First timers - any advice?
We’re going on this the ITALIA BELLA: ROME TO VENICE in June of 2024. Kids are 13 and 11. Anybody been on this tour before? Any recommendations or things to think of? As soon as this tour ends we hop over to England for the Castles and Kings 8-day tour. Finishing it up with a couple extra days at Paris Disney. Going to be a once in a lifetime trip for us so if there’s any suggestions or tips, we’d love to hear it!
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Greetings. First, you are going to have a wonderful time. It's been 15 years since we traveled abroad with Tauck, leaving to Italy in December with the Rome-Sorento excursion. Second, the key to your trip is gauging how much you and your kids want to accomplish. Our approach to international travel is that we don't know if we will have the opportunity to return so we spend our allotted free time seeing and doing as much as possible. The content that Tauck provides is excellent. It's the free time that really makes the trip, at least that was our experience. We have done both tours you are about to take and enjoyed all the time we spent with the families and our guide.
We prepared, reading tour guides, looking at things to do on-line etc. Above all, we explored. Our days didn't usually end until late at night, when we weren't part of the tour activities. Our daughter began traveling abroad with Tauck when she was around 10 (Canada) and then up until around 15. She is now 30 and will be joining us again. It wasn't unusual to see "older" children traveling with us, now she will most likely be the older kid. One of the things we noted is that after the end of planned activities, many families would return to the hotel and collapse. That wasn't acceptable to us because we had invested so much and wanted to maximize our time. So, you're going to need to determine how much you wish to accomplish and when the kids reach a point where they are "done for the day." Keep your stress low and enjoy the beauty of countries.
I wish you well. ENJOY!
Charley you will have a wonderful time, I agree with MarkG that you need to see as much as you can, there's an app called Visit a City and it will give you ideas of things to do in your free time that Tauck does not take you to.
Charley…..I’m fairly new to Tauck, as I have one trip behind me, and one ready to go in ‘24. But what I can tell you from my experiences with Tauck; you don’t have to worry about anything. They take care of just about anything you can think of. Everything is first-class, within reason. I had a vacation of a lifetime. Everyone I traveled with was so helpful too.
To go long with what MarkG said, this should eliminate most if not all stress. Keep an eye on the forum, best advice is from the seasoned travelers.
Charley, we have done 4 of the Bridges trips and have another one scheduled for next year with one grandchild at a time (ages 12-14). Every trip was fabulous and there is very little to plan by yourselves. Last year we did Castles and Kings. We wanted to visit Westminster Abbey, which was not on the itinerary. The tour director was helpful in telling us which event we could skip. The hotel concierge got us timed tickets for Westminster Abbey. We were there from 2:30 to 4 when it closed. Most of the people were gone before 4 o'clock, which turned out to be a great time to be there. Have a great time!