Has anyone toured with Cosmos? I don't want to visit 39 cities in 12 days.... Is this what an organized tour is like? never been on one - Italy in April and/or Morocco?
How many people are usually on these tours? age group?
Thanks!

Hi

Yes, we've been on two - one to Greece and one to Spain. We were booked for a third to Turkey but Cosmos pulled the plug (9 months before?) due to lack of numbers. Going on the tour the week after would have meant cancelling airfares which would have cost several hundred dollars. So we are going Insight this time. I would still recommend Cosmos despite their little dirty trick. I have since found out this appears to be a standard procedure with tour companies. They have tour dates that are guaranteed regardless of numbers. Make sure you choose one of those dates - ask your travel agent.

You'll get alot of anti comments in this forum about tours - do it on your own, tours are regimented, they are waste of money etc. However I am a fan of them, particularly Cosmos (I have travelled Trafalgar before). Why? You travel by first class coach. You have an informed tour director who provides you with heaps of info and tips including culture, cuisine, history, customs etc. Problems and issues are resolved by the tour director and driver who can speak the language - I'm on holidays so I don't want to know!! They will suggest you good inexpensive restaurants - no there aren't any kickbacks! Hotels are excellent - minimum of 3*, sometimes 4 or 5*. Your baggage and tipping are taken care of. You jump queues at major attractions and have a qualified guide take you through them. You are not with the tour 24/7 - you have plenty of time to do your own thing. You are with about 40 other people - we are in our late forties but most of the group are in their fifties and a few in their twenties. You don't have to mingle but we do enjoy some social contact with other travellers and have plenty of fun with them. No you are not taken from one tourist junk shop to another. The very few outlets you are taken to sell quality stuff and you are not under any pressure to buy. Your programme won't be held up or disrupted by stragglers - they are quickly and mercilessly brought into line by the tour director and fellow passengers.

"Cons": 1. The food. Breakfasts are great, though rushed. The included dinners are generally of a poor standard. I mean I'm not fussy - I can even eat cafeteria food if really necesary. But some of the dinners didn't even meet this standard eg. at one hotel, which shall remain nameless, entree was a plate of steamed green beans. Try the meals out. Flee to the nearest pizzeria if you need to and don't worry about missing out on your included meal - sometimes, you haven't missed much!
2. This doesn't bother us at all but some feel rushed on tours. The first thing you shouldn't do is try to cover too many places/countries. Otherwise you'll find you spend most of the time on the bus. So to answer your question do either Italy or Morocco, not both. Check the itinerary offered and work out the distances between destinations - keep it to 2 or 3 hours max. Italy or Morocco won't be a problem anyway.

That's it in a nutshell. I say do it!One more issue - how much to tip your tour director and driver. There is a long thread in this forum on this issue - just use the search facility. To each his own but we paid AUS$100 to the director and AUS$50 to the driver.

Good luck and have fun.

I have, but it's been several years. I enjoyed it enough that I've done it more than once. What I appreciate about them is having the details taken care of for me. I liked not spending time deciding where to eat, or looking for a hotel (both things not ranking high on my pickiness meter). Having spent 6 weeks EurRail-ing through Europe, I'm not sure I saw much more than I did on a 12-day Cosmos tour.

While they do move you fairly quickly around, it's not quite as hectic as you describe. Check the schedules for where is most important for you, timewise. Most large tourist cities (Paris, Rome, etc.) you'll be for at least two nights, giving you, at minimum, a full day there.

Generally, you'll arrive at the hotel in time for dinner, and leave from them early in the morning. During the day, you're on the go. Much of the time is taken up with OPTIONAL tours. If there's something more important to you - you are on your own.

One of the things I most enjoyed about the Cosmos tours was, as they are based out of London, it was a real international group. The first time, There was only one other couple of Americans. But the percentage of Americans increased over the years. I think most tours tend to be older, but the budget aspect I think helps bring the average age down. There were quite a number families with teenagers, or pairs of young adults. By our last tour, my mother (who was in her 60s) was really worn out by the pace.

Just a small clarification....

Cosmos is the budget operation of another tour company called Globus. globus is considered first class while Cosmos is considered tourist class.

Another company group consists of Trafalger which is first class; they have an operation called Cost savers which is akin to cosmops and then their deluxe operation is called insight.

The differences is in the quality of the hotels, the location of the hotels what is included (which is represented in the price) and to a small degree the quality of the included meals. The day to day running of these tours was descfribed correctly.

Hotels on cosmos tend to be smaller type hotels usually located, especially during the summer tours and in the big cities, out in the burbs. Some people are unaware of this, read up on a guide book about Paris for example and are determined to do such and such a thing the night of arrival but instead find they are miles outside of town. In some cases (not necessarily Paris or Rome) you are so far out of town that public transportation is very expensive. Some feel this is more to make you take the optional tours. The brochures indicate on which night dinner is included; dinner to cut down on complaints is usually a 3 course bland affair with an appetizer (soup or salad but incredibly small portions, an entree (beef, chicken, pork) with potatoes and veggies and a small dessdert (ice cream, cake). Some tours include coffee or tea (trafalger does can't vouch for Cosmos)...if you order a drink you pay for it (and coke is as expensive as beer or wine running $3 or $4 per)...

