Spend a week cruising Lake Muritz, the largest lake in Germany with Crown Blue Line (0870 160 5634; ). It offers a selection of boats to rent from £660 for seven days. Onshore activities include hiking and cycling on marked trails as well as visits to the capital, Berlin.Westphalia, close to the border with the Netherlands, boasts some of the best cycling terrain in the country. It begins in the village of Bonnedorf, in the south-west corner of Germany, and for a time follows the path of the nearby Wutach river before ascending to the highlands around the Feldberg area.
This includes return first-class rail travel from London, 10 nights' half-board, excursions, transfers and a tour leader.Home to an impressive neo-classical National Theatre, Munich is one of the major centres for opera in Europe. Martin Randall Travel (020-8742 3355; ) offers holidays enabling visitors to see four different performances during the theatre's summer opera festival as well as several guided tours to various museums. Ramblers Holidays (01707 331 133; ) offers an eight-day walking itinerary. The price of the tour, departing on 18 July is £1,890 per person, which includes return flights, five nights' full board, transfers, tickets to five opera performances and entrance fees to museums.The Black Forest is one of Germany's most stunning natural landscapes of thickly wooded mountains and is ideal for walking.
They're just as big and broad and open as the space behind you. And as before, the formal layout of the waterworks and statues is somehow softened into serenity by the calm, unemphatic design of it all.We got there fairly early on a sunny Saturday before the tourist buses arrived, sharing the gravel paths with the haute-bourgeoisie of Munich walking their dogs to the sound of distant bells, practising for Sunday. We wandered off-gravel into what the Germans call the English Gardens. If heaven lived up to the promise of this grand but not intimidating space (the Germans never quite relinquish the ideal of cosiness: Gem?chkeit) you couldn't fault it.And here's the wonderful secret of Nymphenburg: you simply walk through a tunnel under the palace, and you're in the gardens Free in every sense.
