Touring Pros: Taking a Bus Avoids a Fuss

Looking back on our New England bus tour, I have a few thoughts that may help others considering such an adventure.

Obviously, there are disadvantages in taking a bus tour rather than driving.

Your schedule is inflexible; you are regimented; you arrive at your destination each day on time, you depart on time. Generally you eat in designated restaurants, with your group.

You are locked in for the entire journey with a group of about 40 strangers, mostly retirees or widows, from every section of the country. Husbands and wives, however, may sit together.

Except when the tour stays more than one night in the same hotel, there is no sleeping in. You must have your bags packed by 7:30 a.m., eat your breakfast and be in the bus, ready to go, by 8:30; sometimes 8.

One dare not be late. It irritates the entire group and one is made to feel, for a while at least, like an outcast.

One grows more and more dependent on one’s tour guide, or director. Ours was a Tauck Tour, reputedly one of the best; our guide was Jeanne Eagleson, a bright, cheerful, hard-working, responsible young woman whom everyone, I think, grew to love. We became quite dependent on her, not only for the local lore but also for entertainment; she would spend miles setting up an outrageous pun.

Despite the difference in ages, points of origin and occupations, the tour group quickly forms congenial associations; two or more couples get together for lunch or dinner or tourist adventures; at the end, there is a great deal of camaraderie. Many goodbys are said with feeling.

Everyone depends, finally, on the driver. Our man, John Gray, was not only tireless and skillful but participated heartily with Ms. Eagleson in dubious practical jokes. One morning, as we prepared to leave a large hotel, she said she supposed we had all been disturbed by the commotion the night before. No one had. She said a man had been trying to break into women’s rooms and one had shut her door on him, breaking his arm. A moment later Gray swung aboard, his right arm in a sling. So you laugh.

But you never worry about finding accommodations for the night. Your bags are always taken to your room and picked up in the morning. Except for “free time,” which is generous, everything is paid for, including tips.

The advantages and disadvantages of traveling by car are equally obvious. One has the freedom of the road; one follows one’s whim; there is adventure as well as anxiety in not knowing where one is going to stay. But, as we found out in Spain, one can get hopelessly lost in strange cities where one’s language is not spoken. (In New England, however, many of the residents spoke English.)

You will not find many young people on bus tours. They are for people who don’t want to drive, don’t want to wrestle their luggage, don’t want to wonder where they’re going to spend the night, and don’t mind falling in with strange companions. Most of them are pretty good sports.

My wife and I have driven through France and Italy and Spain; we have also taken bus tours of Bavaria, Morocco and now, New England. The low point of the Moroccan tour was arriving late in the day at the Fez Hotel, in Fez, only to learn that the king was there and had commandeered all the rooms for his retinue. We had to drive all the way back to a hotel in the Atlas Mountains.

On a bus you surrender your spontaneity, your freedom, your sense of being on your own; but you gain security, and it’s probably safer and cheaper; and for some, more fun.

I should not close this report without mentioning our travel agent, Claire Weinberg (G.I.T. Travel Inc., Mission Hills). Ms. Weinberg wrote me a few years ago asking if she could be my agent. She said it would make her the envy of her colleagues. How could I resist that?

The main thing she does is to drive into Glendale before we start on a trip to buy our breakfast at Billy’s Deli and give us our tickets. Thus, we start out with a fattening dish of salami and eggs, which makes us realize we are on vacation.

Bon voyage.