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one of my coworkers daughters is on a contiki tour of europe and its making me want to travel really badly, so let's talk about travelling! talk about your last vacation, one you're planning, one you want to plan, whatever.

and does anyone have any experience with contiki tours? i havent traveled extensively but ive been looking at some of their packages and they look good, but i've heard some shady things about them

I kicked around Australia for a month a while back. Had a blast running amok on my own (even got to drive from Port Douglas (favorite stop, Melbourne was my favorite city) to Brisbane, woot for driving on the other side of the road). I took the Ghan out to Alice Springs at one point though and hooked up with a contiki tour for that part until I hopped off on my own to Darwin. I really had a lot of fun with the tour. They hit up a lot of places but still gave you time to do exploring on your own, fed you fairly well and did plenty of things that gave you excuses to bond with the rest of the people on the tour. We slept out under the stars at one point. The guides were fun and listened and the age group was right for me. Lots of walking, which I enjoy. And it got me into a lot of places without the hassle of me having to drive out to them or figure out how to get tickets etc. The only downside was you shared a room with three other people but for the week I was part of the tour it wasn't a big deal and meant I always had someone to hang out with. By the end I was ready to cut loose on my own again but I'm an introvert so five days constantly surrounded by people was just the right amount of time without being too much. Haven't been on a contiki tour since but from that one, I'd recommend them. Cheap way to get around, they make sure you get to see a lot, the buses are clean, the people are on the roughly college age give or take. I've heard some shady rumors since then as well but the one I went on at least was above board and very suitable for a single girl traveling alone.

ive been looking into europe tours but australia is on my list someday too so its good to know that their aus tours are so cool!! sleeping under the stars sounds so great, wow

this runs counter to some of the things ive heard of them which is reassuring, ive heard they move too quickly for you to really get much time in at the stops and some mixed things about the food. how were the hotels they put you up in? and would you say you got your money's worth with what they planned? ive heard a lot of people say that you can plan one of their trips yourself and stay in better accommodations then what they put you in for around the same price

ngl, its done on a college budget so its cheap. The food was fine but nothing five star (I did get to eat both grub and kangaroo so there's that). You eat at a lot of pubs and such(which I enjoyed). The hotels were, meh, figure somewhere about a decent Sleep Inn. There was wi-fi and AC on the buses which were newer and we never stayed anywhere that looked or felt dirty or second rate. They'd usually take us to a site, let us go on the tour than give us some time to ramble around and shop or get pictures or whatever so I never felt rushed or like I didn't get time to do things I'd wanted to do. Granted a LOT of Australia was hiking for me, especially around Alice Springs and Uluru so it would have been kind of hard to hustle us. In Europe where things are closer, it might be different. You can absolutely get better food and hotels if you're doing it on your own, I did the entire rest of my trip. But for me the main selling point of a tour is that they take care of all of that for you and you just show up and let them drive you around. The area around Alice Springs had a lot of places I wanted to visit but it would have taken a lot of routing for me to get to all of them on my own and eaten up a lot of my time. The tour took care of all of that for me and threw in some friendly company and interesting stories from our guides. Not to mention it took me to some places I wouldn't have thought to go on my own. It really depends on what you want to get out of a tour and how comfortable you are kicking around countries on your own. Contiki is a cheap tour, college level budget but the one I was on was still clean, friendly and they knew what they were doing and, for me, covered a lot of territory without me feeling rushed about it.

One thing I really appreciated was that you could just take a piece of the tour instead of committing to the whole thing. Like for me, Alice Springs was the extent of my tour with them but they were actually going on from there with most of the rest of the people to other places next. I just hopped on for what I wanted and then hopped off when I wanted to go back to kicking around on my own. Granted, take all of this with the understanding that not every tour is going to be like my tour so its very possible that its luck of the draw. But yes, for what I paid and what I expected I did feel like I got my money's worth.

Now if you're doing Japan - Japan Deluxe Tours is the best I've ever been on and I could never recommend them as highly as they deserve. That is top notch, first class all the way treatment.

Europe I'm sorry but I can't really help on tours with. I've had friends go over and backpack it on their own or in groups but I don't know anyone that's been on an organized tour over there. It always sounds like so much fun when my friends talk about the places they've visited though. Any countries you're specifically interested in? Maybe some people on here might be from those areas and be able to give you tips.

thats all really good to know..!! thank you! i heard some horror stories from people, but those might have been old or out of the norm.

