I am on wait list for Sept. 6 for Scandinavia and/or Netherlands. Has anyone taken these tours? Which is better? Is the Scandinavian tour really 7 hours on a bus or do they stop? It, over the Netherlands tour, looks to be quite a lot of road time.
Is September not a good time to go there? Advice is welcomed. I cannot buy an airline ticket until I know if/where I'm going which adds to the frustration. I know I should have started earlier but thought I'd ask. Looks like all the RS tours for 2023 are sold out.
Thank you.
Jill
Posted by
Temple,Tx
417 posts
Jill,
I haven’t been on the Scandinavian tour, but the Belgium/Netherlands tour has very little bus time. There are 3 days of travel from city to city. The first travel day is spent learning about World War I and Flanders Fields. The other days are short travel days with interesting stops along the way. If you go to the tour page and click on “Find a Tour” then go to the top right corner and click on “Search”, then at the bottom you’ll see “See all tours by departure dates”. You can click on “September” and see which tours have available seats in September. There are several tours with September availability
The Belgium/Netherlands tour is wonderful. My husband and I really enjoyed Ghent and Bruges. They are easy to navigate. Delft is lovely and Amsterdam has wonderful museums. The architecture is fabulous everywhere. We enjoyed the food and all the sights. I hope you find a tour that you can get excited about. You can call the RS office and ask how far down the list you are.
Posted by
Colorado Mountains, USA
7360 posts
Although I haven’t taken either tour myself, we’re heading on our own to Scandinavia (Denmark/Norway) this September. Looks like an excellent time of year to go - not quite as busy as in earlier summer, but stuff is still open for tourism, which will start closing in another month.
Posted by
Australia
863 posts
we’re heading on our own to Scandinavia (Denmark/Norway) this September. Looks like an excellent time of year to go
We spent 5 weeks in Scandinavia from mid August to late September 2022 and it was indeed an excellent time of year to go. Have fun!
Posted by
Sweden
6396 posts
Distances are much longer in Scandinavia so more bus time is hard to avoid. E.g. Stockholm to Copenhagen is a bit over 500 km as the crow flies, which in comparison is a tad more than Prague to Zagreb.
And September is not a bad time to visit Scandinavia.
Posted by
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, USA
13946 posts
Like Janet I’ve done the Belgium and Netherlands tour. I 💯% agree with her assessment.
I recommend arriving at least 1 day ahead to Ghent and spending extra time in Amsterdam if you can. When I went in 2019 I spent time in Paris ahead of the tour and took the train up a few days ahead. Yes, the regular tour hotel has chocolate on the breakfast buffet!!!
I have not done the Scandinavia tour.