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Currently you are able to watch "EuroTrip" streaming on Paramount Plus, Paramount Plus Apple TV Channel , Paramount+ Amazon Channel, Paramount+ Roku Premium Channel or for free with ads on Pluto TV. It is also possible to rent "EuroTrip" on Vudu, Microsoft Store, Amazon Video, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Apple TV online and to download it on Amazon Video, Microsoft Store, Vudu, AMC on Demand, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, YouTube.

Where does EuroTrip rank today? The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

Streaming charts last updated: 9:09:58 AM, 06/07/2024

EuroTrip is 254 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts today. The movie has moved up the charts by 190 places since yesterday. In the United States, it is currently more popular than Napoleon but less popular than Galaxy Quest.

When Scott learns that his longtime cyber-buddy from Berlin is a gorgeous young woman, he and his friends embark on a trip across Europe.

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Streaming Charts The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

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The Backpacker Network

21 Incredible Movies Set in Europe

If you’ve watched some of the incredible movies set in Europe already, I completely understand why your feet are itching to make the continent your next backpacking destination. And if you haven’t, why not?! Europe is home to fascinating history, natural beauty, jaw-dropping architecture and of course, a plethora of stories. 

We here at Europe Backpacker know that escapism is massively important, especially when we’re back home reliving our last trip. And if you’re getting ready to set off on the backpacking trip of a lifetime, movies can help build the excitement before you start your journey!

Whether you’re into soppy Parisian romances or prefer your films more fast-paced, you’re bound to find something in this list of European travel movies to inspire you to hit the road. 

Related : (opens in new tab)

• Europe Backpacking Routes: Epic Adventures
• Epic Books Set in Europe
• Romantic Cities in Europe for Couples

Best Movies Set in Europe to Ignite Your Wanderlust!

• Language: English
• Country: Spain 
• Director: Emilio Estevez
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 83%

Ever dreamed about pulling on your hiking boots and walking off into the sunset? You will after watching The Way. 

When Tom Avery’s son Daniel dies whilst walking the Camino de Santiago, Tom decides to finish the journey that he started. This epic pilgrimage across Spain throws up many challenges for Tom  (played by Martin Sheen) and teaches him all sorts of life lessons. The result is a beautiful story that shows the importance of family, personal growth and adventure. As Daniel once said to his father, “You don’t choose a life, Dad. You live one.”

2. Braveheart

• Country: Scotland  
• Director: Mel Gibson
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%

If you’re planning on visiting Scotland, you’ll need to get yourself acquainted with William Wallace and quickly. Along with Robert the Bruce (you’ll get an introduction to him in Braveheart too), Old Willy Wallace is Scotland’s pride and joy. 

Directed by and starring Mel Gibson, this heartbreaking tale tells the story of Scottish hero Wallace as he leads his countrymen in a revolt against King Edward I of England. Historically, it misses the mark on a few things but is still a great movie. It will make you laugh, cry and most of all, want to explore those breathtaking landscapes first-hand. 

3. Eat Pray Love

• Country: Italy , India and Indonesia 
• Director: Ryan Murphy
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 42%

Based on the well-known travel book by Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love tells the tale of its author as she goes on a journey to find herself around the world. Her travels take her through Italy where she delights in delectable cuisine, India where she begins her spiritual journey and finally, Indonesia where she falls in love again. 

Although the film was hounded by critics and didn’t stand up to the book, Julia Roberts is a delight to watch and the film showcases some of Italy’s most wonderful scenery and architecture. Best enjoyed with a large plate of pasta. 

4. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

• Country: Iceland
• Director: Ben Stiller
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 71%

Walter Mitty has realised that he is unhappy with the boring and dull life that he leads working as a photo processor for Life magazine. After discovering that he and his colleague are about to lose their jobs, he embarks on an adventure that could prevent his company from being downsized. 

As he searches for a missing photo that holds the key to the latest issue of the magazine, he heads off to far-flung places and finds himself in the magical country of Iceland. The movie is wonderfully shot and highlights why Iceland should be on every traveller’s bucket list. 

• Language: French
• Country: France
• Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

For gorgeous cinematography and Parisian charm, look no further than Amélie. In the movie, the protagonist is leading a normal life, working in a Montmartre cafe. But her real adventure starts when she returns a long lost treasure to the previous occupant of her apartment. 

After experiencing the buzz of making another human being happy, Amélie decides to make it her life’s mission to spread joy and positivity, and along the way, even finds a little bit of her own. A feel-good film that reiterates Hepburn’s famous quote: “Paris is always a good idea”. 

6. The Sound of Music

• Country: Austria
• Director: Robert Wise
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%

It may be cheesy, but it is a classic! The Sound of Music follows the lives of the Von Trapp family when a failing nun Maria, (played by Dame Julie Andrews) arrives to care for them. Maria inspires a new lease of life in the children which leads them to famously dance through the Austrian hills singing. 

Although the film is a little dated now, it is still a favourite of many which still inspires thousands of visits to Austria ( including this one )! One thing is sure, this country is bound to be one of your favourite things once you make the journey! 

7. Notting Hill 

• Country: England
• Director: Roger Mitchell
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79%

Those floppy curtains can only belong to one man… Hugh Grant, the perfect example of an English gentleman. In this romcom, Hugh, who plays William Thacker, runs a modest bookshop in London’s Notting Hill. All was pretty normal, until one day an A-list actress (played by Julia Roberts) walks through the shop doors and into his life. 

Notting Hill’s characters are remarkably well developed and the two protagonists share real chemistry. The film is also surprisingly funny and not just in that cringey rom-com way. This modern-day fairytale inspires a warm feeling in all but the hardest hearts.

8. The Tourist

• Country: Italy
• Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Starring two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, The Tourist is a romantic thriller, set largely in Italy. In the film, Elise (Jolie) meets Frank (Depp) onboard a train to Venice. 

Unbeknownst to him, she has selected him as a target, to make the police believe he is her lover who is wanted by the authorities. Although some scenes of Jolie eliciting awe-filled stares from men do reek of a perfume commercial, the result is a fun and entertaining spy romp in one of the world’s most beautiful cities. 

9. Chocolat

• Director: Lasse Hallström

Picture the scene: 1960 in a small town in rural France. A single mother with her six-year-old daughter in tow has just opened up a chocolate shop. Although a seemingly innocent move on the surface, Vianne Rocher has opened her shop across the street from the local church… and it is lent. 

The townspeople greet her with scepticism but through the exquisite taste of her chocolates, she manages to coax the locals into giving into temptation, with spellbinding results. Don’t miss it!

10. Mamma Mia!

• Country: Greece
• Director: Phyllida Lloyd
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 66%

If you’re an ABBA fan, you won’t want to miss Mamma Mia. Filmed on the stunning Greek island of Skopelos, Mamma Mia documents the story of bride-to-be Sophie, who is trying to find out who her real father is so that he can walk her down the aisle. 

The movie benefits from an all-star cast, not limited to Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth. If you can remove yourself from how desperately Pierce Brosnan mangles every song he sings, it’s a lighthearted and fun watch.  

11. The Da Vinci Code

• Director: Ron Howard
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 57%

Based on the controversial book by Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code is all about secrets and the danger of unearthing them. The story begins when Professor Robert Langdon (played by Tom Hanks) is summoned to the Louvre after a murder occurs there.

Using the archaic clues left in Da Vinci’s paintings, he discovered a religious mystery that has long been protected by a secret society. Although without doubt a Hollywood blockbuster, this movie has retained a lot of Euro-centric charm which adds to the viewing experience.  The Da Vinci Code is a chilling mystery that will leave you on the edge of your seat.

12. Under the Tuscan Sun

• Director: Audrey Wells
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78%

When American writer, Frances, discovers that her husband has cheated on her, her friend encourages her to jump on a plane and explore Italy. Whilst on her trip, she impulsively decides to buy a traditional villa in the charming region of Tuscany and worries that she has made the biggest mistake of her life. 

Luckily for Frances, starting again in Italy ended up being the best decision she ever made. It even acts as the catalyst for her meeting the handsome Marcello. It turns out that both life and love really do flourish under the Tuscan sun.

13. In Bruges

• Country: Belgium
• Director: Martin McDonagh
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

This dark comedy thriller centres around Irish hitmen Ken and Ray (played by Brendon Gleeson and Colin Farrell respectively) who are sent to the city of Bruges to lie low after their most recent job went awry. 

Ken enjoys exploring the historic city whereas Ray feels stifled in Bruges and misses home. As he searches for excitement, he meets small-time drug-dealer Chloë and the adventure really begins. For visitors to Bruges, the tourist office has created a walking map of locations where the movie was filmed. You can check it out here . 

14. EuroTrip

• Country: Czechia 
• Director: Jeff Schaffer and Alec Berg
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 75%

For fans of American Pie and Not Another Teen Movie, EuroTrip is a safe go-to travel movie for your European adventure. This cheesy teen comedy begins like many others, with a guy getting dumped. 

And of course, as all of us backpackers know, there is no better way to mend a broken heart than to travel it off, right? As Scott explores Europe, with his hapless buddies in tow, the pattern becomes misadventure after misadventure. If you’re not offended by crappy jokes and gratuitous nudity, you’ll love this wild caper. 

15.  Midnight in Paris

• Country: France 
• Director: Woody Allen

Ever fallen in love with a city? Like head over heels? That is exactly what happens to writer Gil (played by Owen Wilson) when he vacations in Paris with his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams). Gil becomes so taken with Paris that he takes to wandering the streets alone, searching for inspiration. 

At midnight, a group of strangers invite him to a party and he discovers that he has been transported back to the roaring 20s’, offering the ultimate muse for his writing. As Gil grows ever enchanted with Paris, he realises that he is becoming more distant from his girlfriend and wife-to-be. 

Also read: Honeymoon Destinations in Europe.

16. Biutiful

• Language: Spanish
• Director: Alejandro G Iñárritu 
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 74%

This Oscar-nominated movie is a harrowing account of those who live on the fringes of society. It follows the story of protagonist Uxbal, a single father of two. He fills his days scraping a living in the underbelly of Barcelona, operating as part of an illegal immigrant labour group. However, when he is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he has to get his affairs in order and fights to leave the world on his own terms. 

If you’re looking for a lighthearted watch, you’ll want to avoid Biutiful. This is not a happy film that spotlights the polished attractions of Barcelona. Nevertheless, it does reveal the dark side of the city and truly reflects the ugly beauty of life.

17. Before Sunrise

• Director: Richard Linklater
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Before Sunrise is the first instalment of the Before Trilogy, set in Vienna, Austria. After an American tourist (Ethan Hawke) and French student (Julie Delpy) meet on a train, they know instantly that they have a special connection. 

Taking place over just 24 hours, the movie documents their journey as they fall in love and eventually go their separate ways, vowing to meet again in the future. To find out what happens, you’ll need to watch the last two of the trilogy, Before Sunset and Before Midnight (all brilliant). 

18. The Holiday

• Country: United States/England
• Director: Nancy Meyers
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%

This festive flick is a great choice for those who love a good romcom. Starring Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Jack Black and Jude Law, the story follows two women who decide to house swap for the holiday season, after a stressful few months. 

Iris (played by Winslet) heads to a swanky pad in LA and Amanda (played by Diaz) ends up in a quaint English cottage. Neither is looking for love but a change of scenery proffers all kinds of opportunities. Who says travel can’t fix all your problems?

19. Leap Year

• Country: Ireland
• Director: Anand Tucker
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 47%

Anna Brady counts off another anniversary without a marriage proposal from her boyfriend. Deciding she needs to take drastic action if she is ever going to get him to put a ring on it, she calls on a Celtic tradition that allows women to propose on February 29th. 

To make the occasion truly special, Anna intends to follow Jeremy to Dublin to pop the question but setback after setback threatens to jeopardise the whole trip. The film starts slow but is a lot less try-hard than other romcoms and really hits the humour mark. 

20. Roman Holiday

• Director: William Wyler

This old classic sees Audrey Hepburn in her American debut. Considering it was released in 1953, Roman Holiday has also weathered the test of time extremely well. The story follows a European Princess (played by Hepburn) as she sneaks past her guardians for a night in Rome. 

A sedative she was previously given by her doctor then kicks in and she falls asleep on a park bench. She is discovered by an American reporter who saves her in more ways than one! It’s an oldie but a goodie and really spotlights the splendour of Rome. 

