Cosmos

I did a faith based tour with Cosmos and it was fantastic! Our guide was all things you wish a guide to be, organized, thoughtful, incredibly knowledgeable, and hilarious! A total riot. Although it was a religious tour, we still had plenty of fun and really made some great memories. I highly recommend you travel with Cosmos, and their pricing cannot be beat!

My tour started in London on 5 May 23 and from the start there was a lot of confusion, poor communication and lack of guidance to the travelers. The tour director, a small Italian guy who thought of himself as the reincarnation of Napoleon, forgot to coordinate early breakfast for the whole group and we had to wait over 1 hour until the problem was fixed. We ate our meal in a hurry so we could travel to catch the train to go to Brussels. Nobody took responsibility for this fiasco, the tour director blamed the hotel but later we found out that nobody informed the hotel about it. The next 17 days were just jumping in a bus, driving for 4-6 hours per day and getting to our hotels late in the afternoon, having no chance to explore the city of the day. The following day, the same story. The hotels were cheap, outdated, and poorly equipped. In Amsterdam for example, we just had a 1 hour canal tour through the old city, then jumped back in the bus to go to a Diamond cutting business (1 hour sales pitch). After that, back to the Coach to drive 4-5 hours to Germany. Arrived at the hotel in Wiesbaden, Germany at 7 pm, with no time to do anything, because the hotel was a 20 minute-drive to downtown or any decent restaurant. The next morning the tour director didn't wake up on time and had to wait 1 hour for him before we could depart to Heidelberg. The stay at this famous city lasted just 55 minutes, so we had to basically jog to the center of town area, take a picture, and jog back to the bus to start the 6 hour drive to Lucerne, Switzerland. To not make this story too long and tedious, I can tell you that the whole tour was just like this, hurry up and sit down in the bus/coach to the next city/town. The hotels were not what was described in the tour brochure, 90% of them were old, outdated, with no amenities, very small rooms and far away from the Cities, like the one near Sorrento, Italy were the owner didn't even provide us with wi-fi service. Of bad/terrible taste, was the tip/gratuity pitch the tour director Luigi made to all travelers few days before the end of the tour. He "passed the envelope" to everyone, and reminded us 2 or 3 times per day from then on, to not forget to leave him and the driver the gratuity. That is shamefully improper from a tour director, or maybe it is a common occurrence in Cosmos tours? I have traveled around the world with other tour companies at least four other times, and after these 18 days with Cosmos, I can say I will never use this company again. So many years in the business and come out with such a poor show? Disorganization, and constant improvisation was the menu of the day during this tour. What a lack of respect toward the customers who invested a good amount of money to travel with them!