Insight Cities

06/09/2024

Given its location in the southern heart of Europe, Budapest experiences a longer summer than many of its Central European contemporaries, making the latter months of the year the perfect time to visit Hungary’s Pearl on the Danube. With a number of different cultural and culinary happenings on offer this fall 2024, including new theatrical premieres, music festivals, wine tastings and art exhibitions, we highly recommend a late-year visit to the city.

Experience Budapest in the fall: wine festivals, cultural celebrations, exhibitions, performances and an art market fill out a temperate autumn season.

28/08/2024

Berlin’s dynamism and energy never let up as the seasons change. While the action tends to move indoors in the autumn, Berlin’s numerous parks are still where you want to be, as the city begins to look like a giant landscape painting, with the incredible hues of the season. Art, culture, and culinary events abound, as Germany also marks the important anniversary of its post-Cold War reunification. Read on for our curated recommendations for enjoying the German capital’s fall harvest of events.

Explore Berlin in the fall: lively festivals, art exhibitions, and music events, all set against the backdrop of vibrant autumn colors.

23/08/2024

We hiked up to 13th-century Castle Bezděz on our way home to Prague from Lake Mácha (which you can spy in the distance behind Vadim on the tower).

What makes it an especially great ruin is they never refurbished its original Gothic into another style. Easy to see why it inspired romantic verses from the great Czech poet, Mácha. Over the past decade, we're proud to have helped hundreds of guests venture outside our great capital city, Prague, to explore the more farflung wonders of the Czech Republic like this one!

16/08/2024

As summer ends, some of us return to our usual routines, but Vienna never stops shaking things up with art and music events galore. Our newest blog gives autumn travelers a heads up how to search out and enjoy the best exhibitions and festivals taking place in the Imperial City in fall 2024.

Discover Vienna's fall events: from classical concerts and art fairs to food festivals and vibrant cultural celebrations amidst stunning autumn scenery.

09/08/2024

The days are getting shorter and the nights will start getting cooler, but the Prague event calendar is just warming up at the end of the summer season. Count on wine harvest festivals, urban light art, design festivals and celebrations marking 100 years of Kafka. In our latest post we share the inside info on the best exhibitions, events, and festivals happening across the city of a hundred spires this fall!

Explore the vibrant hues of autumn in Prague with Insight Cities. Discover the city's top events, festivals, and cultural highlights during the fall season, from art exhibitions and food festivals to historical commemorations and urban experiences. Plan your autumn adventure in the heart of Europe.

30/07/2024

Concluding our blog series on how to travel with kids through Central Europe is the most child-friendly of capitals, Vienna! Check out the wealth of museums, parks, and special experiences that Vienna has for the youngest members of your family. Of course, we offer our very own Vienna for Children Tour with fabulous expert guides, who help kids discover Austria's capital through myths, legends and fun facts about real people and personalities.

Once you've read our tips for Vienna, check out our blogs on crafting memorable trips for child travelers to Prague, Berlin, Budapest and Salzburg!

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Discover family fun in Vienna! We highlight the city's best activities for kids, including hands-on museums, outdoor adventures, and unique experiences.

22/07/2024

Vadim and I are pretty stoked about our new partnership with Pilsner Urquell Experience. To cement our cooperation, they hosted us at their Tapster Academy!

20/06/2024

What makes us proud during Pride Month?

Launching our newest tour in honor of q***r history: Q***r Berlin: Birthplace of LGBTQ+ Movements! Find out why 1920s Berlin became a magnet for creative individuals and progressive freedoms, where the Insitute of Sexual Science was founded along with the first campaign on earth to abolish the legal persecution of homosexuals. Your 3 hours with a historian guide takes you to sites that illuminate Berlin's many remarkable q***r trailblazers, while you discover Schöneberg, the world's first gay ghetto.

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Discover Berlin's vibrant q***r history on this 3-hour walking tour, exploring sites that illuminate LGBTQ+ trailblazers and the world's first gay ghetto.

10/06/2024

Glory to the Gloriette? If we had to choose one excessive thing on the grounds of Maria Theresa's summer palace as our favorite, it has to be the fake Roman ruins!

