Tomorrow we embark on several new countries for us to visit. This is the first time we have traveled overseas where neither one of us have been to any of our travel destinations. We arrive in Amsterdam on the 23rd and will be staying at a home we found through a Love Home Swap exchange. We will be spending a week in Amsterdam seeing the sights before getting on a cruise on the 30th.
I scoured Viator to find excursions for us while we are in Amsterdam. We are kind of lazy travelers in regards to we want to see everything but we don't want to have to plan buying tickets, how to get there, when to go, what to see, etc. I find buying tours to be very satisfying as all the details are done for us and we just have to get there. Don't get me wrong, we do book our own tickets and explore cities by ourselves but for never having been here I thought it would be easiest to book us on a few tours to make sure we get in as much as we can.
Here is what we have planned so far:
July 24th
Anne Frank Home
Canal cruise with drinks included
July 25th
Amsterdam walking tour
July 26th
Zaanse Schans Windmills, Marken and Volendam Half-Day Trip (this gets us out of Amsterdam and into the Dutch countryside)
July 27th
Heineken tour and canal cruise
July 29th
Red Light District tour
The home we are staying in has bicycles for us to use, so we plan to explore on our own on the days we don't have pre-planned tours. People have been giving us suggestions on what to see so I just hope we have enough time to see it all.
On the 30th we jump on a Royal Caribbean cruise for 12 nights. We sail to several countries and have scheduled excursions for each stop. We always do. I know it would be much more cost efficient to buy a Lonely Planet book and just do our own travel plans but we save money all year long on simple things so we can treat ourselves to things like this.
How do you travel? Are you a plan it yourself every step of the way traveler or a more lazy traveler where you find tours that work for you? Don't get me wrong, I still budget for each tour and I find discounts. With Viator I got 10% off almost all of our tours (I had a discount code) and I used Ebates so I got 6% back on everything I scheduled. I also price compared between Viator, Expedia and TripAdvisor to make sure I found what I wanted at the price I was willing to pay.