21. Paddington

• Director: Paul King

Paddington is the story of a displaced Peruvian spectacled bear, trying to make a new home for himself in England. Named after the London train station, Paddington meets the Brown family who offers him a temporary home. 

The movie shows Paddington’s awe as he tries to adapt to urban London living, illustrating the chaos of the city wonderfully. Although this is predominantly a family film, it can be enjoyed by everyone. A great option if you are doing some last-minute babysitting to save for your trip!

And one final European movie which will make you cancel your flight…

• Country: Slovakia
• Director: Eli Roth
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 53%

The splatter movie follows best friends Paxton and Josh as they backpack their way across Europe. After a heavy night in Amsterdam (we’ve all been there), they meet a guy who tells them about a Slovak hostel, filled with beautiful women. Unluckily for them, what awaits them is not hot nymphos but a rather more terrifying prospect. 

If you plan to backpack Europe and especially if you plan to stay in a hostel, don’t watch it. Seriously. 

What is your favourite movie set in Europe? Let us know in the comments or our Europe Backpacker Facebook Community !

Sheree Hooker

Sheree is the awkward British wanderluster behind wingingtheworld.com, a travel blog designed to show that even the most useless of us can travel. Follow Sheree’s adventures as she blunders around the globe, falling into squat toilets, getting into cars with machete men and running away from angry peacocks.

• Sheree Hooker https://europebackpacker.com/author/sheree-hooker/ Three Bonny Edinburgh Itineraries - 1 to 3 Days in the Scottish Capital
• Sheree Hooker https://europebackpacker.com/author/sheree-hooker/ Scotland’s Best Drinks - Slainte (Cheers)!
• Sheree Hooker https://europebackpacker.com/author/sheree-hooker/ Top 13 Traditional European Foods
• Sheree Hooker https://europebackpacker.com/author/sheree-hooker/ Books Set in Europe – Reads To Inspire Wanderlust

The 50 Best Travel Films of All Time

By CNT Editors

It's arguable that, more than any other piece of pop-culture ephemera, movies have the power to transport—to sweep you away on a European adventure ( Before Sunrise ), cross an African desert ( Out of Africa ), even send you to the never-before-seen Paradise Falls ( Up ). These 50 films are especially captivating, with well-told stories that evoke the magic (or harsh reality) of travel, and beautiful scenery that overwhelms the senses. Read on for the favorite travel movies of editors past and present—and get your Netflix queue ready.

This gallery was originally published in 2015 and has been updated.

Roman Holiday (1953)

What’s not to love about this black-and-white classic? It’s got Audrey Hepburn, it’s got Gregory Peck, it’s set in Rome ; there’s a quirky, comical love story. Hepburn plays a princess in town for a goodwill tour, Peck a journalist for an American news bureau who misses his big interview with HRH. When he helps a young, seemingly drunk woman one night and lets her sleep it off in his apartment, he realizes he may have the scoop of his career as the next day’s news reports say the princess has canceled her engagements due to illness. And then he pieces the two together. What follows is a grand romp, with Peck playing the regular joe and local guide to the princess, who just wants to shed the royal obligations and enjoy a little freedom for a change. Their tour of Rome proves the perfect catalyst for their budding romance, and it’s impossible not to have the same effect on the audience. –Corina Quinn

To Catch a Thief (1955)

Cary Grant as a cat burglar, Grace Kelly as a rich debutante, falling in love under the guidance of Alfred Hitchcock? Sold. This stunning thriller was filmed in Cannes and Nice and perfectly captures the Golden Age of travel we always wax poetic about, that time when bringing a gold lamé gown to the beach was a no-brainer. – Meredith Carey

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

Russia during the Soviet Revolution doesn't exactly sound like a prime tourist destination, but director David Lean makes a big argument for the country's haunting beauty in this romantic epic (even thought it was actually shot in Spain). From the opulence of Imperial Moscow to the flowering countryside of the Urals to the windswept Siberian tundra, Lean's camera is as much as in love with the landscape as it is with Julie Christie's doe-eyed Lara. – Jenna Scherer

The Endless Summer (1966)

“Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world,” sang the Beach Boys; and if ever a film embodied that mindset, it’s Bruce Brown’s 1966 surfer documentary. Brown shadowed buddies Robert August and Mike Hynson on a round-the-world surfing trip, filming their travels to places like Hawaii , New Zealand, and South Africa as they crested waves and met like-minded surf obsessives. The film’s impact on surf culture and tourism was huge, thanks in no small part to Brown’s cinematography, as well as the subjects’ ability to make riding those impossibly large waves seem effortless. – Amy Plitt

Lindsey Tramuta

Lauren Burvill

Meaghan Kenny

Sarah James

Two For the Road (1967)

Travel is a constant theme in this romantic dramedy about a married couple, played by Albert Finney and Aubrey Hepburn. The movie starts off with a road trip to Saint-Tropez, and as they drive through France, the audience is treated to flashbacks of previous trips that have affected their relationship. - Jenni Miller

Easy Rider (1969)

Released the year of the Woodstock festival—perhaps the biggest event of the ’60s counterculture movement— Easy Rider couldn’t have come out at a better time in history. The film plays out like a motorcycle travelogue, following Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) on their sojourn from Mexico to Los Angeles to New Orleans . Shot on a shoestring budget, the film is flush with desert landscapes and towns that the pair of nogoodniks (and co-stars, like a young Jack Nicholson) pass through on their drug-and-booze-fueled hippie adventure. – Will Levith

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

While the 2017 remake of Murder on the Orient Express was pretty to look at , you simply can't beat the 1974 original. The mystery boasts an excellent ensemble cast led by Albert Finney as Agatha Christie's iconic Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. He’s minding his own business on the long-distance train when a fellow passenger is murdered in the middle of the night. Poirot agrees to investigate the murder, along with the train's first-class compartment full of characters, ranging from a Russian princess to a gorgeous young countess. Throw in the snowy Yugoslavian countryside, and train travel has never looked so glamorous. (Minus the murder, of course.) – J.M.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Raiders of the Lost Ark was a giant-sized collaboration between two of the world's biggest blockbuster directors at the time: Steven Spielberg ( Jaws ), who directed, and George Lucas ( Star Wars ), who executive produced. The film follows hunky explorer Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) as he circles the globe on a quest to track down the legendary Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do. With filming locations in France and Tunisia (which stood in for Egypt ), Raiders is travel porn at its mega-blockbuster best. – W.L.

National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)

Vacation was the world’s introduction to the Griswold family, led by accident-prone dad-in-chief Clark (Chevy Chase). The film spoofs the tried-and-true American tradition of the family road trip , taking the Griswold car through at least two real-life national parks—Death Valley and Grand Canyon—on their way to the fictional amusement park, Walley World. Add in an unforgettable cameo from Christie Brinkley and a hit theme song in “Holiday Road,” and you have a movie every vacationer should watch once in their lifetime. – W.L.

Romancing the Stone (1984)

The ’80s were the era of the action movie, but Romancing the Stone took that concept and blew it out, mixing in pinches of Indiana Jones and pulpy romance novel. Co-starring Reagan Era sex-symbols Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, the adventure begins when novelist Joan Wilder (Turner) travels to Colombia in search of her kidnapped sister. – W.L.

Out of Africa (1985)

Meryl Streep and Robert Redford star in this tragic love story about a married baroness who falls for a big-game hunter, based on the autobiographical novel by Isak Dinesen. Filmed on location in the U.K. and Kenya, including the Shaba National Game Reserve , Out of Africa feels about as epic as the doomed love affair between two very different people. – J.M.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)

Set around Thanksgiving, Planes uses the travel rush in the days leading up to the holiday as a more-than-worthy comedic vehicle. Steve Martin goofs as Neal Page, who faces a series of travel nightmares on his trip from New York City to Chicago in advance of Turkey Day. After his flight is canceled due to inclement weather, Page ends up sharing his trip home with salesman Del Griffith, played by the late, great John Candy. The actors' chemistry is hard to deny… especially when they’re sleeping in the same bed together on the road. –W.L.

Withnail & I (1987)

“We’ve gone on holiday by mistake!” Withnail’s (Richard E. Grant) desperate moan is the centerpiece of this British cult comedy, which sees two hard-drinking, unemployed actors escaping the horrors of their impoverished London flat with a trip to the countryside. Naturally, the countryside turns out to be even worse. But the desolate, windswept beauty of Cumbria, in Northern England, is the perfect setting for their self-created drama and melancholy. – J.S.

Thelma & Louise (1991)

Thelma & Louise reinvented the concept of the buddy movie by putting two women on the road, escaping good-for-nothing men and setting off on an adventure of their own making. For the first time, women were at the center of the picaresque. Ultimately, Thelma and Louise don't get their happy ending, but the best coda is knowing their movie paved the way for countless other women to hit the road on their own. – Lilit Marcus

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

Guy Pearce, Hugo Weaving, and Terence Stamp star as two drag performers and a transwoman who travel to Alice Springs, Australia , in a lavender-hued school bus they've named Priscilla. A road trip across the Outback serves as a dusty backdrop for personal revelations and general awesomeness, like a fireside lip-sync performance of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive." – J.M.

Before Sunrise (1995)

Richard Linklater turned the stroll-and-talk into an art form in his slow-cinema trilogy. It all began with this quiet, lovely indie, which features a baby-faced Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy flirting and philosophizing as they wander the cobblestone streets of Vienna after hours. The city becomes the third character in the romance, just as Paris would nine years later in Before Sunset, and Messenia, Greece, nine years after that in Before Midnight. All three movies are a testament to travel's power to realign your perception of your own life. – J.S.

The English Patient (1996)

From its star-crossed love story to its sweeping cinematic shots, few movies of the modern era are as lavishly romantic as this adaption of Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize–winning novel. With a storyline split between pre-war Egypt and post-war Italy, director Anthony Minghella gives us artfully crafted glimpses of both locations: a bombed-out villa in Tuscany and Lawrence of Arabia -esque sweeps of the Egyptian desert (actually filmed in Tunisia). – J.S.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

It may be creepy as hell, but The Talented Mr. Ripley also happens to be one of the most beautiful depictions of Italy ever captured on film. Set in the 1950s, the movie follows a group of pretty young things (including Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Matt Damon as the titular sociopath) on their luxurious-slash-murderous holiday, from the pristine beaches in Lazio to the opulent hotels in Venice . – Caitlin Morton

The Beach (2000)

Richard (played by a boyish Leonardo DiCaprio) finds himself tramping from one Thai hostel to the next, desperately searching for something meaningful. A tip from a fellow traveler in Bangkok sends him on a journey to a hard-to-reach island, described as the ultimate paradise—white sands, clear water, and only a handful of other travelers who’ve sworn to keep its location a secret. But, of course, paradise isn't exactly what it seems—and the same goes for real life too, as fans have since trashed the filming location , Maya Beach, forcing its closure. – Megan Spurrell

Y Tu Mamá También (2001)

Y Tu Mamá También follows two best friends and a sexy older woman as they road trip through Mexico, searching for a magical (and fictional) beach called Heaven’s Mouth. Director Alfonso Cuarón shows the beautiful nature of Oaxaca , but also gives a no-holds-bar glimpse into the poverty that exists in Mexico—an aspect that most films set there simply gloss over. – C.M.

Amélie (2001)

Paris is one big shiny confection in this sun-drenched modern fairy tale. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's camera looks at the city through candy-colored lenses, primarily following his quirky-loner heroine (Audrey Tautou) through the winding streets of Montmartre. Everything seems to be lit from within, from the green water of the Canal Saint-Martin to the lurid red lights of a Pigalle sex shop. The city has never looked so dreamy. – J.S.

L’Auberge Espagnole (2002)

For anyone who’s ever studied or lived abroad, discovering L’Auberge Espagnole (i.e. “the Spanish Inn”) is like finding the Rosetta Stone. The film follows a French student, Xavier, who travels to Barcelona in search of himself. Cooped up in a giant apartment with six other contemporaries—all from different countries—Xavier wades through the muddy waters of cohabitation with men and women who don’t share his customs or language. Look out for a fantastic post- Amélie cameo by Audrey Tautou. – W.L.

