London & Paris Vacation Packages

minor hiccups initially but the travel company representative stepped in and addressed it immediately.  Overall we are very pleased with the experience and look forward to future trips!

thru you again.

Thanks again.

and extremely helpful.   His suggestions were perfect.  We couldn’t have asked for more help.   He checked on us through out the trip, even in his days off!

that come to mind. They anticipated our needs and responded promptly when we asked for additional I formation or alternate choices. We will definitely use this travel agent and her team again.

tours and planning that went into our travel.  Our trip designer and his team did a great job meeting our desires & expectations.  Although the weather was not ideal every day, it always seemed to stop raining when we were out and about on foot.

they put together was phenomenal. The kids enjoyed the time in Europe immensely. The activities and tours arranged with them in mind was wonderful. The hotel choices were top notch and excellent. And they stayed on top of everything. Even when there was a last minute change in timing of a tour, they contacted me and let us know. Thanks for everything. 

agent did a terrific job getting us to/from places.  The drivers were good, and the guides in London and Paris were great.  There were a few logistical missteps, but our agent took responsibility and made them right, which we appreciated.  I got the sense that the Paris "partner" was part of the problem. 

to details

and our hotel was an ideal location. It was approximately 2 blocks to Buckingham Place and a pleasant 20 to 30 minute walk to Parliament and Trafalgar Squares. The tube was also very accessible and easy to use. Our tour guides for a ½ London orientation tour and for the Windsor Castle, Bath and Stonehenge were exceptional.

In Paris, the hotel was more of a business hotel than a location for tourists. It was located between two Metro stops but on a residential street and many homeless people gathered in the evening at the church at the end of the street.  Therefore, travel to museums was several stops including transfers to other lines and we were not comfortable walking in the neighbor at night. Our day trip to Normandy was unforgettable and very emotional. We like travelling in a small van with four other tourists and a drive rather than a large bus. Our driver/guide was very congenial and gave us sufficient time at each site to explore on our own. He was new to the tour and not a certified tour guide as was the case in London.  He was knowledgeable but I question the accuracy of some of his statements. For example, “body parts and equipment still wash up on the shores of Normandy today.”

We were disappointment in the travel company's attention to detail concerning our trip. They never told us that breakfast was included with our hotels. The London hotel told us upon arrival and we had to ask at the Paris hotel. The staff at the Paris hotel did not know and had to check on it. We did not receive any tipping guidance on tours/trips that were pre-paid by our travel company. Were the gratuities included with the transportation to and from the airport, or the London and Paris tours?  We did provide our driver/tour guide with a gratuity but had no way of knowing if it was adequate. For our Normandy trip, we did NOT have a either a receipt or a confirmation number and the driver/guide requested payment for the trip. We told him it was paid for by the travel company and he checked back with his office and both he and his office apologized for the error. In addition, it would have been nice to know that dinner was included on our 17:01 pm trip back to London. Due to our late arrival in London, we ate a late lunch, so we passed on the pre-paid meal offered on the train.

The description of our ½ day London tour read, “½ day tour of London. The (morning) tour includes a panoramic drive around the city to see many of the well know landmarks.”  From this description, we did not know that we would stop and enter paid attractions. We did not plan to use the 2-day London Pass because we did want to waste it on the only a afternoon that would count as a full day.

 The travel company uses a pre-written itinerary and just drops in the traveler’s information. The never asked about our interests or the type of vacation we envisioned. 

to be a combination birthday and anniversary present for my wife so the pressure was on to make this a spectacular trip. And it truly was! A few things that stand out about our experience working with our agent at this European travel company:

Why We Choose this company: So, we ended up using both Zicasso and additional research to identify and speak with a number of travel companies. At the end, we selected this company over others for a number of reasons:

1. We clicked pretty much instantly with our agent. She is down to earth, funny, very easy to talk to, asks great questions and really really really knows her stuff. Her background working in various areas of the travel industry and across a spectrum of different clients clearly gives her a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of travel planning and execution.

