RS Tours that are vegan-friendly

The response that you received this year reflects a policy change away from making as many different accommodations as have been made in the past, so previous tour member experiences won't necessarily reflect that. Of course, individual guides and different regions can have some influence. Not having tried it myself, I would guess that your main issue will be lack of variety, especially in traditional cuisines, rather than lack of food.

Broad generalizations: In the case of Greece, I can imagine that the same vegan options were probably repeated on most restaurant menus (salad, fries, baklava, hummus, and a roasted-vegetable casserole); there's not a heck of a lot more variety in the meaty options. A country like France has much more regional variety in its cuisine, but eliminating the animal products will reduce those differences. Greece and Italy seem to me slower to embrace international cuisines, so you won't find the tour group meals normally including any. In destinations including the UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands, tours use some restaurants focused on the cuisine of a former colony (India, Indonesia) and/or many restaurants have modernized themselves in a multi-cultural way; see this recent Ireland veg thread.

You can also use the search feature to find any other recent vegan topics in this forum.

My wife and I were on the 17 Day Best of Italy Tour. We had a couple of people who were Vegans on our tour. Our guide made sure they were accommodated. I think it would be easy to go vegan in Italy. I cannot tolerate garlic and was very worried that garlic would be in every dish. Surprisingly, garlic is used less in Italian food in Italy than in the US. Our guide was very helpful in helping me avoid garlic.

Taking a My Way tour sounds like the best option, as stated above. That way you can choose where you want to eat.

Actually, I'm vegan and have done 8 RS tours. The hardest one was Ireland where things had a lot of butter, 2nd hardest was France, again with the butter. Paris, 2 tours in Italy, GAS, Best of England and the 21BOE were excellent with vegan food.

I did note Laura's post regarding a change in policy.

I have not done a tour this year but in past years all the guides were excellent about having a vegan meal for me for group meals. My general approach has been to talk with the guide after the meet-up on the first afternoon and make sure they know I am vegan. I also always have food available, usually peanut butter and either bread or crackers so I can easily forage on my own if needed and I've always been upfront with the guides about this. It will be interesting to see how the policy change affects things and I will either skip group meals or pick salad if that is available and supplement with other things.

I will also say that on my last tour which was the GAS tour there were a bunch of different diet restrictions. I was the only vegan, there were some vegetarians, a couple of lactose-intolerant folks and some gluten intolerant folks. Unfortunately for them, they sometimes wound up with a vegan choice as their specialty meal. I can understand how that many different meals would make it difficult.

As far as finding food on my own, I've not had a problem in any of the countries I've visited. I've used Happy Cow but when dining options are limited I will fall back on pasta with tomato sauce, veg pizza with no cheese, an Asian or Indian restaurant or salad - I'm not a big foodie.

I've also traveled 7 times with Road Scholar, including 3 UK trips. I'm headed to Brittany and Normandy with them in a couple of weeks so will have to see how this works. With the 3 in UK the guides also requested vegan meals for me at every meal. Their programs tend to have more meals included but I've always been provided a vegan selection. I will see how this trip to France works with them. One day the AM is at an oyster raising area and I suspect lunch will be seafood. I will talk with the guide a couple of days before and see if I need to get something to picnic with the day before as we will have a free afternoon and it would be very easy to pick up items for a veggie sandwich and some fruit.

In general, though, I prefer the Rick Steves' tours over the Road Scholar tours. I only take a Road Scholar tour when Rick doesn't provide a similar itinerary.

editing to add: I just re-read Laura's post and will say that one of the best vegan meals I had was on the 21BOE at the Initial dinner which was at a Rijsttafel restaurant. There were lots of things I could eat of the regular selections but they also brought me about 6 other small dishes with some tofu selections. It was delicious and I had to make others try my extra dishes.

Also, to me the value added with the fully guided RS tours trumps having to find food on my own, if necessary. I am a die-hard RS tour person and I realize that makes me sound like a shill - lol - which I am not!

I have taken 10 tours with RS and while I am not on any type of special diet I do have some food allergies, but have never had any issues finding enough to eat. The vegans were well taken care of food wise on the Best of Italy tour I was on most recently as well as on every other tour where I was aware of anyone being vegan. Some of their dinners looked better than the regular options!

I hope the "change in policy" is not going to eliminate any flexibility toward supporting those with special diet requirements as long as those requirements are not extreme to the point of impacting the remainder of the tour members.