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Steven Spielberg's stylish caper tells the real-life story of Frank Abagnale (Leonardo DiCaprio), a teenage con artist who manages to avoid the feds while pulling off elaborate schemes. Abagnale famously impersonated a Pan Am pilot, and the film plays this up with plenty of vintage air travel eye candy. – A.P.

Catch a glimpse of Eero Saarinen's space-age TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, in a conversation between Abagnale and Carl Hanratty, played by Tom Hanks. The terminal has been turned into a hotel , which just officially opened in May 2019. – M.C.

Lost in Translation (2003)

Lost in Translation chronicles the budding friendship of two Americans in Tokyo (played with the perfect amount of resignation by Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson), shot in typically beautiful Sofia Coppola fashion. From the upmarket Park Hyatt hotel to the neon-filled karaoke bars and streets, the movie is like a tourism ad for Tokyo. But more importantly, it’s a melancholy portrayal of loneliness—even in a city filled with millions of people. – C.M.

Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)

Before there was Eat, Pray, Love , there was Under the Tuscan Sun —the story of a woman who buys a villa in Italy after her marriage falls apart. As we watch Frances (Diane Lane) renovate her gorgeous new house and take day trips to the Amalfi Coast, the thought of dropping everything to move to Tuscany suddenly doesn’t seem so ridiculous. – C.M.

Sideways (2004)

The allure of California’s fantastic vineyards is well known (and documented), but wine culture still has a sniff of exclusivity. That’s what makes Sideways, whose wine-touring protagonist is actually a middle-aged slob, so relatable—and hilarious. Aside from telling a great story with great characters, the movie also happens to showcase some of the most beautiful vineyards and tasting rooms in Santa Barbara. Have a glass while you watch—just not merlot. – C.M.

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

This is where it all began for Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Gael García Bernal), whose road trip across Latin America with his pal Alberto Granado (Rodrigo de la Serna) opened Che's eyes to political injustice. Director Walter Salles filmed their travels through major landmarks in South America, as per Che's memoir, from the Andes mountain range to Machu Picchu and even a leper colony in San Pablo. – J.M.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

And you thought your family road trips were dysfunctional. How about cramming your elderly father-in-law, voluntarily mute son, suicidal brother, overworked husband, and quirky daughter with beauty queen aspirations into a lemon of a VW bus? Toni Collette manages just fine (sort of). I'm stressed just thinking about it, but somehow Little Miss Sunshine manages to find that perfect intersection of humor and nostalgia that makes you feel warm and fuzzy by the time the movie ends. – M.C.

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

Wes Anderson reimagines the all-American family road trip as a rail journey across India. Set on a cramped train rattling across the subcontinent, Darjeeling juxtaposes the claustrophobia of travel against the backdrop of Rajasthan's vast open spaces . Anderson's love of strange and beautiful objects is very much at home in the colorful, busy aesthetic of India; but the movie's most arresting visuals come in the form of barren desert and mountain landscapes. – J.S.

Into the Wild (2007)

The true story of Christopher "Alexander Supertramp" McCandless's disappearance and demise in the Alaskan wilderness can be viewed as poetic or moronic, depending who you talk to. But there's no denying the essential sense of beauty and desolation in Sean Penn's filmic take on the story. As McCandless, Emile Hirsch rides the rails, kayaks the Colorado River, summits snowy peaks, races into the Pacific, and embodies a classically American vision of unchecked wanderlust—exuberant, unstoppable, and foolish. – J.S.

In Bruges (2008)

"Maybe that's what hell is: The entire rest of eternity spent in effin' Bruges ." Cinema has given us few vacationers as reluctant as Ray (Colin Farrell), an Irish hit man lying low in Belgium's most picturesque city. With its gentle, touristy beauty, the medieval town makes an unlikely setting for Martin McDonagh's darkly comic tale of mob justice—which, of course, only makes it funnier. – J.S.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Woody Allen movies usually pay homage to New York City, but he switched geographical gears for 2008’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona . The film shows the adventures and subsequent love affairs of two young women visiting Barcelona , and the city ends up becoming a character itself. As you see all of the gorgeous architecture and landscapes through these tourists’ eyes, you’ll want to hop on a plane and listen to acoustic Spanish guitar immediately. – C.M.

Up might have been rendered as a digital “cartoon” in the vein of Toy Story , but it’s anything but a kid's film. A heart-wrenching tale of love and loss, the film follows septuagenarian Carl (voiced to crotchety perfection by Ed Asner) and his young friend, Russell, as they travel to South America together in Carl’s house-turned-dirigible (we’ll leave it up to your imagination). Up is one of those rare travel films that makes you realize that you’re just floating on like everybody else is on this giant, blue orb called Earth, with nothing holding you down except maybe a little gravity. Have a box of tissues handy. – W.L.

Up in the Air (2009)

George Clooney stars as Ryan, a “downsizing expert” (i.e., companies hire him to fly all across the country to inform strangers they’ve lost their job) who loves life on the road. An obsessive frequent flyer, he’s also about to reach his goal of getting a million miles. The arrival of a young upstart Natalie (Anna Kendrick) who wants to downsize via video conferencing—possibly eliminating their need to travel—sets the two on the road, for him to mentor her. He also meets Alex (Vera Farmiga), a woman equally in love with her transient life, and the two begin meeting up when their schedules overlap. Natalie’s growing disillusionment with the business they’re in, along with Ryan’s deepening relationship with Alex, begin to challenge his cherished way of life, and make him question what that collection of miles is really worth. – C.Q.

Away We Go (2009)

A few months before their baby is due, Verona (Maya Rudolph) and Burt (John Krasinski) decide to take a road trip to find the perfect location to raise their family. Their journey takes them from Phoenix and Tucson to Madison and Montreal , a city that has never seemed more friendly or inviting. The movie is a wonderful tour of North America’s cities, as well as a touching tribute to love and family. – C.M.

The Trip (2010)

Not quite a buddy comedy—you get the sense that the characters played by British comedians Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan may not even like each other very much—this meandering 2010 film is hilarious nevertheless. Brydon and Coogan road-trip through England to dine in fancy restaurants, all the while one-upping each other’s jokes and pondering the meaning of life, death, and relationships. Come for the beautiful shots of the English countryside , but stay for the goofy jokes—particularly the brilliant bit riffing on Michael Caine and Sean Connery impressions. – A.P.

Midnight in Paris (2011)

Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson, is a wide-eyed screenwriter and aspiring novelist on a trip to Paris with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams). Like many tourists in the City of Light, he retraces the steps of Parisian creatives past, drinking coffee (and absinthe) in the same places they once did—until, late one night, a car of these very icons appears, sweeping him back in time to an evening of revelry among the literati of the 1920s. Sure it's time travel, but past or present, Paris always enchants. – M.S.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)

Facing widowhood, and the realities of aging, a handful of Brits decide to flip retirement on its head. Rather than succumb to creaking stairlifts and hospital-grade linens that come with retirement at home, they follow advertisements for the Marigold Hotel in Jaipur, India , which promises grandiose accommodations at a bargain—and an exhilarating second act. Cue tangled love stories, easy laughs, and endearing fish-out-of-water moments delivered by a crowd-pleasing ensemble cast (including Judi Dench, Celia Imrie, and Bill Nighy), who prove how deeply travel can stir us, at any age. – M.S.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

Walter Mitty is the visual embodiment of "wanderlust," following a daydreaming, work-laden Life magazine employee (played by Ben Stiller) as he embarks on a journey his own imagination couldn't have conjured. Looking for one lost, cover-worthy photo slide from renowned photojournalist Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn), Mitty heads from the streets of Manhattan to Greenland to Iceland and even to the Himalayas. It's a stunning, fantastical movie that'll get even an armchair traveler up to the passport office. – M.C.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Of all the fictional hotels in the cinematic world, none come close to rivaling the top-notch service of the Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson's hyper-stylized confection. Complete with a world-class dining room and pink façade, the hotel owes much of its success to Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), the most dedicated concierge of all time. Whether he’s fighting off murderous armies or providing, er, "company" to the older female guests, it becomes immediately clear that Gustave would truly do anything for his beloved GBH. – C.M.

Tracks (2014)

Standing in for real-life writer Robyn Davidson, Mia Wasikowska travels across the breathtaking landscape of Western Australia with only four camels and a beloved dog for company. Her occasional human visitors include a photographer for National Geographic (Adam Driver), an indigenous Australian elder named Mr. Eddy who guides her through sacred lands, and various tourists who come to gawk at the so-called Camel Lady. Davidson’s solo trip was beyond the pale for a woman in the '70s, but it's still incredibly inspiring today. We'll just leave the camel-training to someone else. – J.M.

Wild (2014)

Reese Witherspoon donned a pair of ill-fitting hiking boots and a giant backpack for her role as Cheryl Strayed , a writer who trekked 1,100 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail after the devastating loss of her mother. (The film is based on Strayed’s best-selling 2012 book of the same name.) Strayed crosses the dusty Mojave, crazy forests, snowy fields, and muddy trails, losing toenails but gaining mental clarity—or at least self-acceptance—along the way. – J.M.

Spectre (2015)

Art imitates life, but this time it was the other way around. The 26th James Bond movie's intro scene follows Daniel Craig through a Mexico City Dia de los Muertos parade that didn't actually exist until enough tourists showed up that the city decided to create one in the movie's image . As in most Bond movies, the plot crosses a multitude of borders, from Austria to Italy to Morocco, as the MI6 agent fights the global criminal organization Spectre and a perfectly villainous Christoph Waltz. – M.C.

Carol (2015)

A forbidden 1950s love affair between shop girl and photographer Therese (Rooney Mara) and soon-to-be divorcee Carol (Cate Blanchett) grows stronger on a winding road trip, that takes the couple from New York City through Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa, before reality catches up. The Oscar and Golden Globe nominee is a great period piece as well as a love letter to road trips. – M.C.

Call Me By Your Name (2017)

Consider Luca Guadagnino's Call Be By Your Name a starter guide to the Italian countryside life (specifically in Bergamo, and greater Lombardy) you've always wanted: Riding bikes through hundred-year-old piazzas, fossil-diving in Lake Garda, and waking up to a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs and freshly picked peaches. – Rachel Coleman

Roma (2018)

Another Mexico-based film directed by Alfonso Cuarón, Netflix’s Roma follows the story of Cleo, an indigenous woman working as a maid in 1970s Mexico City (Cuarón hometown). The sweeping black-and-white masterpiece provides glimpses of CMDX's Colonia Roma neighborhood, complete with shuttered house-fronts and laundry fluttering on clothes lines across the rooftops. While Colonia Roma is a tad more gentrified today (think lots of coffee shops and Airbnb properties ), Cuarón's film perfectly captures the neighborhood he grew up in some 50 years ago. – C.M.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Crazy Rich Asians tells the story of Rachel Chu, a Chinese-American professor who travels to Singapore to meet her fiancé's wealthy family. The world of Singapore's old-money elite is filled with yacht parties and royal weddings, but between all that extravagance, Rachel—and viewers—get glimpses of the city's greatest hits: Gardens by the Bay , the infinity pool of Marina Bay Sands , Chinatown's pastel-colored shophouses, and allll the hawker center street food . If you saw the movie and immediately started researching your next trip to Singapore, you're not alone: Orbitz reportedly saw a 20% spike in inquiries to the city in the week following the movie's premiere. Now if only we could figure out how to spend the night in the Young family mansion... – C.M.

Midsommar (2019)

Midsommar was easily one of the most discomforting movies of 2019. But two things shone beautifully through all the creepy cult rituals: Florence Pugh’s performance, and the sunny countryside of Sweden. (Most scenes of the Hårga village were actually filmed just outside of Budapest, but the filmmakers definitely tricked us into wanting to visit Sweden in June.) Scandinavia’s famous midnight sun was used as a tool to warp time and unsettle viewers, but it sure did shed some serious light on northern Sweden’s decorated farmhouses, verdant meadows, and coniferous forests. Just stay away from the mushroom tea, and you’ll be fine. – C.M.

The Farewell (2019)

Golden Globe award–winning Awkwafina stars in this movie about the Chinese-American experience, the power of family, and the importance of levity in the face of grief. The movie follows Billi (played by Awkwafina) as she heads from her home in New York City to visit her grandmother and extended family in Changchun, in northeast China. Visiting under the guise of a wedding—and the reality of a secret cancer diagnosis for her grandmother, Nai Nai—Billi struggles to adjust to mainland Chinese life, and the reality that her grandmother may not always be around. It's absolutely a tear jerker. But it's also funny, sweet, and ultimately heart-warming, with the lives of first-generation Americans and daily life in China taking center stage. –M.C.  