After dinner, many retire to the hotel bar or whatever or walk about or take public transport, if available into town. You will get, in the big cities, an orientation with a local guide (here is the Eiffel Tower, here is Champs Elysee, here is Place de la Concorde) so you've seen them and then an optional tour to see something in depth (the louve for example in Paris)...if you don't want to take the optional tour, you are left off and told when and where the coach will pick you up and you can do your own thing. Or they will give you direction to use public transport (the metro in Paris) to get back to the hotel. The price of the optionals is the price that is charged by local tour companies for the same tour. The optional while on the tour include transportation on your coach with your fellow travellers directiy to the attraction...yes it is cheaper to do some of them on your own but factor in public transportation and anxiety of getting lost or whatever and they're not as bad a deal as they seem.

On travelling days, you will be told to put your baggage outside your tour usually by 0630 or so and it is collected by the hotel staff and brought to the bus. The tour director counts to make sure they're all there. You go to breakfast, usually a buffet and they vary by category and by country. Breakfasts in France tend to be very spartan...a buffet consisting of croissants, ham, cheese, cereal, juices, coffee, tea, hot chocolate in France. In Germany, breakfasts are much better and may include bacon (pretty American in Germany but more like ham in Britain and Ireland), scrambled eggs. On the first class tours (Trafalger, Globus) where you stay in what is considered first class hotels (many of us Americans don't consider them that but they are)you may find omlettes made to order among other things. Some people sneak sandwiches from the buffet to use for lunch and while that is really not the right thing to do, many do so.

The bus usually leaves at 0800 and much of the travel is on motorways (autoroutes in France, autobahn in Germany). There are stops every 2 hours. If you are on a motorway, the stops are at places Americans should be familiar with on the motorway. Sometimes the morning stop is in a small city (the brochure inducates this) which might or ight not include a walking tour. Anyway during this morning break, you can buy coffee, tea, bottled water, soft drinks whatever and use the toilets. Warning you will encounter in many areas the infamous dragon ladies with a dish wanting coins to use the toilet but that usually means the toilets will be clean.

Back on the coach in another 2 hours or so you have the lunch stop. Depending on the tour and the itinerary, this could be in a city and the tour director will point out lunch places that are available or it might be at the infamous autogrills as found all along Italian motorways. You can eat the sandwich you stole from the breakfast buffet, you can have a buffet lunch, you can go to a little bar or if in town you can sample local cuisine. It depends on the itinerary and where just you are. Personally, I am a very picky eater and on tours the first type of lunch stop I scout out is McDonald's which I know will get me things thrown at but at least I know there what I am getting and quite frankly McDonald's tastes the same all through the world and they are efficient. But that's me. Others scream bloody murder about Mickey D's.

Back on the coach (the lunch stop varies from an hour to an hour and a half) and in another 2 hours another rest sto similar to the morning stop. Twenty to twenty five minuteas later back on the coach with arrival at your hotel at around 1700. Tour director gets the keys, tells you where the rooms are and you go to your room, plop down on the bed, take a shower, check out how many channels of cable television you have and whether any stations are in English (most have at least 1 of CNN Internationa. BBC, Sky News; one hotel this past winter even had the Fox News Channel if you are familiar with that)....Dinner is around 7 PM if it is included (usually is on a travel day outside the big cities) and voila.

Are they for everybody? No. Can you possibly meet everybody's interests and expectations...no. Are there stops at shops where the tour director gets a kick back, yes. Do they take you say to a glass blowing place in Venice where there is subtle pressure to buy after a demonstration, yes (Amersterdam tours always include a visit to a diamond factory, tours to Ireland go into Waterford crystal factory etc.).

Are you with the other tour members 24/7..no. You can do whatever you want during lunch stops if in a city, if you don't take optional tours in big cities, after dinner although on Cosmos you might be located miles oops kilometers from anywhere and might have to use public transport or a taxi.

Finally you must understand the language of the brochure. If it says on day 6 you will see such and such a castle, the td will wake you up on the bus and say look to your right. There you can see such and such castle. People not undersanding this language later complain how they were misled and wanted to actually go inside such and such a castle. Visit means you go inside. An opportunity to visit Blarney Castle and kiss the Blarney stone on my Cosmos tour of Ireland means they dropped us outside Blarney Castle and if we wanted we could pay the admissioin to go up and do it. On the Trafalger tour, the brochure says a visit to Blarney Castle is included which means they will pay (well you really pay in the tour price but you know what I mean)and the tour director leads you up to the Blarney Stone.

If you are interested in Trafalger tours, if you go to www.trafalgertours.com you will find an excellent bulletin board with lots of discussions pro (mostly) but some cons about various specific Trafalger tours.

