Hi everyone!!

Who else is going on this upcoming tour???

Hi there, I wont be going on this tour until 21 September so be sure to come back and let us know how it was!

I just got back from this tour (July 4th Departure). It was a great tour, well paced... although i do wish we could have spent more time in some of the cities...

Our tour director was very good, well organized, very knowledgeable and entertaining. You do spend a lot of time on the bus... typically 3-6 hours on driving days, so be prepared (although it is typically broken down into 1.5 - 2hr increments with site seeing stops, lunch stops, bathroom breaks, etc).

the hotels are so so, some better then others... Paris hotel was decent, but outside of the main city area (close to metro), hotels between Paris and Barcelona were "quaint". Barcelona, nice hotel good breakfasts, Nice had a decent hotel close to a lot of the market areas, Florence decent hotel with great bar, Rome nice hotel lobby, small rooms :P, quite far from main attraction areas, Venice tiny hotel quite far from the main lagoon area kinda old and somewhat run down. Lucerne nice hotel close to shopping and sites, Munich nice hotel, heidelberg small room you're just there to sleep, although i think there was an indoor pool there, Amsterdamn, decent hotel, far from city area...

the optionals were decent... Moulin Rouge not really worth 144 euros... Flamenco was pretty cool... Most of the excursion dinners are basically if you don't want to plan or explore on your own or don't want to arrange transportion back to the hotel... it ends up being a convinience thing and if you want to hang out with the rest of the group... typically a cab ride back from will run you around 12-20 euros...

you get to see a lot in the 3 weeks, a lot of history and art stuff... but you also get a lot of shopping time(if you're into that). Free time is pretty decent... it's a trade off with the excursions... if you don't do the excursions, you'll have more free time... typically free time in each city ranged from 2-3 hours with excursions to 2-6 hours if you didn't do the excursions (later if you caught a cab back to the hotel).

one thing regarding the excursion dinners... typically they're all you can drink wine or beer so save up your liver credits... my wife an i ended up drinking almost every night...

oh forgot to mention, the demonstrations i.e. leather, diamonds and glass were really short so hope you weren't looking forward to them...

anyways, just a quick overview of the tour... lemme know if you have more questions...

Thankyou! Finally someone who has done the Euro Break Tour has told how it was!

And ofcourse now that you have i can't think of any questions!

Ummm, So What time were you picked up in the morning from London? and what time did you arrive back in London? Did you stay in the Ibis Earls Court before the tour?

Were there many people on your tour? So i thought that sometimes the TD would arrange for you to be picked up if you decided to go off by yourself?? Did that not happen at all?

Did you end up using your credit card or cash to pay for optionals, oh and for lunch did you have to find somewhere to eat or was the whole group directed to one place?

Well thats a few questions to keep you busy for now!

Look forward to your responses

Hi, let see...

The first tour day (sunday), we had a 4:45 wake up call, however, I think we left around 7:00am for Dover. We had to pick up a couple people from the trafalgar center.

We stayed 2 nights before the tour started at the Ibis Earls Court.

We had a total of 39 people on our tour, however one left midway through for work.

At selected cities, the tour director was allowed to reimburse people for their cab rides home (4 to a cab). Once in awhile, he coordinated a pick up somewhere for those who did not do the excursion that night. it really depends on the location of the excursion and the timing of the pick up... and i guess the tour director...

As for paying for the optionals, our tour director gave a few options, pay in cash in one big payment, or to do a couple smaller payments (depending on your withdrawal limit for ATM/bank), or pay with credit card.

As for lunches, the rest stop lunches on driving days, you basically stop off at a rest station, and have a few options for food. Have fun ordering food in italy! On days you're in a city, you basically have the option to eat anywhere you want. Your TD will typically point you in a decent direction for food. You may be limited by time in some cities as you may have an excursion scheduled ~45min-1hr after your free time starts.

