Rosalind, panda77,
Nope, we were in Europe for 24 days. 20D join group tour, 4 days F&E. Hmm…I dunno how much exactly we spent. But it’s at least 15K. My estimate is that including buying gifts, makan, transport, admission tickets and miscellaneous, it’s probably 16-17K for 2 pax. It’s definitely less than 20K for 2 pax.
Eastern Europe is worth going. If u can, visit Russia, heard Moscow is very beautiful too. But usually those discovery tours (many countries) going to western and eastern europe would not route to Russia, unless u want to go on your own or join a regional tour only to Russia. Heard Scotland castles is nice too, my ex-classmate who did his post-grad in England, went to scotland for holiday and the pic he sent me had castles behind, which is so scenic!!! When I was in Germany, the closest I could get to the castle was while we were on the Rhine Cruise, and both sides of the river had castles on the hills. I didn’t get a chance to go into 1 though.
Panda77,
Time to book your package already!!! We booked ours 4-5months in advance. But we only confirmed our tickets 1-2 weeks before the trip. Looks like it’s harder to get air tickets than the package itself. Are u planning a F&E? We wanted to initially, but dropped the idea when it involved too much work. Sourcing for accomodation and booking train ticket, domestic flight from country to country is headache enough let alone booking admission tickets to places of interest online. So in the end, we decided to leave the hassel to the tour agent. We were glad that we did so, coz when we asked those who been there on their own, they got to backpack and stay in B&Bs, otherwise the cost would be too high. So it’s either u got to spend a lot or go backpack and forgo some of the little luxuries. The accomodations in Europe is generally on the high side. If we were to travel on our own, don’t think we can afford to stay in hotels like Marriot, Hilton, Sheraton, but because we joined a group tour, I think they got better rates and we can then stay in these hotels. We asked the price and it was like 300+ Euros/night for a room in the city centre. Wow…So that’s the advantage of joining group tour. We do not have to worry about the itinerary, neither do we have to worry about transport or language barrier. Except England, all other European countries that we been to don’t speak English!!! This is my opinion only, so the decision is still yours, if you are adventurous enough, you may want to F&E?