For a deep dive into the symbolism of these lavish formal gardens, we recommend our Schönbrunn tour, where you explore the principles of Baroque landscaping as well as the palace interiors. Your expert guide steers you through the grand dining room to the Hall of Ceremonies, the Porcelain Room, and the Millions Room. Learn how these ostentatious displays of the Habsburgs’ immense power, influence and wealth functioned as a crucial mode of courtly representation.

Find more information here: https://www.insightcities.com/tour/schonbrunn-palace-and-gardens-tour/

05/06/2024

Feeling lucky to have had an evening enjoying the beautiful views of Vienna from Das Loft Bar with its great ceiling by Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist.

04/06/2024

Finally made it back to Vienna, to work with our remarkable guide team here, rendezvous with cousins, eat up astonishing amounts of cake, schnitzel, potato salad and tafelspitz and hear Beethoven's 5th at Musikverein!

30/05/2024

There is truly a kids' Prague to be discovered and explored, well beyond our cobbled streets and Gothic castle and soaring towers. Here's the next installment of our blog on family-friendly ways to enjoy Central Europe's capitals. In Prague, we provide gifted guides who happily customize tours with scavenger hunts and and great storytelling for multigenerational groups. Our blog will also direct you to our favorite fun for young travelers to the Golden City, including our beautiful zoo, funicular, mirror maze and fabulous summer festival of small circuses!

Discover the best fun activities in Prague for kids beyond the castle so you can all enjoy an unforgettable family adventure in this historic city.

21/05/2024

We're continuing our blog series on kid-friendly sites and activities in Central Europe's capitals with Berlin. We've got the intel for you on the best parks, activities and museums that Germany's vibrant, cosmopolitan capital has to offer younger travelers. And don't forget our custom tours in Berlin, where our gifted guides entertain your kids with great storytelling and thoughtful site choices while keeping their adults engaged too.

Stay tuned for our upcoming blogs on family-friendly travel ideas for Prague and Vienna!

Going to Berlin with kids? We recommend the best family-friendly things to do and how you can get a custom tour with Insight Cities.

13/05/2024

Next up in our blog series for families getting ready to travel to Europe this summer is Salzburg! We have the insider info on the most kid-friendly sites to explore in Mozart's hometown and environs. Even the youngest members of the family can have an unforgettable experience.

And of course, we recommend our own custom tours, including a Sound of Music excursion that helps you explore the sites where the movie classic was filmed. If you like, you'll also be treated to the legendary soundtrack in your comfortable van while your family sings your way through the glorious Lake District!

Our intel on Berlin, Prague and Vienna to come.

Looking for things to do with kids in Salzburg? Check out our list of the best family-friendly activities in the city.

30/04/2024

School is almost out! At Insight Cities, we're getting ready for a wave of summer travelers with kids in tow heading to our favorite cities. That makes it time to share our intel for the youngest travelers to Central Europe's capitals, from our favorite activities and sites for kids to our own customized family-friendly tours with guides who captivate children while still educating adults.

Kicking off our blog series on how to enjoy Central Europe with kids is Budapest. Prague, Berlin, Salzburg & Vienna to come!

Traveling with kids to Budapest? We've got the intel you need on the best things to do.

15/03/2024

In which we offer some helpful answers to one of the most important questions for all visitors to the Golden City: How to Beer in Prague!🍺🍺🍺
https://www.insightcities.com/how-to-beer-in-prague/

*Natives will recognize these very distinguished beer drinkers (President of the Czech Republic and his major opponent toasting election day - photo by Jana Plavec).

26/02/2024

Stumbling upon fountains and pools across the eternal city makes you glad that the Italian Renaissance and baroque inspired many similar urban oases in Prague (Singing Fountain in Royal Gardens, Hercules Fountain in Wallenstein Gardens, etc.).

Learn about the influx of Italian architects, painters, sculptors and landscapers who left their mark on Prague on an Insight Cities tour.

23/02/2024

Every time supermodels ask me to let our co-founder Vadim show them around Prague, I'm just like: No way Gigi! Get lost, Kendall! But when it comes to lovely sustainability supermodel, Jessica Minh Anh, and her mission of environmentalist fashion, we roll out the red carpet! Here's Vadim yesterday and his charming guest.