And as far as the excursions go, don't assume all of them will be offered.. the TD has the freedom to modify the excursion/optional list by combining or slightly modifying them. the total excursion cost for our tour if you did everything was about 1009 euros. however a couple were cancelled after the fact, 1 because we didn't have enough people, and the other because there was a local celebration and it was impossible to go on the excursion.

oh, if you're staying in London before or after your tour, look into picking up a travel card, it gives you unlimited rides on the tube, and on and off privileges for the double decker buses. You can pick one up from the west brompton station (about 1 - 1.5 blocks from Ibis Earls Court).

Glad you had a great time. Im doing the ultimate starting 9th september so it was good to hear someone else's experience of a similar tour.

I'm trying to remember what my TD said, but he said he's doing the last Breakaway Ultimate in September (or the year). Anyways, the timing of it is such that you end up in Germany for Octoberfest...

Anyways, he might be your TD, so if you get a guy named Calvin, you'll have a good time.

He also said the the Ultimate is an interesting tour... Something like there is a core group about 20 or so people from the start of the tour, then you pick up additional people (10-15) for a portion of the tour (like 10-15 days), then the leave, and another group joins up with you for the remaining days. The group dynamics are a bit different. I think he said the way Trafalgar markets it is as 3 different tours, the ultimate with is the whole tour, then two other tours which are portions of the ultimate... anyways, he said it's a similar tour, and you basically hit the same places plus several others.

have fun!

Fantastic, so did you guys suffer from Jetlag? Did anyone get sick from the food or was it all good?

What did you end up doing in Amsterdam and Munich? As i see we really only have one day there.

Was the coach comfy?

Thanks for that! I didn't even think of Oktoberfest but that should be great. Were there many singels om your tour? Thirty five sleeps to go!

Going to London wasn't so bad as far as Jet Lag. My wife and I upgraded to Business Class so we had nice big comfy chairs to sit and sleep in (not to mention a lot of free booze). The wine knocked my out cold on the way there so I had a good nights sleep. We arrived at 9am, got through customs and to our hotel (earls court) by 11. took a short 1 hour nap, then went out till about 5-6 exploring London. got back, took another short nap till around 8, then went out to dinner. A nice little Italian place down the street from the hotel called Papardella or something like that...

The food ranged from pretty good, to border line ok... typically the food in france was good, but in italy, it dipped down to the ok level. the optional trip out to burano in venice was the low point with deep fried seafood (shrimp, squid, seafood risotto). no one got sick from the excursion or included meals, but one girl got sick from one of the lunches they had. she just took it easy on drinking for a night or so and she was fine.

In Munich, we went to the Haufbrau Haus, a huge beer hall in the middle of town. Great beer, some of the group stayed after the included meal there and drank up a storm. The beer is really good, try the dark beer... they also have a beer with sprite/7up in it that's pretty good for the non beer drinkers...

In Amsterdam, we had another ok meal... authentic dutch food... (chinese/asian food) haha, i thought that was kinda funny. anyways, after some site seeing, then dinner, we had a free night in Amsterdam... check out a coffeeshop and walked around the red light district. btw, our TD had us leave Hiedelberg early (left by 730am) so we had an extra hour or so of free time in Amsterdam, so you might not have as much time, depending on your TD.

The coach was decently comfortable... it depends on your driver and traffic... on the long drive on the motorways it's decently smooth, but on the tighter turnier roads its harder to sleep. get a neck cushion or pillow for the bus. Also, your TD may do some stuff on the bus... i.e. informational presentations on the countries or where you'll be visiting, playing videos, or games to pass the time. i guess it depends on your TD as i've read some TD's just do nothing...

My group had a bunch of couples, many of us were on our honeymoons (at least 3-4 couples). there 3-4 youger people who just finished up college, and a couple older singles on their own. it was quite entertaining to hear some of the stories regarding the singles who opted for the room sharing...

anyways, as far as jet lag for you aussies.. it'll be atleast 2x worse then what I went through as it's only a 5hr and then a 10hr flight from Honolulu to London, compared to the longer flights from Australia through Singapore or Dubai the Aussies on our tour went through...

