Hello, lovelies. Today, I’m going to be reviewing the tour company I used to travel through Europe last summer. I remember searching for Topdeck Travel reviews earlier this year, trying to figure out what I was in for (especially in terms of the food) and couldn’t find many. That’s why I decided to write this today. I hope you enjoy.
//My Trip
Topdeck has a range of trips, from camping trips to hostel trips to luxury ones. I was on a budget, so I picked the most inexpensive trip I could find that could take me to the most amount of countries in the least amount of time (I was on a time crunch). I ended up picking the Europe Inspired trip, which is actually a tour I found in high school. This year was the last summer they did this itinerary, so I’m glad I was able to do it. It started and ended in London and went through 12 other countries over the course of four weeks.
I was there for the entire duration of the trip. There are two other tours called Eastern Inspired and Western Inspired that are within the trip I took, so some people were only touring eastern Europe or western Europe. People came and left throughout the tour, but the group was relatively the same size throughout.
I took was the camping trip, so it was significantly cheaper than staying in hostels every day. We only camped for half the days of the trip. We stayed in hostels the other days, which was a treat. Camping trips do require you to do some work. We’d set up the cook tent, blow up air mattresses, and wash the dishes after eating at night if there were included meals that day. It was actually a really fun aspect of the trip. We only slept in the tents and spent most of the days exploring, which is why I think this was a worthy money saver.
//Itinerary
One thing I was worried about was not having enough time in each city. Because the tour was so short and jam-packed, we were only able to stay two nights per city. This ended up being the perfect amount of time. Right now, I have enough energy to walk all day and take buses to a new city every few days. I think slow travel would bore me at this point in my life. We’d get a city tour on the first day in every city then have free time the next day. Since we were able to see all the main sites the first night, we’d have a full day to do whatever we wanted, including sitting in a restaurant, eating and talking for two hours. I rarely felt rushed and by the end of the trip because my friends and I had gotten so good at getting all the things we wanted to do done in a day.
I’ll talk more about the bus days in another bullet point, but I will say that they were a nice respite in between our free days because it gave us a chance to rest.
//Topdeck Staff
Three people traveled with us throughout the trip. Our tour guide (Fran), bus driver (Don), and chef (Nyssa). All of them were amazing. They knew all of our names by the end of the month and would go out with us at night or in the city. I remember running into them in different cities on our free days, and they’d go to bars and restaurants whenever the entire /tour group went anywhere. I have nothing but good things to say about all of them. They were very kind and funny.
Fran knew so much about every country we went to and would tell us the history during the bus rides. It made traveling so much more fun because I knew things about each country before going in. Her job also includes knowing the places to go, ticket prices for big museums, etc., so she’d give us the subway directions for wherever we needed to go or restaurant/food recommendations.
//Accommodations
I experienced two types of accommodations during my trip: camping and hostels. I’ll talk about each individually.
Camping
Tents and mattresses were provided by TopDeck, but we did need to pack our own sleeping bags. The tents were quite big. We were able to fit two suitcases and two mattresses inside easily. I remember at one point, five of us were inside mine and my friend’s tent comfortably talking waiting for dinner to be ready.
This was weather permitting. it rained a lot during the first half of the trip, which included the majority of our camping days, so we stayed in cabins on the campgrounds free of charge. They ended up being nicer than hostels.
There were a few “chores” when we were camping, but there were so many people on the tour that we only ended up needing to help once or twice. Sometimes, we’d help Nyssa cook a meal or help pack up the bus between cities. It wasn’t difficult labor and it was actually kind of fun since we’d usually do them with friends.
Also, there were bathrooms on all the campgrounds. There was only one camp bathroom that was really gross. The rest of them were cleaner than some motel bathrooms I’ve been in.
Hostels
The majority of the hostels were really nice. The only hostel that wasn’t super great was the one in Croatia, but they picked that hostel because it was right next to the beach. After camping so much, we would have been happy with anything, but these hostels were pretty top-notch. Especially considering this was a budget tour. Many of the hostels we stayed in had a private bathroom per room, so the six of us in each room could use the private showers. The rooms were really clean and nice. It got to the point where we wouldn’t exclaim in excitement about how great the hostels were by the end of the trip because we had gotten so used to them being nice.
//The Bus Ride
We were lucky in that we got a brand new bus for our trip. It was very spacious and the wrap-around windows made for amazing views. I showed my friends some pictures that I took through the bus windows and they look like I’m outside. There was ample legroom, which is saying something since I have long legs, plus there was space to put our backpacks under the seats. We also all had our own charging ports.
One thing I was skeptical about was long bus ride days because I thought they would take away from the trip. They ended up being great rest days. I would read my book, watch downloaded videos on Netflix, and talk to my friends the entire time. It got to the point near the end of the trip where we were kind of sad when our bus days were only four hours because we were so tired after so much travel. The rides also don’t feel as long as they are because there are frequent breaks. It’s illegal for the drivers to drive for more than 2.5 hours at a time, so we had time to walk around, use the bathroom, and buy snacks.
//Food
Authenticity
This was the inclusion I was most worried about because there were quite a few meals included during my trip. I didn’t know if the food we’d be served was authentic to the country and there is certainly a culinary aspect of travel.
I need not have worried because practically all of our meals were related to the country we were in. We were served Swiss food in Switzerland and Italian food in France. I’ve already mentioned that we had run into Nyssa at grocery stores in each country buying ingredients to cook for us. I never felt like I missed out on any traditional foods because she would cook it for us. I didn’t have to spend extra money at restaurants to order frog legs or escargot (snails) in Paris because I had already tried it. I ate out at restaurants a lot while I was in Europe, but I didn’t have to spend extra money or felt like I missed out on different types of cuisines because of the food included by the tour. I also was able to eat things I had never heard of.
