Cosmos Tour Reviews

Our first coach tour and certainly not our last! Our tour leader Simeon was wonderful! Helpful, fun, approachable and amusing. His tips and tales of each destination helped us get the maximum pleasure from them. Dominique our driver made sure we got there on time and safely, he too was helpful and approachable. No getting up in the mornings wondering ...read more 'What do we do today'....'how will we get there'...'where do we park'. Our fellow travelers were a most agreeable lot, a mix of Yanks, Aussies, Brits and Canadians helped us 'enjoy the ride'. Would we do it again? Yes, tomorrow, if we could!

We went on our first ever coach tour last year. Georgie, at Global Journeys, was a great help. We were leaving home a few weeks before our tour of Paris & Northern France, & George was able to get our travel documents to us in good time. The tour director & driver were great. Very helpful, knowledgeable & managed to have time for everyone. We saw more ...read more & learnt more than if we had just traveled on our own. It was one of our best holidays ever & have booked another tour with Globus & Cosmos this year for a longer holiday.

I loved my tour of Turkey. Turkey was great as it hasn't reached the tourist heights of Europe. The history, especially the ruins, were much better than my tour of Europe and I found Turkey has many wonders that I wasn't aware of. Both of my trips had excellent guides and the coaches were great. I will be travelling again with your group.

This was the first tour we had done, We had a fantastic group, everyone always on time so no delays anywhere for the entire 16 days. We found it too busy if you took up all the options. No time for sightseeing apart from the scheduled stops. The actual stops we had were very good, and we were pleased with everything we did and saw. The hotels were all ...read more very very good. The included dinners were probably 50% okay as were the breakfasts, however we did not go hungry. We did ask the Tour Director on one occasion as we were not taking up the optional 'tour' and as the hotel was out of town if we could travel with the group into the City and find our own way back. This we were told was not possible due to 'insurance', though on another day we accommodated a member of the tour groups son and his girlfriend, so that was a bit of double standards on the part of the Tour Director. Basically it was a fun tour and we are glad we did it, so many thanks to you all.

Georgie was wonderful and helpful in booking our tour - she answered my millions of questions happily. We travelled with Cosmos on the Best of Europe tour for 19 days. Our huge disappointment on our tour was missing the Sistine Chapel, we chose this tour because this was included as an optional tour. We chose between seeing the Sistine chapel and Pompei ...read more (on a different tour). We along with everyone on our tour were dismayed and cross at not being let know before booking our tour that this would not be available as Italy had a public holiday! It would be a public holiday at the same time every year and Cosmos would know this and should divulge that it would be unavailable before booking! Grrrr!

Also due to this holiday we could not see David in Florence....everything shut! It was also printed in our personal brochure that the Sistine Chapel would be an optional tour. So not grumpy with Global journeys at all, but maybe make a note in the diary to let other travellers know that the public holiday in Italy is on at that time and will affect tour operators and things they offer so no one else has to travel around the world to see the Sistine chapel shut. Otherwise everything was great, great driver Carlos and we had fun and the Cosmos tour was a wonderful way to see heaps and pack in the sights in a very short amount of time. Trip of a life time!

Our tour exceeded our expectations. The coach was very comfortable, the Tour Leader Al LePore was excellent, the overnight accommodation was comfortable and generally well located and the itinerary gave us a good overview of the West coast of the United States. The 'no meals' arrangement worked very well and made the trip affordable. Overall, the tour ...read more was a memorable experience for us.

This was our first tour of this type and I have to say, it exceeded our expectations. We considered other tour companies such as Trafalgar, but opted for Cosmos because it seemed to give us more options regarding free days, allowed us to choose when and where to have meals, plus a variety optional tours. Overall it seemed to give us better value for ...read more the dollar. Choosing the Golden West Adventure was a real bonus, visiting the fabulous Grand Canyon and Yosemite is a memory never to be forgotten, plus the exciting Vegas and San Francisco. Our fears about travelling by coach were unfounded, it was most comfortable and the majority of journeys were less than 2 hours!! Our tour guide (Al Lepore) was extremely knowledgable and always there to offer advice or give assistance. An added bonus was our driver (Martin Martinez), a great character and again, always there to offer advice and assistance. A fabulous experience and we look forward to doing it again .. on another tour of course!

We were very happy with all aspects of the tour and we had a wonderful experience. The tour guide was a delight to listen to, he had a wealth of knowledge and a happy personality. The tour was so well organised that we saw much more then we expected and we were happy to have good weather. All the hotels were of excellent standard - they made us most ...read more welcome and comfortable. We would recommend this tour to everyone.

