Traveling Companions

So, I'm currently traveling with my friend from graduate school, the Coorindatrix, and two of her friends (who are also sisters), A and A. We've been on a package tour up to this point, but in two days we leave the tour to visit London by ourselves and then stay in Bath two weeks in a townhouse we rented. Our tour director's name is Patricia and she's French and she waxed absolutely poetic about the cows in Switzerland. She assured us that they were very happy and that is the secret to Swiss chocolate. She also believes in reincarnation, positive thoughts, speaking your mind, and Napoleon. She's a good time. The other travelers in our group are from India, Canada, Australia, America, and Texas. We only know a few people's names, so mostly (when not speaking directly to them), we refer to them as the Canadian Grandma, the Australians who hadn't seen snow (as compared to James and Margaret from Australia who had), the newlyweds, the father and daughter, etc. We don't feel bad about it, since everyone on the tour does it, and we're mostly referred to as the girls (or occasionally those cheeky Americans).

There are good and bad things about being on a package tour.

The good include
1. Having a driver so that we don't have to arrange transportation between cities or hotels. (It's also nice that our driver is Italian.) Our driver also transports our bags to and from our hotel rooms, so my back is not yet broken from lugging luggage.

2. Having a tour director and local guides who can easily direct us to the post office, the metro, the bank, the nearest bakery, etc. (especially when one stupidly forgot one's Paris guidebook in Utah).

3. Group tours at popular attractions=skipping lines.


The bad include
1. Traveling as a tourist and being treated like a group in many places.

2. The pace of our group activities is dictated by the SLOWEST person.


We have plenty of time away from the group, though, and mostly we've found our traveling companions amusing.