Shaili B.
Yelp
Two Words: Neverrrrr Againnnn
I took the 12 day Europe Tour with my family and here are the things to note if you consider doing the same:
1. Every day we ate Indian food. When I say every day, I mean every single day. At Rome, go to an Indian restaurant for dinner, in Paris, go to an Indian restaurant, in the hotels, get Indian food catered to you. Me and my sister were so sick of having the typical Indian food for every meal: Punjabi entree, naan, biryani, salad, etc. We barley ate for half of the trip because we were so tired of Indian food. It was annoying because when you're in Italy, you would want to try native food like pizza or pasta, but we were stuck comping down on chew naan and over spicy paneer.
2. You will spend so much of the time in the tour bus, the traveling from one city to another is insane. They drive 5 hours in the morning, 5 hours at night and it gets very annoying after a while. They would stop at rest stop areas for restroom breaks which I was thankful for, but don't let that fool you. The restrooms are so disgusting. Because we always ate at Indian restaurants, we always used the restrooms there and it was the worst. There was always just one stall for 15 women in the tour.
3. Everything is so rushed. The tour guide would take us to a popular area, leave us there for an hour or 30 minutes to roam around and then we would meet again at the same spot for the next event. What bummed me out was at the Colosseum in Rome, we were rushed because we had a mini tour to attend so we barely got times for pictures and did not go inside. When was I ever going to visit the Colosseum again? This happened at multiple cities, we did not get to see a lot of places we wanted to explore.
4. The hotels were mehhh. I still remember the hotel in Rome and Switzerland, both were runned down, old, and dirty. Some hotels were on the better end, but be prepared for some that are not.
I would say if you are Indian and are okay with eating Indian food every single day and do not want to plan anything, you may think about doing this tour. My parents enjoyed this tour because they did not have to worry about anything, just paying. They did not have to worry about reserving hotels, activities, and safety concerns in Europe. The others in our tour group were all Indian families so if you are not Indian I would not suggest this tour. There was an Australian family on this tour and they absolutely hated the tour and the food as they ate plain rice for most of their meals. I would love to return back to Europe and travel without a tour to revisit the areas that we did not get to spend as much time as I wanted.