hi, i am just wondering if it is worth taking a guided tour of major attractions such as the vatican, louvre or coleseum, or should we just attempt on wandering all alone?
if you think it is better to get a tour, what are some that you suggest?
we are going to paris, and most of italy and either munich or berlin
For the Louvre, use Rick's guide or an audio tour. You get a lot of detail and can go at your own pace. I was with a tour group for the Vatican and Coliseum - we were hustled around so fast and the crowds were so loud that I didn't get any value from the expert guides.
You can download a lot of audio tours for free now if you have an MP3 player. Buy a splitter and you can listen to the audio tour with your travel companion. Not just museums and other attractions either - lots of free audio walking tours for different neighborhoods in European cities available as well.
If you aren't going to Europe immediately, you may have time to look into organizations that can pair you for a free walking tour with a local resident (neighborhoods/outdoor monuments, etc. - the local isn't going to be your guide going through the Louvre or Vatican - stick to the MP3 player, rent an audioguide or pay for the docent led tours).
I tend to not like guided tours. I want to see things at my own pace and that means I may want to skip entire sections of a museum or spend a lot of time in others.
If you want to learn, then take a guided tour. if you just want to wander and look, then go it alone.
We took a guided tour of Pompeii and learned a lot, did our own walking tour of Ostia, and wish we'd had a guide to explain what we were looking at! Lesson learned for us.
if you like to study, do some research, then go it alone. I do like to read a bit about what I'm going to see. Major/large sights I think are best seen with a guide.
In Rome I like Angel tours. they are easy to understand and don't let the group size get larger than 16.
In the Louve, I think art galleries are best seen at your own pace. I don't think there is a way to get into the Vatican museum without a guide!
I always took a guided tour, but when I went to Berlin in November, and needed to be on a tighter budget, I didn't go on a guided tour. Instead, I went on a hop on hop off bus, and used their audio guide on their bus.
I loved doing this! I could take my sweet time, and not look at my watch all the time in fear I wouldn't catch up with my group and miss the tour bus. The bus ran every 15 minutes from 10am to 10pm. From now on, no matter where I go, I'll do this from now on.
If Rick had an audio tour to download on Berlin, I would have used that, but I don't think he has an audio tour for Berlin yet. I'm sure he will someday, since he really loves Berlin!
I do a lot of studying before my trip. I find the guides often tell me what I already know (even thought there is a lot more to learn).
If I was alone, I would skip the guides but still bring MP3 audio guides.
When I travel with family, friends or coworkers, I'm usually the only one who studied. In those cases, a guide helps them get more out of the visit.
The best guides I've experienced are here. They are the History grad students who intern in the summer as guides. I've had some great free tours at Little Big Horn and Gettysburg that I would love to duplicate in Europe. The closestI came was the Colliseum in Rome. I signed up for the in-house tour. It was given by a grad student but she kept largely to the script unless asked a specific question.
We always use guides at major attractions. This is a limit to pre-study and what you can remember. Audio guides are nearly as good but you cannot ask questions. And sometimes the audio guides offer too much detail. After spending so much time, effort, and money to get to the site, why would you go cheap to save the last $20?
Personal preference I say.
I perfer audio guides you can always skip what doesn't interest you.
Personal guides stop at what they think is interesting but may have more depth.
I do not want to be in a group with a guide in a building, unless it is required. But I liked some guided walking tours in a section of a city. Some walking tours are free, most require a fee but it is usually not a big amount of money. I like for the guide to be a person who has been a resident in that city for many years. I try to avoid a walking tour with a guide who says very much detailed knowledge of the local history : it is more knowledge than I want to know.
Natalie, I prefer to use guided tours in some locations, as they provide a lot of historical information in a short period of time. Also, as someone else mentioned one can ask questions if desired.
I used Rick's I-Pod audioguide for the Louvre, and I found that approach seemed to work reasonably well. It allowed me to tour at my own speed, and take a bit longer admiring some of the art.
