In 1992, my wife and I travelled to Europe for 5 weeks. There we had both a very good and a very poor guided tour experience.

In Zurich, where we took a city tour, our tour guide asked those in the coach which language they spoke before we left the terminal. On board were, English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian speaking people so she gave the tour in all 5 languages. It was interesting to hear the explanations in the other languages too and though everything was repeated 5 times, it was never boring.

Our 'bad' experience was with an 'Insight Tour' of Switzerland. The regular Tour Leader wasn't available when we took the tour. His (or her) substitute was from Holland and knew nothing about the history of the country we were touring. We would have enjoyed hearing about Napoleon, the Romans, and others through the ages who passed through or stayed in the Alps.

When we had taken an 'Insight Tour' of the British Iles in 1990, our Tour Manager was excellent. He had stories for every region we visited with music to match. In Scotland, he joked about 'Hagis' not revealing that it was something to eat, but rather that it was an animal with the legs longer on one side than on the other so that it could walk across the hillsides without falling.

Our driver took us onto the back roads away from the highways. He drove along roads just 1 lane wide where, if we met someone, they had to drive off the pavement to let us pass. He managed to park the bus in places I couldn't fit a car.

Peter Montreal