Road Scholar tours

Bill,

I've also been looking at those, so I'll be interested to hear some comments about them. I have a stack of their tour books sitting on my coffee table. They seem to have a slightly different travel style to RS tours, and appear to be in about the same price range.

We have not traveled with Road Scholar but have taken several trips with Grand Circle including the Seine River cruise. Our particular trip started in Paris and ended in Normandy so you could go either way. The cruise was wonderful with delicious meals and a caring staff. I would recommend that trip if you want to travel the Seine.

I've done 10 Road Scholar tours along with 10 Rick Steves tours. Of those 10 Road Scholar tours 5 have been in Europe (4 in England, 1 in France) altho none have been cruises. I like them really well. They have a strong component of education in the culture, history, geography etc of the area like Rick's tours do. I find the guides are usually excellent and the tour members generally well read and interesting. I do find sometimes some Road Scholar tour members are a bit more needy than Rick Steves tour members but that shouldn't bother you much. Road Scholar does generally provide transportation from the airport to the tour start point if you book airfare thru them. They also porter your bags in the hotel.

In general, I'll choose a Road Scholar tour if the itinerary is interesting and different from what Rick offers. In fact next year I'm doing Rick's Belgium and Holland trip in April and then doing the Road Scholar Art History tour of the area in September. Rick's is more general, the Road Scholar one is more focused on art lectures and museum visits.

As to the cruises, I'm pretty sure Road Scholar (or actually the company that runs the RS tours in France) does not own the boats. They book on another boat line that operates along the Seine. There would be other people on the ship but your group would sit together for meals and leave the boat with your guide for tours.

Editing to add since I just saw Ken's remarks: I don't find the style too different from Rick altho there is generally less free time and more included meals. Was there anything specific that jumped out at you as differences? I might be able to address it.

BTW, in general I think most of their European tours are smaller sizes like Ricks - so around 25 people. The first one I went on was 40 (a hiking tour in Yellowstone) and that was WAY too big. I'm comfortable int he 25 range, either up or down a few from there.

If anyone has specific tours they are looking at I'm happy to look and compare them to Rick's tours that I have done!

BTW, I had one of my best guides EVER (including all my Rick guides) on a Road Scholar tour to Brittany. Thomas was brilliant.

Thought of more remarks and decided the previous post was getting too long. At the beginning I did a lot of comparing prices and did find Rick's tours and Road Scholar tours came out about the same.

Do note that if you look at the Road Scholar tours their DAY 1 is always the day you fly from North America as opposed to Rick's which have Day 1 as the day the tour meet-up is.

Many people who do the Road Scholar tours book airfare thru them as well so don't arrive until the day the tour starts. I always do my own transportation and come in a few days early as I would on a Rick tour.

PS. Ken, I've had Canadians on some of my Road Scholar tours. Usually more solo travelers as well, but usually more women.

I have taken 3 Road Scholar and 6 Rick Steves' tours. There are similarities as others have stated, but I think the main differences in Road Scholar are less consistency in the knowledge and skills of the tour guides and less consistency in quality of hotels and meals. I prefer Rick's tours, but the Rd Scholar I took to Cuba was fabulous.