2. She was super responsive. our agent was incredibly fast and responsive to us (frankly, I was more the bottle neck). She put together a draft intinerary quite soon after our first conversation and was terrific about then reshaping it to meet our exact needs. This was in contrast to some travel companies we spoke with that took a couple of weeks to get back to us after our initial conversation.

3. She really listened to us and didn't try to 'sell' us. One frustration we had talking with other travel companies is that we would lay out  ideas of what we wanted and then they'd come back with an itinerary that really didn't reflect the conversation. Another thing that was really a challenge was talking with companies who tried to 'sell' certain experience as being very unique (and very expensive) when one could go onto an online Travel Agency and quickly see they were neither. Our agent never did that. She definitely suggested some great experiences and also worked with things we had come up with on our own but she never tried to overblow something.

4. She worked with our budget. London and Paris are *not* inexpensive cities. We knew that going in. Still, we had a budget we needed to work with and she did a great job of staying within it and also helping us work activities that kept things very personal and luxe.

5. It was truly personalized/custom built: We talked to some really terrific travel companies who, when it came time to actually cost out the execution of the trip basically just took the itinerary and sent it out to another travel company. This basically added a layer of un-necessary cost while reducing the actual 'hands-on' experience of the travel company. WIth our agency, they were involved in every facet from picking just the right guide for each event/location to making reservations, to following up on things. It truly was "handcrafted travel" and it makes a huge difference.

The Experience: So, basically every step of the way, from receiving our final itinerary packed full of helpful hints (including specific maps and directions for using the Underground/Train systems in London and Paris to get around as well as Oyster Cards and Paris Passes) to the actual day-by-day travel, was fantastic. One of the things that really struck us was how with *every* guide we used and every event we did, our agent had clearly spent an enormous amount of energy not only selecting each guide to be a great fit for us, but talking to them right before we met with them and then immediately after. It made for such an amazing experience.

In the end, we wanted a trip of a lifetime and we got exactly that (without having to break the bank to do it). Highly recommend and will absolutely use this agency again ourselves.

an outstanding job planning our European trip!  We spent one week in London and one week in Paris in September 2014.  We requested higher end hotels and both The Milestone in London and the Hotel Vernet in Paris were wonderful experiences. We also wanted a balance of guided tours with time on our own and Lindsey knew just what to do.  She worked for several months on our itinerary to get it just right and we very much appreciated her team's attention to detail.

great experience for us.  This was the first trip that I have planned and taken on my own.  I generally fear paying to end up somewhere and having nothing to do… and then spending half of the trip trying to decide what would be best. This agency helped me avoid that situation and really sit back and enjoy the trip while actually accomplishing a great deal. 

I had very little idea of what I wanted to do and see on the trip other than where I had wanted to go.  After a phone call and a ton of emails, they really helped narrow down the trip to exactly what I wanted it to be.  They did not try to push me to extend my budget and instead worked incredibly well within it to plan our perfect trip.

Our trip took us to London, Paris and then Germany where we rented a car and moved around quite a bit.  Overall their trips and recommendations really helped.  I loved showing up places and seeing lines down the road only to happily discover that that tickets that our agent had booked us jumped us right to the front of it all.  Truly was a great time.  

Hotels were great and right where we needed them to be… near public transport.  Loved the place they had us at in London, which was close to the palace and some great food and made all of our trips extraordinarily easy.

They also planned a day-trip to Leeds and Canterbury for us out of London that was amazing and a great time.  All I had said to the agent was that I had wanted to see the country, and this trip pretty much was exactly what I was looking to do.

When I contacted them originally they said that they specialized in mainly England and France which had me worried for our touring in Germany… but that ended up being the best portion of the trip!  We had a wonderful night in a castle on the Rhine River and spent two nights in a cute hotel in Fussen.  Both amazing and cute hotels and were perfect for the kind of touring that we were doing.

Overall I was incredibly pleased with the service.  We had said we wanted to balance pre-planned tours with exploring on our own and they created a schedule that allowed us to do that without overly pushing tours.  A great balance.  I would certainly recommend them to anyone traveling in these regions of Europe.