Hello all, I am writing this to get my word out to the public due to my disastrous trip. I was on the 30 day trip around Europe. The first thing everyone should know about is hotel location. Our tour director reassured us on our hour and a half drive to the hotel that this would be one of the worst locations on the trip. She had blamed the location on a soccer match that was going on that weekend. Everyone in the group was very understanding and was willing to take the two trains and a bus that it took to get into the center of London. Unfortunately, that happened to be one of the better hotels on the trip. Let me tell you all, on a budget trip I was not expecting any type of luxurious hotel, however, I was not expecting to commute at least 45 minutes in every city that we went to. The worst of my experiences happened in Venice. Due to the trip itinerary being posted three weeks before the trip, I had very little notice to fix anything I possibly could with our hotel accommodations. Our tour provided hotel happened to be located in Jesolo. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, Jesolo is at least an hour boat ride from Venice, and that is if you catch the specific boat heading in that direction. EF advertises that you will have 2 days in Venice. But once you arrive in Jeloso at 6 in the afternoon, you realize that it is basically impossible to get to Venice until the next morning. The next night in Venice was the one I booked in order to have a "central location," just like EF advertised. There was a problem though, our bus left for Rome the next morning at 8. My girlfriend and I worried that we were going to miss the bus, so we left Venice by water taxi a little before 6 am. That water taxi took us to Lido, where we had to board another boat to the mainland. From there we had to take a 50 Euro cab ride back to the hotel. We got there at 8:10. It took us over two hours to reach our hotel from Venice that was supposed to be located IN Venice!!! Not only this, but we were almost left behind by the group and heard side comments from the trip director several times that she should have left us behind (maybe she was jealous of our central location?). Besides horrible hotel location, the actual people who provided the tours were awful. We saw much less than what we could have if we had done this tour with one of those groups advertising on the streets. Some of the tours of cities would consist of sitting on a bus and being driven around without the opportunity to get out and take pictures/look at monuments. Obviously after the first few tours, a large part of the group stopped attending and decided to explore on their own. Maybe I had a terrible tour director, maybe we just got unlucky with the tour guides that were provided in each city, I have no idea. When I had contacted EF along the trip, they were not helpful at all and not interested in making anything better for the group and I. In one instance, they downgraded our hotel from one in Nimes to one in Orange, overnight, without any hesitation. I would NEVER recommend EF to anyone!! If you are interested in doing a European adventure, don't be lazy! Obviously when you add a third party, they are going to have to make their share as well. Look into hostels in cities that you would like to visit and schedule tours yourself! You can do the trip much cheaper and more to your likings. My case with EF was they took their share way too far. They widened their profit margins much more than what is fair. Little things like canal tours in Amsterdam, they would offer for 15 Euro and you would find the same thing on the street for half price. There are many more details to this horrible trip. If you are considering doing something through EF and you want more information from me, please feel free to respond!