Jeesh im hoping the air hostess will pick me and my partner out of the crowd and upgrade us to First Class!!

My plan to combat jetlag is: We arrive in London at 6:00am after an 8 hour flight to singapore and a 13 hour flight to London, so hopefully i would of gotten some sleep on the 2nd leg, then adopt London time and stay awake until night time! HA wishful thinking! I probably wont last until Midday!

Well sounds like it was a good tour overall! Let us know if you think of any other tips or tales about your Euro Break adventure!

If you can check into your room, I would check in and sleep till 10 or 11 then stay up till 10 or 11 that night.

if you get in the day before your tour departure, be sure to double check with TT on what time you need to wake up and when you need your bags outside your door. some in our group did not get the welcome letter and the departure day instructions. there wasn't anything posted at the TT bulletin for our tour so we were clueless until the night before we left. we got a letter under our door.

besides that... i hope you like cressants and ham. cause you'll be seeing it every single day (sometimes you won't have ham, just cressants, jam and butter). oh... cold milk and cereal in europe seems to be hard to come by... for our tour, warm milk and cereal seemed to be the norm.

as far as money goes, if you're spending a couple days in london before the tour, just take 100 pounds with you or take it out of an atm. don't do it at the air port as the kill you on the exchange rates. i took mine of an atm and it was a very decent rate (close to the current exchange rate). depending on what you eat, typical sit down meal will average 20-30 pounds, vs sandwiches between 8-12 pounds. still kinda pricey. if anything, charge it if you can, that way you won't have to deal with carrying a lot of foreign currency.

as far as euros, carry a bit more as you will be visiting a lot of little towns that may or may not have many atms, or may not accept credit cards in the little shops. I think I started out with 200 euros, which lasted most of the trips (as we charged meals, and large purchases). be sure to carry change/coins with you, have at least 2 or 3 .50 euro pieces for using the toilets. oh, and just because you're paying to use a toilet, that doesn't mean it's clean, or has a toilet seat... heheh...

be sure to carry bottled water with you, it gets pretty hot in the southern portions of europe and water can get pricey in the touristy areas...

oh, don't forget your plug adapters, you'll need one for UK, Europe and Italy. I got a power strip (not a surge protector) and was able to use a single plug adapter to recharge my camera battery, my PSP, and my Ipod and my wife's Nintendo DS.

I would recommend some form of entertainment for the bus. an Ipod with music and movies, or PSP/DS to play games. as the bus rides are quite long and it can get quite boring if you're not sleeping.

Plan ahead... you'll have quite a bit of free time in Bacelona, and Nice so you may want to read up about those areas so you can figure out what you want to do there. you pretty much have free days there. if you're not doing the walking tours or excursions in rome you have a lot of time too. You also have quite a bit of time in Lucerne if you don't do the Mt. Pilatus and lake cruise. Oh, Venice you have about 3/4 of a day if you don't do the gondolas and the lagoon cruise dinner (this dinner isn't that great, but burano island is nice, cheaper glass stuff there too).

Actually, if you don't do the excursions, you have quite a bit of free time in most of the cities.

If i have time, list the excursions that were offered to us, and give a brief discription of them...

Speaking of breakfast, did they have toast? last time i went to Italy they didnt know what toast was lol. Did anyone try to sneak food from the breakfast restaurant to have later for lunch?

I heard hotels get a little narky and watch you like a hawk so you dont take anything from the restaurant.

Oh did you get to go to Monte Carlo and the casino there? or was that a free time thing rather than an optional thing?

In Paris did you go up the eiffel tower, coz i see that its an option rather then an included?

All this is great! Hey arnt you supposed to be sleeping right now isnt it like midnight over there assuming you are from America?

Paris
Moulin Rouge
The food was ok, you're packed in pretty tightly for the show. you get all the wine you can drink up until the show starts. the show is ok, some naked ladies dancing around, some not naked ladies and men dancing around. i don't think you'll be missing much if you skip this one, especially for the price.

