Great Courses Journeys... Educational Tours

Mr É, thanks for your trustworthy report on the courses. I had often looked at their brochures and wondered if they were legit. Good to know.

I can't speak as to the tours, but this is one of the better channels offered via Amazon Prime and has been very influential in planning several of my trips.

Stan, not really a report. Never toured with them. Had no idea until today they were doing tours. But their instructional programs (classes) and brilliant for the most part and have done dozens of those. So I hope they hold the high standard for the tours. If they are using the same instructors, there is a good chance.

Mr É, its the educational materials I was interested in, and took your patronage to be a "report". The tours, I'm not likely to pursue.

Stan I highly recommend the streaming courses from this company. You may be able to get some of them through your public library.

Yes san they are amazing. I've done everything from the origin of music to the theory of relativity. The philosophy courses have been my favorite. These are not ameture stuff, it some of the best university professors in their field.

I am sure they are excellent tours, but the pricing is roughly $1,000 per night per person.

But they do carry your luggage from the bus to the hotel. So a bargain.

But seriously, very nice hotels and priceless learning; and apparently most all of your meals. While a RS tour provides a lot of free time (free for you and for Rick), these are almost entirely curated. And your guide truly is a world class educator in the subject. I suspect that adds up to close to the difference of the $600 a day RS and this $1000 a day tour.

I would love to do one of these and the price seems fair for the product.

The other really nice one is Smithsonian journeys

I enjoy my Great Courses subscription through Amazon Prime, and the tours look interesting.

The other really nice one is Smithsonian journeys

By the way, I have done two tours (and one river cruise) with Smithsonian Journeys. The two regular tours that I took with Smithsonian were actually Odysseys Unlimited tours with the addition of a "study guide," a PhD to give deeper context and to supplement the regular tour guide. On the southern Italy tour, we had an amazing study guide who indeed provided a deeper understanding than one would get on a normal tour. On the Turkey tour, our study guide was good, but, honestly, she couldn't hold a candle to the main guide, who was probably the best guide I have ever encountered. All of our communication was handled through Odysseys, and the itinerary and accommodations on both trips were identical to an Odysseys tour. If I did it again, I would probably go straight through Odysseys.

The river cruise was .... challenging, not because of anything about the tour or Smithsonian, but for other reasons that I needn't go into here. I thought the study guide was a pompous jerk on that trip, but that might have been just because of my overall state of mind at the time.

I don't know what will happen next year, but Roku had a Black Friday deal last November, offering one of the Great Courses packages at a very modest monthly fee for 2 or 3 months. I think I paid $3.99 per month. There were many history, art and linguistics courses of interest--my major interests, but there was a broad variety of courses offered.

In the past I've accessed Great Courses content through my library's Kanopy subscription.

In theme and pricing, these tours remind me of the tours offered by the World War II Museum in New Orleans. The WW2 tours are led by some of the leading historians in the world--for example, Donald Miller on the Masters of the Air tour, Jon Parshall on Pacific tours, Alexandra Richie on tours of Germany and Poland--and luxury is the expectation with the hotels and restaurant selections. But again, the pricing is more than double what you see on RS tours.

Looks like a very immersive learning and educational tour. Unfortunately my attention span could not handle such an in depth daily tour. If I am in a museum past 3 hours, I am ready for a sedative. I may check out the courses people have spoken about on here. They might be interesting.