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019)

Quentin Tarantino’s films tend to focus more on plot and character development than setting, but the director still knows how to incorporate location into his complex storylines. (I’d lie if I said the Kill Bill movies didn’t make me want to visit Japan even more than I already did.) The best example of this technique can be seen in his latest movie, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood . Rather than relying on mood and language alone, Tarantino uses slow pans across Hollywood Boulevard and backdrops of recognizable sites like Westwood Village to give us a (slightly fantastical) sense of Los Angeles in the late 1960s. Many scenes were filmed in still-standing bars in restaurants , in case you want to recreate some of the less murder-y storylines for yourself. – C.M.

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THE 10 BEST Europe Bus Tours

Bus tours in europe.

• Historical & Heritage Tours
• Walking Tours
• Cultural Tours
• Sightseeing Tours
• Up to 1 hour
• 1 to 4 hours
• 4 hours to 1 day
• 5.0 of 5 bubbles
• 4.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• 3.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• 2.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• Likely to Sell Out
• Special Offers

• The ranking of tours, activities, and experiences available on Tripadvisor is determined by several factors including the revenue generated by Tripadvisor from these bookings, the frequency of user clicks, and the volume and quality of customer reviews. Occasionally, newly listed offerings may be prioritized and appear higher in the list. The specific placement of these new listings may vary.

1. Complete Douro Valley Wine Tour with Lunch, Wine Tastings and River Cruise

2. The Original Sound of Music Tour in Salzburg

3. Barcelona in 1 Day: Sagrada Familia, Park Guell,Old Town & Pickup

4. Avila & Segovia Tour with Tickets to Monuments from Madrid

5. Authentic Douro Wine Tour Including Lunch and River Cruise

6. Santorini Classic Catamaran Cruise with Meal Drinks and Transfers

7. Istanbul Bosphorus Dinner Cruise with Unlimited Drinks and Shows

8. Cliffs of Moher Tour Including Wild Atlantic Way and Galway City from Dublin

9. Pompeii, Amalfi Coast and Positano Day Trip from Rome

10. Golden Circle, Blue Lagoon with Ticket and Kerid Volcanic Crater

11. Big Bus London Hop-On Hop-Off Tour and River Cruise

12. Versailles Palace Live Tour with Gardens Access from Paris

13. Iceland South Coast Full Day Small-Group Tour from Reykjavik

14. Auschwitz-Birkenau Guided Tour with Ticket & Transfer from Krakow

15. Day Trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Wieliczka Salt Mine from Krakow including Lunch

16. Sintra and Cascais Small-Group Day Trip from Lisbon

17. Park Guell & Sagrada Familia Tour with Skip the Line Tickets

18. Normandy D-Day Landing Beaches Day Trip with Cider Tasting & Lunch from Paris

19. Skip The Line Pompeii Guided Tour & Mt. Vesuvius from Sorrento

20. Best of Istanbul: 1, 2 or 3-Day Private Guided Istanbul Tour

21. Montserrat Half-Day Tour with Tapas and Gourmet Wines

22. Normandy American D-Day Beaches Full Day Tour from Bayeux

23. Tuscany Region Day Trip from Rome with Lunch & Wine Tasting

24. Loch Ness, Scottish Highlands, Glencoe and Pitlochry Tour

25. Big Bus Paris Hop-On Hop-Off Tour with Optional River Cruise

26. Guided Tour To Nærøyfjorden, Flåm And Stegastein - Viewpoint Cruise

27. Dublin to Cliffs of Moher, Burren, Wild Atlantic and Galway Tour

28. Douro Valley Tour: 2 Vineyard Visits, River Cruise, Winery Lunch

29. Girona & Costa Brava Small-Group Tour with Pickup from Barcelona

30. Toledo Tour with Cathedral, Synagoge & St Tome Church from Madrid

What travelers are saying.

• Evan A 8 contributions 0 5.0 of 5 bubbles A small group tour with great wine and port. Worth the escape from the city to see the amazing views. Our guide, Pedro, was fantastic in sharing his knowledge of the valley and wine making. The tour gets you away from the big companies and let's you see two smaller operations. We think we know enough to start collecting the right type of Ports! Lots of DOC wines and ports to try. The meal was honestly one of our best of the week (4 courses) and felt homemade. Got to climb into a wine barrel as well!! Read more Review of: Authentic Douro Wine Tour Including Lunch and River Cruise Written June 6, 2024 This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.

Bus Flicks: 15 Bus Films You've Got to Watch

A collection of films to inspire your bus life adventures,  because every bus has a story..

More and more retired buses are getting new life through custom conversions, but this growing scene is part of a long legacy. Bus life is more than a trend, it's a culture.

From documentaries and historical dramas to fantasies and dystopian adventures, bus culture has shaped how we navigate the world. So, if you find yourself in one place dreaming about life on the road or if you have a couple of hours to spare after a drive in your home on wheels, here are 15 bus films to binge-watch this summer.

Let’s ride!

Captain Fantastic

Year Released: 2016 Length: 1h 58m Director: Matt Ross Genre: Drama Where you can find it: Vudu, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, iTunes

After losing his wife, survivalist Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen) is left to raise their six kids on his own. Set in Washington State, the family eventually leaves the forest to venture into suburbia in their 1993 Blue Bird bus conversion named Steve. The bus from the movie was on sale for just $6,000 in 2017, set props and all - a great buy if we weren’t a few years too late!

Year Released: 2011 Length: 1h 30m Director: Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood Genre: Documentary Where to watch it: Tubi, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Amazon Prime Video, Sling TV, iTunes

This documentary follows “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” author Ken Kesey and his Merry Band of Pranksters on a drug-fuelled trip across the country in their converted school bus. It is a classic tale of bus culture shaping the counter-culture of the 1960s. The film uses Kesey’s footage from his unfinished film and features cameos by The Grateful Dead, Allen Ginsberg, and “On the Road” author, Jack Kerouac.

Into the Wild

Year Released: 2007 Length: 2h 28m Director: Sean Penn Genre: Adventure/Drama Where to watch it: Vudu, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Starz, SlingTV, iTunes

Based on the book by Jon Krakauer, this true story chronicles the life of Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) after he set out on the road in North America during the early 1990s. As told through letters McCandless’s journal and letters he wrote to his sister during his travels, McCandless eventually makes his way to an abandoned bus in Alaska territory. The iconic bus does not make an appearance until the end of the film, but Into the Wild embodies the spirit of life on the road that often accompanies bus life.

Where’s the bus now? The actual bus McCandless stayed in was removed from outside of Denali National Park, Alaska, in June 2020 for safekeeping after it proved to be a dangerous destination for inspired travelers.

Smoke Signals

Year Released: 1998 Length: 1h 29m Director: Chris Eyre Genre: Indie film Where to watch it: Vudu, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, iTunes

This award-winning Canadian-American production centers on two neighbors, Victor Joseph (Adam Beach) and Thomas Builds-the-Fire (Evan Adams), from the Coeur D’Alene Indian Reservation who travel from Idaho to Arizona to retrieve the ashes of Victor’s father. The bus ride from the reservation serves as a backdrop for the pair to explore their identities as indigenous men. According to the film’s screenplay writer, Smoke Signals remains, “the only film directed, written, and co-produced by Natives to receive major national and international distribution.” 

Almost Famous

Year Released: 2000 Length: 2h 42m Director: Cameron Crowe Genre: Drama Where to watch it: Vudu, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Amazon Prime Video, Sling TV, iTunes

Next stop, 1973. The film is based on screenwriter and director Cameron Crowe’s real-life experience as a young journalist for Rolling Stone on the road with famous ‘70s bands. But it also sheds light on a unique brand of bus life: the band tour. Almost Famous is an insider look at life between shows on the road filled with roadies, groupies, and band drama. In one famous scene on the bus, the film’s main character William says he has to go home to which “band-aid” Penny Lane replies, “You are home.”

A League of their Own

Year Released: 1992 Length: 2h 8m Director: Penny Marshall Genre: Sport/Comedy Where to watch it: Vudu, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

Year Released: 1981 Length: 1h 36m Director: George Miller Genre: Action/Adventure Where to watch it: iTunes, MaxGo, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, VUDU “Greetings from the Humungus!” Looking like a bus conversion with a partial roof raise, the steel-clad dystopian adventure rig plays a small yet memorable role as the bus used for a gate of a compound in post-apocalyptic Australia. The film, the second installment of the Mad Max movies, follows former highway patrolman Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) through the desert in his V8 Pursuit Special as he avenges the murder of his family by a biker gang.

Expedition Happiness

Year Released : 2017 Length: 1h 35m Director: Selima Taibi Genre: Documentary Where to watch it: Netflix, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Amazon Prime Video (there is an English full-length version with subtitles for free on YouTube, but you didn't hear that from us). 

This film is probably the closest narrative to the way bus life is often portrayed in the media today. It features a young Millenial couple who buy and convert a school bus into a chic “loft on wheels” and travel through North America with their dog, Rudi. It stars German filmmaker Felix Starck and musician/director Selima Taibi whose music makes up the film’s soundtrack. It takes on more of a vlog-style than the other documentaries on this list and does a good job of blending the beautiful scenery with music, while also showcasing some of the hardships that can come with life on the road.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Year Released: 1994 Length: 1h 44minutes Director: Stephan Elliot Genre: Drama/comedy Where to watch it: Vudu, rent on Google Play Movies or YouTube

This film takes viewers on a wild ride through the Australian outback when a transgender woman and two drag queens set out from Sydney to Alice Springs for a string of performances in a bedazzled bus conversion named Priscilla. This movie is an outrageous rhinestone in the rough with over-the-top dance numbers, lots of profanity, and some sticky situations. But at its heart, the movie is about acceptance. The ‘90s film is credited for helping to bring positive portrayals of the LGBTQ community to mainstream audiences. It also provides insight into what bus life in Australia's outback would be like.

Year Released: 2016 Length: 1h 19m Director: Matt D'Avella Genre: Documentary Where to watch it: Netflix, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Amazon Prime Video, iTunes

Although this film does not feature a bus, many see it as a source of inspiration to downsize and live intentionally. It serves as an introduction to minimalism that leads some to bus life. The documentary follows Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus who tell the now-familiar story of ditching the corporate world for a more meaningful life with less. They take viewers on the road to promote their book and website  and introduce others who share their understanding of minimalism.

Freedom Riders

Year Released: 2010 Length: 2h Director : Stanley Nelson Genre: Historical Documentary Where to watch it: Amazon Prime Video, PBS.org, iTunes

What it was like when riding a bus meant risking your life. This historical documentary covers the story of the Freedom Riders, black and white activists who protested the segregation of American transportation and bus terminals after it was found to be unconstitutional. From May to December 1961 several freedom rides took place throughout the American South resulting in white mob violence, bus bombing, and calls for assistance from Federal Marshals to protect the non-violent protestors.

Forrest Gump

Year Released: 1994 Length: 2h 22m Director: Robert Zemeckis Genre: Dramatic Comedy Where to watch it: Vudu, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Starz, Sling TV, iTunes

You may remember a lot about this film like the running, the box of chocolates, and more running, but do you recall the steady stream of buses? It is the story of the latter part of American 20th-century history seen through the eyes of an unlikely cultural hero. The film begins at a bus stop and ends at one. Along the way, we are introduced to the Vietnam-era Army through one bus and left behind at an anti-war rally by another. If you look closely, Forrest Gump is a great example of how buses are both literal and figurative vehicles taking us through life itself.

Year Released: 1994 Length: 1h 56m Director: Jan de Bont Genre: Action/Adventure Where to watch it: Vudu, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Amazon Prime Video, iTunes

We couldn’t resist putting this ‘90s movie starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock on the list. Anyone living bus life would marvel at the fact that the bus stays above 50 mph so so long. For many of us, our bus conversions would take half of the movie just to get up to that speed.

