What

Since 2015, Band of Tours has provided boutique tours, primarily related to history. Oxford defines boutique businesses as “small and offering products or services of a high quality to a small number of customers.” That’s Band of Tours.

Our most popular tours are in Europe (usually 10-18 days), focusing on World War II sites in Normandy (Operation Overlord), the Netherlands (Operation Market Garden), Belgium (Battle of the Bulge), and Germany (Operation Varsity). These tours are designed for the military or history buff who wants a "big picture" overview emphasizing sites related to the 82nd and 101st Airborne, especially the men made famous by HBO's "Band of Brothers" series (Easy Company, 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne).


We also provide sight-seeing tours that focus on non-military themes, but we can't avoid history. That's everywhere!

Our one-week Civil War tours focus on national battlefield parks. Since history buffs tend to have a broad range, we also visit Revolutionary War or World War II sites on our route. In 2019, we enjoyed Guilford Courthouse (Revolutionary War) and the National D-Day Monument in Bedford (World War II) as part of our Civil War East tour. In 2021, the Civil War West tour featured Shiloh, Vicksburg, Ft. Donelson, Ft. Pillow, Lookout Mountain, Chickamauga/Chattanooga, Stones River, Nashville, Franklin and more.

Pick Your Favorites!

Because we are small, you aren’t forced into a pre-existing schedule where you don’t care about half of the sites. We provide the expertise, and tailor each trip to suit your needs after discussing your preferences. Based on your interest in specific sites as well as general topics like history, scenery, architecture, museums, etc., we craft a trip using our data base of sites (over 1200 in France alone) to ensure a trip that meets your needs, not the convenience of a tour company. We have taken great-grandmothers in their 80s on a leisurely scenic trip through the Canadian Maritimes, and we have sprinted through Europe with a couple in their 20s, including stops at 80 World War II sites in two days.

Civil War East

Our week-long tour begins in Charleston, SC and Ft. Sumter where the first shots of the war were fired. It finishes with Gettysburg, Monocacy and Washington, D. C. In between, we visit numerous sites including Antietam, Appomattox, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Harper's Ferry, Manassas, Petersburg, Richmond, Shenandoah Valley and others.

Civil War West

Our week-long tour begins in New Orleans. We visit battlefields like Vicksburg, Lookout Mountain, Stones River, Brices Cross Roads, Shiloh, Chickamauga/Chattanooga, Franklin, and more. Bonus stops may include NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, the World War II museum in New Orleans, and the USS Alabama. If there are music lovers along, we might add a few bonus stops around Nashville and Memphis, too.

Our European tours run for either two or three weeks and each one is customized for our clients. We take only four or five clients so that we have six people in one vehicle for a very personal tour experience.

Band of Brothers Tour

The tour that inspired this business visits the sites of the HBO series about the paratroopers of E Company, 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. From Brecourt Manor and Carentan in Normandy, to Eindhoven, Nuenen and the crossroads scene in the Netherlands, to Foy, the Bois Jacques, and Bastogne in Belgium, to Haguenau in France, to Landsberg's concentration camp site and the Eagle's Nest in Germany, to Kaprun in Austria, we hit all of the key Easy Company sites throughout Europe. We can even climb Curahee at Camp Toccoa in Georgia to start where they trained if that fits the schedule! Of course, there are many bonus sites along the way as we travel from country to country.

Options

Depending on the interests of our clients, we have visited places like Mont Saint-Michel, Monet's Garden outside of Paris, Westminster Abbey in London, Chillon Castle on Lake Geneva, and Patton's grave in Luxembourg. We have seen concentration camps such as Dachau and Mauthausen, and majestic architecture like the Reims, Ghent, and Aachen cathedrals. We have taken canal boat cruises in Bruges and seen the magnificent Vimy Ridge, Battle of the Marne, and Verdun Great War Monuments in France. We have been in crazy traffic in the heart of Paris, and been blocked by cows crossing the road in rural Belgium. We've driven narrow roads in Normandy to places where the large tour buses can't go, and taken the London tube to Buckingham Palace, where everybody goes.

No other company can customize a tour to your preferences like we can, and we'll always include places you never knew about, and tell you stories you've never heard before. Just go to our Why page to hear from our alumni.

Please contact us at randybrandt@gmail.com with any questions.