Once again this summer, my family elected to take a Tauck Bridges tour, but this time it would be the first time to Europe for my nieces & nephew- so exciting! We had a wonderful time overall, and I put together a fun video snapshot of the tour (seen here), but I did want to write up a more formal review with some specific details & stories for y’all.
SO- first off, the itinerary. We selected “Castles & Kings” partly for many reasons. First – London & Paris are both major capitals with lots to see for the kids; they’re the favorite cities of my Mom & I, respectively; and finally because I’d heard such great things about this particular tour from other Tauck employees and even our guide in Italy. If there are two cities in the world that I know better than those two, I’m not sure what they would be, so I felt a little funny taking an “escorted tour” of them, but there were some cool & special things that Tauck included that made us decide on the tour, plus the fact that there would be other kids & families on the tour for our kids to mix & mingle with (a big plus). Basically – the tour broke down into four nights in London and three nights in Paris, and hit most of the major highlights in each. Especially in London, the days were split between a serious museum-type activity in the morning and then a more kid-friendly & interactive activity in the afternoon. For example, one day we went & toured the Tower of London and then after lunch boarded a speedboat for a fun & exhilarating ride up the Thames all the way to Greenwich, and then back down to Westminster. We also got to ride the London Eye after the fun boat ride (no waits in the massively horrid long line, private pods for just our group!). Another example of this was the next day when we went to Windsor Castle in the morning, then a fun & easy-going bike ride through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park in the afternoon. Each day in London sort of focused on a different section of the city – first it was Mayfair & St. James, then the City, then Kensington, with other bits sprinkled in during the evenings (hello West End theater seats!), so I do feel like we all got a good overview of the city. I will say that there wasn’t nearly as much free time as I expected, and what little we had most of us used for rest time, to be honest. Here are some photos of the big stuff we saw & did:
There’s just so much to see & do in London – it’s hard to squeeze it all in, so I was particularly glad that we used our “Gift of Time” (a free night before/after a tour that we got for being previous Tauck guests & booking by a certain time) for a pre-night in London. We used our extra time to explore our neighborhood (including the Churchill War Rooms museum, which I was honestly a bit disappointed in), and most importantly – visit the Harry Potter Studios. It was my second visit to the studios and it was still just amazing, even on the second viewing. The kids loved it, and the timing was really perfect the morning before we met up with the rest of the group for the start of our tour – however, that may have been thanks to the private transport I arranged at the last minute. For our group of 8, we realized that taking our own private mini-bus would be just about the same cost as the Warner Bros bus from Victoria Station, AND it likely saved us quite a bit of time. Of course, the least expensive way to get out there is to take the train to Watford Junction and meet a different WB-branded bus to take you to Leavesden, but taking the tube to a train to a shuttle bus seemed like too much hassle for grand mom & kids. (I did that previously and it is actually quite easy, though!) In any case- here are some photos of our pre-trip addition:
The Paris part of the itinerary didn’t quite come together in the same way as London did, and to be honest – felt a little rushed & also compartmentalized somehow. There weren’t the same “fun” activities on the docket, but instead there was a lot more free time, which at least was helpful for squeezing in some extra stuff (like going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, which is NOT included in the tour). I think I just disagreed with the order that they showed us all Paris – we started in Montmartre, which some people hated b/c it was just so hot that day, and SO crowded in the touristy Place du Tertre (top tip – LEAVE that area as soon as possible & the streets become quiet & adorable, quickly!). Next we did Versailles, then we finally saw a bit of the heart of Paris on a city tour, but that really only focused on the western side of town and included a slightly random walk through Les Invalides, which to me is not one of the top top Paris attractions. Then, on our last day, we finally we got to Notre Dame & the Louvre, which to me is where you should START… but I may be biased. The other problem with the Paris itinerary, especially in contrast with London, is that there wasn’t anything “fun” for the kids. For example – another cool thing we did in London was a “spy walk” through Mayfair, where we split into little groups and the kids had to answer questions, solve riddles, and navigate around little back streets of the neighborhood. It was super cute & fun! There was NOTHING like that for Paris. No