Pieter is 67, recently retired from an engineering career, and had spent most of his working life saving up for a trip he'd never quite got around to. In April 2026, he and his wife Annette finally did it: 22 days through nine European countries on Europamundo's Grand European Tour. This is his account, lightly edited.
Why the long one
"I'd been to London twice on business in the 90s and that was the extent of my European travel. Annette had never been. We didn't want to come back in three years thinking we should have done more. So we picked the 22-day route, England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, and Czech Republic. Nine countries, in three weeks, and the price was R165,000 for the two of us on the land portion."
The total trip, with flights, visas, insurance, and on-ground spend, came to around R380,000 for the couple. "Yes, it's real money. But it was 22 days of zero logistics for the two of us. I drove a desk for 40 years; I wasn't about to spend my first retirement holiday driving the autobahn."
The pace
"What surprised me was that it didn't feel rushed. Most days we were in one place, a city tour in the morning, free afternoon. The coach days between cities were 2 to 4 hours, never more than that. And the Tour Director knew when to push and when to let us rest."
Pieter mentioned the rest days in particular: "We had a built-in rest day in Lucerne and another in Florence. Those days were the best of the trip. Annette painted by the lake. I read three chapters of a book on the hotel terrace. You can't appreciate the Alps if you're rushing past them."
The group dynamic
"43 people on the coach. We were the only South Africans. There were also Australians, Indians, Filipinos, Singaporeans, Mexicans, Canadians, and a Japanese family of three. The Tour Director was Spanish but spoke perfect English. We had a Filipino couple in their 70s who became our best friends on the tour."
"By day four, you've sorted out who's at breakfast at 7 and who only emerges at 9. By day seven, you have your seat preferences on the coach and a few people you eat dinner with on free nights. By day fourteen, you're WhatsApping people you met on the second day. It's social in a way I didn't expect."
The highlight, surprisingly
"Everyone asks what the best day was. I say Rothenburg. It's a tiny medieval town in Germany, walled, perfectly preserved. We had four hours there. Bratwurst for lunch, Christmas shop, walked the walls. Not a famous city, not on the must-see list. But it was the most genuinely European day of the whole trip."
What he'd do differently
"Three things. I'd have done the optional Vatican excursion through the museum rather than the basilica, the museum is the real treat. I'd have skipped one of the lake boat cruises in Switzerland, by day 14 we'd had enough of boats. And I'd have packed half as much. We came home with clothes I never even unpacked from the suitcase."
The financial side
"Rand pricing was the thing that sold us. We paid the deposit in November 2025 at R20 to the Euro. By April it was R21.50. We paid not a cent more than the original quote. If I'd booked in Euros I'd have been R8,000 in the hole. That's two dinners in Rome."
The visa
"We submitted our Schengen applications in January for the April departure. They came back in mid-February. The biggest piece of paperwork was the proof of funds, 3 months of bank statements. Annoying but straightforward. Read the 2026 visa guide if you're heading into this for the first time."
The verdict, in his words
"If you've been putting off doing the big European trip, stop putting it off. We're both healthier now than we'll be in 10 years. The Grand Tour did exactly what we needed: it gave us a panoramic sense of Europe, of how the countries fit together, and of which ones we want to come back to slowly. We'll be doing Italy on its own in 2027, just the two of us, off-tour. But we'd never have known to want that without first doing the Grand."
For the bigger picture on long tours, see our first-time guide to Europe. For a different traveller perspective, read Nomsa's first Europe trip. Browse Grand Tour options.