We enjoyed our tour very much. The only criticism I could possibly make was that the wake up calls were a little premature. For example, wake up calls at 6.00 am but we didn't leave premises until 8.30 am. Although it seems trivial I heard a few of the males on the bus complain and this could be a deterrent for future bookings. Other than that, everything ...read more went very well. The tour director was fine and we saw a great deal of places within the tour that we were excited about. Gerard is interested in a river cruise for next time as he didn't like the early wake up calls and different hotels. He would have preferred to stay longer at one place. Lovely trip overall. Thank you for organising it.

The tour was great. It was as per the brochure and the Tour Director was quite knowledgeable re history of the areas. The hotels were pretty good all over the tour. From our perspective 16 days was long enough to get an overall picture of the history and countryside. If there was a downside it would be too many souvenir shops - stopping sometimes at ...read more 3 a day was too much. (Of course these were also for comfort stops but 15 mins not 45 would have been sufficient). The only letdown on the whole trip was the last motel in London at Kensington Close - the worst hotel and most totally disorganised hotel on the trip - unfortunately everyone will remember this one because it was the last. Any suggestions back to Cosmos - change the Kensington Close to Novotel London West or find a better hotel. Also thanks very much to Yvonne for her great organisation of this trip for us.

We did a 16 Day Best of Europe Tour with Cosmos - it couldn't have been any better. Our tour guide was excellent, we found her to be on the ball at all times and very helpful with any of the hiccups the passengers had. Always made a point of making it clear of us meeting time dead lines. That way we never missed out on seeing anything, she was fantastic. ...read more I wound highly recommend Cosmos Tours to our friends and would more than happy choose their company for any other tours we may do. As for Global Journeys we dealt with Yvonne and once again she answered all of our queries in the lead up to our tour promptly, all our paper work for the tour was sent through when she said it would. She was great to deal with, pretty much between Global Journeys and Cosmos Tours everything was smooth sailing. What more could we ask for...the answer is NOTHING! I also will be recommending Global Journeys to our friends for their future holiday bookings. We only have good stories to tell about both companies. We couldn't be happier.

The Cosmos coach was comfortable, and it did have a loo on board which we had been led to believe would not be provided. Both the tour director and driver were excellent. The standard of hotels was very good and certainly better than we were expecting, and the food was very good. The duration of our tour was 21 days, and towards the end, we were looking ...read more to its conclusion, but this does not detract in any way from the tour itself. The tour certainly far exceeded our expectations. We would certainly recommend this company and this particular tour to anybody, as the age range on our tour was between 25 and 88, and we never heard any complaints about anything at all. Three comments: we were caught unaware by the payment in total for all the optional extras on day one, as we had thought we would be asked to pay individually as the tour progressed, but we overcame that hurdle. Another comment is that for a 21 day tour, the number of nights spent in Ireland seemed excessive compared to the number of nights in England itself - eight nights in Ireland and only five in England. The tour director very kindly organised for a laundry to do some washing of our bigger items in Ireland, and we would have appreciated that service one more time. This was our first experience of an overseas trip of that kind, and as there were no dramas or problems of any kind with our tour, we would certainly recommend Global Journeys and Cosmos. Thank you very much for your assistance.

We enjoyed the tour very much. We had a great tour leader in MJ and driver in John. It was our first tour and we were very lucky to have had such a great group to tour with. It was a very positive experience. Having said all of that, there are one or two things that we feel could be improved upon, although we realise that it is difficult to provide ...read more first class options within budget. We felt that the Skyline Hotel in NYC was below expectation. In our case, the first room we were given had wet paint on the door, workmen working in the passage and a paint sheet still over the bed. The second room we were given already had people in it (which we found when we opened the door) and the third room was quite acceptable. It was noisy at night and generally unappealing. Another hotel in Canada had only one lift working and we understand that the second lift had been out of order for a considerable period of time. Lastly, we felt that 4 cities in the few days we had in Canada was probably one too many. Quebec and Ottawa were great, but we felt that one of either Montreal or Toronto should perhaps be dropped. We also felt that the minimal time in Philadelphia was a waste of time and a disappointment. We are not sure what should be done about this because Philadelphia is such a significant city so it probably should be given more time rather than dropping off the itinerary. We hope that our comments will be seen as constructive feedback as they are not meant to be negative. We reiterate that we had a great time on tour and enjoyed it very much.