For the Colosseum in Rome I would highly recommend the "official" guided tours, rather than renting an audioguide or taking one of the tours offered by the "English speaking" guides that work the crowds outside. The cost was only about €7 (might have increased since late 2006?) and "whisper headsets" were provided to the group, so that all could hear. The Guide (Barbara) was extremely knowledgeable and she provided an exceptional tour. If you're interested, you can book the tours at the small booth just inside security when you enter the Colosseum (same booth rents the audioguides). I found this to be a much more interesting and rewarding way to learn about the site.
One other Guide that I'd highly recommend in Rome is Francesca (listed in Rick's book). She provided an outstanding tour of parts of Rome when I was there in late April. If you want to see specific sites and your budget will allow, I'd definitely give her a call!
I just returned from Munich and took the "Munich Walks" tour offered by Radius Tours. The cost was reasonable and I felt that I learned a lot about the history of Munich from the tour. I also took the Radius tours of Dachau and Neuschwanstein when I was previously in Munich in late 2006, and both of those were excellent also.
Hope this helps? Happy travels!
Some attractions require a guided tour, such as Ludwig's castles and various private homes. But otherwise, I would say it depends on the destination and your personal preferences.
For destinations where a tour guide and an audio tour are definately worth it- many of the Loire Chateaux and the abbey of Mont St. Michel. The interior of many of these structures are often somewhat stark, and they really need an explanation to help them come alive.
I rarely have found that I want the same information that the guide is giving on everything, except walking tours. However, after study, etc, when I am in a museum, I just hang around whatever I want to know more about and wait for an English speaking tour to come by. Yes, that can be construed as cheating, but I don't follow them around like some have suggested doing. I usually only want a bit of info on a specific display/artifact/painting. Then I head off in my own direction.
When I want more indepth information, I do pay for a guide/tour. Then I have found them to be invaluable. It is easy to miss some of the most important things when on your own unless you are an expert in that area. Guides usually are quite good and enjoy what they do.
We have just lefy Florence and used the Walking Tour company for the Uffizi...it was amazing and made the museum so much more of an experience. We learned history, small, interesting tid bits that we would have never known....well worth it!!
I can't speak for the Italian sites, but in Munich, you can only visit Neuschwanstein with a guided tour, which is included in the €9 cost of the tour. At Dachau, they offer guided tours for €3.
As for the "third party" tours, IMO they don't offer anything special and cost a lot more. I wouldn't take one.
I just returned from Italy - Rick's tour and descriptions of the Vatican were perfect for our interest level. We waited until we got to the Coleseum and hooked up with one of the people that were outside recruiting tourists. It was worth every penny. Try to see the person giving the tour before you pay so that you can make sure you are getting a "good" guide with interesting stories and a sense of humor. You can go on the tour but have time afterwards to explore it more on your own if you want to. For the rest of Rome, Rick's walking tour was perfect.
We did not use a guided tour at the Vatican museum and I am glad we didn't. They're annoying (just my observation), and you don't get to stop where you want to. We did it with the audio guide, and that was very pleasant. You don't need a tour to do the VM. Maybe some here can't do the museum on their own, but I really did not feel like it was such an overwhelming museum to be honest. I was expecting a lot bigger.
Major attractions? It might possibly be a time saver, but usually the major attractions have the important information translated into English. Where it is really nice to have a guide is in a more out-of-the-way place or museum where nothing is in English. My favorite place in Italy is Brescia just because we were the lone tourists in a couple of museums and ended up getting private, free guides in the way of the curators/security people. They were so proud of their local museum and thrilled to share information with us (and practice their English on us). What would have been somewhat dull displays became fascinating as we got some of the back story that we could not understand before.
The key to seeing European museums etc. is the timing.
The Louvre is wonderful on your own at late night openings - get there around 6.30 pm and you will have the place to yourself from 8 pm.
At the vatican get there very early and then run (I mean it - don't stop until you are there) to the sistine chapel to be one of the first. It is so wonderful you do not need a guide. The rest of the vatican has good books.
The colliseum has very good personal guides who get you in and tell you the stories. Find a good american.
Otherwise i like the audiotours of cities. Rick Steves and strollon do very good ones. They give you time and freedom without the lady with the pink umbrella.
I never take guided tours. They are too slow and take too long, so they bore me. But I read ahead of time about each individual attraction and print out a few things about the and take them with me.
