But gradually Chinese visitors began staking out a grand tour of their own design.
The list of its events this year reads like a modern Grand Tour: Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, Prague, Zagreb.
The Grand Tour was a European cultural jaunt focused on Italy that became part of the education of 18th-century high society.
At the start of the 19th century, the Grand Tour was still the privilege of a small number of aristocrats.
More interesting are Kahn's sketches of his 1928-29 "Grand Tour" of Europe.
As Rome became an essential stop on every 19th-century Grand Tour, thanks to its wealth of ancient wonders, musicians and composers came too.
Alex Dowsett will be competing in his first Grand Tour in Spain next month, and is keen to match the success of his elder compatriots.
For more insight into how Chinese travellers are experiencing Europe, this New Yorker story guides readers from start to finish of the new Grand Tour.
Although Guardi is best known today as a vedutista, or view painter, the British aristocrats on their "Grand Tour" preferred the near-photographic precision of Canaletto's views to take home as souvenirs.
The Grand Tour has been a tradition of newly rich countries ever since young British aristocrats took to the Continent in the eighteenth century, picking up languages, antiques, and venereal disease.
She also spent stretches in Venice where, as an ageing celebrity, she was a must to visit for the young noblemen doing their grand tour gap-year travellers of the time and provoked either delight or disgust.
Though in recent decades the final traces of the grand old days of mahogany dining cars and dinner-jacketed waiters serving up turtle soup have vanished, the line still makes for an adventure worthy of any Grand Tour, particularly with your own diminutive passengers in tow.
If it does not, and if the grand tour leader cannot lay the blame on Mr Fox, he faces an uncomfortable choice: back down and negotiate a new agreement, return to the jungle and take up arms once more, or disappear into the obscurity from which he came.
Welcome to Tucson, Arizona and to the grand southwest tour of the Kucinich campaign.
Australian skipper Rocky Elsom was disappointed to concede the late try which cost his side victory and the chance of a successful grand slam tour of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
But it was felt that the opportunity of a Grand Slam tour in the same year as the series against the British and Irish Lions was something not to be passed up.
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On an All Blacks post-Grand Slam tour to Milan, New Zealand wing Joe Rokocoko backed the idea of Italy forming a super club to play in the Magners League and Heineken Cup.
Fortunately the All Blacks have moved on from that and things are looking up again as they head to Europe again for what they hope will be another Grand Slam tour of the home nations.
He will hope to repeat the dose on 6 November when he is expected to face Wales in Cardiff as South Africa begin their quest for a Grand Slam tour of Europe, but he believes the challenge will be stronger.
Carter is one of 17 players in the current squad who also featured on the last grand slam tour in 2005, only the second time a New Zealand party had beaten England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales on the same tour, following the successful 1978 All Blacks.
He makes a grand and scary tour of inquisitional moments, and we are then asked to compare our own readiness to torture when what we fear threatens us.
From there the field is eventually whittled down to 30 players, who compete in the grand finale, the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.
"I rate the World Tour Finals after Grand Slams as the biggest event in our sport, so being the title defender is a big responsibility, but I don't think I'm the favourite, " he tells BBC Sport after the photo call ends.
Meanwhile, in Westminster Hall there are a series of debates led by backbench MPs - topping the bill one on Yorkshire and the Tour de France, as the Conservative MP Julian Smith leads a show of political support for the decision to stage the Tour's Grand Depart in Yorkshire in 2014 (it often stages part of the race outside France).
The next stop on F1's world tour is the Japanese Grand Prix on October 7.
South Africa, who have also lost to Leicester and France this month, play Italy in Udine on Saturday before rounding off their tour against Six Nations Grand Slam champions Ireland at Croke Park on 28 November.
He covered Spain's 2010 World Cup victory from Madrid and has broadcast live from Wimbledon, the US Open (both tennis and golf), the Ryder Cup, the Open Championship, the Rugby World Cup, the Tour de France, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and five consecutive Champions League finals.
Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France and Andy Murray won the Tennis Grand Slam in New York.
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Thompson was on the bench for Northampton's Heineken Cup win in 2000, and he won the 2003 Six Nations Grand Slam with England and was selected for the 2005 Lions tour to New Zealand.
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