Tour recommendations

What cities do you want to see? How much time do you have and is a typical RS tour price for the same length of time within your budget?

We would like to visit Warsaw, Krakow, Prague, Budapest, and Vienna. We are thinking 16 days give or take. Yes, we have priced this tour and it seems reasonable.

I think GoAhead has a tour that covers all of those cities.

It’s a good trip. I asked about the price because if you want to brave it I did a little math and you can book a RS Quality trip to these cities on your own for $3000 to $4000 for two (I did some quick math). That would be 14 nights in a RS quality hotel, 6 or 7 partial to full day private tour guides, and train transportation between cities. The high end would be if you use private transportation either into our out of Krakow (its always a bit of a stretch), the low end if you are very cautions on your expenses. Add to that cost the flight over and food and a few entrance fess and you have a trip. Lots of folks here that can help you plan it. (oh, and Fred here could do it for $675 but I said RS Quality trip).

The very first tour I ever took to Europe was a Go Ahead tour. My sister planned it with Go Ahead for my Dad, herself, and me.
It was awful. The tour guide, or Go Ahead, had neglected to book the bus in some locations and we all ended up sitting in the lobby of the hotel for a few hours. We had booked an extension to Florence, from Rome along with a few other people. They told us that we would be met in Florence at the hotel, given a morning walking tour of Florence and then given our train tickets back to Rome to catch our flight 2 days later. No such person met us, thank goodness the hotel was helpful to us getting in touch with them and they had to express the train tickets to us. Never again would I travel with them.

Hopefully, they've gotten their act together, but I don't know

I have taken the RS Eastern Europe trip since then and it was one of our favorites. We loved Prague, Krakow, and Budapest, but also the smaller towns that we stayed in were so much fun.

Whatever you decide, I hope it's a great trip!
Mimi

Another option you might wish to consider is JayWay Travel. They specialize in custom tours to eastern Europe. I used them for my trip last year to the Balkans. I had a good experience with them; the accommodations they offered were superb, and all the arrangements were handled well. They provided me with a local cellphone so if I got lost or had a problem, they were a phone call away.

The itinerary seems to be exactly what you want, and looking from afar they appear to have a good reputation.

http://www.odysseys-unlimited.com/tours/europe/discovering-eastern-europe

From $3,997 to $4,897 including ...
--Round-trip air transportation from listed cities
--15 nights’ accommodations in Deluxe, Superior First Class, and unrated hotels
--25 meals: 15 breakfasts, 4 lunches, 6 dinners
--Extensive sightseeing as described, including all entrance fees
--Services of an Odysseys Unlimited Tour Director
--Private motorcoach transportation throughout your trip
--Luggage handling for one bag per person
--Gratuities for local guides, dining room servers, airport and hotel porters, and all drivers

Seems price competitive to me.

My husband and I took an Odysseys Unlimited tour to Peru last year. They are a top notch company. I would highly recommend them. We are hoping to go to Tanzania next year and will be using Odysseys Unlimited if we do.

We did any Odyssey Unlimited tour last Spring to Spain & Portugal. We had the same issue, since RS does these as two separate tours and we wanted a combination. We were very pleased and would use them again. Our first choice is still an RS tour, where dates and itinerary allow. OU has approx. same size groups, and they transport your luggage. I would say that the beginning and ending hotels were a little higher quality, but the ones in the middle are similar. Actually, we felt a bit uncomfortable in the last hotel (The Wellington) as the rest of the hotel guests were better dressed and less bedraggled than we were. The guide was professional and delightful, but we've had two top-drawer guides with RS, so we noticed the differences. The company was very easy to work with.

I'm happy to answer any other questions.
Patty

Thanks to everyone that offered advice and shared their experiences. We are leaning to an organized tour as opposed to planning the entire trip on our own. From the information that we received from everyone here we think that we will be able to maneuver from location to location more efficiently with a tour rather than on our own.

Thank you everyone. Happy Travel!