We are traveling to Europe (for the first time) in May and plan to stay in London, Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome for approx. 4 days each. I have read in some posts and in guidebooks that half-day tours may be a good idea for the first or second day of arrival to see the real "touristy" sites effectively. This sounds like a good idea, leaving the other days to explore elsewhere and/or revisit any of the sites.

Can anyone recommend particular companies or agents for tours of the cities listed? We would like to not spend more than a 4-8 hours on a guided tour. We do not have a set price, as I'm sure they very greatly. Thanks in advance for the advice!

Try evanevans.co.uk for half day tours from London.

for Rome i took the advice of people here and we used scala reale. now it is called context rome. they had tours for specific areas in rome and also an
orientation tour that was only two hours but covered a lot of ground. our guide was a young art history student, but he really made everything come alive. rome is big, it would be hard to cover the whole city in a few hours.
compared to rome, florence and venice are very small and i don't think you'd need a guide as much but that's up to you.

Thanks for the advice. I'll look into both of them. I have read a lot of posts suggesting the open-bus tour upon arrival into London. These boards are so helpful!

For my second day in London I took the Big Bus tour (must have live commentator). It's hop on/off and runs all day. There are 3 routes and you could cover most in one day but that would be a bit much. The nice part is that you get a great overview, can get off some place you want to explore and catch the next bus to continue. The advantage to May is that it stays light very late although I think the bus quits around 6:00 pm.

You can also take one or more of the 2-3 hour guided tours (London Walks) within the city - pick up a brochure at your hotel or look up the walks on the Internet. Four days is not much time in London but if you want to leave the city a half-day in Greenwich or Hampton Court is a possibility.

Paris also has many walking tours for a couple of hours or so. Again, if you leave the city you'll spend all day. Way too much to see in 4 days within Paris.

Venice, I think, must also have walking tours but it's very easy to do your own thing - you can't get lost And you can take a boat trip to one of the other islands.

Thanks for all of the input. We just bought our Big Bus tickets online. They offered a two pound online discount and gave a great overview of their many routes. We are really looking forward to it. Thanks!

I just got back from London and Paris 2 weeks ago and can recommend two great guides. I was with 2 other women and 3 teen girls and we loved both guides.In Paris we used Michael Osman and he was wonderful, we spend almost 12 hours with him and had to ask to go home. He is an american artist that has been living in Paris for many years. He has a web site discoverparis and his email is [email protected]. In London we used Harry Norman. His web site is cruising-america.com/londontours and his email is Harry'[email protected]. He was also wonderful and the teens had a ball with him. In fact my husband and I are going back to London in June and I need to book Harry again. I was in Florence and Rome last year and used Drivers in Rome for both places. They were also good. Private guides are the way to go. You can save a lot of time and see so much more with them. Have a great trip.