"We were really lucky with weather in Amsterdam. It was sunny and warm for our visit. The day we went to the Keukenhof it was in the mid 70s. I was afraid booking the trip the first week of April that the tulips and flowers would not yet be in full bloom. I was wrong, they were gorgeous!
The Amsterdam sight-seeing trip by bus needs to be amended. Tour buses aren't allowed in many parts of the city. We were unable to drive by the Anne Frank house. We thought the house was included in the tour and were disappointed to find it was not. It is difficult to get tickets for the house. Had we known, we would have booked them farther in advance. A lot of things are closed on Sundays, and since we arrived on Sunday, it limited what we could do.
Our side trip to Ghent had the same issue. The excursion was scheduled for Sunday and most of the shops were closed. I was hoping to purchase some of Ghent's famous cured meats and mustards, but only found one place open and their meats weren't vacuum packed, so we had no way to get them home safely.
Our tour director Atto was fantastic! He was personable, knowledgeable, and patient. Our local guide is Bastogne was the best guide we had on the trip. He was an expert of WWII and the area. He was also up on his current events and local politics.
Not sure if Go Ahead has any kind of policy regarding tardiness, but we had a couple people on this tour who were consistently late. Not 5 or 10 minutes late either, up to 25 minutes late.
Overall it was a great trip and we're already talking about our next adventure!"
"Loved Scotland & our tour guide Cornelius was fantastic. Not only was he knowledgeable but he was entertaining and very nice. Our bus driver Paul was also fantastic and friendly. They both went out of their way to make sure everyone had a great time.
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"I loved my trip to Amsterdam! Every time I travel with Go Ahead Tours, I come home enriched. The planned activities were engaging and interesting - I especially liked the Koukenhoff Gardens which were a beautiful array of color, and I enjoyed the dinner cruise on the canals. The bridges, which are lit up at night, were artistically reflected on the water, making a magical experience. I appreciated the amount of free time that was structured into the itinerary - it offered me opportunities to visit the Anne Frank House, go to the National Holocaust Museum, explore the town on foot, and take a day time canal cruise to get a different perspective of the unique architecture of the city. All in all, I highly recommend this tour!
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"The Galápagos Islands and Machu Picchu have been on our bucket list for quite awhile, so we were excitedly finally experience both of these amazing destinations. Galapagos was so pristine - it was amazing to walk in Darwin’s footsteps and realize it must have looked basically the same as when he was in the Islands. Snorkeling with giant seal turtles, sea lions and penguins was so cool, as well as spotting the blue footed boobies! They took such good care of us on our 5-day cruise thru the Galápagos Islands, and our tour director Fabrizio was fabulous! Peru was equally exciting, but standing in the ruins of Machu Picchu is a feeling I’ll never forget. The majestic Andes Mountains encircling the vast Incan plateaus and remaking structures just took my breath away. It’s definitely an experience that everyone should enjoy in their lifetime! Our tour guide in Peru was OUTSTANDING - extremely organized, kept us informed at all times, went out of his way to ensure each of us had a great time, very personable, always had made arrangements for our bags to be hauled from hotel to airport to hotel, etc. He made it easy for us to enjoy the beautiful country of Peru without us having to worry about the details! Overall, a FANTASTIC tour!"
"This was our first trip with EF Go Ahead Tours. Everything went very smoothly! We took an 18-day tour of England, Scotland and Ireland. We had a great tour director, knowledgeable tour guides, very capable bus drivers and nice hotels. We signed up for several optional excursions and all were very good, except by doing so, we spent a lot of time riding buses. Next time, we would probably take a shorter tour and be more selective regarding how many and which optional excursions we take. "
"We are pleased with the service of Go Ahead tours, pioneer one in Greece, so much so we are thinking of future tours with them. In fact we are booked, confirmed and excited to go on our 2nd with them to the Highlights of the Baltics early May for 12 days. We expect no less professionalism and service we got from the Greece tour. Thanks"
"Had a wonderful tour to Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Go Ahead outdid themselves with the excursions, hotels, food and tour and local guides. Lucerne was my favorite hotel - luxurious and accommodating. There is really nothing but good things to say.about this tour and Go Ahead. Already planning our next tour."
"We had an amazing trip to Iceland. We traveled as a group of 3. (My Mother(72), my 13 year old son, and I(39)). The trip itself was great! We ended up getting to do everything on our itinerary plus more. We even got to see the Northern Lights while out on a boat tour which was a once in a Lifetime event. There are too many highlights to list with this trip - everyday was pretty amazing. Loved going to the Waterfalls, the geysers, and all of the other places that we got to see on our trip. My only small complaints are that the trip was very rushed. We would go to a waterfall and only have 20 or so minutes to see the waterfall - so you either saw the waterfall or went in the gift shop. There was really no time to do both. The next small complaint was about one of our dinners out - Please give two to three choices in the food. Not everyone eats fish and there should always be another option. We almost ended up not going to dinner because not all of us eat fish. The Blue Lagoon day was a lot more relaxed! Really enjoyed the half day off to go walk around the city. The Fridheimer Tomato Farm was great. The tomatoes were excellent and the soup and bread was perfect. My 13 year old son loved tomato soup and has asked for it quite a few times since we got back home. The Icelandic horses were so much fun to pet and see. They are just beautiful. We also got to see a horse show while at the farm and that was pretty neat also. On our trip, we stayed at the Foss Hotel. We enjoyed the hotel and didn't have any issues there. We ate the buffet one day for lunch and it was phenomenal. We would have eaten there again, it was just a little too pricey (56.00 USD per adult). We ate at the Beirgarden in the bottom of the hotel twice and had great food both times. The prices were much more reasonable. (20 USD per burger) We ate breakfast daily at the hotel and it was great everyday (included) Our bus driver was great. There was a lot of snow the first day and he got us to and from without any incident. Our tour guide was okay. He was very informative, just not very friendly. The country itself is just amazing and I will definitely go back one day. The scenery is like nothing I've ever seen anywhere and just can't be topped. Overall - would HIGHLY recommend this trip. We had the best time. Our pictures are amazing and love re living this experience through them."
