whayes.... You make some really good points about 'down and dirty' versus the
ABD tour approach. I, too, am a big fan of Rick Steves' books, etc.
I think both kinds of vacation approaches are valid, but there a few factors one must weigh. Just one example - if you have young(er) kids traveling with you, the ABD approach can make sense insofar as everything is taken care of for you and the tour is geared to family fun. In that scenario, the 'down and dirty' approach *can* be stressful and exhausting.
When my family (with kids 14 and 11) did Knights&Lights last Summer, we elected to do a sort of hybrid. We spent 5 days roaming Southern England in a rented car prior to hooking up with ABD. While those 5 days were a heck of a lot of fun, the planning and execution to keep things interesting and 'easy' with the kids in tow took a lot of effort sometimes. My kids are great travelers, but we tend not to leave much to chance when traveling to someplace we've never been. Examples: we made sure we had B&B's booked so we never had to worry about where we were staying and we had a pretty good itinerary mapped out. Had we been without the kids, we certainly would have spent more time winging it, perhaps been more aggressive with how far afield we'd venture, etc.
When we dropped off the car and the ABD folks took over, there was a certain sense of relief (likely not the right word) that we were going to enter a different phase of our vacation where we didn't have to worry so much about logistics, etc.
Just one perspective
