Europe Tours and Trips

Kathryn and Augusto were fabulous! Took care of all our questions, needs, etc. Kathryn helped me find restaurants to celebrate a birthday! We had great local guides. Meals were a wide variety of tasting menus. The luncheon with a local family was the best! The hotels were excellent and I was raised in the hotel business.

Our tour guide, Einar, was incredible and was very knowledgeable and passionate about Iceland. He did a great job with keeping us on track with the itinerary and packing in lots of amazing activities and sights. This was absolutely a trip of a lifetime and I can’t wait for another Iceland excursion!! Throughout the experience, there were some delays with hearing back about certain requests from Explore, but ultimately matters were resolved. The accommodations were lovely, particularly Hotel Gullfoss, which was very welcoming and accommodating.

Everything was perfect about the trip but the most important thing was the tour leader Einar. He could not be bettered - an amazing person, knowledgeable, got us immediately (and we were quite an unusual bunch!), was funny, took us to local places that meant something to him and his family. Brilliant.

Having really enjoyed the Explore hiking trip on La Gomera in January 2025, we came back for more on Gran Canaria in January 2026. The hotel in the casco historico of sleepy Aguimes was charming, albeit the breakfasts were rather basic and the double beds only 1.40m wide (we are used to 2m at home!). In contrast, the hotel in Altea lacked a certain charm, but had a super bed and a terrific breakfast. Our very affable and multi-lingual Explore leader, Brian, ensured some good extra activities (eg making goat’s cheese) and gave the group plenty of options for the free day. We rested our knees on this free day and went to the excellent Bodega Los Berrazales, a wine and coffee finca, in the Agaete valley as well as visiting, briefly before it had really woken up, Puerto de las Nieves; Brian’s information on the punctual but not very frequent public buses was spot on for this non hiking jaunt). The astronomy talk over one of the dinners at a farm outside Aguimes was a bit comical with half the slides in Spanish and an astronomer with shaky English. Dinners were not included in the tour but Brian always arranged dinners at interesting restaurants. He was at pains to describe aspects of Canarian history, culture and geology throughout the tour. The Museo Guayadque in the Guayadque Ravine (Gorge?) was fascinating. For me, also as a keen student of the Spanish language and all things Hispanic, these were just as important as purely the hiking. The hiking, and the views the hikes offered, were indeed pretty spectacular. We may have been lucky with the weather with a lot of sun at a very pleasant temperature. Apparently it had rained quite a bit the week before, so a number of areas were quite verdant. Described as moderate, the terrain, both in terms of sharp volcanic rockiness as well as steepness, both up and down, was quite tough for non-regular hikers, such as me, a 64 year old (albeit twice a week gym goer).

Joao was an excellent; he was great with answering all questions. Armindo, our bus driver, was great, also; he was always very courteous. Please tell them both thank you for an outstanding travel experience.

The Best of Italy tour is terrific and covers the important parts of the country if you want a good overview of Italy. The itinerary is well paced and the activity level is very balanced. The hotels were very good and we were taken care of very well by both our Travel Director and our Driver.