Great European Tour

The group of Aussies on the trip. Because wed all purchased from Inspiring Vacations we were end-to-end tour partners. The coming and going of tour participants and tour leaders was problematic.

The Itinerary is very Good, but the pace was grueling with very early starts and long days. The City Visits tours were very superficial at best missed a lot of the places we visited. Luckily, I had been there before was able to use our Free Time well, so I know a lot was missed. Our Great European Tour group was shunted among other tour groups and from one guide to another from one bus to another, which came with the other much smaller tour groups we joined. Many of our tour group felt our tour was very compromised by this arrangement and would expect that the Grand Tour would have one guide fewer buses throughout. Also, some guides were very rigid with times with 1 disabled passenger abandoned in a city because he could not make the curfew return time to the meeting place. Also the hotels were understandably very remote from town centres in semi industrial settings the bus parking places did restrict access to some attractions in some cities. Generally a good tour which could have been so much better, is service had been better.

Overall i am happy with the tour. I considered the tour leaders are very knowledgeable with the history of the places. The experience they have in leading such a big group of useven up to 67pax. I considered that was too big of a tour group. It restricted the tour leader or the local tour guide to accompany us into museum or places of interest. The hotels we were put in were generally good but about 45 mins from the city with restricted places to eat dinner. Breakfast in Florence was the worst as food were run out when we have our time allocated with only one coffee machine for 100 people. Special thank you to Javier Villodre, the tour leader who took an extend to uber to get my husband backpack from the bus 30mins away from the hotel at his own expense at midnight after the folkloric Tiroles show in Innsbruck.

Visit the village of Grindelwald and see snow

The trip was fast paced but we managed to fit a lot into our days starting early and finishing late. The included activities were all great as were all our local guides. The only thing I would like to add is the lack of bus etiquette by some passengers and the amount of luggage way above what is outlined in the itinerary.