Verdict/Summary

Beautiful building in Paris where the front facade is completely covered by shrubs and grasses

===

Ok, so what to make of it all ?
It was a great experience of course. To me, Europe is some kind of 'holy land', a strange fascination I have with it. So it was a religious experience just being there :-).
The trip is not all just fun. With all the stuff going on, sometimes your mind just gets tired and wants a break. For a couple of days in the middle I stopped enjoying it and was hoping it would get over! Two weeks is a long time, and the schedule is demanding so you have to be prepared for it.
Another thing to say is that a trip like this just scratches the surface. If you are a serious traveller with some sense of the history of the place and an ability to appreciate the things there, there is a huge amount more you can do. We hardly talked to a local person or got any sense of the daily life in the country, and we hardly touched the local cuisine. Except for travelling by the metro a couple of times we wern't on our own much.
A friend here in Bangalore asked me the total cost (say 1.2 or 1.3L) per person and then asked me if it was really worth it. Good question :-). For that kind of money I could have bought a car :-). Well, one thing is, after you have bought a car and bought a flat(well, atleast paid the down payment on the flat), then if you have the excess 'disposable income', then this is a great way to spend it. The other answer is -- it could broaden your thinking and experience in unexpected ways and in that case you can't really put a monetary value to it. For me something unexpected did happen, at one point (specifically at Rhine Falls in Switzerland), I was idly wondering ' it would be great to live in Europe for a while', and thinking how I might make that happen. At this point its kind of unlikely that I would be able to find a job myself in Europe easily, and then a thought occured, 'why don't you do an MBA in Europe'. Its still in my mind, and not out of question. Either ways, it probably would never have occured to me if I hadn't gone on the trip.
Regarding this particular trip -- we had a lot of headaches with Cox & Kings prior to the trip (having the date switched on you at the last minute, not fun at all). Several other people we met on the tour reported similiar snafus with Cox & Kings. The tour itself went well, and they were relatively few glitches. With a tour like this its difficult to go wrong, especially if you're going with a good attitude. When you get to see Rome and Paris, and Vatican City and Eiffel Tower and Switzerland, you can easily forget the smaller inconveniences. There was a nice moment at the Lido show when Priya pinched me to see if she was dreaming or if this was real (I pinched her back to show that it was real). If you're going to try to do a tour like this -- if you can afford it, Thomas Cook is likely to be more reliable, if not go with C & K and do your homework, keep bugging them to make sure things are going well, and hope for the best :-).
=======
PS: I amn't finished blogging about Europe yet :-)