Canada Alaska Tours & Trips

Good tour . But first section of the train ride was not good as I expected . Unable to see much beauty of Canda. Unfortunately I was unable to see any bears , beauty of Lake Louise due to weather changes . However we had experienced in beauty of winter .

In writing this review I am assuming that you are considering the Cosmos Alpine Adventure, Bernina & Glacier Express tour as a potential future tourist experience, and that you have read the detailed description of the tour itinerary on the Cosmos web site. So rather than describe and comment on the tour venues, stops and optional excursions, I will restrict my comments to the more global aspects of the tour. During our many years of travel we have done many road and river tours in many countries of the World, and aside from the visited locations, there are a number of prime characteristics that can make a tour memorable, or otherwise. Tour Director - The role of this person is to bring the tour itinerary to life, to foster relationships in the tour group, to maintain a high standard of safety whilst travelling, and to generate a collective “Joie de Vivre” in the group. We were very fortunate to have a young Croatian lady, Marta, as our Tour Director. Whilst we have never experienced a bad Tour Guide on our many trips, Marta has to be rated as one of the best. She was very personable and informative, spoken perfect English with minimal Croatian accent, had a great sense of humour, was meticulous about individual and group safety, and best of all, displayed genuine enjoyment for her job and the places we visited. A daily supply of Swiss chocolate could have lifted her rating! Rating: 10 out of 10. Coach and driver - Many of the roads we travelled on and the mountain passes we traversed, would make the hairs on your neck stand on end, so a safe and reliable driver is essential. Our Driver, Genaro, displayed these talents in excess, and we felt almost safer when slowly navigating the many hairpin bends in the mountains than when travelling at higher speed on the motorways. Rating: 10 Coach - Whilst the coach was modern and was kept meticulously clean by the driver, I found the seating a bit uncomfortable and developed back and shoulder ache. The seat separation was too small, particularly on the driver’s side of the coach, the seats were hard and too vertical, and the gap between the curved edges of the seats was too narrow, except for people of small stature. The audio and aircon were very good. Wifi was a bit flaky, but this was more an issue of Alpine reception than a coach issue. Rating : 7 Hotels - The tour itinerary includes large cities (Lucerne, Munich, Zurich); medium sized towns (Como, St. Moritz) and small mountain villages (Cortana, Innsbruck, Tasch) and it would be unrealistic to expect the same quality of hotel in every location. It also has to be remembered that quality, price and location are incompatible concepts in hotel accommodation. The quality of the hotels was surprisingly good. With the city stops, Cosmos has put priority on quality and cost over location, so the selected hotels tended to be away from the CBD and the tourist venues (although these had generally been visited during the day.) When you think about remote hotels in mountainous areas with winter ski runs, images of mud covered boots and soggy skiers come to mind, and rustic hotels full of old, sturdy wooden furniture and drying rooms. Fortunately all of the mountain area hotels we stayed in did not conform to this image. They generally exhibited the warmth of wood, with wooden floors, ceilings, furniture, doors, windows etc., and were relatively spacious and comfortable. The highlight was the hotel in Tasch, with an led light highlighting an image of the Matahorn behind the bed! May sound a bit tacky but it was very impressive. So for the tour price, Rating 8. Included breakfasts and dinners (3) - Breakfasts were a bit variable, overall acceptable, with the odd disappointment. For some hotels, employing a logistics specialist would be money well spent, with group access to breakfast fare and tables often requiring the use of Google maps for navigation! Disappointment was generally related to quality rather than quantity or variety. Breakfast - Rating 6. Dinner - There were 3 included dinners. All were very acceptable, although the restaurants tended to be a bit noisy due to the many hard services. Surprisingly, the best was in the most remote location, Tasch, gateway to Zermatt and the Matterhorn. We had dinner there twice, both were nice and inexpensive (EUR 28 for 3 courses.) We were a bit disappointed that the last dinner was not on the final night of the tour in Zurich, where the group could have enjoyed plenty of time to bid their tearful farewells. Perhaps dinner cost in Zurich is beyond the Cosmos budget! Rating 7. Train trips - The two main ones are the Bernina and Glacier Express. Whilst the latter is the most famous and expensive, the former was the most memorable in terms of the scenic vistas of the Dolomites. It has to be remembered