Some of the included meals were meals at restaurants. We went to restaurants in Berlin and Germany where we were given options for meals, so it wasn’t just Nyssa cooking for us.
Health
A huge reason why I didn’t feel like total crap while I was in Europe is that there were healthy food options. If meals weren’t included on this trip, I would’ve spent all my money on bread, cheese, and pasta. While that tastes good in moderation, I’d have been sick to my stomach by the end of the month.
Our breakfast on bus days was a pretty standard continental breakfast because the sooner we got on the bus, the sooner we’d be in a new country, which is why we’d plan to eat quickly. We had hot breakfasts on other days. Nyssa cooked this Swiss hashbrown-like thing while we were camping in Switzerland that was divine and warmed our freezing bodies. Anyway, there would always be vegetable and fruit options during all of our included meals. I never had to think about ordering anything healthy at restaurants because the included food balanced things out. We also ate healthier meals during long stops on driving days.
I also drank green tea almost every day because it was available at the coffee station they had in the mornings.
Dietary restrictions
The final thing to talk about is how Topdeck handles dietary restrictions. When I booked the trip, I disclosed that I don’t eat pork and they checked in again at the beginning of the trip. Europeans surprisingly eat more pork than Americans, but there was always a substitute available to me. I usually ate the vegetarian option if there wasn’t another meat option available to me, but I usually didn’t have to. When we were provided a meal at the restaurant in Berlin, they gave me chicken schnitzel rather than the pork one everyone else got. There were five vegans in our tour group and a few people with allergies or lactose intolerant, so there were options available to them as well. I can’t speak for them, but I never had any problems with the replacement foods Topdeck provided me.
//Inclusions & Optional Activities
Inclusions
Here are some examples of inclusions outside of transport between cities and food.
- Walking Tours In Every City (Driving Tours In Paris, Budapest, and Copenhagen because they’re so large)
- Metro Tickets In Many Of The Countries
- Entry To Big Sites like the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Auschwitz-Birkenau
- Dutch Cheese & Clog Demonstration in the Netherlands
I was very happy with the majority of the inclusions (the only one I wasn’t into was the leathermaking demonstration in Florence). We saw all the large sites in every city during our walking tours. Fran led most of the tours, but sometimes we had official tour guides based in each city. Because of this, we felt comfortable doing a few main things on our free days since we saw all the main sites the first night. We never had to worry about tickets. We did pay for tickets on our free days when we went into museums individually, but whenever we were with the tour, we didn’t have to pay anything.
On our free days, there were a lot of countries where we were able to give Fran a receipt and she’d reimburse us for our metro tickets. That was a cool inclusion that I didn’t expect.
Optional Activities
There are quite a few optional activities in every city. I didn’t do all of them, but I thoroughly enjoyed the ones I did do. I think they were worth the money. We didn’t pay for them while booking the trip. We’d pay Fran in cash before entering a new country so that she could book each slot. Here are the ones I did:
- Seine River Cruise in Paris – After buying them through the tour, they gave us the tickets and we were able to go anytime on our free day on our own.
- Traditional Cabaret Show in Paris – I genuinely had no interest in going to this until Fran raved about how amazing it was (She didn’t do this for everything. There were some optional activities that she discouraged us from purchasing). I ended up going with two of my friends, so we dressed up and ended our time in Paris with a bang. It was great. Parts of it were in French, but you could understand the gist of it.
- Guided Tour of Vatican City – This includes entering the Sistine chapel.
- Gondola Ride In Venice
- Entry to Postojona Cave in Slovenia
- Third Reich Walking Tour in Berlin – This was done by a separate tour guide. He took us around the city and talked to us about Nazi Germany. It was a cool tour and we were able to see all the things we wanted to see in Berlin in just that walking tour.
//Demographic
There were under forty people on the tour I was in. More than half of our group was from either New Zealand or Australia. There were slightly more people from New Zealand. There were quite a few people from Brazil and Mexico. There was one person from the UK and another from South Africa. I was the only American on the tour until another one joined halfway through the trip. I think the reason there weren’t many Americans is that school was still in session when I went on the trip. I took my finals early and even wrote a final paper in the hostel in order to take an earlier and cheaper flight, so keep that in mind with these numbers.
In terms of gender, it was pretty evenly split between men and women. The tour was majority white, which makes sense, followed by Hispanic, then black. I was the only Asian person. The ages ranged from 18-35. Most of my close friends were in their early 20s, but everyone talked with everyone else. There were quite a few married couples on the trip, as well. Some people would party at bars every night and some people wouldn’t. It was a pretty diverse mix of people in terms of that.
//Wifi
There is Wifi on the bus, but we only get a set amount of it. I ran out after two weeks. I don’t recommend paying for more gigs because it’s more expensive than it’s worth. You’re better off downloading videos for entertainment when you have Wifi elsewhere. (I took advantage of European Netflix’s movies unavailable in the U.S.)
Well, that’s it for now. I highly recommend Topdeck and had a great experience using it. It’s very affordable compared to other touring companies (I looked at a lot when planning my trip), and I think you get a lot for your money. It’s fun, the food is good, and you can travel through many countries in a limited amount of time.
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Have you ever used a tour company to travel? What was your experience with it? Are you considering taking a Topdeck bus tour?