We juggled our options, the two obvious choices being Contiki and
Topdeck, and I had friends who'd done and enjoyed both. In the end, we
chose Topdeck because a) the age bracket was slightly wider and we'd
heard that it was less, um, party-oriented than Contiki, and Libby and I
are not drinkers and party-ers in the slightest; and b) we really liked
the sound of the route of this particular tour.
So, yes, European Odyssey is an 18-day tour which falls under their EuroHotel category. The tour route went something like this: London - Paris - Engelberg, Switzerland - Florence - Rome - Venice - Kirschberg in Tyrol, Austria - Prague - Berlin - Amsterdam - London. I say "something like this" because a few people joined us mid-way from another Topdeck tour, so apparently you don't have to stick to the exact route, you can hop tours or just cover a few of the places. I'm not exactly sure how this works, but wish this was something I'd known prior to booking. They also took us to Pisa, Orvieto, Verona, Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Dresden and Bruges. However, these – with the exception of Pisa and Mauthausen – were lunch stops, and lovely as they were, our priority was lunch and loo. We stopped for about 1.5 hours in each of these places.
Our tour guide, Marta, and our driver, Krzys (hope I spelt that right), were lovely and knew a lot about Europe (d'oh). Marta told us the history and facts of each city as we were entering it, and took us on walking/orientation tours in a few of the cities. Every other day was a driving day. Europe is large, and getting places takes time. We normally watched movies pertaining to the place we were visiting, for example Angels and Demons, The Gladiator, Inglorious Basterds, and The Hangover (for the morning after some of the peeps conquered Berlin). Special kudos to Krzys for manoeuvering on the hairpin bends in the Swiss Alps! The coach was pretty comfy, but note this: there is wifi on the coach, but it's very expensive. I know. Even though the brochure makes this sound like a free feature, it isn't.
Accommodation was generally good, and knowing the hotels were three star, I wasn't expecting much but some were pleasantly surprising. The Ski Lodge in Engelberg, which is right at the foothills of Mt Titlis, had the softest beds and generous views of the Swiss Alps. I almost stole one of the towels from our Roman hotel, those were nice. The hotels in Berlin and Amsterdam were very cosy and clean, however the hotel in Florence was rather shabby, with no wifi, funky smelling sheets and a paper-thin shower curtain which let water flood all over the floor. The Florence and Venice hotels surprised us with three beds in our twin room (wrong booking? Hah, we didn't complain.). And oh yeah, expect a few of the places to have twin beds joined together to make a double bed. We did have early starts, and we did get told that we'd be left behind if we didn't show up on time. Thankfully no one did, and Marta counted heads every single time before the bus started anyway. :-)
All breakfasts were provided (just the sort you get in hotels: cereal, bread, fruit, juice, cakes and cold meat). Around half the dinners were included, and these were mostly three-course affairs. I'm a lacto-ovo vegetarian, and I'd let Topdeck know this when I booked, and I was provided with speshul meals. Except for Paris and Amsterdam, these dinners were good. During driving days, we'd stop for about 45 minutes to an hour for lunch at the motorway restaurants, and all 47 of us had to rush to line up, grab something to eat, go to the loo, etc. This was a little harder for me, as I'm vegetarian and had to really look at the ingredients in what I was getting. A couple of times I couldn't find anything to eat, and had to chocolate-milk it (it's filling, energising and delicious). I understand the need to reach our destination in time or early, but sometimes it felt like these lunches were too rushed.
My other tiny grumble with the tour was the day in Austria. We only got to spend one night, and that too in this small town in the middle of nowhere. They had some optional adventure activities, but for those of us who weren't into that, there was seriously nothing to do, and that's annoying when you're on a restricted time limit. Note that Engelberg, too, is quite small, but Libby and I took the train to Lucerne, and spent half the day there. Best decision ever. Some people like down time, and that's cool, but we just felt like it was wasting precious Europe time. :-P
I'm not sure what else I can say, really, except that I'm very very glad I went on this tour. I liked that you can go and do things on your own but don't have to worry about things like getting from one city – country – to the next. We had a really good group, lots of Aussies, a few Kiwis, a Canadian, and no dramas. The tour itself is like a movie trailer version of Europe, but it gives you a good idea of places you want to come back to – no, places you will come back to.