Louvre and Eiffel Tour
Worth it, you get to see both and not have to wait in long lines. per our TD, all museums and Versaille (sp?) is closed on mondays, so the Louvre is extra busy. sorry if you were looking forward to seeing Versaille, but it's closed and not available.

Barcelona
Flamenco & Dinner
Decent buffet dinner (all you can eat), all you can drink wine, beer and sangria. the show was pretty good, and i thought it was pretty worth it.

Monserrat
This was offered, but cancelled because there wasn't enough people.

Nice
Three Corniche drive and Dinner
The drive was nice, and there were some great views. Warning, part of our tour had us hike up to the top of a hilltop/mountain top town. wear comfortable shoes and be prepared to sweat a little. the dinner was decent. note, shrimp cocktail is not an appetizer, its a salad with little soft bay shrimps on it. the rest of the meal was decent, again, all the wine and beer you can drink plus a little shot at the end of the meal.

Florence
Jewels of the Renaissance
Decent walking tour and you get to see the famed David statue, there are several copies of the statue throughout Florence, but the real thing is pretty nice to see. Our guide was pretty good too. no photos allowed of David.

Medici Entertainment and Sumptuous Dinner
Corny and Touristy entertainment, the Palace doesn't look like much outside but the inside is pretty nice. After a few drinks you can play dress up in Renaissance Costume clothing and take pictures, and after a few drinks the entertainment is kinda funny. The food was decent, and again, all you can drink wine and beer.

Rome
Introduction to Rome at Night
A nice walking tour through Rome, not too long of a walk, you get to see Piazza Navona (the fountain their was under repair and there was a barrier around it when we went), the Panteon, the Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps. You get to see the major sites and don't have to worry about getting lost and finding it on your own. It was worth while for my wife and I.

Roman Dinner and Live Music
Opera night... Kinda touristy, the singing was decent, and the food was again decent. All the wine or beer you can drink.

Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel and Coloseum
Worth it to check out the Vatican and Sistine chapel as well as St. Peters. I forget if the coloseum was part of the tour or if it was included... but our guide took us through the Vatican and through the Coloseum. worth it to cut in line at the vatican and coloseum to see them both.

Venice
Gondola Ride
It was ok, the wife and I didn't get to sit together as we had 4 other people in out gondola plus the gondolier. we got a bottle of proseca (sp?) to share. the water was kinda stink, but its kinda nice. this one is a toss up...

Lagoon Cruise and Dinner
the lagoon cruise was nice, and Burano Island was nice to take pictures, and they were selling cheaper glass then on the main island. The dinner is probably the worst excursion dinner. seafood risotto, fried shrimp, fried calamari and something i don't remember. non-seafood eating members of our group got steak and fries. all the soda, wine and beer you can drink included. also a nice cafe correcto... coffee with almaretto. if you do it... say you don't want seafood...

Venice by Night
This was offered but cancelled due to a local Venetian Celebration.

Switzerland
Lucerne
Mt. Pilatus & Lake Lucerne Cruise
It was cold, about 3-4 degrees C at the top, when we got there it was cloudy and you could barely see 50ft infront of you. But it cleared up a bit, and the views were pretty good. The train ride down was nice as well. The lake tour was kinda boring and slow. another toss up... it would give you a lot more free time in town if you didn't do it. you get back to town around 1pm or so, and the folklore dinner (if you do it) requires you to head back to the hotel and be ready by around 6pm. The lake cruise ends pretty close to the Lion carved into the mountain.

Folklore Evening Dinner
Food was decent, cheese fondue... 2 beers only... but they're 1 litre each! after the two beers, the entertainment is pretty hilarious! pretty fun outing if you're into drinking.

Netherlands
Amsterdam
Wine and Cheese Cruise
Our TD said he booked with a different company, so it was a couple Euros more, but it was an all you can drink cruise... good beer, and all you can drink! it's also the last excursion and night together with your group, so it was worth it for us!

anyways, that was it.. hope it helps...

Sounds great - I don't suppose you go to go to the Schnapps Museum?