Vegetarian-Suggested Tours

I've traveled, mostly solo, through about 20 European countries and never had trouble finding vegetarian food. I don't think that needs to be a concern when you're choosing a tour.

No. I've had the same experiences as Chani. In addition, I have found all the guides go to great lengths to make the group meals work for all members' dietary requirements. They are truly wonderful at doing that and I think you could choose any tour and feel comfortable.

I'm vegan and have found the same as Chani and Andi...few problems and the guides have been wonderful in arranging vegan options for the group meals. I think the Paris and Heart of France tour might have been the most difficult as there was sometimes butter used even in the vegan dish. Even with the guide advocating for me, there seemed to be a disconnect in that the restaurants did not consider butter an animal product. This may not be an issue for you if you include dairy in your diet.

I don't usually have problems finding vegan options when I am on my own but I always have back up food including peanut butter and/or Clif bars.

I've done 8 RS tours which included time in England, Ireland, France, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Italy.

BTW, in the instances where I can taste butter in a meal, if a restaurant has gone out of the way to provide me with something special, I usually eat at least some of it to acknowledge their extra work.

Is there a tour you particularly have in mind?

editing to add: I did the GAS tour this fall (great trip!) and felt bad for the gluten-free people. For some reason they usually got the vegan option?? I had great vegan food on this trip!

I don't worry at all about finding vegetarian options when I travel. On tours, there's usually some alternative automatically offered or, if not, a slight adjustment is made and I'm served something else. This was true even in China last month, where I really wasn't sure what I'd find. I will say that the most meat-intensive menus I've come across have been in Germany but even there I was fine.

Much of Spain likes its meat, too, especially pork. Outside of the tourist hot spots (Madrid, Barcelona, the Basque Country, and probably also the major cities in Andalucía) it won't necessarily be super easy to avoid meat. Vegetables are fairly often cooked with bits of ham, and I got the feeling that they're just not as used to dealing with vegetarians as the Italians are, for example. I'm not sure the servers in more out-of-the-way cities would necessarily grasp that a vegetarian doesn't want a dish made with meat stock or gelatin.

But I'd expect any tour leader to be up on good local vegetarian options. My concern (which wouldn't stop me from going anywhere I wanted to go) would be for days before or after the tour when I was on my own.

I can't speak to Rick's tours. But I was just in Glasgow, Manchester, and Liverpool, and I can say that the attention in restaurant menus to various food concerns (gluten-free, allergies, vegetarian, vegan) was extremely high. For instance, one Chinese restaurant said on their menu that due to nuts being used in many dishes, they could not guarantee that any of their dishes were free of nut contamination. Now, that's true in many restaurants, but I've never seen it put so plainly on a menu before.