Europe Package Holiday Tour

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privatepyle82

Disciple
Okay, this is kinda travel related non-tech question, but since I didnt know any other good Indian forums apart from TD and TE, I am posting this here.

We are a family of 4 (Mom, Dad and 2 male kids - all adults) and we would like a budget 2 week tour of Europe. Our budget is max 1-1.2 lakh per person including everything (food, airline, visa charges, airport taxes etc.) Amongst various travel agents (SOTC, TCI, Cox, Raj etc) which is the best that has great service with good itinerary etc? We would like a package tour where we have other people along with us in a coach so that we don't get bored. The one thing that we are willing to compromise on is quality of hotels as we'll only be in the hotel for sleep and any 3 star type hotel in Europe would be good.

Since a lot of guys here might have some experience with this, can someone suggest a good package/ travel agent please. We would like to leave around 15 June 2007.

Also any kinda stuff that i shud beware of or talk to the travel agents. Also once I am in Europe are there any electronics etc there that are cheaper than India or shud I buy the digi/video cam etc from India itself before leaving.

And most importantly which would be the best indian site/forum where this wud be a good place to post (travel related or general)

Please feel free to drop any advice regarding a Europe trip.
 
these tours are good but the only problem that i have heard from my friends who went on them was the scheduling and food.
they will make you get up early in the morning and basically run around the whole day fitting in as many sites to see as possible which gets tiring . and not much time for shopping or really enjoy a site.
the food you get is generally repetitive on those 'indian veg food' kind of tours. if it is a general tour without any food restriction or such and you eat non veg , you should be ok.
some other issues is that representatives in different city of the tour operator sometimes go missing or are at different terminals so that creates lot of problems.

if you can live with these which might or might not come ahead then you can go ahead. just make sure you confirm 'all conditions apply' , extra charges if any at any city or fine details you have.

you can buy a digicam / camcorder here , prices are good locally nowdays.

indian site , i dont know , i do refer to VirtualTourist.com - Travel Guides, Maps, Photos, Forums, Deals, more whenever i have gone out of India but its for business related and not vacation :( :D
 
its much much more fun to spend a week visiting one or 2 cities instead of a dozen of them and not ultimatly not even grazing the surface of any of them

try to schedule the vacation with that place's festival time for mo fun
 
best indian related travel site ... indiamike.com ...its for people coming to india but i am sure they are well informed about the same
 
Thanks for the really helpful posts. I can totally relate with wat u ppl are saying. Thats exactly the way I'd like to travel once I grow up and have enough time and money. But right now I am going with my parents and we'd like to take the traditional Indian kinda Bus tour package with everything pre-planned and 7-8 countries jampacked within 14-15 days. If i were going with my girlfriend/friends/wife, I'd be way more adventurous ofcourse.

We're planning to take the Grand Tour of Europe from SOTC (http://www.sotc.co.in/europe/GrandItn.asp). Its costing us about 1,32,000 per person inclusive of everything. How does it sound? Any suggestions? Is the package good.

Also the first city happens to be Rome. Should I hang on and buy a good digicam frm here or buy one frm India itself. Currently I have a Kodak DX6340 3MP camera. Not good enough to capture a once in a lifetime trip. :)
 
That URL has a typo see here instead.

I had family do a similar trip where they pack in all those countries in just 15 days. I can tell you it will get hectic & tiring. They like you wanted to squeeze in as much in as little time. Very early rise and by the time u hit the bed you will be out. It feels like you are just running all the time. The biggest annoyance is the cheap hotels are waay out in the middle of nowhere so you can't really go out much on your own without paying a fortune.

I'd suggest half as many countries and it will be more relaxing, which i guess is the idea you go on a trip for.

I did a month long trip around Europe many yrs ago where we stayed in camp sites and visted i think 12 or 13 countries, on a coach in europe, i returned needing another vacation just to recover from that one. But that was more a younger crowd.
 
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