My travel group is thinking of taking Rick Steve's 14 day Greece tour next spring. We would appreciate hearing from anyone familiar with this tour...likes and dislikes. Some of us have used Rick's guidebooks on our own, but we have never taken one of the tours. This is our reshearch phase. Please help!

I took several Rick Steves' tours before getting up the nerve to go on my own. I have not been to Greece though. I am very enthusiastic about his tours. The guides are excellent, the hotels decent. The groups aren't too large and they do what they say they do. In addition, there is no tipping of guides or drivers and any kickbacks they might get from visitng a particular store are spent on the group. There are morning and afternoon snack breaks--usually required for the driver but they travel with juice and fruit and snacks for everyone. Usually a tour includes at least one picnic. They try to minimize one night stands. Hotels are chosen first on the basis of location. Restaurants are fine and meals are usually but not always ordered off the menu. Over half the departure dates are already waitlisted.

I've never taken a Rick Steve's tour, but I did do a tour to Greece this past January, and it was nice to be in a tour group for this country. There are a lot of sights, ruins, etc to see and it could have been difficult without a guide. In addition, in this largely Eastern country, it adds a bit more comfort as well. Greece is great - I highly recommend getting there somehow!

I toyed with taking his Greece tour this fall,which would have been a first tour group for me. In the end, I decided I wanted to do some Islands and couldn't afford to do both. I'm now in the process of planning a 4 day Classical Greece tour and then onto the Islands. So, far it is much less expensive than his tour.

If you go to http://tours.ricksteves.com/tours06/home.cfm you'll find scrapbooks and feedback from people who've been on the tour. I agree with everything Barbara said - I too started out taking a couple of his tours, although I now love solo travel. Still, I'm signed up for his first Greece tour of this season - the itinerary was not too far off what I would have done and I felt like letting someone else do some of the work for a change (it's part of a longer trip). I am a bit apprehensive - I no longer think his groups are "small", although almost all the people on the two tours I took were great.

We're taking two of his tours this year.One will be this April...Best of Provence. The other will be Italy in the fall. In both cases we are coupling these tours with independent travel because we don't want to give that up entirely. Our ages are a factor in this decision.

I think reading the feedback on his tours at his website gives you a good idea of what to expect.I like that they posted the good and the bad. I did notice that a lot of people who posted on the feedback page are also independent travelers...we'll see what happens.