Charming Luxury Austria Itinerary for Families

Our trip to Austria and Germany was initiated with a desire to see the Christmas markets. And yes, these were magical, but Zicasso’s travel company also included guided trips at each location to fully enjoy our trip. The private ride through Bavaria to Neuschwanstein Castle was Christmas-card picturesque. Walking through Vienna on a guided tour was as if we were visiting Franz Joseph and Sisi. The travel company created an itinerary that balanced the needs of a group with different ages, interests, and budgets, and everyone had a magnificent time.

Overall, the trip was great. Daily reminders for the next day's itinerary were great and it was easy to communicate with the help desk team, which was a plus.

It would have been good to know in advance if I were to have the same guide for multiple days. We didn’t find out until our first tour in Vienna that we’d have the same guides for three more days. Our guide talked negatively about going on a long day trip to Salzburg and Hallstatt with our four-year-old. I almost canceled that long day trip, but decided not to. Our guide and driver for that day were wonderful and he made our journey the most memorable.

Our guides and drivers in Prague were wonderful. We were just not thrilled with the local agency this travel company chose for us, given they knew we were traveling with our young daughter. If I have more choices for our future destination, I don’t think I’ll be working with them again. Thank you!

Hello there.

This was our fourth trip with Zicasso. We would consider this trip more of a tour not a curated travel experience. Felt more like tourists than travelers.

Not sure if we received great value working with an extra layer of operators.

Although we would rate logistics and client interaction 10/10 (staff of the travel company were very lovely and professional) not sure there were any great special "treasures" other tourists wouldn't have seen.

Additionally, the descriptions of expectations were way off on a few occasions and totally touristy when local staff suggested alternatives that were what we expected in the first place.

Examples of this were firstly in Bled, Slovenia.

No guide was necessary and we spent a lot of money unnecessarily. It was touristy and should have been a suggested quick stop. The much better choice was a lovely 20-minute drive away (we had our own car at this point) to Lake Bohinj.

Our very sweet bellman in Ljubljana suggested we visit here. It wasn't crowded and spectacular. We would have had a picnic packed for the day and enjoyed the hike here.

Another example is Capri. It was described by the travel company as beginning with an easy motorboat ride with a group (which was fine) a leisurely half-day on the island with shopping and lunch in a romantic cafe.

This was life in Capri maybe 30 years ago. Today it is a shoulder-to-shoulder nightmare.

We were greeted by a guide who informed us that this day was like Formula One. Every second counts! Don't be late for anything!

What anything we thought? Isn't today about just a romantic lunch and leisurely shopping?

We were loaded onto a ferry with 400 people (everyone seemingly much more informed about what lay ahead), then shown cue cards for where to meet and when.

Confused, we were then loaded onto a bus and off to the Grotto. What is the Grotto?

Thankfully my husband and I are good sports and went with the flow. We were ushered into yet another line and lay down flat in a rowboat and ventured through the cave. Although an adventure, the point is we were not informed of this. Next was the chairlift up the mountain. Beautiful. Yes, but more unexpected lines and waiting.

Group lunch next.

Crowded funicular ride down and another 398 people on the ferry home.

No romantic lunch and leisurely shopping for us.

It was all fine in the end. Our guide was excellent. But, you see my point. The travel company needed to explain this. I do believe I suggested Capri as part of our itinerary, but the expectation was as to how it was presented by the travel company. We would have either skipped this and chosen a different way to spend a beautiful day on the Amalfi Coast or been better prepared.

Our hotel in the in Vienna was lovely in an excellent location. The restaurant however was only open for breakfast. Very disappointing. When traveling we like to have the option of having dinner in the hotel and a nice drink in the bar after a day of discovering or a nightcap before bed. All said, in Vienna it felt like we had only a partial home base. Not a great beginning to the trip.

Austria was spectacular! It really blew us away and the trip and country as a whole exceeded our expectations.

In advance, setting up the itinerary with Zicasso's tour operator was seamless—they were very prompt to change details and move things around to give us the exact trip we had in mind. The interactive itinerary web pages they generated were great—we could look through the timeline and fill in comments with our thoughts/suggestions on each item, making for an easy back-and-forth.

We loved the pace and layout of our trip—it gave us enough time to relax and do some exploring of our own, while at the same time hitting all the highlights of each city we visited. The hotels chosen were exceptional and exactly what we were looking for. All of the guides and drivers chosen by the tour operator did a great job and we liked receiving the information of our guide/driver the night before, with a contact number and confirmation. Throughout the trip, the tour operator checked in multiple times and was readily available to assist with any problems or questions.

Highlights were the city tour in Vienna, seeing an opera in Vienna, Wachau Valley scenery (although in hindsight, we should have spent more time here!), Innsbruck town, and our favorite—a day hike in the Alps.

Zicasso’s travel specialist was outstanding! From the beginning, he listened and curated exactly the kind of experience we had hoped for. The trip was fantastic. The hotels were perfect and everything went smoothly.

The guides for the Salzburg food tour and Vienna walking tour were particularly outstanding, as well as our driver-guide in Munich. The travel specialist created a custom itinerary that not only met our expectations, but exceeded them, with VIP experiences that made this mother-daughter trip truly special.