Affiliate disclosure: This page may contain affiliate links. I only recommend things I actually use or genuinely love. Using these links helps keep this content going—at no extra cost to you.
Once the flights and hotel are booked, the real fun begins. These trip planning resources help you discover tours, activities, and experiences that actually add meaning to your trip — not just tourist checkboxes.
Booking an Excursion?
Where I like To Book My Tours!
Viator
Viator is my home base for day tours — and, full disclosure, my favorite agent partner. I book through them myself, and I’ve done the digging for you: my favorite tours, hand-picked into curated lists for 32 destinations.
Browse My Curated Tour ListsTravel Made Easy
Exoticca
The tour company I traveled to Egypt to vet in person — and the one I’d pick first.
I don’t recommend a tour company lightly. Before I ever put Exoticca on this site, I traveled to Egypt with them myself — specifically to vet the whole experience in person before recommending it to you. The guides, the logistics, the hotels, all of it. They passed with flying colors.
What keeps me recommending them: their prices are remarkably affordable and they include airfare, which honestly still surprises me every time I price one out. If you’re a traveler who wants the whole trip handled — flights, hotels, tours, transfers — without the planning headache, this is where I’d start.
This is also a company I’m eyeing for future group trips — see what’s brewing on my Group Trips page.
My Exoticca Favorites Right Now
The trips I send people to first — every one bundled with flights, hotels, tours, and transfers. Click through on any of them and you’re booking through my advisor link, which means I can see your trip and help if anything comes up.
Egypt
Great Pyramids & Full-Board Nile Cruise
9 days
The trip I took myself to vet Exoticca before I’d ever recommend them.
- Stand before the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza
- Full-board Nile cruise from Luxor to Aswan — Valley of the Kings included
- Cairo bookends the trip; everything bundled
Greece
Ancient Ruins, Mykonos & Santorini
11 days
- Athens and the Acropolis, Delphi, and the cliff-top monasteries of Meteora
- Ferry-hop to Mykonos and Santorini for the villages and caldera sunsets
- One of Exoticca’s best sellers — history first, islands second
Italy
Escorted Eternal Cities
- Rome, Florence, and Venice — the classic trio, fully escorted
- Orvieto, Assisi, Bologna, and Padua woven in between
- Rated 4.7 stars by hundreds of travelers
Portugal
Coastal Cities & Cultural Treasures
- Lisbon’s neighborhoods and Sintra’s fairytale palaces
- Porto and its port-wine cellars, with Nazaré, Óbidos, and Fátima between
- The #1-rated trip in Exoticca’s whole catalog — 4.7 stars from 1,000+ reviews
Japan
A Taste of Japan: Tokyo, Kyoto & Osaka
9 days
- Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka linked by bullet train
- Mt. Fuji day trip and Kyoto’s Gion district
- Self-guided with guided walking tours woven in — structure where you want it, freedom where you don’t
Peru
Sacred Land of the Incas
- Machu Picchu with the Sacred Valley and Cusco around it
- Ollantaytambo’s fortress terraces and Andean markets
- Fully escorted — the Andes handled end to end
Affiliate disclosure: This page may contain affiliate links. I only recommend things I actually use or genuinely love. Using these links helps keep this content going—at no extra cost to you.