no matter how many hundreds of words . . . . .:(

(No one made fun of, or condemned anyone BTW - you seem to be reading between the lines and seeing things that are not there. We have been commenting on THIS specific tour - not on people who take tours)

No janisj...I understand it is this particular tour and I still with the utmost respect disagree with the generalizations some have made about it. I'm through commenting on it but it can serve a very useful purpose to some. That's all I said.

It's difficult when I agree with everyone! Is anyone old enough to remember the movie "If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium"? Some vacation. But yet, for many it is.

When we were on our tour of Greece, we were in our early 30s. There were people who could barely get on and off the bus and for whom the walk up to the Parthenon was not going to happen. DH and I wondered, in the arrogance of our youth, why they bothered to come. As I approach the age of some of those travelers, I do understand that seeing some of it was making the best of infirmity and at least getting a glimpse of a faraway place.

Even those of us who return each year and say we are travel pros, make incorrect generalities based upon visits and not the context of really living in a place.

janisj - LSky certainly did make fun of and condemned others and was not commenting on "this specific tour" when he said, "I think these are tours for people who don't know any better. Saddest of all, for them, is that they really don't want to." That is an arrogant overgeneralization that really has no place on this board!

I suppose this could be a good tour for people with mobility problems - pretty much your whole time is spent on a coach looking out the window at things you drive past. There's only a couple of actual 'visits' included plus a minimum of free time to explore by yourself. For some people, it might be a good trip.

I know I'd hate it with a passion.

I read this thread with great interest. I'd like to "gift" my daughter with a European trip for her grad school graduation, so she and I can get a taste of places she hasn't been to and then go back on her own at a later date. I think a pre-planned tour is the most efficient way to do that. What tour would you recommend? My daughter has lived in London, Paris & Aix.

Just give her the money and let her plan her own trip. If she's already lived in London, Paris, and Aix, she knows her way around and might not appreciate such a tour as you're envisioning. She probably has lots of ideas of what she wants to see and where she wants to go.

GraceCO: this is a very old thread that was topped by spammers. You'll do better to start a new thread of your own.

that being said, very few tours are geared to both your age groups. And if she has already lived in Europe most group tours would be waaaaaay to shallow for her. Plus tours really aren't cost effective when everything is doubled.

You and she should plan where she would really like to visit - and go there.

Mimar and Janisj are both spot on. Listen to them.

LOL! Exactly what part of the word "whirl" did you not understand, Sass?

Hate my typos - That should be >> waaaaaay too shallow . . . <<

I am really laughing at the suggestion above to chop a bit of Rome to do the Amalfi coast too. Genius!

Sassafrass was OP of this thread, Dukey. I'm guessing she fully understands "whirl."

I agree that anyone who's lived in Europe would go completely bananas on a tour like this. And no, tours aren't "the most effective way" to see Europe, though they might be fine for folks who don't want to do any planning, and they're certainly not the cheapest way, either.

I didn't notice the date and nearly had a heart attack seeing LoveItaly posting!

I know this is an old thread but I ran across it searching for info about this specific trip on behalf of a friend. Looks like they are still running basically the same itinerary, although instead of going London to Amsterdam, you now take the Eurostar from London to Brussels - no time to explore Brussels itself - and pick up a bus from there to Amsterdam. Why? Wouldn't it be simpler to just take the Eurostar to Amsterdam?

They've streamlined a few stops throughout the rest of the itinerary (no Cologne, Mannheim or Basel), but it is still completely insane. And the hotels are in awful locations, by and large, because they have to be able to get a big bus onto the grounds. In Venice you stay in Mestre on the mainland. In Paris you aren't even in the 20 arrondissements, you're in no man's land on the outskirts.

You couldn't pay me enough to do this.

Depends on dates -- with construction at Amsterdam Central there are disruptions with the Eurostar between Amsterdam and Brussels so it may be easier for the tour to switch to a coach for this leg.

"You couldn't pay me enough to do this." . . . me neither ;)

The itinerary makes my head spin!

It was fun reading this again, and I especially enjoyed seeing Love Italy’s name. I was lucky enough to meet her at a GTG. I really miss her.

When I was in high school, I took my first trip to Europe. It was a school trip sort of like this, but it lasted 5 weeks. And I thought that was rushed.

I guess if you've never been to any of these places, you don't know what you're missing, but the thought of having just one evening in Amsterdam, a few hours at most in Munich and a drive-by sighting of the Italian lakes makes me die a little inside.