"The entire Go Ahead tour experience was exceptional from the first contacts as we prepared for the trip to the final Goodbye as we departed from Rome. All the service providers were excellent. I cannot say enough about our guide, Jacqueline Joseph. She was without a doubt one of the highlights of our experience while in Italy. Her knowledge, humor and friendly personality made all of us feel welcome while so far away from home. Our local organizer, Diann Meeks, and Jacqueline, collaborated to offer a memorable trip with incredible scenery, amazing places and fabulous food. The only regret was that it came to an end. I hope that I can go again and would not hesitate to book once more with Go Ahead tours. "
"With Go Ahead I was able to relax and enjoy my vacation. I really loved that my flights, hotels and tours were already booked and paid for. It made it so easy to just fall in love with Scotland! I strongly recommend Go Ahead and definitely recommend their tour of Scotland!"
"So first I was surprised by being the youngest, by far, on the tour. Wasn't really an issue, just didn't expect it. We covered a lot of ground in the two weeks. Some places we could have spent the entire day but only ended up getting a couple hours for most of our stops. I understand the reason behind it, we experienced a lot- but just not enough time to soak up the experience. It's perfect for scouting the countries to get a feel for it, then planning your own trip in the future. For me, I worked really hard every day to get the most out of the journey and to experience as much as possible. It was tiring but worth every second. But the tour is tailored to be fairly casual and just take in the sights. You do not have to exert yourself if you do not want to. "
"Airport transportation was easy and timely. Location of hotel in Amsterdam was great, hotel was adequate, clean, and very basic. The group guide was very nice and personable - most of her responsibilities were centered around coordination of group (34) as opposed to sharing of knowledge about the city. City bus tour prior to visiting the Van Gogh Museum was ok, but would have appreciated more historical information about different parts of the city. Tour guides in Delft and Keukenhof Gardens were very factual and short, with remaining time on our own. Dinner cruise the last night was fun, but we were crowded in the booths on the boat, and very touristy.
In summary, we enjoyed the cities of Amsterdam & Delft, but this tour lacked the personal experiences and recommendations of our previous tour guide in Italy. Maybe we had the best in Italy, and our expectations were too high for this trip. "
"A great trip, learned a great deal, saw interesting sights, food was great, our guides/drives were fantastic. "
"I had a lot of fun on this tour. I was amazed by the knowledge of each tour guide we had and I was also grateful to be able to go into some of the historical landmarks with the tour guide explaining more to us so that we could really get a full understanding vs. going alone.
Some of the challenges I had were:
1. Lack of meal choice...I understand booking dinners for 30+ people at once cannot be easy however I wish for the hosted dinners we were given a choice of 3 options vs just being given something, because while we may not be allergic to a specific thing that doesn't mean we don't have certain preferences on food. Like for example I may not be allergic or have a food restriction to ground beef but it is definitely not my first choice as I try to stay away from ground and or red meats. Providing us a simple menu specifically for the tour group with 3 choices for dinner and 2 for dessert would have made my dining experience much more enjoyable.
2. Tour guides rushing: I just wish our tour guides would not have rushed through the landmarks so fast. Very often they did not even give us time to take pictures so many of the places we went I have no pictures to remember it by. Go Ahead tours PLEASE change this we don't pay as much as we do and travel as far as we do to not even be able to take pictures. This was by far the most disappointing part of the entire tour for me.
3. Schedule: I understand they cannot provide a time by time schedule as with transportation and other factors thats hard to measure HOWEVER I do feel that we should have at least time estimations. For example our itinerary said Transport to next city - Free day. that was all it said. So we booked excursions that were not provided by Go Ahead Tours for that day because it said free day. Low and behold it was NOT a free day we did not even get into that city until 3pm. We missed all our NON-REFUNDABLE excursions because of this and lost out on hundreds of dollars. Simply when the word Transport is on the schedule they should tell us estimated times for transport so we can plan accordingly. This was definitely the second most disappointing part for me.
I have reached out to the company directly and I truly hope they hear me and the other explorers out and make some changes immediately. Unfortunately I have decided not to take another tour with this company until these things are fixed.
I hope this review helps someone as I wish I wouldve looked into the reviews before booking. "
"Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful experience! Everything was handled and put together - all we had to do was show up and enjoy! An amazing trip with great sights and a wonderful, fantastic, and knowledgeable tour guide. Will definitely travel again with GoAhead!"