Arnoud described it was the original Facebook, friends party pictured posted on a wall and their names tagged. We then headed to the Louvre where after taking some fun pictures, our time with Arnoud was over.
The next city that we had a New Europe tour guide in was Dublin, Ireland. This tour guide was a young, fresh out of college history major who specialized in Irish history. This tour was fascinating in the sense of learning so much about the fight that Irish people had with getting away from England. Just like everyone else in Dublin, our tour guide was one of the most friendly people I encountered in Europe. My favorite story was of the most famous prank to ever go down in college history. A group of kids made a plaque and nailed it to the bridge of a legendary captain. After multiple years the city government finally found out about the plaque and had it removed, only to upset the entire city. After much disappointment the city actually put back this plaque of honor for a made-up captain.
The third and final city of having a New Europe guide was Edinburgh. This is where I actually went on two different tours. The first was during the day and was a history of the city of Edinburgh walking up and down Princess Street and the Royal Mile. This was also a great tour with lots of fun facts about why Edinburgh is so haunted. Many murders have taken place in the city and it has lots of graveyards. In these graveyards is where J.K. Rowling got many of her names for characters in the famed Harry Potter novels. The day tour was fun, but couldn't compare to the night, the Ghost tour. This was a special tour which took us through the graveyards of Edinburgh at night. Edinburgh has some of the most ghost sites in the world and even though I'm not easily scared, it was spooky.
When you get your chance to go to Europe make sure you take advantage of this great company and get booked on with one of these tours!!
-Dan
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