maureencol

My friend at work has decided she and another friend would like to see Europe. She wants to go on a tour because she is overwhelmed by planning etc...even though I gave it my best efforts of convincing her that planning is half the fun and doing it on your own would be much better.

Can someone give me any recommendations for a tour that would encompass multiple European Countries? I have no knowledge on tour companies since I travel on my own.

Thanks

Viajero2

First thing I would had done to help my friend out is give her this website and asked to post this herself. That way she could better answer how many days, age range, time of the year, price range, etc, etc, etc.....

carolyn

Tell her to go to a good travel agency and pick up brochures of various tour group companies. Globus is a good middle-range company as is Insight, and they offer a multitude of different itineraries.

xyz123

Assuming she is in the United States, let her go to the web site of affordabletours.com. Their web site lists the various tour operators, numerous ones, and if you book through them generally you will get at least a 10% discount off of the listed price.

Globus and Trafalgar are both very reputable which have lots of tours covering a lot of turn in Europe for varying lengths of times and one would say that even though they call their tours first class, first class in Europe is a little bit below what an American might consider first class although they are far more than adequate...personally I prefer trafalgar to globus as it gets slightly more international tourists than does Globus which appeals, in general, more to Americans. If you go to the trafalgar web site, trafalgartours.com you will find a message board with lots of comments on various trafalgar tours.

A step below trafalgar and cosmos are cost savers and cosmos, the former part of trafalgar tours and the second part of globus. Tours are almost identical but stay in smaller more economical hotels. Both cater to an international crowd and seem to attracts losts of Australians to whom it costs lots of money to get to Europe and tend to do more than one tour on a visit and might wish to save a few dollars (Aussie or US)..

Insight tours is the deluxe arm of trafalgar tours and its hotels are generally first class hotels and smaller groups to give you more individual attention but obviously cost more.

Are tours worth it? We can debate that from now until the chickens come home to roost and we won't have an answer; some people sear by them others swear at them.

Does taking a tour take most of the hassle out of a first (or even a subsequent) trip to Europe...yes....but the price you pay are things like early departures on travel days (usually no later than 0730), long hours on an air conditioned bus (coach in European parlance) but there are stops usually no more than every 2 hours either a pit stop or in some city on the route, stops at various landmarks that might or might not be included in the tours or extras, in smaller towns dinners (while not gourmet certainly adequate) companionship of others sharing a group experience, no worries about where the next hotel is, no worry about missing the next turn off on the motorway if renting a car or which traffic circle to take to find the A23. But then again some people find those things to be fune and part of the deal and will tell people later on how much fun it was getting lost and the friendly people who helped and that indeed could be fun...or how they discovered such and such a place which they never would have on a tour and again they're absolutely right.

So one cannot sit here and say definitely one is great and the other is terrible. Traveling independently vs. traveling on a tour each has its advantages and each has its drawbacks. If you're on this message board, most will tell you travelling independently is the only way to do it and tours such. If you look on the bulletin board of a tour company such as trafalgar, you might get the exact opposite response.

Now for a particular tour recommendation for a first visit to Europe, you might want to look at the European Whirl tour of Trafalgar...you go from London to Paris (2 nights) to Lucerne to Venice to Rome (2 nights) to Florence to Innsbruck to Munich through the Black Forest with a cruise on the Rhine via Cologne to Amsterdam and back to London...you see a lot, do a lot but you have limited time in each of the big cities but you do have some free time contrary to some opinions to do research and go to restaurants of your choice in Rome, Amsterdam and Paris but the tour will have optional dinners available and meals included in most of the other places but it is fast paced and if not prepared osme people might feel cheated...I did that tour as my first experience in Europe and enjoyed it imensely but I had been prepared for what happens.

Hope this helps.

xyz123

Damn...a whole bunch of typos in my excellent response above...why doesn't Fodor fix this message board to allow you to fix typos (and no using the preview feature is not the same thing)..fodors join the 21st century.

emmalee_71

Hi,
I would email [email protected] as she specializes in trips to Europe. Very professional company and they will point you in the right direction of how long to stay in places etc. Good luck