Is a bus tour for you?

We have just returned home from 4 weeks in Europe visiting Spain, Malta and Italy.

We booked two bus tours with Trafalgar with a few days in between visiting a friend in Malta. 

Spanish Wonders – 9 days and 8 nights – visiting Madrid, Toledo, Seville, Granada, Valencia and Barcelona.

And Grand Italian Experience – 17 days and 16 nights – visiting Rome, Alberobello, Ostuni, Sorrento, the Amalfi coast, Pompeii, Assisi, Venice, Milan, Trento, Lake Maggiore, Santa Margherita, the Cinque Terre, and Florence, finally returning to Rome for one night before we flew home.

Sounds exhausting? Yes it was, BUT we believe we travelled more safely and probably saw a lot more than we would have under our own steam as it was our first visit to this part of Europe, we didn’t know anything about travel in these countries, and don’t speak their languages.
A fellow traveller said she felt like she had been in the "amazing race"! 

An organised tour is not for everyone, but looking back over our holiday I started thinking about the 'fors' and 'againsts' of organised bus tour travel.

But first a few travel tips: Seasoned travellers probably have many more you could add.

•  I suggest arriving the day before your tour starts to allow time to rest after your flight. We had an approximately 30 hour trip from home in Western Australia to Madrid, had virtually no sleep on the plane, and arrived at the hotel with only an hour to spare before we went to our tour's evening "welcome" dinner.

• Check the luggage restrictions of the airline you are flying with and your tour bus. Sizes and weights may be different so you need to pack for the smaller size.

•   Pack lightly. My friend advised – lay out the clothes you would like to take, then take half away. I tried to do this, and still had clothes I didn’t wear.  Try to pack clothes that don’t crease. We found that hotels in Europe didn’t supply irons.

• Hand wash your essentials every night and other clothes every couple of days. The hotel supplied shampoo and soap are good for this.  We carry a small ‘washing line’ and pegs with us and hoped for a balcony for drying when we had a two night stop over.

• A great way to wring out extra water from your washing is to wrap the items in a bath towel and hand wring tightly. It is amazing the amount of extra water that comes out.

• If you are a reader only take one book or take an e-reader. Honestly you won’t have time to read unless you intend reading on the bus or you are a late night reader. 

• Make sure you take an international power adapter with you so you can charge your devices. A power board for plugging in multiple devices is also a good idea. 
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• The easiest way for photographers to store photos is to take multiple memory cards. 

Montserrat, Spain

• We purchased a "travel sim" for our mobile phone which made calls home much cheaper. The mobile phone was a good way to check our emails and update family and friends on Facebook. Our bus had wifi and the facility to charge mobile devices, but make sure you take the necessary cords with you.

• We loaded a ‘travel card’ with Euro before we left home and used this instead of our Visa card, as well as some cash. The travel card is not connected to any of our bank accounts, can be used to withdraw cash at ATMs, and can be loaded with extra cash on-line if necessary. 

•  Whilst we agree that airport transfers when you arrive at your destination make life easier and a lot less stressful, we found that a taxi transfer from our hotel to the airport for our return flight was easy and a lot cheaper. 

•  Be aware of additional or ‘hidden’ costs. These include optional experiences, lunches and evening meals, and gratuities (tips) expected by the local guides, your tour leader and coach driver. This can add many extra dollars to your cost, so you need include these in your budgeting before your book.  
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• Be careful of paying "gratuities" to tour leaders and coach drivers upfront when you pay for your trip. Gratuity rates are 'recommended' by the tour company but they are "something given voluntarily or beyond obligation usually for some service" - therefore they are not obligatory - they are a 'tip' for good service. Unfortunately some times you might feel that your tour leader or coach driver has not given you the service you expected, in which case you should not feel 'obliged' to pay the 'recommended' amount. If you have already paid up front when you paid for your trip, you have no say in how much you pay. 

Now the fors and againsts tour bus travel, as we saw them.....

FORS

• The tour companies know the countries you are visiting and are well placed to get the best deal to see the most in a limited time.

• Travel in the safety and security of a group under the guidance of a tour leader who will also address language difficulties.

• All your accommodation, breakfast and many of your meals are organised. Generally we stayed in good quality hotels, but this depends on how much you pay for your tour.

A very enjoyable "optional" dinner in Madrid with opera singing waiters

• You don’t have to plan or think about your day – it’s all organised for you

• You receive a good snapshot of the country including visiting the iconic sites.