river cruise, no bike ride – and then, something I was looking forward to was a scavenger hunt in the Louvre – it didn’t happen. There was apparently some snafu with the scavenger hunt part of that morning, so instead we got an incredibly informative guided tour of the museum. Don’t get me wrong- it was one of the best lectures on art history that I’ve ever heard (and really helped me understand a bit better the transition from medieval to renaissance art), but the kids were dying. The guide really tried to keep them engaged, but it is just SUCH a huge museum, and all that art history was just too dense for basically all of them. So, as a Paris lover myself, I did the best I could to show my family “my” Paris during the free time we did have, but after such a busy time in London, some people took their “shopping” time during a rainstorm and instead made it nap-time in the hotel. Lol. Here are some of the highlights from Paris:
I wanted to take a few words to speak about the hotels that Tauck uses, because they are FABULOUS! First, in London, we were lucky enough to stay at the Royal Horseguards hotel. This is super centrally located, just a block off the Thames, about 5 minutes walk to Trafalgar Square. There were pubs & restaurants galore in walking distance, Royal Horseguards parade, Downing Street, & St. James’ park were right there too, and Westminster Abbey & Parliament were just about 10 minutes down the street. The only downside to the location is that it’s not in much of a “neighborhood”, since it’s really tucked away in the midst of government buildings. That said- it was incredibly quiet and peaceful, and there was a gorgeous park right off the back of the hotel where the kids could sort of run around in. The rooms were really large (a plus since we had two rooms for three people), and though the showers took some getting used to, the bathrooms were quite nice as well. A lovely plus at this hotel is the mini bar that they keep stocked each day that was complimentary – including wine & beer! We had our welcome dinner in the hotel which was lovely and tasting, and though breakfast was the exact same every day, it was plentiful and also pretty tasty. In Paris we stayed at the Westin Vendome, which is also incredibly well-located. It’s across the street from the Tuillerie gardens, about five minutes from Place de la Concorde, and just a bit further on over to the Louvre. Place Vendome and the Opera are five and 10 minutes the other direction, and even La Madeleine is a short few steps away. We actually had two inter-connecting rooms here, but they were frankly a little cramped. Our third room was MASSIVE, but sadly it made more sense for us to have the triples together, 6 of us piled in the two little rooms and gave 2 of us the splurge of the huge junior suite style room! I will say that we had a completely freak rainstorm our last night there and the lovely juliet balcony windows we had (that gave us a view over onto the park) did leak quite badly, at least in one room. It IS a historic building, so things like that are bound to happen from time to time. Breakfast again was plentiful & varied, if a little strange and not particularly French, and we nicely had little coupons to the beautiful atrium bar found in the center of the building. You could tell it was a large, chain hotel, as it wasn’t quite as charming as some other options you can have in Paris, but still a perfectly-located home base.
Finally, I wanted to speak about the guides and the Tauck difference a little bit. This tour was slightly different than most other Tauck tours I’ve been on, because while we did have a tour director who was in charge of us and with us basically the entire trip, due to regulations we had local guides assigned to us for all of our touring in each of the cities. This meant that we had extra people to ask questions too, of course, and that we had excellent local knowledge (a given with Tauck), but that we weren’t quite as close with the tour director as you can get on many tours. Also- our tour director (Maria!) was SO awesome and did SUCH a great job with the kids and getting to know us, that it was frankly a bit of a shame to have her have to sit down & let a local expert get on the microphone. Our two main local guides were fantastic, don’t get me wrong (see above about the art history lecture in the Louvre!), but they weren’t always the most kid-focused, which was a bit of a shame on a multigenerational trip. Our local guide in London, Mary, in particular had a bit of a quiet, calm voice, and though she was really really good, I think some of the kids might have gotten lulled into sleep by both the voice & the accent on our first day’s double decker bus tour! 