<p>Mr PMK jr will be traveling in Europe for the first few weeks this summer. We’ve checked out Contiki and Topdeck. Does anyone have an experience with either company? Or do you know of other companies that provide similar services? </p>
<p>Lastly, if he forgoes a formal travel company, what is the best way to craft a “do it yourself” tour around Europe? Can you recommend websites or books?</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>STA Travel…</p>
<p>My D and her best friend did this last summer (the summer after HS graduation). We bought them plane tickets and the first three nights hostel in London, 30 day Eurorail passes, and Let’s Go Europe book. They just picked where they wanted to go when they were done with wherever they were - stayed in hostels they found in the book (all good experinces). They started in London then took the ferry to Amsterdam (where the Eurorail pass starts working), Heidelberg, Prague, Florence, Pisa, Nice, Barcelona then to Paris where they flew out of back home.</p>
<p>I highly recommend this way to do it for kids - my sister and I also did this back in our youth - good stuff!</p>
<p>Make sure they have a good backpack and make them keep a journal!!! I cannot tell you how hard I laugh when my sister and I read the one we kept!!!</p>
<p>Happykid and two pals traveled for three weeks last summer hitting Austria, Switzerland, France, and the UK. Early on, they determined that with three traveling together, they could get better accommodations in hotels for the same price (or nearly the same price) as hostels. They flew on Condor (Baltimore - Frankfort) and Air Nikki (Frankfort to Vienna, and London to Frankfort). They had Eurailpasses for transportation in mainland Europe, and took the Eurostar from Paris to London. Total out-of-pocket was just under $4,000 each. Granted, there was a bit of cheating on the budget as one grandmother chipped in the cost of the week’s hotel in London as a present. This meant that the hotels earlier in the trip were upgraded, and they could add a second show in the West End.</p>
<p>They researched locations and did all of the hotel bookings on their own through bookingDOTcom. The Eurail passes were complex because of the dates and connections needed, and while I suppose we could have done them ourselves with much patience from home, that was handed off to an agent at our local AAA office. Because three were traveling together with occasional tight schedules, all seats were pre-booked, and one connection required an upgrade to first class.</p>
<p>Early on in their research, they did look at some packages to get an idea of do-ability of connections, and the likely amount of time to get from A to B, but they were never seriously interested in a package option. If one person is travelling alone, the packages can be very convenient. With three, they were easily able beat the price of the packages they investigated, and they were able to choose exactly where they wanted to go.</p>
<p>I will add this - my sister and I stayed in hotels when we did it but D and her friend wanted hostels so they could meet plenty of other kids doing the same thing. They had a much better time and had groups of kids to go clubbing with or whatever - also the other kids were coming from a variety of places and I think the sharing of experiences shaped where they ended up going to an extent.</p>
<p>Above the airfare and Eurorail pass, we gave the girls $1,500 each. They didn’t run out of money.</p>
<p>I’ve done a few student tours and highly recommend planning ones own visit instead. There are plenty of local guides and tours that will be as good as, if not better, than the guides from the package tour. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that many package tours have an artificially low price and charge extra for “optional” tours, include shopping excursions where the guide receives a sizable commission, and tips. </p>
<p>The trend in Europe has been to have many free or inexpensive city tours (tip the guide afterwards) geared towards younger visitors. Many of these tours include biking, pub crawls, etc.</p>
<p>I would suggest having your son read guidebooks by Rick Steves (the travel host on PBS). He specializes in touring Europe “Through the Back Door” and avoiding a lot of the overly touristy activities. It’s a good way to get an understanding of what one wants to visit. He also has a very detailed website and his son runs day tours for college-aged students.</p>
<p>PMK, if I’m remembering your posts about your son correctly, he may really enjoy Berlin. While kind of far away from other cities, Berlin is very inexpensive and has a very good nightlife scene, most notably in terms of gay clubs. Prague and Amsterdam are similar in regards to being gay-friendly, but are often more expensive. </p>