29/12/2023

Yesterday, catching the hourly Christmas Tree show at dusk on Prague's Old Town Square! This year's 27 meter spruce is from the Liberec region of Bohemia. 🎄 It is lovely how Central Europe's Christmas markets bring people outdoors in this festive, social way to enjoy their cities and communities during the winter season.

24/12/2023

Merry Christmas!

* recycling a few photos from former years since we didn't manage any yet this year of our beautiful Prague Xmas markets full of festive mulled wine! For those who don't know, carp (see the line of carp buyers below) is the traditional Czech Christmas feast. 🐟🎄 Wishing you joy.

23/12/2023

We are shocked and devastated for the victims of the mass shooting at the Charles University's Philosophy Faculty, in fact my first employer in Prague. It was a privilege to teach in this magical and imposing place, with hallways full of the gravitas of learning and the dynamism of young people and their aspirations. It is heartbreaking to read of the many wonderful and talented people who were lost. Keeping them and their families in our hearts on this National Day of Mourning.

21/11/2023

Feeling November nostalgia for our enervating September trip to Berlin to see friends and take in the city's sights and intellectual adrenaline and to work on our tours with our brilliant Berlin guide team.

25/10/2023

We found some Prague in Paris! The women of the 1906 art nouveau Bouillion Julien food hall were modeled on the Czech artist Alfons Mucha's famous poster women. The hall has good but inexpensive fare then and now. I'm glad we got there early since it was packed with French families 30 minutes later. You may also spy Vadim's first snails in Paris.🐌

23/10/2023

We may be tour operators in Central Europe but, sometimes, we still need to visit the City of Light!

15/09/2023

Happy Rosh Hashanah!

We mark the year 5784 with our "Journey through Jewish Budapest" tour, which introduces travelers to the thriving Jewish community that made up one quarter of the Hungarian capital’s population before WWII. Budapest’s Jews played a profound role in the social and economic modernization of their city, despite harrowing persecution in earlier centuries and before the tragic culmination of 20th-century genocide.

We pay special attention to their remarkable synagogues, including the largest temple in Europe, the Dohány, with its lavish, Moorish Revival style and the Art Nouveau orthodox Kazinczy synagogue.

New kosher bakeries showcase a fragile revitalization of Budapest’s Jewish community today.

Concluding at the haunting Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial, we pay respects to the Hungarian Jews lost to the Holocaust.

08/09/2023

Mix up your Prague trip with a dash to Pilsen and a tour through beer history at Pilsner Urquell Brewery, home of the world's first pale lager. Invented in 1842 from a new recipe, today 9 of 10 beers sold on earth are copies of it. It's a great place to explore the essential role of beer culture in Bohemia.

25/08/2023

The summer dry spell is coming to an end and Berlin's art world is poised to surge back into action with fall. Berlin Art Week, with its pyrotechnic array of initiatives and exhibitions, is around the corner (13-17 September).

Book our Berlin Gallery Scene tour to enjoy having an expert art historian on our team help you navigate the shows and discover why post-Cold War Berlin is the artistic magnet of Europe.

https://www.insightcities.com/tour/berlins-gallery-scene/

15/08/2023

Proud of our amazing Prague Pride festival. Founded in 2011, it's grown to a week-long August fair with lectures, films, theatre and dance performances, sports, spiritual meetings, concerts, and, of course, parties, all culminating in the parade. It's a great time to visit Prague and take in the celebration of freedom and love while exploring this historic city. Check out these photos of 2023's Pride by the fabulous Leah Takata (Takata Photos & Design) which capture American ambassador to the Czech Republic, Bijan Sabet, enjoying Pride Village and the terrific LP in concert on Letna Plain.

08/08/2023

Happy kids on our Sound of Music tour, with the famous house from the film, Schloss Leopoldskron, in the distance! You can sing along with the soundtrack as we make our way across the glorious natural scenery of the Salzkammergut Lake District. Visit the sites. Discover the film's backstories. And learn about the real Trapp Family singers, one of the authentically great refugee tales of WWII.

More info here: https://www.insightcities.com/tour/salzburg-and-the-sound-of-music-tour/

03/08/2023

The beautiful moment on our Vienna Art Nouveau tour when we enter the Secession Building and your expert guide helps you get your mind around Klimt's Beethoven Frieze.

Learn more at: https://www.insightcities.com/tour/vienna-art-nouveau-wagner-city-trains/