Best Of

We've done it three times, and we are scheduled for a fourth time next year. We love it, and we figure it actually saves a lot of money (because of airfare and insurance). Just takes planning.

Never tried it. Have been on single longer tours, longest was 24 days.

We did it twice, the first was the England tour followed by the Ireland tour. The second was Rome to Sicily and then Egypt. I didn't find it a problem. If you can stay away from home that long, it works fine. (A limitation might be if you have to put your dog into a kennel).

We have done extended trips a couple of times, just returned from back-to back week in Venice, Florence, Rome and week in Tuscany and Umbria. I agree with all the previous comments. The early morning bag pulls and two-night hotel stays can get tiresome unless you are a morning person, energetic, and have a well-organized suitcase. I would definitely prefer the more active land trip before the more relaxing river cruise. We spent five days in Siena between our two week-long land tours. That time for relaxation and laundry helped.

We have done this twice. We did the Scandinavian land tour, followed by Iceland cruise. We also did French land tour followed by river cruise. We preferred doing the more active land tour first, and then relaxing on the cruise. Both trips were 28 days. Took some extra planning, but was well worth it. We thoroughly enjoyed both trips.

We've done it twice and have another 2fer planned for next year.

Advantages: Tauck will only charge one Guest Protection for both trips (the higher of the two if there is a difference), you maximize the cost of your airfare, and only have to go thru jetlag once. If you book before the yearly deadline for Gift of Time (31 Jul) you will get it for both trips.

Downside: It can take some researching getting the right dates so the tours don't overlap but don't have more days in between than you want. You can fill gaps with extra stays at the Tauck hotels or find you own accommodations. Tauck helped us with the air arrangements once but other the other we were taking a train so we had to handle that ourselves.

Some people are totally ready to get home by the end of a tour which I worried about initially. But it's always been a new city, a new group, a new TD so we've had a great time.

If you're happy being gone that long and can work out the logistics I'd recommend going for it.