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Life in the Bus Lane

Year Released: 2017 Length: 51m Director: Brock Butterfield Genre: Documentary Where to watch it: YouTube

The tale of Bus Life Adventure and The Bus Fair founder, Brock Butterfield, and how he overcame a near-fatal bout with ulcerative colitis to become a professional snowboarder, later converting and traveling the continent in a short bus turned tiny home on wheels. The film shows the reality of what it takes to build and maintain a school bus conversion.

De Griezelbus (Dutch)/ El Bus Del Terror

Year Released: 2005 Length: 1h 39m Director: Pieter Kuijpers Genre: Horror Where to watch it: complete version en Espanol available on YouTube

Based on the six-part children’s book series by Paul van Loon, this Dutch production captures the imagination similar to the Harry Potter  series or Chronicles of Narnia , released at the same time, but it features De Greizelbus or "the horror bus." It is geared toward a younger audience but fun to see how bus life can take on a creepy and downright sinister tone.

 Thanks for reading and watching, what did you think of our list? Let us know if we need to add something. See you on the HWY!

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The Grand Tour

By Evan Osnos

For several millennia, ordinary people in China were discouraged from venturing beyond the Middle Kingdom, but before the recent New Year’s holiday—the Year of the Rabbit began on February 3rd—local newspapers were dense with international travel ads. It felt as if everyone was getting away, and I decided to join them. When the Chinese travel industry polls the public on its dream destinations, no place ranks higher than Europe. China’s travel agents compete by carving out tours that conform less to Western notions of a grand tour than to the likes and dislikes of their customers. I scanned some deals online: “Big Plazas, Big Windmills, Big Gorges” was a four-day bus tour that emphasized photogenic countryside in the Netherlands and Luxembourg; “Visit the New and Yearn for the Past in Eastern Europe” had a certain Cold War charm, but I wasn’t sure I needed that in February.

I chose the “Classic European,” a popular bus tour that would traverse five countries in ten days. Payment was due up front. Airfare, hotels, meals, insurance, and assorted charges came to the equivalent in yuan of about twenty-two hundred dollars. In addition, every Chinese member of the tour was required to put up a bond amounting to seventy-six hundred dollars—more than two years’ salary for the average worker—to prevent anyone from disappearing before the flight home. I was the thirty-eighth and final member of the group. We would depart the next morning at dawn.

I was told to proceed to Door No. 25 of Terminal 2 at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport, where I found a slim forty-three-year-old man in a gray tweed overcoat and rectangular glasses. He had floppy, parted hair, and introduced himself as Li Xingshun, our guide. To identify us in crowds, each of us received a canary-yellow lapel badge bearing a cartoon dragon with smoke curling from its nostrils, striding in hiking boots above our motto: “The Dragon Soars for Ten Thousand Li.” (A li is about a third of a mile.)

We settled into coach on an Air China non-stop flight to Frankfurt, and I opened a Chinese packet of “Outbound Group Advice,” which we’d been urged to read carefully. The specificity of the instructions suggested a history of unpleasant surprises: “Don’t travel with knockoffs of European goods, because customs inspectors will seize them and penalize you.” There was an intense focus on staying safe in Europe. “You will see Gypsies begging beside the road, but do not give them any money. If they crowd around and ask to see your purse, yell for the guide.” Conversing with strangers was discouraged. “If someone asks you to help take a photo of him, watch out: this is a prime opportunity for thieves.” I’d been in and out of Europe over the years, but the instructions put it in a new light, and I was oddly reassured to be travelling with three dozen others and a guide. The notes concluded with a piece of Confucius-style advice that framed our trip as a test of character: “He who can bear hardship should carry on.”

We landed in Frankfurt in heavy fog and gathered in the terminal for the first time as a full group. We ranged in age from six-year-old Lü Keyi to his seventy-year-old grandfather, Liu Gongsheng, a retired mining engineer, who was escorting his wife, Huang Xueqing, in her wheelchair. Just about everyone belonged to the sector of Chinese society—numbering between a hundred and fifty million and two hundred million people—that qualifies as the country’s middle class: a high-school science teacher, an interior decorator, a real-estate executive, a set designer for a television station, a gaggle of students. There was nothing of the countryside about my companions—the rare glimpse of a horse grazing in a French pasture the next day sent everyone scrambling for cameras—and yet they had only begun to be at home in the world. With few exceptions, this was everybody’s first trip out of Asia.

Li introduced me, the lone non-Chinese member of the group, and everyone offered a hearty welcome. Ten-year-old Liu Yifeng, who had a bowl cut and wore a black sweatshirt covered in white stars, smiled up at me and asked, “Do all foreigners have noses that big?”

We boarded a gold-colored coach, which shuddered to life. I took a window seat and was joined by a sturdy eighteen-year-old in a black puffy vest and wire-frame glasses. He had long, dark bangs and a suggestion of whiskers on his upper lip. He introduced himself as Xu Nuo; in Chinese, the name means “promise,” which he liked to use as an English name. Promise was a freshman at Shanghai Normal University, where he studied economics and shared two sets of bunk beds with three roommates. His parents were seated across the aisle. I asked him why his family had chosen to travel rather than visit relatives over the holiday. “That’s the tradition, but Chinese people are getting wealthier,” he said. “Besides, we’re too busy to travel the rest of the year.” We spoke in Chinese, but when he was surprised he’d say, “Oh, my Lady Gaga!,” an English expression he’d picked up at school.

In the front row of the bus, Li stood facing the group with a microphone in hand, a posture he would retain for most of our waking hours in the days ahead. In the life of a Chinese tourist, guides play an especially prominent role—translator, raconteur, and field marshal—and Li projected a calm, seasoned air. He often referred to himself in the third person—Guide Li—and he prided himself on efficiency. “Everyone, our watches should be synchronized,” he said. “It is now 7:16 P.M .” He implored us to be five minutes early for every departure. “We flew all the way here,” he said. “Let’s make the most of it.”

He outlined the plan: we would be spending many hours on the bus, during which he would deliver lectures on history and culture, so as not to waste precious minutes at the sights, when we could be taking photographs. He informed us that French scientists had determined that the optimal length of a tour guide’s lecture is seventy-five minutes. “Before Guide Li was aware of that, the longest speech I ever gave on a bus was four hours,” he added.

Li urged us to soak our feet in hot water before bed, to fight jet lag, and to eat extra fruit, which might balance the European infusion of bread and cheese into our diets. Since it was the New Year’s holiday, there would be many other Chinese visitors, and we must be vigilant not to board the wrong bus at rest stops. He introduced our driver, Petr Pícha, a phlegmatic former trucker and hockey player from the Czech Republic, who waved wearily to us from the well of the driver’s seat. (“For six or seven years, I drove Japanese tourists all the time,” he told me later. “Now it’s all Chinese.”) Li had something else to say about the schedule: “In China, we think of bus drivers as superhumans who can work twenty-four hours straight, no matter how late we want them to drive. But in Europe, unless there’s weather or traffic, they’re only allowed to drive for twelve hours!”

He explained that every driver carries a card that must be inserted into a slot in the dashboard; too many hours and the driver could be punished. “We might think you could just make a fake card or manipulate the records—no big deal,” Li said. “But, if you get caught, the fine starts at eighty-eight hundred euros, and they take away your license! That’s the way Europe is. On the surface, it appears to rely on everyone’s self-discipline, but behind it all there are strict laws.”

We were approaching the hotel—a Best Western in Luxembourg—but first Li briefed us on breakfast. A typical Chinese breakfast consists of a rich bowl of congee (a rice porridge), a deep-fried cruller, and, perhaps, a basket of pork buns. In Europe, he warned, tactfully, “Throughout our trip, breakfast will rarely be more than bread, cold ham, milk, and coffee.” The bus was silent for a moment.

We never saw Luxembourg in the daylight. We were out of the Best Western by dawn and were soon back on the Autobahn. Li asked us to make sure we hadn’t left anything behind, because some of his older travellers used to have a habit of hiding cash in the toilet tank or the ventilation ducts. “The worst case I’ve had was a guest who sewed money into the hem of the curtains,” he said. We headed for our first stop: the modest German city of Trier. Though it’s not quite a household name for most first-time visitors to Europe, Trier has been unusually popular with Chinese tourists ever since Communist Party delegations began arriving, decades ago, to see the birthplace of Karl Marx. My Chinese guidebook, written by a retired diplomat, said it once was described as the Mecca of the Chinese people.

We got off the bus onto a tidy side street lined with peaked-roofed, pastel-colored buildings. The cobblestones were silvery with rain, and Li donned a forest-green felt outback hat and pointed us ahead as he started at a brisk walk. We reached No. 10 Brückenstrasse, a handsome three-story white house with green shutters. “This is where Marx lived. Now it’s a museum,” Li said. We tried the door, but it was locked. Things were slow in the winter, and the museum wouldn’t be open for another hour and a half, so we’d be experiencing Marx’s house only from the outside. (“The sooner we finish here, the sooner we get to Paris,” Li had said.) Beside the front door was a plaque with Marx’s leonine head in profile. The building next door was a fast-food restaurant called Dolce Vita.

Li urged us to stay as long as we wanted, but he also suggested a stop at the supermarket on the corner to buy fruit for the ride ahead. We milled around awkwardly in front of Marx’s house, snapping photographs and dodging cars, until one of the kids pleaded, “I want to go to the supermarket,” and tugged his mother toward the bright storefront. I stood beside Wang Zhenyu, a tall man in his fifties, and we looked up at Marx’s head. “Not many people in America know about him, right?” Wang asked.

“More than you might think,” I said, and added that I’d expected to see more Chinese visitors. Wang laughed. “Young people no longer know anything about all that,” he said. Wang was thin and angular, with the bearing of a self-made man. He had grown up in the eastern commercial city of Wuxi and had been assigned the job of carpenter, until economic reforms took hold and he went into business for himself. He now ran a small clothing factory that specialized in the production of wash-and-wear men’s trousers. He didn’t speak English, but he’d wanted a catchy, international name for his company, so he’d called it Ge-rui-te, a made-up word formed by the Chinese characters that he thought sounded most like the English word “great.”

Wang was an enthusiastic tourist. “I used to be so busy that now I want to travel,” he said. “I always had to buy land, build factories, fix up my house. But now my daughter’s grown and working. I only need to save up for the dowry, which is manageable.” I asked why he and his wife had chosen Europe. “Our thinking is, Go to the farthest places first, while we still have the energy,” he said. Wang and I were among the last to arrive at the supermarket. Our group had stayed at the Chinese Mecca for eleven minutes.

Until recently, Chinese people had abundant reasons not to roam for pleasure. Travelling in ancient China was arduous. As a proverb put it, “You can be comfortable at home for a thousand days, or step out the door and run right into trouble.” Confucius threw guilt into the mix: “While your parents are alive, it is better not to travel far away.” Nevertheless, ancient Buddhist monks visited India, and Zheng He, a fifteenth-century eunuch, famously sailed the emperor’s fleet as far as Africa, to “set eyes on barbarian regions.”

Over the centuries, Chinese migrants settled around the world, but Mao considered tourism anti-Socialist, so it wasn’t until 1978, after his death, that most Chinese gained approval to go abroad for anything other than work or study. First, they were permitted to visit relatives in Hong Kong, and, later, to tour Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. In 1997, the government cleared the way for travellers to venture to other countries in a “planned, organized, and controlled manner.” (China doles out approvals with an eye to geopolitics. Vanuatu became an approved destination in 2005, after it agreed not to give diplomatic recognition to Taiwan.) Eighty per cent of first-time Chinese travellers went in groups, and they soon earned a reputation as passionate, if occasionally overwhelming, guests. At a Malaysian casino hotel in 2005, some three hundred Chinese visitors were issued special meal coupons bearing cartoon pig faces. The hotel said that the illustrations were simply to differentiate Chinese guests from Muslims, who don’t eat pork, but the offended Chinese tourists staged a sit-in, singing the national anthem.

Most countries begin to send large numbers of tourists overseas only when the average citizen has a disposable income of five thousand dollars. But China—where urban residents are at barely half that level—has made travel affordable by booking tickets in bulk and bargaining mercilessly for hotels in distant suburbs. Last year, more than fifty-seven million Chinese people went abroad, ranking China third worldwide in international tourism. The World Tourism Organization predicts that before the end of the decade China will double that.

