Seeing the world is always awe-inspiring—so inspiring, in fact, that we can’t blame you when you don’t want the journey to end. If you dream of staying longer after tour to explore on your own (or plan to fly in early to shake off your jet lag), our team is always here to help customize the flights you book with Go Ahead so that you can fill your trip with even more adventure.
There are countless ways a pre- or post-tour stay can add to your journey, and Go Ahead travelers Bonnie and Dwight may have discovered them all. They’ve been on six Go Ahead tours and customize their flights each chance they get. Here, they talk about how going farther on their own adds so much to their travel experience.
Dwight and Bonnie in Santorini, Greece
Uncover more of one place
“The flights team looks after you very well,” said Dwight. “For our upcoming tour, Barcelona, Southern France & the Italian Riviera, we worked with Go Ahead to stay in Italy for another ten days on our own. We’re adding the Rome extension, then we’ll stay in a small Tuscan town called Staggia Senese for about a week, and then we’ll end in Florence. I love everything about Italy! You’re there, so why not take advantage of the opportunity?”
Take extra time to relax
“We really enjoy guided tours because you learn a lot—your Tour Director and city guides share so much firsthand knowledge,” Dwight explained. “So, staying behind after tour is our downtime. We’ll walk with no destination in mind and we might get a little bit lost, but it’s amazing what you can come across. We’ll stop at a cafe and have a gelato or a glass of wine and just sit back and enjoy.”
A quaint cafe scene captured by Dwight in Alpine Europe
Meet more locals
“We like to see the icons, but enjoy venturing beyond, too,” said Bonnie. “For example, we arrived for our tour of Belize early to spend an extra week in Hopkins Village on the Caribbean coast. We love the local people and meeting them there was a highlight.”
Cross country borders
“We flew to Málaga, Spain after our first Go Ahead tour of Dublin, Edinburgh & London, and stayed another ten days,” Dwight explained. “That was really nice—we love Spain. We just told the Go Ahead team what day we were going to depart and where we would be, and they booked our flight home from Madrid. So it worked out well! Another couple we were traveling with on the main tour flew to Belgium at the end of our trip. I think being able to do that is an excellent perk of traveling with Go Ahead. I don’t know of other tour companies that do that.”
Dwight with his Norwegian cousins on a pre-tour stay in Lillehammer, Norway
Trace family heritage
“We flew to Scandinavia early and took the train to Lillehammer to visit Dwight’s grandmother’s house,” said Bonnie. “His distant cousins still live there! We met them and then went back to Oslo to start our tour. Then, we extended our trip again and stayed extra time in Stockholm at the end of our tour. Dwight’s grandfather was from Sweden, so that was really neat.”
“It was awesome because my distant cousins brought down a picture of the farmyard—we have the very same picture in my parent’s house!” added Dwight. “It was unbelievable. Then, they took us around Lillehammer, so we got to see the town through their eyes. It was very rewarding.”
The farmyard where Dwight’s distant cousins still live in Lillehammer
Thanks to Bonnie and Dwight for sharing how they've their travel experiences their own! Read more about ways to customize our airfare package.
