My Way Tours

The tours are fairly well set. The last new one is the Alpine Tour. There is always talk of adding or removing the tours to follow demand. But, yes, the office would be better able to answer that.

Although I have taken 10 RS tours, I have not been on one of the My Way ones because I prefer the other inclusive tours, but I am looking to maybe taking the My Way France tour. It covers some of the area that other RS tours have that I wouldn't mind seeing again, but still provides access to places I have not been.

Ideas get debated all the time, and tour members might tell us where they want to go next, but I haven't heard of any firm plan to offer a new itinerary in 2019.

Really wish a new 14 day Best of Europe tour (Western Europe), My Way or not would be offered so there would be 2 itineraries to choose from. There are two 14 day BOE family tours for the family tours but not for the adult tours. The 21 day tour is too long for me and I’m sure others.

I would love to see a My Way Central/Eastern Europe - Bulgaria (Sofia), Romania (Bucharest)l, Hungary (Budapest), Slovenia (Ljubljana), and Croatia (Zagreb, Opatija, Split, Dubrovnik) with stops in a couple of smaller places in between. Would probably have to be a 21 day because of the distances but it would be nice to have an itinerary like this without the higher cost of tour guides, admissions, and meals - just hotels, transportation, and a couple of meals (get acquainted and farewell dinners).

Thank you for your suggestions.

Laura: Like these responses I feel your agency is missing some wonderful tours. The current tours cover areas easily accessible by train. They are great tours for those who want transport and hotels booked for them. But for others who don't mind booking trains or hotels they would do those tours on their own. Beyond your current tours there are many regions not easily accessible by train, Southern France for instance, where car transport is much easier and in some instances necessary. For those who don't want to drive a tour would be welcomed. I understand RS is a company and profit margins are important. But if fiscally possible I hope your company would consider tours to more remote (less train friendly) areas.

Highlanderct, I understand what you mean about less train-friendly destinations, although so much of populated Europe is accessible by train, and even more if you add in buses and a few local van tours. One problem with small destinations is less choice of what to do there. We want My Way Tour members to feel like they have less structure and more choice for their day, rather than risking half of the group taking a long hike and others thinking "you drove me here and dumped me in the middle of nowhere for 5 hours." Or, "the only thing to see was one Etruscan ruin." Rural destinations are more likely to be covered on a fully guided tour, where customers expect a day structured by us and we can plan ahead to offer everyone a picnic lunch, or a truffle hunt, or a just-enough half hour at the Etruscan ruin with a guide to tell you about it, or multiple planned and timed stops.

Nancy, there certainly is room to grow in the Eastern routes, but your proposed itinerary sounds hard to sell. Just seeing Sophia without a lot more of what Bulgaria has to offer, including one of the most charming and enthusiastic tour guides in the world? Bucharest, which people report is one of the least fun big cities around and least interesting part of Romania? These are also destinations where a guide can really help open up communication with the locals and add value to your experience. I think a guided tour is more likely what Americans want and need here, if they're not interested in planning their own trip. Our fully guided Bulgaria tour is pretty awesome value!

Laura I didn't think of those issues and they makes sense. Is there any website that would help me learn the rules of the road for European countries along with typical road signs and what they mean? I've seen a few posts from people who owe several hundred euros in traffic tickets. I'd like to drive but want to do it correctly.

We have taken two My Way tours, BOE/14 and France (the inaugural year, second outing). I can totally understand and I agree with what Laura is saying about the "off the beaten path" destinations. If you've looked at the itinerary for MW France, you'll see several times where the bus stops at a site in route, or does a day trip somewhere, and we felt that the stops were too long or too short or there were other things I'd rather have been doing. After a fantastic experience with BOE, the France tour was less so. We love France generally, including the locations we visited on that trip, and we had a fantastic time doing what we wanted to do when we got where we were going, but that trip convinced us that we could and would do future trips on our own, renting a car when we need to, staying as long or as little as we want to. Which we have!

highland -

What I find odd is that a lot of the places where you are most prone to get tickets or encounter traffic are places you'd never need have a car to start with! You don't have to rent a car for the whole time you're in Europe - you can just get one for a day or two or week, as the need demands. On our trip last summer, we used only trains for the first week then rented a car when we headed off the beaten path a bit. It worked perfectly. Sometimes you just have to think outside the box! (But brushing up on AND FOLLOWING the local laws is always advisable! If you speed, you are more likely to get a ticket than here in the US where we are used to getting a 10-15 mph cushion.)

Rick has some tips here and usually more detail in the country-specific guidebooks:

• https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/navigate-european-roads
• https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/driving-europe-tips

There is some new signage to memorize and I'm sure more tutorials per country are online. My rule of thumb is, if I don't remember the meaning of a sign, it often essentially means "do not enter" or "not for you."

Also be clear about speed limits on different type of road, per country, whether they're signed or not and whether other cars are speeding or not. There might actually be more signs saying "speed controlled by camera" than signs that state the limits in the same terms that we're used to.