Seven Countries, Venice & Paris with London Reviews

This is a quick tour of seven countries. Fast paced, need to be organised and willing to be on the move. It's a great trip to get an idea of Europe. Loved every minute of it. I would then look at a more extensive tour like the one I took - Prague, Vienna & Budapest . This one is a slower paced tour - loved this one too. Both tours had very informative ...read more tour managers. Local tour guides were very knowledgeable as well.

Enjoyable tour. Fast paced but needed to be to fit everything in. Three out of the eleven days though consisted of two days pre tour in London and the thirteenth day was travelling on the Eurostar from Paris to London so it was really only an eight day tour of Europe. Tour director needed to do a head count when leaving each stop as on the second morning ...read more two passengers were left behind at the hotel! Luckily they had the tour directors phone number and they were able to call her and we went back to collect them. This delay could have been avoided by doing a simple head count. Also not impressed with the tour director in regards to gratuities. Very high pressure to secure gratuities for herself. Some of the hotel rooms were very tiny with even tinier bathrooms and shower cubicles. Especially the Ibis Hotels. Also some of the rooms were very hot with no air conditioning. Reception very reluctant to supply a fan. Lots of complaints the next morning in regards to the rooms being too hot and people not being able to get a good night's sleep as a result.

Lack of daily seat rotation was also an issue. Seat rotation was not enforced. Same few people sitting in the front two or three seats for the first five or six days. This should have been fairly obvious to the tour director yet she said nothing to these passengers about moving. Other passengers in the end had to ask these people to move so that others had the opportunity to sit closer to the front of the coach. I think the tour director turned a blind eye where seat rotation was concerned so as not to get any passengers off side which may have affected her gratuities. Cosmos stated in their brochure that portage was included at each hotel but yet on four occasions this didn't happen. Not acceptable especially for elderly or less able people.

A special thank you to Michelle White at Global Journeys for all her help and assistance with our bookings. Very professional and everything went very smoothly including transfers as we did three back to back Cosmos tours.

Overall the tour was a great experience, it is not for those who wish to lumber along though. The pace of the tour was as expected pretty full on as we did see a lot in a short amount of time. Our tour director, Sonia, and driver Carlo, were fantastic, very helpful, very patient and generally fun to enjoy this tour with. On the negative, we started ...read more badly with a delay of 7 hours in Calais in France as the port workers went on strike just as we were about to pull into port. Totally not the fault of Cosmos, however due to the delay we did miss our first days tour of Brussels. (we did get a free 7 hour cruise of the French coast as a positive to this), the tour people did make amends with a complimentary dinner and tried to appease the group as best they could given the circumstances.

Also, as the tour went on the hotel rooms got smaller and smaller, also there was no in room coffee making facilities and the included meals were of bargain basement standard. Personally my wife and I would be happy to pay a little more for the tour and have improvements in these 2 areas, plus an extra night in a place somewhere about mid tour for a recharge and time to soak it all in. Perhaps the extra first night in London, ( Saturday) could be exchanged for this as that seemed unnecessary. Given the schedule the tour was overall excellent value as you could not do this on an individual basis for the same amount. It was a lot of miles in the coach but the places we went to were breathtaking to say the least and well worth it. The coach was very comfortable, the people on tour were all great fun, even with the few hiccups no one was really too upset. I totally WOULD, recommend this tour if you want to see a lot but have minimal time to do it.

Very enjoyable trip, although we wished we could have spent more days in some countries! Austria and its scenic snowy aspect, and Switzerland of course, were the highlights for us!

What a wonderful trip we had. Yes it was very fast paced and 'full on' but this only added to the experience. We had a wonderful tour guide and a very mixed group on our tour, which I can only say added to the fun. I'd really recommend this tour as a taster of Europe, we already have a list of places we would like to return to at a more leisurely pace. ...read more Most on the tour commented that they would have preferred the accommodation to be closer to the centre of the towns and cities we visited but all realised that that was the trade off to get such a good value tour. Huge thank you to Emily for organising this for us so quickly when it really was a last minute booking. We are already checking out the brochure to see where we would like to go next!!