Hard to select “favorite” part of trip…would have to say Number One was the planning, organization and ability to make changes when necessary. Guide,Scott, was fantastic and saw ahead to our needs. Driver, Jerry, consistently delivered us safely and on time to our destinations. Both provided “extras” - Jerry purchased plenty of water and candy for us; Scott had interesting stories and videos about our locations and superb cookies! Both consistently were pleasant and extremely patient!. The itinerary was fantastic - and the particular order of the various park visits seemed to build to a grand finish. Each of the hotels was delightful and the included and optional tours fabulous. ,This was my first GCT tour and I cannot WAIT to schedule my next!

This was our third trip with Grand Circle, and I have to say it has gone way down hill post-pandemic. Here are the reasons I say that:

1. Covid 19 policy: if you test for Covid, and the result is +, you will be confined to your room for 5 days and not allowed to leave unless results are negative. Our ship was a petri-dish. By the end of the trip up the Rhine, half the passengers had a dry cough and runny nose. We caught whatever was going round on the third day of the cruise, but did not have it tested due to the Covid policy. The day we got home I tested for Covid and it was positive.

2. Size of ship. Both of our prior trips (2013 Paris to Nice) and 2015 Prague to Berlin) used smaller ships (90 and 45 passengers vs. 160 for the trip up the Rhine). GCT no longer uses those small ships, its all about profit, not about the traveller's experience.

3. We signed up for a pre-trip visit to Brugge. It was a wonderful city to visit, but our trip leader was nowhere to be found most of the time, so there was really no reason to pay the high price to GCT, we should have just booked the travel through GCT and arranged our own accommodations.

In 2015 we took a land tour of Sicily with GCCL/OAT and this month we took a cruise down the Rhine on their riverboat Ms Harmony.

Both experiences were highlights of our lives. The positives are mountain ranges in contrast with maybe as much as an ant hill of negatives. Too much good about GCCL/OAT to even begin to list.

We travel with a group that between them have taken at least 50 GCCL/OAT tours (and all of us are well traveled in other ways). We heard net negatives about precisely one trip and that was due to a sub-par substitute program director.

GCCL/OAT is a great company for reliably great journeys.