There’s always a guy like Harold.
We’ve now entered the summer travel season, when you can take a package bus tour to Paris. It includes the Louvre museum, so you can be jammed in with 2,000 other art lovers trying to fight your way close enough to glimpse the Mona Lisa, which is much smaller than you’d expect.
Harold is the guy who sits behind you on the motor coach (it’s always called a motor coach, never a bus) and complains constantly that everything’s not exactly like it is back home.
“The sign in the window said they SPEAK ENGLISH,” he says bitterly, when we get back on the bus after our designated time for lunch. “They didn’t speak English.”
The line to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre (Photo by Trevor Summons)This is only one of the 2,402 pithy observations that Harold will make during our journey together through the Great Capitals of Europe. Which I will be forced to hear, because this tour requires you to sit next to the same people the entire time, so they can rotate the seating so everyone eventually gets to sit up front.
During this trip, I will learn that foreign people are smelly, it’s outrageous that you have to bring a coin to tip the bathroom attendant, the food is strange and borderline suspicious, the Roman Colosseum has too many stairs, the Taj Mahal has no air conditioning, the hotel water pressure is substandard, there’s a weird thing in the bathroom that looks like a toilet but it’s not, and Harold is tired of muesli and yogurt for breakfast. I mean, where’s the damn bacon and eggs? What kind of country is this, anyway?
Looking back on my time with Harold, I have to wonder why his wife didn’t just leave him at home and bring her sister instead. But I assume some people are just masochists.
When I was young and just starting to travel on my own, I took package tours, because they knew where they were going and I didn’t. And I became acquainted with their delightful traditions, like making sure my suitcase was packed and outside my door by 6 a.m. so it could be loaded onto the bus, er, motor coach, so we could head out on our busy itinerary right after breakfast.
We could see three cathedrals before lunch, stopping just long enough to take a photo, then back on the bus for the next one. When we’re finally released from the bus for lunch, we wander around a medieval town looking for a place where we can eat in an hour — meaning we end up at the tourist-oriented restaurants facing the square with the worst food. On the plus side, they’re also the most expensive.
Hey, at least the waiters speak English, and some of them serve chicken fingers. And slices of pizza. That’s definitely what you want in Lyon, widely considered the gourmet capital of France. Slices of pizza. But, not to worry. Later tonight, there will be a special group dinner (optional extra cost) with authentic French cooking and ladies doing the can-can.
No time to linger over a coffee and people watch on the square, because we have to get back on the bus and drive by another cathedral.
Eventually, I outgrew these tours, because I just couldn’t stand to take trips on someone else’s time schedule. Just when you’re starting to have fun somewhere, you have to leave. And I was sick of being shepherded into a gift shop where the only purpose was to earn a commission for the tour company.
I’m not saying I’d never take one again. In 2019, I took an Intrepid Travel tour of India, because I was nervous about visiting such a challenging country by myself. And I’m glad I did, because we had our tour guide available to help us on the sleeper train, when we discovered an entire family had taken over our reserved beds, even to the point of chaining their luggage to the floor. She was able to get the porter to evict them and change the sheets, so we could get some sleep.
She was also kind when I had a meltdown in Varanasi, where the deceased are burnt on funeral pyres on the Ganges River. I just couldn’t take the massive crowds, smells and chaos anymore. I fled back to the hotel, cried, ate pizza and drank a margarita in the American-style lounge. Our guide, Akanksha, then took me with her to a shopping mall, where we saw a Bollywood movie and ate at McDonalds, where they served corn and spinach burgers because cows are sacred. Then I felt better.
(Photo by Marla Jo Fisher/SCNG)Funeral pyre on the Ganges River in Varanasi, India, 2019 (Photo by Marla Jo Fisher/SCNG)But that was Intrepid Travel, which is more my kind of package tour. Meanwhile, I learned that I could make my own arrangements and any hotel will help me find activities and fun things to do. And I could hire my own guides, usually for a similar price to the group trips. Meaning I could do any darn thing I pleased. Thank you, Internet.
And, if I met a Harold, I could just walk past him.
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