<p>Many people in the under-25 crowd will prefer to stay in hostels, but one can often find good deals at large chain hotels too. Similar-aged people at another forum I frequent are known for staying in hotels which are normally €250 per night because they are very affordable when using hotel and/or frequent flier points/miles.</p>
<p>I would suggest finding a bank account with a 0% foreign transaction fee and getting a credit card with an EMV chip (chip and PIN cards are preferred, though chip and signature cards are also preferred over normal magnetic stripe cards and are easier to find from US card issuers).</p>
<p>Thank you all for your help!</p>
<p>SEA-tide, Berlin does sound like a good fit for my son. I’ll recommend it to him. </p>
<p>Not sure if he’s going to go with a tour or put together his own tour yet. He needs to decide soon. I’m excited for him!</p>
<p>One D just spent time in Budapest, and had a great time on her own, because the hostel was such a friendly, well organized place. Included a night cruise on the Danube, hostel organized! She met her sister in Krakow, and were also impressed. Prices are much lower in Eastern Europe.</p>
<p>Definitely forgo the package option - they’re invariably overpriced, rushed and won’t include everything that you want to do. Much better to go independent. Buy a return flight, then </p>
<ul>
<li>Internal travel: Eurail </li>
<li>Accommodation: hostels, because you get to meet so many other people. I went travelling solo around Australia, and when you’re staying in hostels you’re never truly alone because so many other people are travelling solo and want to make friends [Hostels</a>, Hotels & Youth Hostels at HostelBookers](<a href=“http://www.hostelbookers.com%5DHostels”>http://www.hostelbookers.com) Can also consider couchsurfing if they want to get to know locals <a href=“http://www.couchsurfing.com%5B/url%5D”>www.couchsurfing.com</a></li>
<li>Food: buy in supermarkets and cook in the hostel - a much cheaper option, and exploring different local food is all part of the fun </li>
</ul>
<p>If you’re son’s interested in LGBT things then he should work out when Gay Pride is going to be in one or more cities that he wants to visit, and work his schedule around that to some extent. He might also like to visit Brighton - the UK’s seaside answer to San Francisco and conveniently located not far from Dover (where the cross-Channel connections are). </p>
<p>If he wants to go to the UK, then let me know, and give me an idea of the sorts of things he likes to see and do (country, city, museums, hiking, adventure sports, clubbing etc. etc.) and I can give him some ideas (I like to think that 21 years of living in the UK makes me vaguely qualified ;)) </p>
<p>Get him to think about where the really expensive cities are (e.g. London and Paris) and how to minimise time there relative to other cities. Try not to factor in rest days in such cities, but do make sure that there are some days available for contingencies - e.g. being ill or just really tired and wanting a day off Never mind the gay scene, Berlin is one of my favourite cities in the world. Amsterdam is great if he wants the novelty of the “coffee shops” and the red light district. If he goes to Italy, he MUST try the ice cream! </p>
<p>Lonely Planet and Rough Guide are always good options for guide books, and both do a Europe on a Budget book. </p>
<p>One last tip - Europe is a BIG place which is relatively densely populated and with more to see and do per square mile than the US. You simply can’t do it all in the space of a few weeks, so your son would do well to think about which countries he wants to go to and do them in a bit more detail. IMHO there’s nothing worse than trying to do a country in a day - you’ll spend a lot of time travelling and you’ll never really get to grips with anywhere. It’s fine for tick box tourism ("oh look, I’ve seen the Eiffel Tower, tick!) but nothing else. You wouldn’t suggest trying to do all of North & South America in a few weeks; the same goes for Europe. </p>
<p>I’d also suggest running a search - I can think of a couple of good threads on the same subject of late; I assume that there are more out there<br>
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/study-abroad/1468962-cheapest-way-travel-europe.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/study-abroad/1468962-cheapest-way-travel-europe.html</a>
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1479826-tell-me-what-i-need-know-about-backpacking-europe-alone.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1479826-tell-me-what-i-need-know-about-backpacking-europe-alone.html</a></p>
<p>Contiki tours are essentially drinking competitions. If that is not your son, don’t do it (people get off the Contiki bus in Oxford at 10.30am already inebriated, on the first day of their vacation).</p>