Europe, initially, was an afterthought. In 2000, more Chinese tourists visited tiny Macao than visited all the countries of Europe combined. But gradually Chinese visitors began staking out a grand tour of their own design. Just as apparatchiks once flocked to Marx’s house, Chinese literature lovers began trooping to a muddy riverbank on the campus of Cambridge University to glimpse a specific stand of willow trees. Xu Zhimo, an adored early-twentieth-century poet who studied in the West, described the willows as “young brides in the setting sun.” When I passed through Cambridge not long ago, Chinese visitors were posing for pictures beside the river while other tourists streamed by. Wang Yixiong, a twenty-three-year-old physicist originally from Henan Province, was on his third visit to town, and this time he had brought a blushing economics student named Chen Si. “We fell in love with each other not long ago,” he told me. “Cambridge is a romantic place.”

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The French hotel group Accor began adding Chinese television and Mandarin-speaking staff. Others were moving beds away from windows, as dictated by feng-shui_._ The more the Chinese went to Europe, the cheaper tours became. By 2009, a British travel-industry report had concluded that “Europe” was such a successful “single, unified” brand in China that individual countries would be wise to put aside pride and delay promoting “sub-brands” such as France or Italy. Europe was less a region on the map than a state of mind, and bundling as many countries as possible into a single week appealed to workers with precious few opportunities to travel. “In China, if you can get ten things for a hundred dollars, that’s still better than getting one thing for a hundred dollars,” Li said.

I strolled back to the bus from Marx’s house with a young couple from Shanghai: Guo Yanjin, a relaxed twenty-nine-year-old who called herself Karen and worked in the finance department of an auto-parts company, and her husband, Gu Xiaojie, an administrative clerk in the department of environmental sanitation, who went by the English name Handy. He had an easy charm and the build of a lineman, six feet tall and barrel-chested. His sweater was maroon and bore an appliqué of a golf bag, but when I asked if he was a golfer he laughed. “Golf is a rich man’s game,” he said.

Handy and Karen had saved up for months for this trip and also received a boost from their parents. Guide Li had urged us not to ruin our vacations by worrying too much about money—he suggested that we pretend the price tags were in yuan instead of euros—but Handy and Karen kept an eye on every cent. Within a few days, they could tell me exactly how much we’d spent on each bottle of water in five countries.

Back on the gold bus, rolling west across the wintry scrub of Champagne-Ardenne, Li wanted to add an important exception to his demands for efficiency. “We have to get used to the fact that Europeans sometimes move slowly,” he said. When shopping in China, he went on, “we’re accustomed to three of us putting our items on the counter at the same time, and then the old lady gives change to three people without making a mistake. Europeans don’t do that.” He continued, “I’m not saying that they’re stupid. If they were, they wouldn’t have developed all this technology, which requires very subtle calculations. They just deal with math in a different way.”

He ended with some advice: “Let them do things their way, because if we’re rushing then they’ll feel rushed, and that will put them in a bad mood, and then we’ll think that they’re discriminating against us, which is not necessarily the case.”

At times, he marvelled at Europe’s high standard of living—bombarding us with statistics on the price of Bordeaux wines or the average height of a well-fed Dutchman—but, if there was ever a time when Chinese visitors marvelled at Europe’s economy, this was not that time. Li made a great show of acting out a Mediterranean life style: “Wake up slowly, brush teeth, make a cup of espresso, take in the aroma.” The crowd laughed. “With a pace like that, how can their economies keep growing? It’s impossible.” He added, “In this world, only when you have diligent, hardworking people will the nation’s economy grow.”

I dozed off, and awoke on the outskirts of Paris. We followed the Seine west and passed the Musée d’Orsay just as the sun bore through the clouds. Li shouted, “Feel the openness of the city!” Cameras whirred, and he pointed out that central Paris had no skyscrapers. “In Shanghai, unless you’re standing right next to the Huangpu River, you can’t get any sense of the city, because there are too many tall buildings.” Europeans, he added, “preserve anything old and valuable.”

At a dock beside the Pont de l’Alma, we boarded a double-decker boat, and as it chugged upriver I chatted with Zhu Zhongming, a forty-six-year-old accountant who was travelling with his wife and daughter. He had grown up in Shanghai and had ventured into real estate just as the local market was surging. “Whenever you bought something, you could make a ton of money,” he said. He was charismatic, with large dimpled cheeks framing a permanent, mischievous smile, and he’d been going abroad since 2004, so others in the group deferred to him. He was drawn to Europe, above all, because of “culture.” (In Chinese surveys, “culture” often leads the list of terms that people associate with Europe. On the negative side, top results include “arrogant” and “poor-quality Chinese food.”)

The boat reached Pont Sully, and turned slowly against the whitecaps on the Seine to head back downriver. Zhu said that Chinese interest in Europe contained a deeply personal motivation: “When Europe was ruling the world, China was strong as well. So why did we fall behind? We’ve been thinking about that ever since.” Indeed, the question of why a civilization that had printing six hundred years before Gutenberg slumped in the fifteenth century runs like a central nerve through China’s analysis of its past and its prospects for a return to greatness. Zhu offered an explanation: “Once we were invaded, we didn’t respond quickly enough.” It was a narrative of victimhood and decline that I’d often heard in China. (Historians also tend to blame the stifling effects of bureaucracy and authoritarianism, among other factors.) But Zhu did not trace all of China’s troubles to foreign invaders. “We cast aside our three core ideas—Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism—and that was a mistake. We were taught Marxist revolutionary ideas from 1949 to 1978.” He paused and watched his wife and daughter snapping photographs at the railing, an orange sun sinking into the city beyond them. “We spent thirty years on what we now know was a disaster,” he said.

The boat docked, and we headed to dinner, walking through the crowds and din of the city for the first time. Karen hugged Handy’s arm, their heads swivelling. We followed Li into a small Chinese storefront, down a flight of stairs, and into a hot, claustrophobic hallway flanked by windowless rooms jammed with Chinese diners. It was a hive of activity invisible from the street, a parallel Paris. There were no empty seats, so Li motioned for us to continue out the back door, where we turned left and entered a second restaurant, also Chinese. Down another staircase, into another windowless room, where dishes arrived: pork braised in brown sauce, bok choy, egg-drop soup, spicy chicken.

Twenty minutes later, we climbed the stairs out into the night, hustling after Li down the block to the Galeries Lafayette, the ten-story department store on the Boulevard Haussmann. The store appeared happily poised for an onslaught from the East: it was decked in red bunting and cartoon bunnies for the Year of the Rabbit. We received Chinese-language welcome cards promising happiness, longevity, and a ten-per-cent discount. On the sixth floor, a restaurant called Sichuan Panda was serving dinner.

Our group moved with purpose. Promise and his parents, followed by Zhu Zhongming and family, turned right, after the Rolex counter, and headed into a luminous Louis Vuitton boutique. A corps of Mandarin-speaking salesgirls, in matching neckerchiefs, worked the counters. On average, a Chinese tourist buys more than a thousand dollars’ worth of tax-free stuff abroad—more luxury bags, watches, and designer clothes than any other nationality, including the Japanese, according to Global Blue, the tax-free-shopping refund service. Chinese tourists abroad spend nearly twice as much on shopping as they do on hotel rooms. Several in our group told me how sorry they were that we weren’t stopping at a place called Aotelaise. The name baffled me. Someone explained that it’s a new Chinese word: “outlets.”

Promise’s mother, Li Ying, pulled out a stack of printouts bearing photographs and model numbers of purses. She tried one after another, swaying back and forth before the mirror, frowning at her reflection. Handy and Karen took one look at the prices and kept walking. Zhu Zhongming urged Li Ying to find a bag with “more nobility.” “That one looks like the same junk we have on the mainland,” he said. She tried a large bag called the Artsy, which cost about fourteen hundred dollars. It had a tan strap and miniature “LV”s tattooed across its chocolate hide. “What do you think?” she asked, and everyone nodded. “I’ll take it.”

That night, we stayed at a hotel in the suburbs called the Dream Castle. It had coats of arms in the lobby and a giant statue of a king in flowing robes.

En route to the Eiffel Tower, the next morning, we passed a group of African street venders, and Li mentioned that the city is a magnet for illegal immigrants. “They don’t have a hukou ,” he said—the document needed to live permanently in a Chinese city. “Why haven’t they been arrested? Because it’s exhausting to arrest them, feed them, and send them home, when they’ll fly right back again tomorrow.” I didn’t sense overwhelming sympathy. The Chinese have been the world’s most abundant migrants, but these days many believe that they have better job prospects at home than abroad. Li joked that Americans and Europeans should be more concerned about Chinese visitors buying up prime real estate. “The European economy is in decline,” he said bluntly. “Times have changed.”

He pointed out the grounds of the French Parliament, which he said had been the site of a recent protest against raising the retirement age, a protest that he found baffling. “Can a place where workers go on strike every day grow economically? Certainly not,” he said. “People here are strangely used to it. Their laws on public demonstrations are very mature. As long as you apply to the government, you have the right to protest on a predetermined route.” This is their “routine way of demanding their rights,” he said, though he didn’t think it was good for tourism. “You can be stuck at one spot for four hours because the streets are blocked. I hope that you all will never encounter a terrible situation like that.”

By midmorning, we were done with the Eiffel Tower and had set off for Versailles. A Chinese-speaking guide met us at the palace gate and led us upstairs. In one of Marie Antoinette’s chambers, the Salon des Nobles de la Reine, he pointed out a blue vase of “beautiful Chinese porcelain, which was stolen from us and brought here.” The Hall of Mirrors, he said, was host not only to royal galas but also to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, in June, 1919—a notorious document in Chinese history, because it allowed German territory in Shandong Province to be placed under Japanese control.

At the Louvre, we picked up another Chinese-speaking guide, a hummingbird of a woman, who shouted, “We have lots to see in ninety minutes, so we need to pick up our feet!” She darted ahead beneath a furled purple umbrella, which she used as a rallying flag, and without breaking stride she taught us some French using Chinese sounds: bonjour could be approximated by pronouncing the Chinese characters ben and zhu , which mean, fittingly, “to chase someone.” We raced after her through the turnstile, and Wang Zhenyu, the pants manufacturer, tried out his new French on the security guard: “ Ben zhu , ben zhu! ”

The guide advised us to focus most on the _san bao—_the three treasures—the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Venus de Milo, and the Mona Lisa. We crowded around each in turn, flanked by other Chinese tour groups as identifiable as rival armies: red pins for the U-Tour travel agency, orange windbreakers for the students from Shenzhen. We’d been going non-stop since before dawn, but the air was charged with diligent curiosity. When we discovered that the elevators were a long detour from our route, I wondered how Huang Xueqing, in her wheelchair, would get to see much of the museum. Then her relatives carried her chair while she hobbled up and down each marble stairway, and rolled her in front of the masterpieces.

By nightfall, another day of touring Europe’s finest sights had kindled a sense of appreciation, albeit with a competitive streak. While we waited for tables—at a Chinese restaurant—Zhu brought up the Zhou dynasty (1046-256 B.C.), the era that produced Confucius, Lao-tzu, and other pillars of Chinese thought. “Back then, we were damn good!” Zhu told a group of us. His wife, Wang Jianxin, rolled her eyes. “Here you go again, always talking about the same thing,” she said. Zhu was wearing a recently purchased Eiffel Tower baseball cap with blinking battery-powered lights. He turned to me in search of a fresh audience. “Really, during the Zhou dynasty we were practically the same as ancient Rome or Egypt!”

His wife peered toward the dining room. “How long are we going to have to wait?” she asked. Someone joked that we might do better at McDonald’s, which gave Promise something new to consider. “Does Beijing have the biggest McDonald’s in the world?” he asked me. I wasn’t sure, but Zhu was certain. “The one by the Grand Hyatt—it’s enormous!” he said.

The Grand Tour has been a tradition of newly rich countries ever since young British aristocrats took to the Continent in the eighteenth century, picking up languages, antiques, and venereal disease. Once the railroad arrived, in the mid-nineteenth century, large numbers of Britain’s ballooning middle class followed—“lesser men with less fortunes,” suddenly free to “tumble down the Alps in living avalanches,” in the sniffy words of Lord Normanby, the future British Ambassador to France.

