Greece and France at 5 months out?

[bearmom]

Hahahaha



Did you ditch a day tour group or a US-originating multi-day tour group? I don't have a lot of experience with tour groups besides day tours like the $$$$ high brow Context Travel or the cheap-o city walking tours and pub crawls. I've only taken one multi-night tour: a British based three day tour to Welsh castles with a PhD expert/author on Edward I which was so awesome I decided to use the company again for Greece. I want tours that educate me AND to find people with whom to have dinner as I don't like eating dinner alone, especially in a nice restaurant. (I'm OK with lunch.) I talk to EVERYBODY. (I'm that bubbly, twinkly type that some lugubrious, dyspeptic people find irritating.) This chattiness only works well when there are English speakers nearby. I never made it through a meal alone in the UK before another couple would invite me over or pull up their chairs. In all my trips, the only Italians who spoke to me were the English-speaking waiters. I don't think they knew what to do with a midd -- er, I was going to say middle aged but I guess I am old now -- lone woman wearing athletic shoes (gasp!) who only spoke a tiny bit of Italian. I made friends in all the walking tours I took but they were all made up of English speakers. I suspect Paris will be much the same -- I speak no French. If I add the Athens tour, I miss the Rick Steves Paris tour and will be on my own in France and will need to find walking tours, gastronomy tours, pub crawl tours. (Evening pub crawls are great for meeting dinner companions but no so good for a DSer who can barely drink. Ditto for the food tours.) I don't know what I'm going to do vis a vis Athens. Still waiting for word back from the tour company as to what kind of credit they will give me for the unused roundtrip airfare from LHR to Athens if I stay on and take the second tour.

@DSRIGGS and @southernlady I was always envious of others' European trips. And then I discovered just how many frequent flyer miles my husband had accrued. That "free" airfare is what makes this possible for me. The all-inclusive cost for the 9 day Greece tour is actually pretty darn cheap.

(I just realized this is in the main forum and not off topic. sorry)

The group we ditched was an international group we'd been touring with through Trafalgar tours. We were near the end of a month+ tour, but the reason we went our own way was because while most of our outings were great and had good guides, we thought that a few of the things slated for Paris sounded crowded/overdone or just hmm. I dunno, we just weren't as interested in going to stuff like the moulin rouge, as seeing one of the other museums (we'd only been to the Louvre that that point).

I've heard my entire life how rude Parisians are. Not true. We met so many lovely people there. The old women in Italy, on the other hand, are another story. The men in Rome could also be a handful. We ordered gelato on cones, and I was handed a HUGE cone back, way larger than anyone elses, and the guy who had scooped it and handed it to me and said "my peeniz is much larger than thizz". Our guide had warned us ahead of time that the men there may pinch your butt or do something fresh, so to not make a big deal and just roll with it. SOO many jokes after that from our tour group analyzing how I was eating or licking that cone.

You may not be up to pub crawls by the time you go, but eventually you will again (now THAT is one of my fave London activities).

I've always wanted to try a Rick Steves tour. I'm so excited for you. And jealous.

 

[southernlady]

At first it was definitely about WLS and not being able to eat on vacation but it's sort of morphed into a travelogue. You decide.

I'll leave it as it's original intention was geared toward travel soon after surgery. Just because the thread took a tangent off another direction is no cause to move it. I'm not one to get bent out of shape if threads go off on tangents.

 

[Clematis]

"my peeniz is much larger than thizz"

Bwahaha. That's what they all say, pal.

I miss lewd comments and dirty looks. (Sigh.) The day I felt old was the day I walked through a room crowded with men and not one even glanced at me. I'm invisible now. The government shouldn't waste tax dollars on stealth bombers and instead just have middle aged and old women carry secretive material.

 

[CaraOC]

Bwahaha. That's what they all say, pal.

I miss lewd comments and dirty looks. (Sigh.) The day I felt old was the day I walked through a room crowded with men and not one even glanced at me. I'm invisible now. The government shouldn't waste tax dollars on stealth bombers and instead just have middle aged and old women carry secretive material.

The older I get the younger doctors get and the more pissed off I get with them!! They come around and practically fawn over the very young and very blonde and pretty nurses. It's embarrassing to watch sometimes. If you're pretty enough you can say anything even ridiculously stupid and inaccurate and nobody corrects you. I've heard some utter bullshit leave their mouths and nobody challenge a word. Except me or course, I frequently develop Tourette's at work and call it as I see it. I frequently approach doctors and tell them, "can I tell you what I need or do I have to giggle and flip my hair first?"

 

[Susan in Tennessee]

The older I get the younger doctors get and the more pissed off I get with them!! They come around and practically fawn over the very young and very blonde and pretty nurses. It's embarrassing to watch sometimes. If you're pretty enough you can say anything even ridiculously stupid and inaccurate and nobody corrects you. I've heard some utter bullshit leave their mouths and nobody challenge a word. Except me or course, I frequently develop Tourette's at work and call it as I see it. I frequently approach doctors and tell them, "can I tell you what I need or do I have to giggle and flip my hair first?"

Why, Cara, try as I do, I just CAN'T picture this! wink-wink