If you go to www.affordabletours.com you will find a more generalized but not as thorough bulletin board but of all the tour companies they sell. Incidentally affordabletours discounts most of the tours they sell if you don't mind booking through the internet and not having the personal attention of a travel agent who might not know each specific tour company and the tours anyway.

To be continued as this is getting too long and I know people don't like to read long posts even if they are excellent like this one is.

Finally to finish, as noted, trafalger and cosmos tours tend to attract a very international crowd..you will always find many Australians as both companies advertise greatly in those countries, there will be Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders, sometimes people from South Africa and other English speaking countries of the world. Globus tours tend to attract only Americans.

You can purchase a complete package from cosmos or trafalger which includes the air fare or you can buy land only. The air fares can often be beaten by booking them indepedently but as noted above you run the risk of having the tour cancelled. On the web sites of the barious companies you will see tours listed as guaranteed departure which means they will go regardless of how many book...if they are not guaranteed departures you run the risk of booking your own airfare and then 30 days before the tour starts being informed not enough people and book another tour...the air fare cancellation penalties might make this an expensive gamble..I think if you buy air fare included they will refund the air fare if they cancel the tour. They have many many departures for each tour (almost weekly but in some cases twice weekly on popular tours and they are certainly within their rights not to run a tour if only 7 people book besides no tour director or driver would want to do such a tour).

Tipping is such a touchy subject. The brochures recommend you tip the tour director $4/day and the driver $2.50/day (US)...on the last day of the tour they give you envelopes and you put the tip inside.....it doesn't have to be in US money...on my last tour it was an 8 day tour so the tip for the driver was $20 ($2.50 x 8) and I had a 20 swiss franc bank note left so I counted that as $16 US and put in $4 US...they are used to getting all sorts of different currencies so it's not a problem to them. A good way to get rid of excess banknotes (or even coins) at the end of the tour...(count the euro as $1.20 US and calculate accordingly). I said it is a touch subject because in talking to many of the Aussies I meet on tour, their culture is not really used to tipping (no offense intended but they themselves tell me this) but most go along; especially if the td is good and the bus drivers...well I wouldn't want to navigate many of these narrow roads and loading and unloading the luggage from the bus..well they certainly earn their money. Traditionally local guides get a tip of one coin at the end...I usually give them a euro but I notced that in most cases the Aussies tend not to....again just an observation folks. This is what it is.

Money issues have been greatly simplified with the introduction of the euro but again many, especially Americans, are ignorant. If the tourstarts in London, I have met many who were told by their travel agents or banks that the euro is accepted in London and they expect to walk into a shop and spend euro....or I've met people who are told, don't worry everybody accepts US dollars. The little guide books issued by the tour companies are a little ambiguous on this. Yes many shops in London do take euro but most don't. And then these people with all their euro are told no problem, go to a bank and change the euro to sterling..well they already paid a commission to change the US dollars to euro so now they are hit with another commission. And then when you get on the continent you are told to use euro and for the most parts the rest stops now always include ATM's and they almost always take credit cards...but the novice traveller may not be aware of all of this. And one particular galling rip off is on tours that start in London and include a ferry crossing to Calais...the ships they use are usually English ships and the tour directors sometimes tell people to change money on the ship. Of course, if you wish to change US dollars to euro, what the boat company does is first converts USD to GBP and then GBP to euro, two separate transactions with separate commissions and ridiculously high exchange rates. I'll give you a specific example. Last week on the ferry from Calais to Dover (France to England) the boat was charging $1.92 for a £...most of the exchange rates in London at banks listed $1.86 but my credit card company transactions were at $1.76...again you live and you learn.

Optionals will be discussed by the tour director on the first day and he or she will distribute a list of the optionals and describe each one in glowing terms. You check off the ones you want to do; most of the time you can change your mind but not too often. Anyway you can pay with a credit card (by far the smartest way to do it)..on Trafalger tours unless it is a tour in Britain and Ireland, the optionals are priced in euro but you can pay with their inflated exchange rates in Aussie dollars, US dollars, travellers cheques whatever. Use your credit card.

I think that describe the day to day operation of these tours. Are they as good as independent travel? No probably not as you do lose some flexibility but there are lots and lots of good points about them.

The most important thing is to read the tour itineraries very carefully and have some idea of what is involved. On the trafalger bb I read of some person complaining of spending 10 hours on the bus on the day they travelled from Lucerne to Paris...look at the distances involved and understand it will take close to 10 hours to get from Lucerne to Paris when you factor in breaks and lunch stops. And then the person complained all the good things were optionals which made them spend more money than they wanted yada yada yada. And the hotels were not up to his standard of what a first class hotel should be and sacre bleu he had to use the metro to get into Paris for an evening on the town as he didn't want to spend €143 to go to Moulin Rouge...the later part and complaint being valid but I blame a lack of research for that not the tour company.

Anyway that's the xyz123 guide to coach tours in Europe. Hope you found it informative.