European River Cruise

Passepartout said:

On another trip, you can self-cater and it will cost a great deal less. Don't sweat being 'monolingual', you'll be surprised how much you'll recognize of other languages. Plus virtually ALL Europeans speak English- even if they'd prefer their native tongue.

Jim

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This is excellent advice. Europe is really easy to get around, and it's usually easy to figure out maps, etc., on the subways because the lettering is the same as in English (compared to places like Japan). And you can almost always find someone who speaks English. We've been traveling in Europe every few years for more than 40 years, and there's been a big increase in English speakers, especially in larger cities. But it's not a bad approach to take an organized tour the first time, including the add on days, to get comfortable. Even those tours will have some "free time" so be sure to take advantage and explore some on your own. Then you'll be ready to venture out on your own the next trip you plan.

We don't usually like organized tours, but we did ones to Japan and Greece/Turkey recently because we wanted to see lots of things and knew the countries might be a bit more challenging to get around. The tours were worth the cost and allowed us to see more than we could have managed it fit in on our own.

raygo123 said:

Question u mention AA miles, 40,000 to Europe. Seems cheap compared to chase explorer and UA. Does your card work out to $.01 per dollar spent?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

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Actually, most of these miles were free with new AA credit cards. 40,000 miles, but you must spend 3,000 within 3 months. We were doing some remodeling, so that was a piece of cake