that the train trips in the Cosmos tour are only part of longer Express train trips. You may have watched TV programmes of the Glacier Express ploughing through a white wilderness, with train drivers ever alert to the danger of avalanches. We travelled in early May, and whilst there was still snow capped mountains, the lower regions were emerald green with fields reminiscent of the local golf course. Whilst the white of Winter may be romantic, late April/early May may be best time for the train trips, with the green and white environmental combination. So if you can forget your images of a long red train ploughing through a snowy wilderness you probably won’t be disappointed. Both trains had large, panoramic viewing windows, with the usual ghost reflections when you are about to take that award winning photograph! The short “shuttle” train trip between Tasch and Zermatt (15 minutes), whilst a lesser experience, was very pleasant. Rating 7. Scenic environments. The tour covers several countries; Germany, Italy, but predominantly Switzerland, with variable predominant languages in the Cantons of Switzerland. Switzerland has to be one of the most spectacularly scenic and naturally manicured countries in the World. Its land mass is covered by 58% of European Alps, although this is only 15% of the total Alpine range. Its towering mountains were almost vertical in many of the visited locations, topped with glistening late Winter snow. At this time of year (early May), the deep valleys are green from the Winter snow melt, and are covered with manicured fields that look like they have just been mowed, and would be a credit to the most self respecting of golf course green managers. Mountain tunnels, of which the longest was 15 km in length, multiple covered, snow protected roadways which appear to cling to the side of the mountains, train lines that wind around the sides of mountains like curling snakes. Villages with snow covered mountain backdrops that when covered in a slight mist look like an artist has painted an enormous scenic canvas behind the village. Neither words nor photographs can do it justice, just absolutely stunning. Rating 11 out of 10. Optional excursions. Rather than provide commentary on the various optional excursions which you can read about on the Cosmos web site and the many Internet tourism sites, I will restrict my comments to the tourist attractions available if you select NOT to participate in an optional excursion. Where optional excursions were offered, the general tour structure was a 1 or 2 hour optional excursion followed by 1 to 1.5 hours of free time in the city, town or village from which the excursion starts. This left non-excursion group members with free time of 2.5 to 3.5 hours, time for a very leisurely lunch and local exploration. Two hours for exploration was easy to productively fill in most locations but in a couple, the local tourist attractions were limited and extensive thumb twisting time ensued (Stans and the optional trip on the funicular to Mount Stanserhorn, Aosta, with an optional town tour with a local guide.) Moral of the story - the optional excursion may be the better time option in these locations. Local guides. We had a range of male and female local guides who collectively displayed great pride and enthusiasm for their home towns and its tourist attractions. All spoke perfect English, although the odd one had a slight accent which distorted understanding. A common negative we have found with local tourist guides over the years is that they tend to speak too quickly and to provide too much detail about the history of the buildings and monuments etc., that they are describing. Most of us are not professional historians, architects or archaeologists! This attribute was evident in a couple of the local guides, and the male guide in Bern broke the Guinness Book of Records record for the most words spoken in an hour, a long standing record, previously held by an Italian lady! Rating 8 (for enthusiasm) Highlights. The Swiss landscape, mountains and valleys; the Bernina train journey and the beautiful Dolomites, the Matterhorn, the magnificence of which can be viewed from vantage points in the streets of Zermatt without the need to test your tolerance to altitude, Cortana, home of the 2026 Winter Olympics, the magnificent city of Bern (an extra day here could have been productively filled with ease), and not to forget our wonderful Tour Director, Marta. Value for money: I now have to resort to my Tour Director (wife) and the global group commentary, which both came up with a resounding, EXCELLENT VALUE FOR MONEY. Who am I to question my wife, so it must be right! Rating 10. Final analysis - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Everything was very well organised and the hotel accommodation ranged from good to excellent. Lots of sightseeing packed in but interspersed with plenty of opportunities to relax. Best of all was our guide, Renato who was good-humoured, knowledgeable and entertaining throughout, while organising with calm efficiency.