----
Thanks for reading! If you've any questions about the tour or want to say hello, please don't hesitate to comment :-) And if you'd like to read more about how my trip went, here are all those posts.
So, yes, European Odyssey is an 18-day tour which falls under their EuroHotel category. The tour route went something like this: London - Paris - Engelberg, Switzerland - Florence - Rome - Venice - Kirschberg in Tyrol, Austria - Prague - Berlin - Amsterdam - London. I say "something like this" because a few people joined us mid-way from another Topdeck tour, so apparently you don't have to stick to the exact route, you can hop tours or just cover a few of the places. I'm not exactly sure how this works, but wish this was something I'd known prior to booking. They also took us to Pisa, Orvieto, Verona, Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Dresden and Bruges. However, these – with the exception of Pisa and Mauthausen – were lunch stops, and lovely as they were, our priority was lunch and loo. We stopped for about 1.5 hours in each of these places.
Our tour guide, Marta, and our driver, Krzys (hope I spelt that right), were lovely and knew a lot about Europe (d'oh). Marta told us the history and facts of each city as we were entering it, and took us on walking/orientation tours in a few of the cities. Every other day was a driving day. Europe is large, and getting places takes time. We normally watched movies pertaining to the place we were visiting, for example Angels and Demons, The Gladiator, Inglorious Basterds, and The Hangover (for the morning after some of the peeps conquered Berlin). Special kudos to Krzys for manoeuvering on the hairpin bends in the Swiss Alps! The coach was pretty comfy, but note this: there is wifi on the coach, but it's very expensive. I know. Even though the brochure makes this sound like a free feature, it isn't.
Accommodation was generally good, and knowing the hotels were three star, I wasn't expecting much but some were pleasantly surprising. The Ski Lodge in Engelberg, which is right at the foothills of Mt Titlis, had the softest beds and generous views of the Swiss Alps. I almost stole one of the towels from our Roman hotel, those were nice. The hotels in Berlin and Amsterdam were very cosy and clean, however the hotel in Florence was rather shabby, with no wifi, funky smelling sheets and a paper-thin shower curtain which let water flood all over the floor. The Florence and Venice hotels surprised us with three beds in our twin room (wrong booking? Hah, we didn't complain.). And oh yeah, expect a few of the places to have twin beds joined together to make a double bed. We did have early starts, and we did get told that we'd be left behind if we didn't show up on time. Thankfully no one did, and Marta counted heads every single time before the bus started anyway. :-)
All breakfasts were provided (just the sort you get in hotels: cereal, bread, fruit, juice, cakes and cold meat). Around half the dinners were included, and these were mostly three-course affairs. I'm a lacto-ovo vegetarian, and I'd let Topdeck know this when I booked, and I was provided with speshul meals. Except for Paris and Amsterdam, these dinners were good. During driving days, we'd stop for about 45 minutes to an hour for lunch at the motorway restaurants, and all 47 of us had to rush to line up, grab something to eat, go to the loo, etc. This was a little harder for me, as I'm vegetarian and had to really look at the ingredients in what I was getting. A couple of times I couldn't find anything to eat, and had to chocolate-milk it (it's filling, energising and delicious). I understand the need to reach our destination in time or early, but sometimes it felt like these lunches were too rushed.
My other tiny grumble with the tour was the day in Austria. We only got to spend one night, and that too in this small town in the middle of nowhere. They had some optional adventure activities, but for those of us who weren't into that, there was seriously nothing to do, and that's annoying when you're on a restricted time limit. Note that Engelberg, too, is quite small, but Libby and I took the train to Lucerne, and spent half the day there. Best decision ever. Some people like down time, and that's cool, but we just felt like it was wasting precious Europe time. :-P
I'm not sure what else I can say, really, except that I'm very very glad I went on this tour. I liked that you can go and do things on your own but don't have to worry about things like getting from one city – country – to the next. We had a really good group, lots of Aussies, a few Kiwis, a Canadian, and no dramas. The tour itself is like a movie trailer version of Europe, but it gives you a good idea of places you want to come back to – no, places you will come back to.
----
Thanks for reading! If you've any questions about the tour or want to say hello, please don't hesitate to comment :-) And if you'd like to read more about how my trip went, here are all those posts.
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