•   A good tour leader will be very organised and have you arrive at points of interest early before the tourist hoards descend. 

•  Be taken to places you might not have been aware of in the region: eg UNESCO World Heritage listed Trulli houses near Alberobello in Italy dating back to the 14th Century.

Trulli houses

•   No queuing at locations. To me this is the biggest plus of an organised tour when I saw the length of queues at the iconic sites. Our tickets were already purchased and we went straight past the waiting queues of other tourists, some of which were hundreds of metres long. This can save many hours of queuing which is wasted sight-seeing time.

Colosseum crowds, Rome

• Optional tours with local specialist guides at places of interest or street walks gave us an in-depth experience of these places. We found in general that local guides were passionate about their cities and its history. We all had headset radios which worked well for everyone to hear what the guides were saying.

The Mosque of the Caliphs in Cordoba in Spain, built in the 10th Century, and now a Catholic cathedral, and our passionate local guide

• All our breakfasts were included in the price of the tour, some of our evening meals, and some optional cultural dinners were offered.

• Meet a range of people from different countries with whom you can share experiences, fact find together, and share information. 

AGAINSTS

• The pace of the tour was hectic. We only had a few cities where we stayed two nights. The ‘get packed up, put your suitcase out to be collected, have breakfast, and get down to the bus by 8am or earlier’ regime was tiring.  

• There was very little opportunity to relax. We often had long driving days with a visit to a place along the way, usually not getting to our hotel till after 4pm. We would have liked to have had 3 nights in a few places, and perhaps an ‘at leisure’ day in the middle of the tour so that we could rest, recharge, explore on our own or get our washing done. 
• You may have to spend time at locations of little interest to you as they are part of the travel itinerary.

•   Whilst the ‘optional tours’ give you a more in-depth experience, they leave little time for self-exploration, especially if the stop also required finding lunch, all within an hour or so. But of course these are 'optional tours' which you can opt out of.

• No flexibility to stop and explore places of particular personal interest or move on quickly from places of little interest to you.

•  Sometimes the ‘experiences’ don’t necessarily match the itinerary, or hold ups with traffic etc can mean that you are rushed through planned experiences. Unfortunately this happened to us in Pompeii, and the rain that day didn't help.

• Visits to artisan workshops and outlets, whilst very interesting, can be little more than a chance to push sales. On several occasions I felt I would have rather spent my time exploring the city instead.

• You may find you are travelling with a group or tour leader that isn’t a good match for your personality. Touring in this situation can make for a less than happy experience considering how much time you spend together over the duration of your tour. This can make or break your enjoyment of the tour.

• Tour groups can be too large. Our last tour had 49 people. Tour groups of this size puts additional pressure on tour leaders and make it more difficult to have interaction with everyone on the tour. When you are walking with a local specialist the tour group tends to get ‘strung out’ over a long distance.The 'plus' of a large group is that you are more than likely you will find somebody who you 'click' with.

•   On the bus, whilst our tour leaders could tell us information along the way via their microphone, it was limited how we could interact back to them or ask them a question due to the size of the bus. 

•   A large tour group can make for very noisy dining experiences.

FINALLY

At the end of our tours we were given evaluation sheets. This is a good opportunity to express your likes and dislikes, or make suggestions, about the tour, or you could email the tour operator direct on your return home. Please try to give truthful and useful feedback, otherwise the tour company won’t know what they are doing right, what doesn't work, or what they could improve on. 

Overall we enjoyed our travels through Spain and Italy and we met some lovely people who we will no doubt keep in touch with over the coming years. However next time we will be looking more closely at the length of the tour, the area being covered and the number of people we would be travelling with. 

A note on ‘hop on hop off’ buses. These can give you a good overall view and get you around to the iconic places in a city. However be aware of traffic conditions. When we were in London several years ago we wasted a lot of time sitting in traffic and didn’t get to see all the places we had planned. We could have walked quicker than the bus drove through the city. Also you still need to buy your entrance tickets and queue which wastes valuable sight-seeing time. You could catch local buses, but if you don't know your way around this could be problematic. 

Thank you so much for stopping by. Over the next few weeks I hope to bring you more from our travels to Spain, Malta and Italy. 

Have you been on a bus tour? What did you think about it? Do you have any travel tips for us? Perhaps you would like to share in your comments. 

I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week.  

The views expressed in this article are entirely mine and my husbands.
We travelled with Trafalgar and via Qatar Aireways at our own cost.

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