Hi. We are signed up for an April 2023 RS Sicily tour. After this is over we want to chill for a few days somewhere then travel to Paris/Normandy and possibly other destinations in France. Has anyone done 2 RS tours in Europe separated by 4 to 5 day rest period in between? If so.... I would love to hear about your experiences. Thanks. Fred
Posted by
Lynnwood, Washington
8795 posts
How fun to be planning for this!
There are quite a few tour reports and threads about back to back tours that you might be interested in. If you go to the travel forum home page, you will see a search box with a magnifying glass at the top of the page. Put "Back to Back Tours" in the box and it will bring you to several different threads on this subject that you might find interesting.
Posted by
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, USA
14549 posts
Oh yes, absolutely I've done several back to backs both Rick Steves and Rick and a combo of Road Scholar (only because I liked their itinerary at the time). The ones that have worked best for me are the ones with 2 completely different cultures like you are proposing. Definitely allow yourselves a few days in between. You'll have travel to contend with and it's nice to just relax before caught up in a whirlwind! It also gives you time to get caught up with clothes washing!
I've done:
21 day Best of Europe + Best of Paris + Village Italy (It was a celebration year and I did everything that caught my eye)
Best of Britain + Paris and the Heart of France
Germany, Austria, Switzerland + Road Scholar walking program in England
Best of Southern England + Best of Scotland (I never thought I'd get "castle'd out" but I did on this trip)
I definitely recommend this. I think there are direct flights from Sicily to Paris so that would be easy for you.
Posted by
near San Francisco
5178 posts
This spring I did back to back Best of Istanbul and Best of Turkey tours. The 2nd tour started the afternoon that the first tour ended. A day or two in between would have been welcome, but since the only travel was cross-town to a different hotel in Istanbul, we still took advantage of half a day to ourselves.
I was glad that one tour was a "city tour" and the other was a "country tour" so we had significant variety and didn't burn out on any one travel theme. By traveling longer, we got good value from our flight and Turkish Visa and only had to get over jet lag once.
Posted by
San Francisco/Marin County
9436 posts
In 2019 we had a poster here that did 5 back-to-back RS Tours and we all followed along with him as he posted all along the way. He had a great time.
Posted by
Used to be Steilacoom, now it’s Las Vegas
2266 posts
We did back-to-back tours this spring. The first was the Sicily tour which ended on a Friday a.m. We had a 6:00 a.m. flight from Catania to Venice where our My Way Italy started on Sunday evening. Your extra days sound even better, but no jet lag meant we were ready to go and absorb all the second tour had to offer. We have now decided that back-to-back will probably be our preferred way to travel in the future since the biggest hurdle to enjoyment is jet lag and the long plane flight. For us, building in days before the tour begins seems to be more important than the time between tours. We got to Sicily on Friday for a Tuesday tour and we were fully acclimated and engaged by then. I felt like a couple of people on our tour were hampered the first few days by jet lag.