Heading to europe for a month need help
New Member
Posted on: Fri, 20/06/2008 - 18:41
HEy
My girl friends and i are heading out to Europe, we are highly dysfunctional, we tend to have problems making our minds up and planing is all too much for us. So the two of them want to go on a guide tour for two weeks of our trip. I am highly skeptical, I am not sure Its the best way to go through Europe even if its just two weeks. on the plus side we will have a plan, i just ain’t sure why we need one, isn’t that half the fun? anyone have an opinion or an idea to solve my problem.?
What’s your plan?
Most often, I do not especially care for tours.
Have you looked at either of the stickies at the top of the screen yet?
Well, the question to ask is:
WHY do you want to go to Europe?
This is by no means to discourage you from going. But you must give yourself (and us) the reason why you are going. That the only way to figure out where and how.
You have several choices:
1. Package tour: you will be moved around like pawns on a chess board by some self-important tour guide whom you would have bullied in secondary school. But your misery is all planned out for you.
2. City-after-city traditional, inter-rail back-packing tour. Cram as many cities with inter-rail connections as you can into two weeks, spending 1-3 days in each place. This board will give you lots of ideas as it is the dominant choice, here. requires fairly high level of planning and usually you have to arrange all your lodging ahead of time.
3. Sand and Sea vacation: Minimal planning + great for water and sun lovers. Hint: not many sandy beaches in Croatia and many, many tourists. You need to know which place best fits your profile (party, gay, boring, ....). Get a travel book first to select where you want to go and figure out how to get there. I do this all the time. There’s no need to book ahead in most cases.
4. Go to the capital city of a region/country you want to explore, get a map, rent-a-car, and drive around. Rooms in most small towns are found by inquiring in a local bar. Requires minimal planning and adventurous people. Requires more money.
My ideal eurotrip would be a combination of Frihed’s #3 and #4, with a little bit of #2 as well. Although none of my trips to Europe have ever been strictly for pleasure (visiting relatives [and weddings, baptisms, etc], visiting parents (and visiting grandma as a little kid), living/moving back and forth between USA and Europe, etc), I can’t complain…I always make time to do a #3 and #4 exactly as Frihed described. That being said, I think that #1 does have its advantages. If you’re a complete novice to international travel, you may find it overwhelming. There’s the language barrier, different social conventions [on the street, at the post office, at the bus stop, at the hotel concierge, etc…], different foods, as well as “travel skills” (booking accomodation, getting around, learning your away around a new city, familiarizing yourself with the public transport system in a new city, etc) not to mention culture shock which, in culturally similar Europe, may creep up on you when you don’t expect it. So having everything planned out for you on a first trip may be good way to “introduce” you to international travel. I could be understimating the power of newbies to catch on to foreign travel. Of course, everybody is different…some first-timers catch on real quick, while others panic and find fault with everything in their host country. Where you fall on this spectrum is something you won’t know until about 3-6 days into your trip.
So, I think #1 has its strong advantages. The disadvantages of #1 are that, you don’t see the local culture much. Now, by backpacking Europe, you don’t really immerse into the local cultures that much…but by taking a guided tour, your immersion into local cultures is even less. Much, much less. You’ll come back home thinking that everyone in Italy and France works at museum ticket booths, and most of your time in Europe’s cities will be spent in highly touristed districts. On the other hand, while travelng on your own, you’re taking the subway/metro/tube with the locals, and a lot of hostels are located in heavily residential neighborhoods; it’s a real treat to see the districts where the locals live…to go inside and see the soul of the city. For example, while you’re searching for your hostel in Paris (with your map/guidebook in hand), you may pass by old ladies on the sidewalk gossiping, or old men in a park playing boules (aka bocci ball), or a schoolyard filled with children on recess, or an open air produce market. You’re not going to see these things if you don’t deviate far from the Champs Elysées, or by taking a river cruise down the Seine. So a guided tour has this disadvantage. Another disadvantage is that guided tours tend to take you to the cities and specific sights that are well-known, but they tend to neglect sights, districts, towns, and/or regions that are lesser-known but highly worth a look.
Thank you very much, your reply was very helpful, It gave me the extra insight i needed to argue against the tours. And if you have any other tips or good sights about cheap airfare or hostel that would be awesome.
thank you again!
Feel free to check those forums.
I, too, appreciate the time and care that Luv took to shape his response. He has lots of experience. What he says is true if you are easily overwhelmed: things can mount up. However, as bad as this can be, I think Luv may have underestimated the “costs” of a package tour. I took one with my late mom around the Baltic, about 10 years ago, just after I moved here. It was a company with a quite a good reputation. However, a) the people were truly boring and old-at-heart, b) there wasn’t enough time to savor any local culture; we were always on the move from one place, one street, one museum, one painting to another, c) there were scheduled toilet stops you had to conform to, d) the tour guide was a neo-nazi and so on. Even my 81 year-old mother was pissed. Get the details before you sign up for one of these.
Besides, the helpless scatterbrain image you sometimes project is just a ruse to hide your true strength and resourcefulness. I am a father. I know.
Have fun. You are only as old as you act.
aww, thanks for the kind words.