Bargain tours to Europe?

I can't offer a lot in terms of accomodation but as far as air fares go, http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/ is an amazing website. I don't know how this guy keeps on finding these unadvertised fares but from my experience as a frequent flyer, he's pretty damn impossible to beat.

While you say you want all the hotels/transport arranged in advance, are you willing to do this yourself? Because I think that's the answer, and you can do almost all of it online, far in advance, and in English. Some ideas for a cheap(er) vacation below: Travelocity and Expedia can hook you up with simple quasi-DIY packages. Use the "flight + hotel" setting for your entry/departure city, and then book hotels in the other cities online as well. Print out your confirmation e-mails and show up. Done! If you'd rather do things independently, without conglomo-website involvement, get yourselves a guidebook and find a hotel in a location near (or not) to what you're interested in seeing. Most hoteliers in smaller local places speak at least some English, so even if there's only an e-mail address or phone number (was there ever a better time for Skype?) to work with, try anyway. Getting there: if it's cheaper to fly to Dublin from wherever you are in the US, look at ticket prices to get there, and then connect on super-cheap http://www.ryanair.com or also-cheap http://www.aerlingus.com to all the other places you want to go. http://www.flybmi.com flies to many of the cities you mention, as does http://www.easyjet.com. Maybe it seems like flying would be the most expensive option, but we're talking lower-than-Southwest fares here - I flew Ryanair from Krakow, Poland to Glasgow for something absurd, like a grand total of $30. Also, with so little time, you can expand your horizons: Edinburgh, Paris, Rome? No need for an overnight train. You can buy point-to-point rail tickets online http://www.raileurope.com - they'll mail you paper tickets that you can take on your trip, but there's a premium they extract on top of the actual price. Or you can buy online and pick up your tickets at the station or even just print out and show an e-ticket to the conductor (the case in Italy). Here are the English websites for http://voyages-sncf.com/dynamic/_SvHomePage?_DLG=SvHomePage&_CMD=cmdHomepageUK&WB=HP and http://trenitalia.com/en/index.html's respective train systems. British train tickets http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/. Europe-wide train details http://www.seat61.com. Pack light!

I worked at a "coaching hotel" in the UK, and those tours are crap, crap, CRAP. As a package for crinklies, they're a good bargain. Unfortunately, the're total shit because each night's accomodation is WAY too far past what's a good idea. Take a good look-- the "activities with a tour group" are largely confined to sitting on a coach. The tour operator doesn't care if you do his old people activities as long as he gets your money. Unfortunately, you need to do his old people activities to make it to your next hotel. If your idea of seeing Europe is through a Wallace Arnold coach window, by all means disregard this.

A Eurail pass and your own advance travel planning (there are detailed schedules available online), plus your own resrvation of hotel, will be your best bet. Even if you want to be independent of your tour group, all your going to/leaving from/travelling time will be with a bunch of crappy strangers. You'll have much more fun just the two of you, and can still have the payment / security you want. Just one more tip: ten days isn't much, I wouldn't want to do any more than three cities MAXIMUM. Take three close ones like London - Paris - Amsterdam to keep the actual travelling time to a minimum.

all your going to/leaving from/travelling time will be with a bunch of crappy strangers. Like on any standard airplane trip? The only way to travel w/o strangers is to rent a car or a private cabin on a train.

smackfu, with a bunch of random people, you are alone. When you are always with the same group of random strangers, they become crappier.

We don't want spontaneity in our travel or lodgings... Then book yourself on an 'if it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium' tour, tell the guide you're going to skip the route-marches (with the promise of a good tip at the end) and get back in time for departure. Like other people, I think the whole concept sucks -- there's nothing worse than having to abandon a place you've taken a shine to, and nothing better than having the freedom to stay another night -- but it's your holiday.