The railroad made it possible for schoolteachers, engineers, and civil servants to go from London to the Alps in less than twenty-four hours, instead of spending weeks in a stagecoach, according to “The Smell of the Continent,” a history of Victorian travel by Richard Mullen and James Munson. In Switzerland, the Londoners and, later, the Americans savored the fresh air, but they found much to complain about elsewhere: Henry James saw Venice as nothing but a “battered peep-show and bazaar.” Everyone complained, above all, about the food: French dishes “stewed in grease” and breakfasts consisting of nothing more “than a thimbleful of coffee or chocolate and a morsel of bread.” Mark Twain, whose 1867 trip to Europe and the eastern Mediterranean produced “The Innocents Abroad,” described American tourists “who talked very loudly and coarsely, and laughed boisterously when all others were so quiet and well behaved.” But, through it all, the journeys changed the travellers in powerful ways. As Samuel Rogers, the English poet, put it, travel sowed in them “doubt of our own exclusive merits.”

By the fourth day on the road, we no longer thought twice about riding three hours in the morning and another three in the afternoon, separated by cultural excursions. When we stopped for snacks and bathroom visits, we spoke to nobody outside our ranks. We were as mobile and self-contained as a cruise ship. On a map, our route resembled the Big Dipper; it started in Germany and looped through Luxembourg and into Paris, before a long southerly swoop through France, over the Alps, and down into Italy as far as Rome. It might have ended there, but instead it did an about-face and doubled back to Milan, for the flight home. (“Every route is largely determined by the plane tickets,” Li explained to me. Wherever the cheapest flights are on a given day, Chinese tours see opportunity.)

The bus had a DVD player, and as we embarked on the seven-hour drive from Paris to the Alps Li put on “Sissi” (1955), an Austrian romantic drama about Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria. The movie was heavy on verdant hillsides, ballroom gowns, and surging orchestral music. Sissi had been dubbed into Chinese (“ Nihao , Franz! ”), and it was a hit with the parents, who remembered when “Sissi” was a sensation on Chinese television, in the eighties. But she didn’t attract much interest from the teen-agers on the bus, and, from his backpack, Promise pulled out a crumpled edition of the Wall Street Journal that he’d picked up at the hotel in Luxembourg. He studied each page in silence and elbowed me for help when he came across a headline related to China: “ EU FINDS HUAWEI GOT STATE SUPPORT .” The story said that European trade officials believed that the big Chinese technology company Huawei was receiving unfairly cheap loans from state banks. “Does the American Constitution prevent companies from receiving government support?” Promise asked.

Sissi had a whole trilogy to her name, unfortunately, and we soldiered on to a second DVD. I asked Promise if he used Facebook, which is officially blocked in China but reachable with some tinkering. “It’s too much of a hassle to get to it,” he said. Instead, he uses Renren, a Chinese version, which, like other domestic sites, censors any sensitive political discussion. I asked what he knew about Facebook’s being blocked. “It has something to do with politics,” he said, and paused. “But the truth is I don’t really know.” I recognized that kind of remove among other urbane Chinese students. They have unprecedented access to technology and information, but the barriers erected by the state are just large enough to keep many people from bothering to outwit them. The information that filtered through was erratic: Promise could talk to me at length about the latest Sophie Marceau film or the merits of various Swiss race-car drivers, but the news of Facebook’s role in the Arab uprisings had not reached him.

We stayed in the Swiss town of Interlaken, where Li had promised us “truly clean air,” a treat for residents of any large Chinese city. I stepped outside to look around town with Zheng Dao and her daughter Li Cheng, a nineteen-year-old art major. We strolled past luxury watch shops, a casino, and the Höhematte, a vast green that hosts yodelling and Swiss wrestling events. Midway through the trip, the daughter was politely unmoved. “Other than different buildings, the Seine didn’t look all that different from the Huangpu,” she said. “Subway? We have a subway. You name it, we’ve got it.” She laughed.

As Li Cheng walked on ahead with friends, her mother told me that she wants her daughter to see differences between China and the West that run deeper than “hardware.” Our guide had mocked Europe’s stately pace, but Zheng said her countrymen have come to believe that “if you don’t elbow your way on to everything you’ll be last.” A car paused for us at a crosswalk, and Zheng drew a contrast: Drivers at home think, “I can’t pause. Otherwise, I’ll never get anywhere,” she said.

Not far from Interlaken, we boarded a train that inched up a snowy mountain, bound for an Alpine saddle between the peaks known as the Jungfraujoch. Skiers, flushed and sweaty in fluorescent powder suits, swooshed by, shouting in German and French. We were dressed for train travel, not mountaineering: Liu Yang was in leather thigh-high boots; Li Cheng wore a white furry hat in the shape of a polar bear, paws reaching down to warm her chin. We chuckled at the Europeans.

The train let us off at a spacious lodge with restaurants and brilliant views of peaks and valleys that stretched to the Black Forest. We ate lunch at 11,388 feet—the Bernese Alps, the Aletsch Glacier, chow mein and spring rolls. The gift shop was overpriced, so Handy and Karen bought a single postcard and mailed it to themselves as a souvenir.

Milan was cold and clear when we arrived the next day. Li said the climate accounted for “why foreigners love to bask in the sun.” Pursuing a tan is anathema in China, where women vigilantly cover their skin to avoid the bronze of a laborer. “Westerners’ skin will turn red and then quickly turn white again,” he said. He went on, “After someone has turned red, he can go back and show others, and they will know that he’s been travelling on vacation.” China was so isolated for so long that stereotypes about outsiders have an especially long half-life. Li peppered his lectures with his observations: South Koreans have square jaws, Western men are covered in short, dark hair, and Italian men grow long eyelashes, which they “flutter like fans” at unsuspecting women.

We had thirty minutes to wander in downtown Milan, so Karen and Handy and I stepped into the cool interior of the Duomo. Handy peered up at soaring sheets of stained glass. “That looks exhausting,” he said. “But it’s beautiful.” A few hours earlier, Li had reminded us again to be on guard against thieves, but Handy said, “Italy is not as chaotic as they made it seem. It sounded really terrifying.” He was a sanitation specialist by training, and he couldn’t help but notice Milan’s abundant graffiti and overstuffed trash bins. As Li had explained it, “The government wants to clean, but it doesn’t have enough money.” Handy tried to be polite, but he said, “If it was like this in Shanghai, old folks would be calling us all afternoon to complain.”

The Italian papers were full of news that Prime Minister Berlusconi was about to be charged with sleeping with a teen-ager. Li was diplomatic. “What a unique man he is!” he said. The drive across Italy that day had put him in a reflective mood about life at home. “You might wonder now and then whether it would be good to promote democracy,” he said. “Of course, there are benefits: people enjoy freedom of speech and the freedom to elect politicians. But doesn’t the one-party system have its benefits, too?” He pointed out the window to the highway and said that it had taken decades for Italy to build it, because of local opposition. “If this were China, it would be done in six months! And that’s the only way to keep the economy growing.” Li was so boosterish that I might have taken him for a government spokesman, except that his comments were familiar from ordinary conversations in Beijing. “Analysts overseas can never understand why the Chinese economy has grown so fast,” he said. “Yes, it’s a one-party state, but the administrators are selected from among the élites, and élites picked from 1.3 billion people might as well be called super-élites.”

Li’s portrait of the West contained at least one feature of unalloyed admiration. He mentioned a Western friend who had quit his job to go backpacking and find his calling in life. “Would our parents accept that? Of course not! They’d point a finger and say, ‘You’re a waste!’ ” he said. But, in Europe, “young people are allowed to pursue what they want to pursue.”

He went on, “Our Chinese ancestors left us so many things, but why do we find it so difficult to discover new things? It’s because our education system has too many constraints.” Our group was even more attentive than usual. At the very moment that American parents were wondering if they had something to learn from China’s purportedly hard-nosed “tiger mothers,” Chinese parents were trying to restore creativity to the country’s desiccated education system. One mother, Zeng Liping, told me that teachers had frowned upon her bringing her sixth grader to Europe. “Before every school vacation, the teachers tell them, ‘Don’t go out. Stay at home and study, because very soon you’ll be taking the exam to get into middle school.’ ” But Zeng had made her peace with being out of step. She had quit a stable job as an art teacher and put her savings into starting her own fashion label. “My bosses all said, ‘What a shame that you’re leaving a good workplace.’ But I’ve proved to myself that I made the right choice.”

We reached Venice in the early afternoon, and people were hungry, urging Li to stop even if there wasn’t a Chinese restaurant. We had been in Europe for a week and had yet to sit down to a lunch or a dinner that was not Chinese. (Nearly half of all Chinese tourists in one market survey reported eating no more than one “European style” meal on a trip to the West.) But Li warned that Western food would take too long to serve, and he recalled a five-hour dinner in Spain. **“**If you eat Western food too fast, you’ll get an upset stomach,” he added. “Save it for your next trip.” Everyone consented, and we stopped for a twenty-minute lunch at La Pagoda Ristorante Cinese, on the outskirts of town. In Venice, we crisscrossed the lagoon by ferry, visited a glass factory, rented a fleet of black gondolas, and had time for a quick stop at Prada before heading back out of town. On the way to La Pagoda for dinner, Zhu picked up a local real-estate circular. “Look at this—a hundred and ten thousand euros for a house!” he cried. “Cheaper than America. Much cheaper than Shanghai!”

In Rome the next day, we stopped at the Trevi Fountain, where tall Senegalese men were selling counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags and venders tended carts offering cheap magnets and paperweights. Handy gazed at them and said, “Made in China.” At the Vatican, Zhu took in the full scale of St. Peter’s Square. “Pretty impressive!” he said. “Their Pope can just stick his head out anytime he wants and watch all of us down here? I bet he doesn’t get any happier than that.” The scale reminded him of Beijing. “It’s just like the old days, when Chinese people used to go to Beijing just to catch a glimpse of the Communist Party.” He laughed.

We wandered down the block and sat down to rest on a windowsill. Zhu lit a cigarette. He’d been thinking about the fluctuating fortunes of great powers. I asked if he believed American politicians who say they have no objections to China’s rise. He shook his head. “No way. They’ll let us grow, but they’ll try to limit it. Everyone I know thinks that.” Ultimately, he said, in the politest way he could think of, Americans would need to adjust to a weaker position in the world, just as China once did. “You are so used to being on top, but you will drop to second place. It won’t be immediately—it’ll take twenty or thirty years—but our G.D.P. will eventually surpass yours.” I was struck that, for all his travels, Zhu saw an enduring philosophical divide between China and the West: “two different ways of thinking,” as he put it. “We will use their tools and learn their methods. But, fundamentally, China will always maintain its own way,” he said.

His sentiment didn’t inspire much optimism about China’s future alongside the West. On some level, it was hard to argue with him; the myth that a richer China would soon become a Western, democratic China has rarely looked more frayed than it does today. But if it was naïve to imagine that China’s opening up would draw it close to the West, it is also naïve, perhaps, to dismiss the power of more subtle changes. Modern Chinese travel, like the modern Chinese state, is predicated on the fragile promise that it will impose order on a chaotic world, by shepherding its citizens and keeping them safe from threats that can include Western thieves and Western cuisine. In the flesh, the world our group encountered was, indeed, more Europe than “Europe”—unkempt and unglamorous in ways that Sissi never mentioned. And yet, behind Berlusconi’s opera buffa and the prosperity gospel about Chinese one-party efficiency, my busmates caught unredacted flickers of insight. On this first trip, there was much they would never see—a rowdy free press, a social safety net forged by political wrangling—but, mile by mile, they were quietly discovering how to see it at all. When Promise finally put down his wilted copy of the Wall Street Journal , there were no trumpets. He said simply, “When I read a foreign newspaper, I see lots of things I don’t know about.”

The three-hour drive to Florence was our last long bus trip, and Li raced through some topics, including Catholics and divorce, Pavarotti, balsamic vinegar, truffles and the pigs that find them, and leather goods that are marked as Italian but made in China. He once had a leather-factory boss on a trip to Italy, he said, who spent the time collecting samples of Italian products to replicate at home.

The Piazza della Signoria was a riot of sun-pinked Russians, American students, and cops in white thimble-shaped helmets. A local guide steered us into a leather shop called Peruzzi, where purses and shoes were displayed with the motto “If you don’t take home a Peruzzi souvenir, you can’t prove you have been to Florence.”

