ellenem

As others have said, with a little research on googlemaps.com or viamichelin.com you can begin to predict bus time as well as free time.

For example, on Day 13 you spend a good part of the day driving from Vienna to Venice. No stops are mentioned--just the drive, which will take at least 6 hours. Depending on how early the bus departs from Vienna and how quickly the drive goes, that might leave a good portion of the afternoon free or just dinner and the evening free.

On Day 15, you spend a good part of the day driving from Venice to Rome, again at least 6 hours on the road. This time the itinerary states, "En route, hear an informative tutorial about the famous Chianti wines that make this region so famous."--which I take to mean you will have this experience on the bus during the 6-hour ride.

Conceivably, one could figure travel times for the entire itinerary in this way.

adrienne

<< On Fodor's, people are extremely defensive about being told they have no basis for their opinion. >>

Since when does an opinion need to be substantiated by fact?? Better check the dictionary!

SaS10

Just took the Best of Britain Insight tour. It is, indeed, a "bus" tour. In all fairness, the bus driver was excellent, the hotels good, but the tour guide was "joyless" and the amount of time you had in many places was less than an hour. The only location with any "free time" of any consequence was Edinburgh. Since the tour was in October, they offered a discounted trip, which was not really a discount. They charged us for individual tours or meals that are normally included. Cardiff, Glasgow and on night in Cornwall would have had NOTHING to do, if you didn't pay the extra fee. I will never travel with Insight Vacations again.

janisj

Welcome to Fodors SaS10. If you had joined Fodors <i>before</i> booking this tour and asked, we could have told you that . . .

>> and the amount of time you had in many places was less than an hour.<<

That is what you get w/ most coach tours.

>>and on night in Cornwall would have had NOTHING to do, if you didn't pay the extra fee<<

Unless you were in some god forsaken roadside motel -- I'm sure there was <i>something</i> you could have done in the evening -- local pubs, etc.

Sassafrass

Quite an old thread.

janisj

yep . . . SAS10 googled Insight Best of Britain to complain and this old/moldy thread came up so he registered. Like I said . . IF he had come here <i>first</i> we could have saved him a boatload of $$/££ and exasperation . . .

nytraveler

SaS10 -

If you are going to take a guided tour you need to study the brochure in detail to understand what is included and what isn't. this varies tremendously by tour - not just be price of tour. If you didn;t like the itinerary - why take the tour?

StuDudley

>> If you didn;t like the itinerary - why take the tour?<<

Because many people don't do much research and don't know what places are interesting and which are not. My parents took guided tours of Europe in the early 70's and had no idea of where they were going - just what country they would be in.

Nice to get re-acquainted with Zeppole. She is a little nicer now that she is sandralist.

Stu Dudley

janisj

>>She is a little nicer now that she is sandralist.<<

Not really - she's has driven at least two old timers to quit Fodors for good . . . though for the last couple of weeks she seems to have softened just a bit.

adrienne

Sandralist is just as bad using this screen name as she was when she was zeppole. Although she may be better now but I would not know as I stopped reading her inflammatory posts a year ago. I just scroll down when I see her screen name.

nytraveler

SL picks on people in turns - not sure why - just sems to glom onto someone and attack every post for a couple of weeks - then moves on.

I have given up even reading what he/she/it says.