Those Guiding Lights of Your Travel Adventures

One of the great adventures--or misadventures--of foreign travel is the luck of the draw when it comes to guides, whether thrust upon you by the tour operator or chosen by yourself off the streets.

Generally, the street fraternity is more entertaining, and often more likable, than the professionals.

We met Paddy O’Hara, who was even more Irish than the name implies, on a summer afternoon in front of Buckingham Palace.

He was wearing a bowler, a morning coat that could only have come from a dust bin, a pair of decrepit shoes, but no socks.

He drew himself up to his full height of not much more than five feet and gave us a smart salute: “A veteran of the Great War, at your service.”

Although much of his information was at total variance with the London guidebooks, O’Hara was a congenial companion for the next three days. He would be waiting for us outside the Strand Palace Hotel in the morning and would return us there at night.

Except for his special areas of expertise, such as finding the worst pub food in London, the scenes of its most lurid crimes, and back-wall peepholes into the private precincts of the Royal Family, he was an amazing font of misinformation, and we have never forgotten him.

The least congenial guide we ever had in Europe was a wordy Swiss, who we were stuck with for seven days on a bus tour from the north of France to the Mediterranean. With PA mike in hand, Otto saw to it that nothing along the road should escape our attention: the 12th vineyard of the morning, a stand of plane trees, a farmer in his fields, a distant mountain.

But his particular fascination was with the TGV, the world’s fastest train. At more than one level crossing he would blast us awake from our afternoon naps with: “Attention! Train a Grande Vitesse!” By the time we could open our eyes, of course, it had already shot by at its cruising speed of 168 m.p.h.

One evening, after 12 nonstop hours of minutiae, Otto would join us in the bar after dinner to cadge drinks and resume his nonstop monologue. We have never forgotten him, either.

Guido, who once drove us from Naples to Pompeii in a mini-van, was an opera buff. We heard his commentary over a constant background of arias from the stereo system.

As we were heading out of the city along the waterfront, he put a question to us: “Who knows where Caruso died? For the right answer I will pay 10,000 lira.”

“Right here in Naples,” said one of the passengers.

“You are absolutely right,” said the guide, “and you may deduct 10,000 lira from my tip.”

Later, the guide was taken to task by a woman tourist official at Pompeii for dawdling and holding up other parties. There was a loud shouting match, each threatening to report the other to tourism officials in Naples.

Our guide drove us back in a silent rage, although a vengeful aria from Iago or Rigoletto on the stereo would have been appropriate.

Once in Naples the damage to his dignity was such that he left us at the hotel and sped off without a word or without collecting a single tip.

Two women guides stand out in memory. One, whom we shall call Ilona, was from Budapest, and was to have been our leader on a 10-day bus tour from Munich through Eastern Europe.

She met us and two women from New York City in the lobby of our Munich hotel the night before our departure.

“I have bad news,” she said. “Only you four have signed up for the tour. There will be no bus. We will ride in a Mercedes-Benz with a Yugoslav driver.” Her reading of Yugoslav had an ominous tone.

Afterward, to our surprise, she said we should call the company and cancel because the tour was not as advertised. We were beginning to suspect that her heart was not in her work.

The New Yorkers did try to cancel, but without success, and the following morning we met in front of the hotel.

Ilona was sobbing. The driver, whose name was Bora, was obviously sympathetic. He took us aside and said that Ilona’s mother was gravely ill in a hospital in Budapest, but the company would not let her leave the tour until a replacement could be found.

For the next five days a tearful Ilona met us every morning with the same apology: “I’m sorry but I cannot help you today. Bora will help you.”

Bora drove at life-threatening speeds, knew nothing of the points of interest along the route and invariably became lost in even the smallest cities.

To compound our difficulties, we were kept waiting for an hour or longer at every border. This was before the movement toward democracy in Eastern Europe; communist frontier guards were quick to recognize four Americans in a black stretch Mercedes-Benz as arrogant capitalists.

Despite Bora’s pleadings, we sat and sat while other cars and tour buses went through with little delay.

We finally got to Budapest, where the replacement guide was waiting at a hotel. Bora then drove off at high speed to deliver the still-sobbing Ilona to her mother.

Our new guide told us that evening over dinner that the mother was suffering from nothing more serious than anemia and was in the hospital for a series of tests. But the new guide, like Bora, was most sympathetic: “They’re very close, Ilona and her mother.”

In contrast to our time with the tragic Ilona, a day spent with Rosalynd Pio in Florence was the highlight of our visit to that incredible city.

She was a strikingly attractive woman in her mid-30s who had come to Florence years before, after majoring in Renaissance art in her native England. She had been married to an Italian journalist, but was now living alone.

Rosalynd won us over the moment we first saw her outside the Duomo, the starting point for our morning tour. Like all guides working in large crowds, she had to raise a standard to which her flock could rally.

Most guides hoist pennants of various colors or even placards bearing their names or the number of the tour. But not Rosalynd; atop her staff was one perfect rose.

We spent the next three hours following that rose through the Duomo, Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti and the swarming streets of the city. Rosalynd was a witty and knowledgeable guide and clearly a favorite with the staffs of the museums.

After the tour, the three of us had lunch in a small family cafe of her choice just a block off the Arno. She then drove us in her rattletrap car to her apartment above the Boboli Gardens, and we spent the afternoon in a cool patio, sipping white wine and leafing through her library of art books.

Much of her conversation was of friends and family in England, from whom she had been long away.

Later, she drove us down the hill and across the river to our hotel. And we were left with two lasting memories--a little car vanishing down a dark street and one perfect rose dancing over crowds of tourists in the streets of Florence.