Something you got to decide right off the bat is are you going to take a tour or are you going to go on your own?

There's good reasons to take tours, but the worst reason to take a tour is because you don't think you can do it on your own.

Anybody smart enough to be here this evening has what it takes up here to be your own tour guide. The reason to take a tour is because you want to pay somebody else to do the driving, to organize the hotels and all of that.

And there's lots of specialty kind of tours that I think make a lot of sense. But the masses of people that take tours, they just take a cheap big bus, 50 people on a 50-seat bus tours.

And that's what I want to talk about for a minute. When you look at a cheap bus tour, it can be a good value, but you got to understand that they haven't worked in their profit yet, you see.

They get you on the bus and then they park you outside of town where the hotels are cheaper, and then they make their living selling you optional sightseeing, take you shopping, for kickbacks, and they make their living with tips, okay.

That’s where the profit is.

Now, there's nothing wrong with that. But as a consumer, you should understand when you get that super cheap bus, they're going to have an interest in making more money off of you once you're on the bus.

And that's what you got to be aware of.

So, in my book, “Europe Through the Back Door,” there's a chapter called Bus Tour Self-Defense that talks about how to take advantage of a cheap bus tour without it taking advantage of you.

It's great economy to have 50 people sharing a 50-seat bus, and you can tap into that, if you think of the bus tour as a bus pass that comes with hotels. That's all. Skip out of everything else, you see, and then they're not going to make any money off you. If everybody did that, they'd have to charge for their service differently, you see.

Seriously, if you took a cheap bus tour, you'd be paying more for hotels alone than the hotel you're going to get, plus the bus transportation for that itinerary. Find an itinerary you like.

Now that's the mass-produced tour. There's also very good tour companies, small buses, any kind of different mode of transportation that you can imagine, hiking tours, you name it.

I've had so much fun, taking different kinds of tours, and we do our own tours. But what I talk about mostly in my teaching is going on your own, being your own tour guide, equipping yourself with information, and expecting it to work, and expecting yourself to travel smart. You can, and you don't need to tab your guidebook this aggressively.

This is a bit much, but I'm glad she's doing that because I'm sure she's getting the most out of that. And that's what I'm quite excited about actually, is people having a guidebook and traveling on their own.

If you're going to travel on your own, you got to be good at finding information because you don't have a guide.

You're your own guide. And there's all sorts of tours. I mean, when you go to almost any city, there's going to be public tours where you share the cost of the guide. In some tours, in some cities, it's even free -- put on by the local tourist board. That can be a very good value.

Also, you can hire your own private guide. Have you noticed in my TV show it seems like I've got friends all over Europe? I introduce my, you know, “This is my friend and fellow tour guide, Christina” in Lisbon, or Alfio or Francesca or whoever. I'm just paying them to be my friends.

Okay, you can do that too. They're wonderful people. They're great guides, and you just need their email. Send them an email saying, “I'm going to be in your town. I'd love to hire you for half a day. Are you available on this day?”

It's not cheap. It varies from city to city and country to country according to the cost of living there. But I love it. It took me a long time to figure this out, and I have guides everywhere I go now to do my work.