Combine Rick Steves Tours on one trip

We combined two different ones in the UK, with 5 days on our own in between. It worked well. The five free days in the middle was REALLY helpful to decompress. If you're highly social, it may not be so important.

Lots to consider including how well you do being on a group schedule, your health and stamina, and your packing/laundry skills.

Thanks. It’s wasn’t too long?
We’ve been on four Rick Steves tours and know how it goes.
This would be over a month of travel so we’re mainly concerned with if it’s too much to do.

we did Best of France and Best of Southern France back to back and it was fine. At the end, we were ready to go home, though.

Thank you for your reply

Hello,

I have not done back to back tours, but I have done and prefer longer independent trips. And my reason for preferring the longer trips is that I like contrast. For example, one 3 1/2 week trip included Paris, the chateaux of the Loire Valley, Barcelona, Chania Crete and hiking the Samaria Gorge and a 4 day tour of the Classic historical stops in the Greek Peloponnese (Mycennae, Epidaurus, Olympia, Meteora, Delphi, Corinth).

So if I was contemplating 2 tours, I would mix it up and not do all Italy. Because for me, the amount of time wouldn't be 'too much' but the structure, food, language, and themes probably would be.

I've not done these 2 back to back but I have done several back to backs and once did a back to back to back!

The 3 tours in a row was the longest - the 21 Best of Europe + 7 day Best of Paris + Village Italy. I also had another week in Paris with a friend after the Best of Paris so had a break in the go-go-go of a tour. I was not ready to come home, lol!! The only problem was that my suitcase got too heavy, hahaha!

I will add that the tours I enjoyed the most as back to back were when I changed cultures such as the Best of England and Paris and the Heart of France. The 3-tour vacation was also good with differing cultures and city + Rural change.

How many days would you have between the 2 tours? I'd want at least 2 nights to give you some time to do laundry, forget your tour mates names from tour #1 and be ready to start remembering names for tour #2. IF you 've never been to Rome there is plenty to do to keep you busy for weeks, lol.

I generally go for a month anyway. It's just such a long flight that I might as well stay a good while once I'm there!

I have done both of these tours but not back to back. I will say that I was more than ready for a break from the tour lifestyle after the BOI so I too would recommend 3, 4 or more days in between to decompress and rest, especially if you haven’t been to Italy before. We did do the Best of Paris and Eastern France tours back to back with two days in between, The tours complimented each other and the length of time felt just about right for us.

No we have not gone back to back for a month like that. We like
to bookend our RS tours with 2-3 days on our own before and after the tour. But that being said it seems like there is always somebody on our RS tour that just came off another tour or is heading to another tour, so a lot of people do it. And with air travel being so expensive and exhausting if you got the time go for it.

It really comes down to your stamina. You seem to know what a tour entails, the activity level, the "togetherness", and the pace. You are talking 30 days of tour, plus a few days before, a few days break in the middle (depending on schedule) and maybe a couple days after to wonder what the heck you just did, so maybe 40 days of fairly intensive travel.

If you have serious doubts, then I would probably nix the idea. Nothing worse than being an unenthusiastic traveler (another day, another fantastic sight to slog through)

But if you are game, go for it, or maybe look at some shorter tours.

We did these tours back-to-back. It was wonderful. The Best of Italy tour ended one day then the South Italy started the next day. I think if you are concerned and schedule accommodates it, have an extra day or two to see more of Rome and have down time. We did not think it was too much at all. We are retired but healthy.

I think the perfect combo would be a tour and then some independent time—if you are wondering if it would be too much for you, it probably is. Other than the time and money aspect, I think it would mostly come down to where you are on the introvert-extrovert scale. I get tired of people even after independent travel, so I would need a good break in between the two tours to decompress and refill my reserves.