<p>How about half on your own and half Contiki or Topdeck? That is what two of my kids did. One went to several cities with a group and then a 2 week Contiki with a friend and, three years later, the other went to several cities with a group and then a 2 week Topdeck with a friend. They did not find a lot of drinking on either of the organized tours. They appreciated the efficiency of having the basic logistics arranged and were able to see and do things they wouldn’t have thought to do or been able to arrange - and enjoyed getting to know the others on the tour - mostly Australians. With both Contiki and Topdeck there was a mix of organized activity days and free days. In the independent part of the travel my son found he and the other guys were often waiting for girls and their beauty routines and when one had a problem (carry-on left on a train, another had passport stolen) they all spent hours helping and rearranging travel.</p>
<p>So much great information! Thank you all for the input. He is considering his options and we’ll see what happens.</p>
<p>boomting, My son is currently living in London. He is there for six months on a co-op with his college. He loves it but, yes, is it every expensive! We (my husband and I) were supposed to go to London/Paris to visit him but the financials just didn’t work out (niece annouced upcoming wedding, house is going on market next year, etc.) We’re very disappointed but at the same time it did free up some money to help our son travel more while he is overseas. thank you for all of your help!</p>
<p>One of my friends writes a travel blog, Adventurous Kate, for young, independent female travellers. She’s actually turned it into a full-time job and is now based out of London.</p>
<p>Like many of your kids, D has become an expert in low-cost travel in Europe, since she’s been living there for a year in a low-paying job with plenty of vacation time.</p>
<p>Great Lakes, did your D stay at Carpe Noctem? That’s where my D will be in Budapest. She booked it because she wanted to try out travel on her own, but it sounded so good now it seems she has lots of company.</p>
<p>She has not had anything arranged, but has used a combination of rail, bus, air and ferry to get where she wants to go. She found that rail is often more expensive than air travel these days, since there are discount airlines that frequently have 10 euro or so flights. The key for her has been packing light, since those airlines have steep baggage fees.</p>
<p>Other useful sites for my D have been airbnb (especially if staying with others), couchsurfing (you need to be careful there, but it can be useful). The cheapest airfares she’s found to and from the US have been on STA.</p>
<p>Anyway, sorry no info on tours or packages, but I think it’s very doable if you (assuming you’re young and adventurous) do it on your own.</p>
<p>Hi, PMK, It is so great that your son is going to extend his adventure with a few weeks of travel. Both of my kids have done this with friends or on their own, not connected to tour groups but often punctuating ad hoc bus and hostel travel with short stays with friends or friends/family of friends in congenial places. They’ve done more with EasyJet and the other low-price airlines than with Eurorail–it’s consistently cheaper (i’m told) DS did a weekend in Oslo with flights that were 10 pounds each way. (But you have to educate yourself to avoid all the extra fees). DS is now living in London and has a great cohort of friends in the Marshall Scholar program. He tells me the majority of the guys are gay, FWIW, and they do seem to get around quite a bit. PM me if you want me to arrange a backchannel contact between them. DS is a really friendly guy and has had many good things come his way through the kindness of strangers so I know he’d be keen to pay it forward.</p>
<p>And lastly, I wanted to say I admire your unselfishness in pulling back from your plans to visit. But if circumstances change and you can pull it off don’t miss it–there’s nothing like letting your kid show you around a place he has mastered and grown to love.</p>
<p>I went backpacking for a month with my roommate after undergrad (2008). Planned it all ourselves and used [Hostels</a> Worldwide - Online Hostel Bookings, Ratings and Reviews](<a href=“http://www.hostelworld.com%5DHostels”>http://www.hostelworld.com) to book hostels. We generally booked our next stay before we left, so we knew we would have somewhere to stay (and knew where it was so we wouldn’t have to wander around).</p>
<p>We went London, Paris, Pisa (pit stop for 6 hours on the way), Rome, Interlaken (Lauterbrunnen, Swiss Alps), Bern (day stop waiting for the night train), Vienna, Prague, Krakow, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, London. Food, lodging, and day to day expenses for less than $75/day. We had the 10 travel days in 1 month Eurail pass.</p>
<p>As someone else said, I wouldn’t recommend the tours unless you just want to go drink. And if you just want to go drink, you can do that in the US for cheaper.</p>