The tour was excellent, the driver & guide were the best, destinations and tours were great. The only down part of the trip is the poor quality of hotels & supplied meals. We would have preferred to have paid more money and stayed in better hotels closer to town in the places we visited. Overall though we had a great time, met some nice people and saw ...read more enough of Italy to know where to return to one day.

had a great time and met some wonderful people. We had a smaller group (26) which was a bonus and we gelled together pretty well. Our Tour director Zsuzsanna Toth was awesome..very helpful and obliging. The tour bus and drivers we had were great. When we ate where dinner was 'included' the food was fine but it seemed on our optional dinners we were ...read more shunted in and out. Some of our meals were rushed..there were times we were put 'out the back' (Nice) or 'crammed in.' The ventian dinner wasnt the best either. The Swedish dinner and Flamenco were great, and of course we never had enough time anywhere :) Thanks for all your help!

Loved it - please pass on our thanks to Ronald and Christian our driver. Ronald was awesome and displayed all the qualities I would expect from a tour guide. He was polite, extremely helpful, had a good sense of humor, well informed, always there to help where needed and I needed him to get me to hospital immediately in Amsterdam. He continually checked ...read more throughout the tour how I was without being over intrusive. I would highly recommend you. Could you please also thank Christian who drove us around in complete safety. There were some curly moments and thank god he had his eyes on the road. Thanks Christian for an awesome job! (Ed: Review based on slightly different itinerary. Trip name and itinerary updated this season)

It was great to be able to see so many countries and have city tours included at the major stops. It was lots of early mornings, but at least there was plenty of time to sleep on the bus. I wasn't prepared to be given such little time in some places, for example, we only had 1.5 hours to spend in Amsterdam (including finding lunch) and 40 minutes (including ...read more lunch) in Heidelberg, these two cities alone need at least 3 hours to enjoy just the outskirts. As it is a mid-range priced bus tour, the hotels were very comfortable but not close to the city centres. Most hotels we stayed in were on average a 40 minute bus ride from the city centre. The optional tours were mostly good, but the Flamenco in Barcelona was not. An entire day in Venice and Florence was fantastic but it was the only place we really got to shop properly and relax. The hotel in Paris was located approximately one hour away and we lost so much time in traffic as well so not even a single hour of free time by the time we did the optional tour to Versailles. The city tour was good and the optional Eiffel tower/river cruise too. I would have ended the tour in Paris and stayed a few nights longer had I have known this, rather than take the ferry ride back to London. It would have been nice to know about all of the incidental expenses prior to going, just so we were prepared, for example, the local guides that take you on the city tours get paid by tips by you, the passengers and the bus tours stop at places to get you to buy from a particular shop but often you leave that shop and find the same item for a third of the price just outside i.e. Murano glass factory. All in all it was a really good way to see the highlights of Europe and I would recommend to first timers. I am looking forward to going back and spending more time at the places I liked and/or want to really experience again. We had a great group of people on our bus tour which really helped but organise some group bus games to play as that is the only way to really get to know your travelling companions early on. Happy travels.

The Grand European was a good tour to give an overview of lots of countries. Definitely not long enough in each place to really immerse yourself in the local culture but certainly enough to get photos and tick it off the list. Definitely sleep on the bus where possible and know which optional tours you want to do prior to departing... you will probably ...read more find you will sign up for more optional excursions than originally planned but that's because you don't want to miss out on anything. As they are at discounted rates for Cosmos tour groups it makes it even better. Jodie at Global Journeys was great to deal with. Everything was organised so easily over email. Highly recommended. Happy travels!

The trip was great. It gave a very good overview of Turkey & I would recommend it to friends. The tour leader had an excellent knowledge of the history of the country. In fact Bijou was a walking encylopedia! I don't remember asking a question which she couldn't answer! There was a good variety of accommodation, all of which was clean.

Great trip and well organised from beginning to end. Driver, excellent and Tour director also very good. Would have liked more time in Granada. Very long day from Rabat to Granada, arriving early evening. The following morning, only allowed time to visit the Alhambra then onto the coach for journey to Madrid. Half day too short.(Personal opinion) With ...read more regard to the general guidelines for gratuity for the driver & tour director, we believe they are rather excessive: eg 4.5 euros a day per pax for the tour director and 3.5 euros a day per pax for the driver. Overall, a great trip, well organised and well run. We would have no hesitation in booking another Cosmos trip.