As avid travelers, we understand the difference between the usual trips of large travel agencies and our own personally crafted group adventures.
We offer travel with real ingredients— something to cherish and fill your heart long after you return home.
It’s sure to be nothing less of ineffable, as words cannot describe how it will shape you. You’ll simply need to experience it for yourself.
The Educated Wanderer was born out of our long experience in designing and leading study abroad trips for college students. The experience of thinking deeply about the reciprocity between book learning and experiential learning led to a vision of travel that is slow, immersive, fun and educational. After the exclusivity of only designing trips for students who could enroll in a college class, it seemed right to open our vision of travel to everyone. Over the years we have run tours all over the world offering so many people a different way to travel in which understanding and immersion in the culture is far more important than the number of stops on a given itinerary. Every tour is fully escorted by the owners – Creed & Jen, who are pretty well educated in the social and natural worlds so as to be able to offer unique insights into the places we go.
In 2020, we acquired Group Tours & Travel, a well-established company that was founded in 1984, and focused primarily on domestic travel. It’s a natural fit between the two companies and and combining them offers you a greater variety of travel experiences to choose amongst and yet still have a family-run business that will make you feel personally cared for, and able to enjoy care-free fun so that you may experience the deepest and most important thing about travel: learning something about the world and about yourself at the same time.
Each trip is personally crafted and led by us—Jen and Creed. These are places we’ve explored ourselves beforehand, or have researched intensely in preparation. While we certainly don’t neglect the popular attractions, we also love to explore lesser-known hideaways.
Our name is “The Educated Wanderer,” after all. Other tour guides are confined to a script and often neglect to live in the moment. Although we map out itineraries, we do not fail to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. A unique reconstruction? A spontaneous street performance? We’re in. This way, we see everything and really get to know the places verses breezing by history in unexpected places.
You’re embarking on a journey with the owners – people who have made travel their whole lives, not rehearsed tour guides.
With this, you also get two people— soon to be your new friends— who deeply care about what matters to you. We’ll help you find the places you are interested in and want to see beyond the itinerary. We’re also just pretty fun! We love cheering drinks, flipping through musty books and getting to know our fellow explorers as friends and travel companions, not simply as customers.
Because each trip’s itinerary is thoughtfully hand-crafted by us, there’s a level of care and connection unmatched by most travel companies.
Our destinations are based on our own favorite finds, through years of immersive travel. Each season, we choose different regions, ensuring there’s always a new trip in the works. Even when we go back to the same destination, the journey will be different every time.
We like to think of slow travel as akin to slow eating, where you take the time to truly appreciate and digest what you’re consuming. Instead of blurring through a half dozen or so destinations like other group tours, we focus our travel exploring in depth the places we go, connecting a theme through our travel that will delight and enlighten you!
This “less is more” mentality allows us to gain knowledge of the complexities of each area, and truly experience each culture.
Here’s where the “Educated” in The Educated Wanderer comes into play. We think that learning should be purposeful, enlightening and thought-provoking, which is why we recommend a combination of reading and travel.
If you would like to do a little pre-travel reading, let us know and we will more than happy to provide you with some books we know will be worth your time – and we will be even happier to discuss them with you while we travel!
Your trip will include airfare or bus transportation, accommodations on all multi-day trips, planned tour and admissions fees and transportation costs from the time you depart until the time you return. This saves you from worrying about expenses and allows you to focus instead on your experience. Optional excursions will be noted on each tour description. Travel insurance protection, while certainly recommended, is not included.
Many meals are on your own so you can enjoy the cuisine of your choice and sample all the flavors of the culture. Food is, without a doubt, deeply cultural and the best places to experience that are small restaurants that don’t accommodate even small groups. We will always provide you with a list of options we think are delicious but it’s a great adventure to just wander, find a place where the menu looks intriguing (or a place that doesn’t even have a printed menu) and jump into a culinary adventure!
Compassion and caring so that your travel experience is the best it can be
Travel as a way to learn about ourselves and the world around us
A sense of curiosity and adventure that coincides with the spirit of travel
Upon your decision to travel with us you will pay in full for single-day trips, while for multi-day trips you may pay a deposit, with the balance due as noted in each trip description, or in full.
Creed has been leading tours since 2005, and holds an M.A. in International Political Economy from Fordham University and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Malta. Jen has been leading tours since 2017 and holds an M.S. in Biology from the University of Maryland.
Trip costs include airfare or bus transportation, accommodations (on multi-day trips), all tours and admissions fees, tour guide tips, and for international trips all train/bus travel within each country, and meals as noted within each trip description. Travel insurance protection is not included, but most certainly recommended. We will send you insurance information and forms upon receipt of payment.
“Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-tree and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.” – The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
“I inherited the travel bug from my dad, who would often give random people a ride to the airport just to be close to the thrill of flying.”
Unlike traditional travel agents who need only pass a certification to lead routine tours (which anyone can do), we’ve made travel and introspection (which are inseparable, really) our lives.
We’ve got the education and experience to maintain “normal” careers, but we choose to travel upwards of 200 days a year, to step away from our homes and loved ones and devote our lives to exploration— of people, of places and of ourselves. Why? Because, we utterly love it! And because it feels critical to share the experiences of these places with others.
We obsess over the small details, working our butts off behind the scenes to create a seamless experience for our travelers.
Whether it’s getting up at 6am to scope out new places (when the group isn’t due to gather until 9am) or taking you to a special place off the dusty trail you don’t even know yet that you are dying to see, we lead sensational journeys.
Think of us as your facilitators. We sort out the messy parts of travel (like planning the day’s events, booking tickets, securing transportation, lodging etc.) so you need only experience – truly, deeply experience – your destination.
In this way, we’re not travel agents. We’re personal guides that will help you know more about the world, about how to travel well, and more about yourself.
© 2024 · Educated Wanderer.