Travel Review: European Family Vacation, Italy, Spain, France, England, London, Paris, Barcelona, Versailles, Giverney, Rome

Working with Zicasso was great!  Our contact person was responsive to our questions and got us a sample itinerary quickly.  She was very helpful in adjusting the itinerary to meet our family’s needs.  She was also helpful in guiding through what would be reasonable expectations in terms of days in each city, day trips that might work with our locations and re-arranging the order of the cities to help with flight costs.

Once we started our trip we had another contact.  She was amazing!  She was quick to respond whenever we had questions.  On the day we arrived in Paris, we were supposed to meet a tour group on a street corner for a tour of the Eiffel Tower.  Unfortunately, the meeting place was changed and we were not informed.  The street corner was quite a distance from the Eiffel tower so we couldn’t just ask at the information desk as we were no where near it so we just waited.  Eventually, when we were 15 minutes past the meeting time, I emailed and called our contact.  She got back to me pretty quickly and figured out that the meeting place had changed.  By that time, our tour group had left.  We were pretty frustrated, but our contact made some quick phone calls and got us added onto another group at a later time.  We were really grateful as we didn’t really have any significant down time in our schedule to come back to see the Eiffel Tower another day.  She even offered to reimburse us for a dinner for our trouble.  Amazing customer service.  In regards to the mix up to begin with, I don’t know if you have any say in meeting places, but our original meeting place on the street corner was a bit odd as it was a good 15-20 minute walk from the Eiffel Tower and it doesn’t really seem to make sense why it was so far away when there were obviously many groups meeting right at the base of the tower.

London - This may have been our favorite part of the trip (but it was all amazing so it’s hard to pick!).  We were thrilled with the location of our hotel - in the theater district.  It is a lovely part of town and we walked around a lot.  We were also right next to a tube station which was handy.  The hotel itself, including the staff was fantastic.  The meeting places for various tours was clear and it was pretty easy to get around (really glad we didn’t rent a car as the driving looks terrifying!).

Paris - The hotel was very pretty, but incredibly ornate and the rooms were small, a little less kid friendly than the other hotels.  Honestly, the small room size was actually what we were expecting in all the cities, so it wasn’t a big deal.  Our day trip to Versailles and Giverny was excellent.  Our guide was very good.  The walking tour of Île de la Cité was also very good - it would be good to mention the amount of walking for certain tours.  That day we had the walking tour in the morning, about 90 minutes break, then the Louvre tour in the afternoon.  We decided to walk from the hotel to  Île de la Cité which was probably a 45 minute walk.  We ended up walking for probably 8-10 hours, including walking the 400 some steps to the top of Notre Dame, that day and were exhausted (it also happened to be 90+ degrees out).  If we had known how much walking we’d be doing that day, we would probably have taken a taxi.  The Louvre scavenger hunt tour was probably our least favorite event of the trip.  The guide was very nice, but the scavenger hunt was not that great.  Our kids are 11, 15 and 18 and I think are a little too old to have been very engaged by it.  It also seemed like we were just rushed from one part of the museum to another looking for the next “clue”.  There were some things we weren’t interested in and others that we would have rather spent more time.  There was a lot of walking there and after spending the morning walking in the heat, I think we were pretty tired.  The Louvre is so big that I don’t know of a better way to see it, but those were our thoughts.

Barcelona - The hotel was very nice - it’s too bad they limit the air conditioning because it was very hot there too.  We did expect the heat, but were a little surprised at how few places had air conditioning (or kept it at a pretty warm setting).  The hotel staff was nice, but some of them didn’t seem very knowledgeable regarding locations of restaurants or meeting places.  The one thing we would have liked to have known ahead of time is regarding Park Guell.  We had an open afternoon and there suggestions on our itinerary to go to the beach or to Park Guell.  When we asked about the beach, we were told that the only one that was recommended was about an hour away by bus - we were told the others had a lot of vendors and that at those beaches, we could expect to be approached to buy things every 30 seconds.  When we asked about Park Guell, we were told that tickets need to be purchased a day in advance (on the itinerary, it seemed like we could just show up, get a ticket and walk around).  Luckily, we were able to work it into our schedule because it was worth it!

Rome - The hotel rooms were small, but nice.  The staff was pretty nice, but not especially helpful with our transportation questions.  On the day we were to see the Colosseum, we planned to take a taxi as it was pretty far to walk.  We asked the front desk staff the night before about getting a taxi (because there were 5 of us) and were told we just needed to come to the lobby when we were ready and they would call one.  That day, we found out that if we wanted a taxi for 5, it should have been scheduled in advance.  We were basically told to walk to the taxi station on the corner and hope that one with enough seats came by.  After a bit of a wait, we did get one, but it was pretty stressful since by then it was much too late to walk and get there on time.  In general, transportation was the biggest issue in Rome since none of it other than shuttles to and from the airport was arranged.  We loved the city itself.