The main reason I picked Contiki was because they had the most cities I wanted to go to in one trip. I had originally planned a trip with a friend, but after a series of unfortunate events, I realized I was going to be doing a bit on my own. I changed the itinerary (took out Italy and Paris since I had already been there) and prioritized the cities by how important they were for me ted to go to them. Unfortunately, money and time were on my side so Copenhagen and Bruges will have to wait for another trip. But with Berlin, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest, I found Contiki had a tour with those four cities, which would have left four on my own, and three of those I had friends and family to stay with. I also liked that it was a youth trip, ages 18-35.
I don't regret doing Contiki. I made some good friends and got to go to some other cities I would have otherwise not gone to (Dresden I fell in love with, Kunta Hora and Bratislava were also very nice). It was also very convent to have a bus take us everywhere and not have to worry about checking luggage.
The major down side was that I was excepting a walking tour in every city, and I while we did have one, I had to pay for it in most of the cities, which was very disappointing. The tour was pretty pricy as it was and they kept on hitting us up for extra "excursions" that I really thought should have been included, or at least the walking tours.
A lot of people ask me if there was a lot of partying, which Contiki has a reputation for. We did go out most nights, but for the most part everyone was able to get up on time for the next day and put in a full day of sight seeing and culture and then still go out for a few drinks and dancing at night. I took a couple of nights off, which I think most people did on my tour, but I found out from the people that have done other Contiki tours (there were at least 5 other people on this tour that had done a few others, Australia, Egypt, North America, another European one) said that their other tours weren't like this one. They said that their previous ones were often one day in a city and that it was very much party party all night and sleep all day on the bus.
Would I do another Contiki tour? Under very certain conditions.
1. I would make sure that we'd stay at least three night in each city. We only stayed two in Vienna and it was NOT enough time! We were scheduled to stay two in Budapest, but myself and a lot of other people stayed longer, but I could definitely see myself not spending enough time there if it were only the two nights.
2. I probably wouldn't do it during the summer or during a major college break, just to avoid the college aged crowd. This trip really hit up the whole age range which was very nice, but I could definitely see if it were in the summer that It would be a younger group that would be a little less mature and wanting to party more and not so much caring to see the world.
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