Imperial Cities featuring Prague, Vienna & Budapest (Prague to Budapest) (2025)

Customer Reviews

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  Elisa Magill

  · November 7th, 2025
  Our tour manager Marius was fantastic! The hotels were perfectly located and the included breakfast was wonderful! One great memory was the Danube river cruise to Melk - spectacular!
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  Trip date: June 2025

  Review collected by Collette
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  James Piazza

  · November 7th, 2025
  This tour was great, but it was also expensive. Upsides: Great tour manager who added value through in-depth information sharing about locations we visited. Good selection of structured activities in tour. • Accommodations and transportation was uniformly good. Downsides: Large group (35+) means lots of wasted time herding everyone together throughout the day, and loading/unloading. Provided dining options were limited to locations able to accommodate large groups. Pre-packaged services like airfare and dining options were on the whole overpriced or constraining (IMO). Collette and their staff did a fine job, but for my preferences the value proposition in such large group travel is not positive. YMMV
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  Trip date: July 2025

  Review collected by Collette
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  Harris Goldberg

  · November 7th, 2025
  It was more and better than anticipated. Tomas was an excellent tour manager. Very patient and did more than was listed. I would recommend Collette to everyone and they would be lucky to get Tomas as a tour manager. The tour included a lot to see, but also plenty free time for ourselves. The two optional excursions were well worth the money. Great value and beautiful places to go to.
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  Trip date: August 2025

  Review collected by Collette
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  Elizabeth Reese

  · November 7th, 2025
  Collette tours was so easy to book and made all the arrangements for us. Even the travel accommodations to and from the airport. Our tour guide (Tomas) was excellent. Always there for us whenever we needed him. He was always friendly and knowledgeable to all the places we visited. I would tour with him again.
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  Trip date: August 2025

  Review collected by Collette
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  Mindy Ettlinger Goldberg

  · November 7th, 2025
  Loved baking strudel in Bratislava, the concert hall in Vienna, the boat ride on the Danube and how organized and planned everything was thought out.
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  Trip date: August 2025

  Review collected by Collette
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  Sherman Alpert

  · November 7th, 2025
  The single most important reason I chose Collette, honestly the only reason I chose Collette for this tour, is hotels. The reality is that the tours per se with the bigger and better tour companies are basically the same. I compared several other tour companies for this trip and the itineraries, meals, etc. were all essentially the same. The only difference was the hotels. I went on another tour, to Costa Rica, with Collette and the hotels were very good to outstanding. I expected the same on this tour. Better class hotels, in locations that allow for easy self-touring, particularly since this tour included a lot of “on your own” time, and was a tour largely of cities where one can explore on one's own. The second hotel on this tour, the Intercontinental Hotel Wien, was outstanding. Beyond my expectations. Lovely and in a great location. The third hotel on this tour, the Up Hotel Budapest, was essentially the opposite. Cheap cheap furnishings, and not a good location. Let's start with the bathroom. The sink was broken in two places along the upward-pointing rim – if I had inadvertently put my hand down on either of those, I would have cut my hand on the sharp ceramic. The bath towels and mats were extremely thin and rough and, worse, threadbare with strings of threads hanging off of them – pretty much falling apart. Other people on my tour told me theirs had actual holes in them. The towels were what you would find in a cheap motel in the US. The room furniture was also very cheap. Perhaps some optimists may call it modern or minimalist; I call it cheap crap. Bare metal poles supporting laminated shelves, no closet at all. It all looked like worse than IKEA furniture. Again, the place felt more like we were in a cheap motel than a nice city hotel. The location – with the sex shop and strip club a block or so away, not a great neighborhood – also not up the standards I expect from Collette. And not located near to sites or things we would want to see on a tour of Budapest. I advise you, at the least, not to use this hotel again. Back to the positives. The Tour Manager, Marius Curea, was great. He spoke to us at length of the history and culture of places we visited and life in Central Europe, particularly under the Soviet communists. He went out of his way time and again to solve problems. When I got separated from the group just before our evening cruise on the Danube, he called me and helped direct me back to the group. A great guy as well. The tour per se was excellent, although we really did not see much of Vienna. We actually had only two days in Vienna, and on the original itinerary, one-and-a-half of those days was “on your own” – Day 6 “afternoon at leisure” and Day 7 “Choose how you spend your day because it's your choice”. Happily, while the tour was already in progress, Collette offered us a cruise up the Danube to another village on Day 7. Of course, that full day out of the city did not allow us time to see the city. But, the day was lovely.
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  Trip date: September 2025

  Review collected by Collette
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  Nicoletta Caforio Sine

  · November 7th, 2025
  Loved the night cruise in Budapest and the additional tour to the old Jewish temple.
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  Trip date: September 2025

  Review collected by Collette
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  Gordon

  · September 18th, 2025
  Tour manager and organization was excellent. There was enough guided time and enough free time in these three wonderful major cities. We also visited three smaller historic towns that were quite the tourist traps, but had a lot of interesting history. All in all a great tour, exactly what I was looking for.
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  Collette commented on this review

  Thank you for sharing your feedback with us regarding the Imperial Cities tour. We’re delighted to hear you enjoyed the balance of guided and free time, as well as the mix of major cities and historic towns included in the itinerary. We're glad the tour... Show more
  Trip date: September 2025
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  Kelly

  · June 5th, 2025
  Collette tours are the absolute best!!!
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  Trip date: March 2025

  Review collected by Collette
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  Mara

  · June 5th, 2025
  The food was terrible. I felt sick every time I ate those cheap meals, which were primarily salty fried dishes. It made me wonder if any of these countries served fruits or vegetables. Regarding the accommodations, only the hotel in Vienna was nice. Budapest felt depressing and rundown, making the trip overall quite sad. However, I really enjoyed the tour guide; she was fun! I thought the trip was well organized, and I would travel with Collette again. I would have preferred to have seen Poland. Vierna - we needed more time there Prague is a lot of fun.
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  Trip date: April 2025

  Review collected by Collette