The scenery especially in Switzerland was just beautiful. Worth every bit of the trip. You will walk a lot - minimum day of walking was 5 miles according to our phone app (keep in mind you're on the bus for significant portions of the day, steep inclines and uneven footing almost everywhere you go). Only 2 hotels had AC and no fans (Amazon sells a small personal fan you can use as a backup recharge source for your phone that worked very well). Rooms are super small so be prepared. Tyrol Folk Evening is worth the visit. It a fun show and I felt worth the money. Jungfrau was another beautiful place to visit. I felt the price a touch much but the scenery second to none so ultimately worth it to me. It a view you can't get many other places in the world. The Swiss Fondue meal was nice. Plenty of food to eat. The only fondue is the Swiss cheese appetizer which was very good. The stop in Pisa is a waste of time if you ask me. You spend as much time walking back and forth from parking to the tower as you get at the tower (which is just an hour long photo op). Lots of pick pockets at this site. On this day the itinerary says dinner included and it not - it lunch. There is an optional dinner in Montecatini which I'd suggest skipping as it was not that good. Venice is a ton of walking, but what an interesting city. I'm sure you could walk it a dozen times and see different things every time. We didn't do the Gondola ride, but I get why people would want to - it Venice. The Water Taxi ride should be part of the tour costs as it basically mandatory if you want to get back to the hotel with the tour group. Otherwise, you have to walk back a very long ways to catch the bus back to the hotel. This my 3rd Expat trip. It was by far the most strenuous of the 3 trips. The sites to see are worth the trip but be prepared to walk, uphill both ways (still haven't figured out how that worked out). But was overall another good trip I felt worth taking.
This tour was a wonderful experience to me. I have to give massive credit to tour leader Mika, driver Gabor, my family and the other travellers within the group that made the tour far more enjoyable. We all enjoyed each others companies and meshed together like bread and butter. The tour highlighted key monuments, buildings, areas, and places for a majority of the countries. I really enjoyed hearing the information, stories, folklore for all the countries, especially Poland and Czech Republic. The tour also provided travellers with adequate time to appreciate most countries by spending time in it, but this was not the case for Austria for example (in my opinion). Overall I highly enjoyed the tour mostly because of the people I was with and the beautiful countries and the whimsy, magic, history and everything the tour had to offer for me.
First of all our tour leader and driver were exceptional. Always so very cheerful, friendly, helpful, I can't say enough about the wonderful experience. Hotels were ok, some outside some close to inner city. Again tour leader and driver made it easy to get to attractions even when the hotels were a bit further out. Breakfast was always very good, rooms clean, some a bit small. The program and route were perfect. I highly recommend at least some of the optional excursions, well worth the money. Again tour leader had a lot of recommendations and offered information to those not participating in the optional activities. All the included and the optional meals were good, all had vegetarian options and dietary restrictions were taken into account. Thank you Dee and Chris it was wonderful!
