5 Reasons You Should Go On An EF College Break Tour

**update** First of all, thanks so much everyone for reading and appreciating my honest words. We did so well that EF not only cancelled my referral code, but took away all of the credits I had earned from actual people I knew and this post. They even updated their terms of service. I see that while I was trying to figure out a solution, someone else was sending their referral code, which apparently hasn't been cancelled, so I can't earn credit for my opinion, but someone can use my opinions to make money off of, real cool EF. real cool. I'm going to leave this up, because I genuinely enjoyed the trip, and you know, apparently still want them to make money off of my honest opinion. More so because I do want there to be an unbiased, very much so not paid for review of the trip. Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions, but I can no longer provide my referral code. For what it's worth, they never contacted me regarding this post, asking to take it down or anything, because it's clearly driving people to take the trips, they didn't tell me they were cancelling my code, and they took away what I had already generated. **

Okay, up front. I was zero percent compensated by EF College Break for this. I am more than willing to share my referral code with anyone who wants to book a trip (I'm not going to include it in this post because I have a feeling it's against the rules I agreed to when I booked my first trip. side note, does anyone ever actually read the "terms + conditions" or do we all just agree? Do you ever wonder if we're like, unknowingly signing over our first born because we didn't want to read them?)

ANYWAYS. When I first stumbled upon EF College Break, through a Facebook ad of all places, I googled the crap out of it. I couldn't find a single trip review that wasn't on their blog. Not that I don't buy those opinions, just that it seemed weird that nothing was on the regular Internet, you know? Positive or negative. Then I vowed that I would blog the living daylights out of my trip so the Internet would know. It's my duty, right? So this is what I got out of my trip + why I will absolutely be going again. 
I 100% stole this picture from facebook. please don't sue me.....
Traveling Solo for maybe just the flight over // I didn't have anyone to travel Europe with me. When I booked the trip I was in a bad place + just needed anything to look forward to. I read all of the posts on their blog about "50% of our travelers sign up alone, 0% travel alone." I thought that was the corniest thing I had ever heard, until I got off the plane in Amsterdam. I literally made friends when I found the people waiting for the bus. That's it. Granted, I can talk to a wall, but I didn't feel like I was forcing anything + I was so pumped to make new friends. We even still chit chat on Facebook today (hey guys, glad you're reading this!) about how we're going to try to go on more trips. I think it helps that we all obviously had that wanderlust gene
BOAT TOURS IN AMSTERDAM
Fantastic day-to-day events // To be honest, I wouldn't have known where to begin if I was planning the entire trip by myself. I made a list of things that I absolutely had to see, then followed the planned excursions + optional add on adventures. I could not have possibly found the tour guides that we had on my own. From what I understand, EF is really serious about the people that they hire, and they're great about it. I've talked about our tour guide in London (remember? "what the front door?!"). We had equally fantastic tour guides in every city. Super knowledgable, fun, + not afraid to go off the beaten path. They were great. Honestly. I couldn't say enough nice things about all of our guides. I never once felt like I was drudging through a history class with a monotone professor who lived with the dinosaurs. 

Monthly payments for the win // Oh, you have three grand to drop on a trip today? Well, good for you, want to take me too? I know I didn't have a cool couple grand laying around when I decided to go. I did make a bigger down payment (because last year I didn't owe the IRS money...) then I had totally manageable monthly payments. So I paid off my trip month by month rather than magically being good at money management. It's super empowering to be able to pay something like that off, by the way. It's a steal too. My entire trip was less than I would have paid for a flight to Amsterdam and back. 
this has nothing to do with our tour director because I didn't plan this post while I was there so my photos don't reflect it.
The Tour Directors are the bomb.com // Along the trip we crossed paths with a couple other tour directors, obviously none of them were as kickass as ours (his name was Adam. he's fantastic! I would take a tour 100% just because he's the director.) They are amazing. Just like with the tour guides, they are super selective + only hire the best of the best. I'm sure that if we had a lame tour director who wasn't all about, well I don't know anything but us having a kick ass trip, we wouldn't have had a good trip. Adam wanted to make sure we loved it + had a blast + I don't think we could have had a better director if we tried. 

BECAUSE YOU WANT TO TRAVEL + YOU NEED TO TRAVEL // I have the bug. I have the wanderlust bug bad y'all. I want to go again yesterday. Obviously since I've blogged about wanderlust at least once a week since I've been back. I bet you're tired of hearing it. I wouldn't have been able to realize that dream without the folks at EF + so I cannot say enough good things about the trip. They recently bumped the max age to 27 -- so GO! OH BETTER -- LET'S PICK A TRIP + GO TOGETHER! 

Have I convinced you yet? Do you want to talk about it more? You should totally shoot me an email or stalk me on any other social media outlet (you can see some of my favorite pictures on the instagram machine...) Have you picked out a trip yet? I'm daydreaming of Greek Isles or Thailand or you know, a casual month in Australia + New Zealand. Again. 100%. EF didn't ask me to write this (guys they didn't even pick my pictures on insta to regram, that kinda made my inner blogger sad. I thought I instagrammed awesome pictures. #kaseygoestoeurope.) I just honestly think it was the best decision I have ever made. Hands down. Are you ready to go on an adventure with me?

ALSO. Did you miss my Europe posts? Catch up here:
London
Paris one || two || three
Amsterdam