id be going with my boyfriend and we're looking at a few! i really like the look of the simply italy tour and some of the italy/greece ones, since ive been on another school trip awhile back and id really like to go back there in particular, but my boyfriend's never really traveled so he's looking at the more generalized ones, european whirl in particular. part of the appeal of contiki when i was looking at them is that the general trips would give him a bigger experience while also letting me go to places ive never been before, but without actually doing the legwork ourselves, since neither of us have really fully planned a vacation before, so then we might be able to plan another trip to wherever we liked for a more narrowed down experience... the pacing of them does worry me, especially the faster/higher energy ones he seems to be looking at, but im glad to hear that they schedule in at least a bit of time to kick around!!

ive heard some things about contiki having a bit of a reputation as a booze cruise sort of trip too, which is a bit concerning since thats not really what im into, but it doesnt sound like that was how it was with your group.

japan is definitely on my list someday so i'll keep japan deluxe tours in mind! thank you, you've been super helpful!!

i just got back a few weeks ago from a trip to japan! i went with friends, and we planned out all the places we wanted to go and things we wanted to do. mostly we stayed in tokyo and kyoto, with trips out to yokohama and osaka. we're all weebs so we went to harajuku and akihabara and visited a whole bunch of themed cafes (cardcaptor sakura cafe, moomin cafe, otomate cafe, and final fantasy eorzea cafe.) it's the second time i've gone, and i absolutely love it-- we're trying to make a thing to go every 2 years or so.

i'd love to go to japan someday!!! im so happy for you!

man, that all sounds like so much fun...what were the themed cafes like? did you go to any in particular that were really neat? i hope your next trips are just as good!!

it's really, really great! i hope you can go too, anon.

the themed cafes were all really different, both in like.... just how themed they were and what kind of food or drink they offered. my favorites were the moomin cafe and eorzea cafe. moomin cafe is very cute and had a super peaceful, tranquil vibe. the cafe itself is nature-y themed, you may or may not have seen that news article or tumblr post about it floating around, but you can sit and eat with big stuffed plushies at your table-- we got a moomin with a top hat, and later one of the nice servers brought us the kangeroo lookin' animal to sit at our table. it's actually a bakery, so you get to select as many savory or sweet breads as you want, pay for them, and then find a table.

final fantasy eorzea cafe is harder to get into-- you have to make reservations, or really hope that you're coming at a time where it's not totally booked. you order everything on ipads, so it's all fancy and high tech. the cafe itself is totally decked out and looks like the kind of ADVENTURE TAVERN you'd find in any good ol fantasy game, there's weapons on the wall and stained glass windows and glossy wood. they have a really extensive drink menu (alcoholic & nonalcoholic) and a bunch of themed foods, all of which were really dang cool. it's hands down one of my best experiences this trip (and the food was p good to boot)

My last "really big sort of traveling" vacation that wasn't for family or work was when I lived in Maryland a few summers ago. I'm a biiiig Lincoln assassination nut, so I went to various places along John Wilkes Booth's escape route as well as Ford's Theater itself. It was really interesting, especially when you compare the different museums & such at various houses he stayed at (one museum was very "our person was innocent and only barely knew Booth!" while another was "lmao she was guilty as shit").

Because the place in Maryland where I was working was only a few hours from DC, I made multiple day trips down to DC to like, hit up all the museums and see the monuments and things like that. One of those trips coincided with DC Pride Parade which was amaziiiiing. It was great especially because I was working in such a small town with fuckall to do on the weekends, lmao

right now I'm planning a trip to New York mostly because there's a show I want to see. I imagine it might be delayed a bit because I THINK some old Vermont college friends of mine are planning a weekend reunion in February which'll eat up a lot of my budget, but it's always on the back of my mind.

america trips are so often overlooked but can also be really cool, i'm glad your lincoln trip was so fun! it's interesting how people in positions like that can hold such differing opinions on history

i hope your new york trip goes well!!!

i just had a con weekend in another city right after getting back from a three week vacation in the us (i'm not american)

i did two states with my family where it was basically just shopping and one art museum, a broadway show, and nycc, and then they went home and i went to dc for the museums

it was great

I was in Crete for three weeks over the summer, then I took an overnight boat to Rhodes and stayed there for a week.

I don't really have the words to describe Crete. It's lovely-slightly brown in the summer heat, as you might imagine, but lovely all the same. I suspect its just gorgeous in spring. I was living outside of the city of Chania, and its really brilliant to see the history there, and to have a chance to learn about it.

There are tourists, of course, and they kind of ruin things, but as I'm one myself its not like I can justly complain.

Rhodes is also pretty touristy (I can just imagine some of the people reading this going no, really while their eyes roll out of their sockets) but it's also amazing. I think it has the best-preserved medieval town in Europe? It's something like that. But there are the castles of the Knights Hospitaliter. And the Mosque of Suleiman. And the little black statue at the old harbor mouth that I think is supposed to be representative of the Colossus of Rhodes but kind of looked like a stylized version of the Eye of Sauron.

I want to go back.

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