Germany Tours for Seniors

Zicasso’s travel company put together a wonderful trip for us! Our 10-day trip included stays in Berlin, Dresden, and Munich, with stops in between in Potsdam and Nuremberg. We had great guides, great hotels, great recommendations, and great communication from them throughout the trip. I highly recommend working with them.

We just returned from one of the most fabulous trips we have ever taken. I lived in Germany back in the 80s and wanted to share some of the most beautiful areas with my husband.

We were most fortunate to come in contact with Zicasso's travel expert. After our initial phone call with her, we knew this would be a great trip.

We had several phone calls and emails with her and her colleagues to talk about the trip in general. With each phone call and with their recommendations, we would get more and more excited about our trip.

When we arrived in Germany, waiting in our hotel room was a beautiful book of our itinerary. All we had to do was go page by page each day. Each page included details of what we would be doing for that day, along with tickets (if needed) for events, brochures, and all details for that day. Also included was a phone for us to use while in Germany. They had pre-programmed contact numbers of anyone from the agency we might need to contact, phone numbers of our tour guides, GPS, a digital copy of our itinerary, hotel contacts, etc. They were available to us 24/7 for any needs or concerns. The agency also checked with us throughout the trip to make sure things were going well. Their tour guides in the various cities were very knowledgeable, personable, and very thorough with their tours. We really enjoyed them all.

This was a very memorable and wonderful trip for us. We give all the credit to our travel company for listening to us and making it happen in ways we would not have expected. This was a trip of a lifetime for us! Many thanks to all for your hard work! We would highly recommend them to anyone!

We had a wonderful trip to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland! The people from the tour operator were very helpful in the planning phase of our trip. They were able to design a trip that included a variety of experiences that appealed to our different interests in each of the six cities we visited.

The accommodations they booked for us were all very clean and comfortable, and in good locations, within walking distance of sights or transportation to those sights. We mostly traveled by train once we arrived in Europe and they were helpful in booking train tickets for travel in Germany and Austria, and the Swiss rail and bus passes that we used for travel in Switzerland.

A representative kept in contact with us and was available to answer questions as needed. When one of the activities was canceled due to bad weather, they facilitated ticket refunds for us. We were very pleased with the planning and responsiveness of Zicasso's tour operator and would use them to plan a trip again.

This travel company was incredibly difficult to work with, and I would not recommend them. The travel agent seemed very annoyed when we asked basic questions about our itinerary. For example, the itinerary he sent us did not have the correct number of rooms booked for our party. When I asked him about it, he rudely told me, "Of course I have booked the right rooms". Later, we found out he was working off the wrong itinerary - our final invoice was based on this wrong itinerary and had a much higher amount than we actually owed. When we pointed that out, he went from being annoyed to flat out rude.

We also identified many gaps in transportation and logistics, with the travel agent continuing to be rude when we asked for clarification or support in fixing the gaps. For example, he had us driving a rental car to the Bologna airport at around 3 AM from rural Italy to make an 8 AM flight. We would be driving right through Florence on the way to Bologna. When I asked why we didn't simply take a later flight out of Florence, I was told there were no options to do this. A simple Google search identified several flights out of Florence at a more reasonable time.

We finally had Zicasso step in, and they were incredibly helpful in cleaning up our itinerary. Unfortunately, we still experienced several logistical issues during our trip despite Zicasso's support. For example, we were dropped off by drivers at train stations and were then on our own to figure out how to get to our hotels - all required lengthy walks up hills to access, and my 81-year old father was not able to do that. So we had to find our own transportation or have my dad attempt to walk (not good at all). As another example, my father really wanted to see the Matterhorn. The travel agent said it was an easy "day trip" from our hotel to the Matterhorn. It turned out to be a 3.5 hour drive each way. The driver left us at a train station below Zermatt (town below the mountain) to figure out on our own how to navigate the city of Zermatt. We had no guidance from the travel agency on how to best see the Matterhorn, and Zermatt was another town with steep hills that my dad had to walk through (with a cane) as we tried to figure out how to best see the mountain. Due to the length of the drive to Zermatt from our hotel, we had less than two hours in Zermatt because the travel company had booked us on a 6:15 AM train the next morning to leave Switzerland. It was a wasted day instead of being the wonderful experience my father had hoped for.

The best part of the trip was the hotels, and the travel company gets credit for selecting hotels with wonderful views and great breakfast options. They were not easily accessible from the local towns, so we had to figure out taxis and shuttles to get to nearby sites.

Most of the time, we were left on our own to find our way around. But we did have a guided tour in Florence and a knowledgeable driver that took us to a winery in Tuscany. Both of these guides were amazing, and it would have been nice to have more guided support throughout this trip (especially in Zermatt).