We were about to reboard the bus for another ninety minutes, to snatch a photo of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But then something strange happened: people said no. Handy, Karen, and a few others wondered why we couldn’t skip the tower and linger in Florence. Li gathered everyone in the shadow of the bus and said, “Whoever wants to go, raise your hand.” Two-thirds or so of the hands went up. A woman’s voice urged solidarity—“We should all go together.” After a minute of discussion, Li called for another straw poll, and it was clear that some of the mutineers had been winnowed. A consensus of a certain kind washed over the group, and we all dutifully lined up for the bus. Handy lifted his eyebrows and said, “Voting Chinese style will always end this way.”

On the highway to Pisa, I wondered how much longer Chinese tours at this pace might endure. Solo tourism was growing in popularity among the young people, and even in the course of our time together my fellow-tourists had wearied of hustling so much. When we reached Pisa and its charmingly goofy tower, each of us took turns standing at the perfect spot, grimacing, arms outstretched, for the photo of ourselves holding up the tower. There was a spectacular blue sky above. Huang Xueqing got up from her wheelchair, to feel the cobblestones beneath her feet. We worked up an appetite, and I pointed out a Chinese restaurant not far from the tower. Handy and Karen had another idea, and I followed them into a McDonald’s. ♦

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By Michael Waters

By Adam Iscoe

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FLASH SALE💥   Book now for   up to 60% off!

Classic Europe

• Fully Guided
• Coach / Bus

Traveled in March 2024

Places You’ll See

• Stay in the heart of the Swiss Alps
• Discover London, Paris, Venice and Munich
• Cruise along the iconic canals in Amsterdam
• Free days in Paris, the Swiss Alps and Rome
• Introduction
• Day 1 Start of tour in London
• Day 2 London - Paris
• Day 3 Paris: Free Day
• Day 4 Paris - Burgundy - Swiss Alps
• Day 5 Swiss Alps: Free Day
• Day 6 Swiss Alps - Pisa - Tuscany
• Day 7 Tuscany - Florence - Rome
• Day 8 Rome: Free Day
• Day 9 Rome - Venice
• Day 10 Venice - Munich
• Day 11 Munich - Rhine Valley
• Day 12 Rhine Valley - Amsterdam
• Day 13 Amsterdam - Bruges - London
• Day 14 End of tour in London

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What's Included

• Accommodation
• Additional Services

Where You'll Stay

Customer photos.

Operated by Expat Explore Travel

Expat Explore is one of the industry’s leading coach tour operators. Their core mission is...

Sustainability Initiatives

Animal Welfare

Supporting Destinations

Sustainability Programs

Your Peace of Mind Options

Cancellation policy.

A transparent overview of applicable fees.

Customer Reviews

• Overall Rating Excellent 4.5
• Itinerary Excellent 4.6
• Guide Excellent 4.6
• Transport Excellent 4.6
• Accommodation Good 3.9
• Food Good 4.0
• Tour Operator Expat Explore Travel 4.4
• Most Recent
• Most Popular
• Highest First
• Lowest First

• SC Sharryn · 31st May 2024 Really good itinerary, well organised Trip date: May 2024 Review collected by Expat Explore Travel

• PS Philip · 28th April 2024 I really enjoyed the tour. It gave me a taste of a number of countries. Tour guide was enthusiastic and knowlegeable. Felt safe with the driver at all times. Driver and tour guide worked together well. Trip date: April 2024 Review collected by Expat Explore Travel
• AW Andrea · 16th April 2024 The Classic Europe tour with Expat was amazing. Everything was very convenient and well organised. Adam our tour guide and Florin our driver did wondeful jobs to make sure we saw and did everything on schedule and gave us special treats with some extra... Show more Trip date: March 2024
• TK Tim · 8th April 2024 Awesome tour. Great people. Super tour guide and driver - Adam & Florin. Trip date: March 2024

Dates & Availability

Pay-by-instalments

Take advantage of our 0% interest instalment plan on selected departures. Learn More

• Upcoming departures
• August 2024
• September 2024
• October 2024
• December 2024
• August 2025
• September 2025
• October 2025
• Get Instant Confirmation Tuesday 18 Jun, 2024 Monday 1 Jul, 2024 English Almost Sold Out Multiple Room Types €2,625 Confirm Dates
• Sunday 23 Jun, 2024 Saturday 6 Jul, 2024 English Sold Out Based on Double Room €2,625 See Similar Tours For These Dates
• Get Instant Confirmation Tuesday 2 Jul, 2024 Monday 15 Jul, 2024 English Almost Sold Out Multiple Room Types €2,625 Confirm Dates
• Get Instant Confirmation Sunday 7 Jul, 2024 Saturday 20 Jul, 2024 English Almost Sold Out Multiple Room Types €2,625 Confirm Dates
• Get Instant Confirmation Tuesday 16 Jul, 2024 Monday 29 Jul, 2024 English Filling Fast Multiple Room Types €2,625 Confirm Dates
• Get Instant Confirmation Sunday 21 Jul, 2024 Saturday 3 Aug, 2024 English Filling Fast Multiple Room Types €2,567 Confirm Dates Hold space for 48h
• Get Instant Confirmation Tuesday 30 Jul, 2024 Monday 12 Aug, 2024 English Filling Fast Multiple Room Types €2,438 Only Pay 10% Deposit Confirm Dates Hold space for 48h
• Get Instant Confirmation Tuesday 13 Aug, 2024 Monday 26 Aug, 2024 English Filling Fast Multiple Room Types €2,625 Only Pay 10% Deposit Confirm Dates Hold space for 48h
• Get Instant Confirmation Sunday 18 Aug, 2024 Saturday 31 Aug, 2024 English Multiple Room Types €2,182 Only Pay 10% Deposit Confirm Dates Hold space for 48h
• Get Instant Confirmation Sunday 1 Sep, 2024 Saturday 14 Sep, 2024 English Multiple Room Types €2,116 0% Interest Instalments Only Pay 10% Deposit Confirm Dates Hold space for 48h

Frequently Asked Questions

Whilst internal flights are covered for certain itineraries, you will have to make your way to the meeting point for the start of your tour. When booking flights be mindful of departure times and possible delays. Tip: We suggest that you start comparing prices the moment your deposit is paid to avoid costly flights.

We have a set minimum age of 10 for our tours, but we're happy to consider younger children on a case-by-case basis. Just let us know your request, and we'll do our best to accommodate it. Expat Explore reserves the right to accept or decline the request at our discretion. We want to ensure everyone has a great time exploring with us!

We make every effort to include local cuisine on our tours to ensure an authentic experience for you. You'll receive an email before the tour begins, where we'll ask for your dietary preferences. We always have a vegetarian option, and we'll work hard to accommodate any other dietary needs or preferences you may have.

Contactless payment is widely accepted across Europe – it’s best to bring a payment card with no overseas withdrawal fees. * Keep in mind that certain optionals are payable in cash to your tour leader whilst on tour. We suggest that you talk to your Tour Leader about when & where to draw cash to pay for the optional excursions.

While Expat Explore cannot assist with booking pre or post-tour accommodation, we recommend Booking.com for affordable accommodation options prior to and after the tour. If hotel information is available, we can provide you with the details in advance so that you can book accommodation at or nearby the start hotel. Please request this by sending a message through on the conversation page.

While Expat Explore endeavours to stay current on all major entry requirements, we are not a registered visa agent. We are, however, able to make things a little easier by providing you with the required supporting documents for a visa application once your tour is paid in full. It is a requirement of the embassies that tours are paid for in full before visa support documentation is requested and applications are made. When you have made the final payment for your booking, simply reach out to our Customer Support Team to request your visa support documents and confirm which embassy you will be applying to.

This is up to you and will vary depending on how much you wish to spend on snacks, drinks, souvenirs etc. We do not include entrance fees to attractions and museums. We do, however, provide you with free time to see everything you want, and our tour leaders will have all the information on pricing and locations so you can manage your own budget. Please refer to your tour-specific pre-departure information and optional excursions guide for further details.

It's your responsibility to arrange sufficient travel insurance for your trip. When you travel with Expat Explore, both you and your personal belongings do so at your own risk. A comprehensive insurance policy should cover medical expenses for illness or accidents before or during the holiday, as well as reimbursement for lost holiday funds due to cancellation, curtailment, or other insurable events. Make sure there are no exclusions that would limit coverage for the activities included in your tour. We generally recommend WorldNomads because they cover a wide variety of nationalities, but you are welcome to use any supplier that offers you the most comprehensive plan. You are able to obtain travel insurance through one of TourRadars partners, XCover. Please reach out to receive a quote.

We embrace travelers of all ages and backgrounds, prioritizing attitude and mindset over age restrictions. However, our tours are fast-paced and jam-packed with experiences. Regrettably, individuals with mobility limitations or those using wheelchairs may find this tour challenging. Comfortable walking shoes are essential for exploring quaint towns and navigating cobblestone streets. We want every traveler to fully enjoy their journey, so we encourage reviewing the itinerary carefully before making your booking decision.

When you book for more than one person, we will by default group you together in the same room(s), unless you request single supplements or specifically request us not to. If there are unequal numbers (3, 5, 7 etc.) then the remaining traveller will be roomed with another passenger of the same gender, unless you opt to add a single supplement (subject to availability) to your booking. Please note that minors under the age of 18 cannot share with another traveller outside of your group's booking. If you are making separate bookings and would like to share the same room(s), please send us an email with the booking references for each of the travellers and the details of your preferred rooming allocation.

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Good to Know

• Currencies € Euro Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Netherlands £ Pound Sterling England Fr. Swiss Franc Switzerland

As a traveller from USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa you will need an adaptor for types C, E, F, L, J, G. As a traveller from England you will need an adaptor for types C, E, F, L, J.

• These are only indications, so please visit your doctor before you travel to be 100% sure.
• Tick-borne encephalitis - Recommended for Germany and Switzerland. Ideally 6 months before travel.
• Unfortunately we cannot offer you a visa application service. Whether you need a visa or not depends on your nationality and where you wish to travel. Assuming your home country does not have a visa agreement with the country you're planning to visit, you will need to apply for a visa in advance of your scheduled departure.
• Here is an indication for which countries you might need a visa. Please contact the local embassy for help applying for visas to these places.
• For any tour departing before 27th July 2024 a full payment is necessary. For tours departing after 27th July 2024, a minimum payment of 10% is required to confirm your booking with Expat Explore Travel. The final payment will be automatically charged to your credit card on the designated due date. The final payment of the remaining balance is required at least 50 days prior to the departure date of your tour. TourRadar never charges you a booking fee and will charge you in the stated currency.
• Some departure dates and prices may vary and Expat Explore Travel will contact you with any discrepancies before your booking is confirmed.
• The following cards are accepted for "Expat Explore Travel" tours: Visa, Maestro, Mastercard, American Express or PayPal. TourRadar does NOT charge you an extra fee for using any of these payment methods.
• Your money is safe with TourRadar, as we only pay the tour operator after your tour has departed.
• TourRadar is an authorised Agent of Expat Explore Travel. Please familiarise yourself with the Expat Explore Travel payment, cancellation and refund conditions .
• Insurance Unless otherwise mentioned, TourRadar does not provide travel insurance. We do however recommend purchasing it through our tried and trusted partner, World Travel Nomads .
• Accessibility Some tours are not suitable for mobility-restricted traveller, however, some operators may be able to accommodate special requests. For any enquiries, you can contact our customer support team , who are ready and waiting to help you.
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German tour operator FTI is filing for insolvency and canceling future trips

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BERLIN (AP) — German tour operator FTI said Monday that it is filing for insolvency protection from creditors, and trips that haven’t yet started will be canceled or scaled back.

FTI Group, which describes itself as Europe’s third-biggest tour operator, said parent company FTI Touristik GmbH, was filing an application for the opening of insolvency proceedings at a Munich court.

Since an announcement in April that a consortium of investors would come on board, “booking figures have fallen well short of expectations despite the positive news,” the company said in a statement.

“In addition, numerous suppliers have insisted on advance payment,” it added. “As a result, there was an increased need for liquidity, which could no longer be bridged until the closing of the investor process,” making the insolvency filing a legal necessity.

The operator said it is working to ensure that trips that have already started can be completed as planned, but “trips that have not yet begun will probably no longer be possible or only partially possible from Tuesday.”

A support website and hotline were set up for customers affected.

The Munich-based FTI Group has over 11,000 employees.