EVEN MORE ADJUSTMENTS TO COME

As we near our departure date, Heidi and Lee contemplate some added travel adjustments yet to come.  Past tours with Oversseas Adventure Travel (OAT), for example, always have been with small groups, between seven and fifteen individuals in our case, while this Grand Circle Tour will max out at forty.  Likewise, our travels in Spain will be in the company of thirteen couples and four single men while  OAT draws more single female participants and other combinations (friends, mother-daughter, sisters).

Another adjustment revolves around the amount of "free time" incorporated in the itinerary.  When touring Myanmar, India, Egypt or Turkey, while some meals were "on your own", even then our travel leaders almost always recommended or, more likely, decided for us where we would dine - we simply paid for our own meals and ordered off the menu.  Seldom was any other kind of "free time" included.

In Spain, however, we will have plenty of opportunities to explore and dine on our own.  That means, of course, that some pre-planning is involved if one is to make the best use of those unscheduled times.  Fortunately TripAdvisor and Google Maps and other online resources have helped ease the planning process; looking into the posssibilities also allowed us a more personalized visit and encouraged our investment in the entire trip long before we embarked.

When we were considering where, with whom and how to plan this particular trip, Lee looked into the posssibility of simply doing the entire tour on our own.  Realizing quickly that this would involve putting together an itinerary, scheduling how many days to spend in each location, booking flights and hotels, mastering innercity and intracity transportation options, transferring luggage from place to place, deciding what sites to visit, renting audio guides or reading guide book descriptions everywhere we went, learning tipping cutoms, and at times wrestling with non-English speakers to accomplish some essential task, he opted instead (and with relief) to make the needed adjustments and book the Grand Circle alternative!

There are, indeed, it would seem, advantages to group travel, even when the group might be larger than one prefers.  We'll see soon enough if the Grand Circle option fits our travel style.  We suspect (and hope) it will!