🙂 However- I do just have to give Tauck a few kudos and try to illustrate WHY it’s so fantastic to tour with them, because they really do take excellent care of their guests. Firstly, when we went to the Tower of London, I was initially a little disappointed that we weren’t taking one of the tours led by one of the famous “beefeaters”. However- Maria WAS able to snag an actual Yeoman Warder – just for us – to introduce us to the tower and their role there. Later that day I looked over to one of the actual beefeater tours and my jaw just dropped. There were easily 50+ people crowded around one guy trying to listen to his tour. It was bananas! Instead we had our lovely little group of about 30 or so with our little vox boxes listening to Mary give us a good accounting of all the different roles the tower has had over the centuries, and how we should structure our free time (which was plentiful – we saw pretty much everything to see in the tower). The next time I was super thankful to be in Tauck’s care was on our transition day from London to Paris. We were instructed very clearly where to go and with plenty of time to spare to grab some picnic lunch for the train ride, and then after customs we had a comfortable place to SIT and wait (our train ended up being about 30 minutes delayed). Then when they announced boarding, there was complete chaos, but we were able to easily navigate the crowd over to our first class cabins because Tauck was taking care of our luggage. We didn’t have to lug it from the bus, through customs, or through the absolute masses of people trying to get up to the train platform. It was lovely! Plus, I have to say that first class in the Eurostar was really posh. Then once we got to Paris, again we didn’t have to deal with our bags and just hopped on a bus to start our touring. NOW – the slight wrinkle to this story is that the Eurostar baggage handlers apparently just decided not to unload a whole compartment full of our luggage, so once we all got back to our rooms in the afternoon, quite a few of us were missing bags (13 out of the ~40-some bags we had). Instead of us having to stress about finding them, our fearless leader Maria spent THREE HOURS dealing with Eurostar nonsense while we were having the most lovely dinner ever, and all of the missing bags took another trip through the chunnel and were delivered to us before we went to sleep. Tauck took what could have been a nightmare of a travel day and made it basically painless. Hooray! Another few special touches that I thought were great that I wanted to call out were at Versailles. I’m sure you’re aware just how crowded this amazing palace can get, but Tauck got us there right about when it opened, and because we were a group we didn’t have to wait in any lines at all. Also- because Mom and I had been there enough times and wanted to do something different, Maria totally accommodated us and let us into the gardens first instead of making us take the tour of the palace. Now, unfortunately what we WANTED to do (go straight to the Trianon palaces & Marie Antoinette’s hamlet) wasn’t possible due to opening times (our idiot fault for not looking that up), BUT it was really special to basically have the gardens to ourselves even once the fountains & music came on. Then another great thing that Tauck did for us there is to arrange for a private room inside the palace for our own lunch. We had all kinds of choices of sandwiches and quiches, tons of yummy deserts, and it was ALL for us – and because we could come & go, even our room wasn’t crowded (b/c some people went & ran around the gardens first, some ate first, etc.). SUCH good benefits at this crazy busy (& beautiful) place. The final touch on this trip which I though was just fantastic was our farewell dinner the last night in Paris, which was a totally happy surprise for me. First of all, we finally got into the Marais, which is one of my favorite neighborhoods of Paris. Secondly, the meal was a fun sort of French-tapas theme (think mini croque monseiurs, tiny cups of cold & refreshing soups, even mini burgers!) which was a nice change of pace. Plus there was unlimited champagne & wine, and the adults got to sit out on the square while the kids were inside (sadly – I don’t think the kids appreciated the interesting small-plates food…). Then the “magic show” that I was dreading ended up being SUPER COOL. We filed down into this tiny dark basement where the kids were already lined up in the back and watched an incredibly charming & funny woman (the daughter of the founder of this particular club) do a number of cool card tricks and illusions and such (and I’m not really a big fan of magicians). Then the cutest part was that each of the kids had been taught a little magic trick and they were able to have a little individual moment in the spotlight to show us what they’d learned. SO cute!! I seriously loved it, and it’s nothing I would have ever known about or thought to book ourselves. Check out a bunch of the Tauck differences here:
So, to summarize, it maybe wasn’t my favorite Tauck tour I’ve ever taken, but it certainly lived up to my expectations as far as service goes. We had a great mix of free meals to do what we wanted and meals mixed with the entire group. Meals where the kids were split up from the adults so that parents/grand parents could have some adult-only time and the kids could get to know each other (and there were some cute little friendships that bloomed in just that one week!). It certainly covered the highlights of these two amazing cities, even if it wasn’t in the way I might have designed it myself. 😉 All in all – if you want to show your kids Europe for the first time, without stress and with some cool added benefits and possibly even new friends, this would definitely be an excellent option!