Best Of

Trips I recall with long bus rides include Scandinavia (Copenhagen to Stockholm) and Patagonia ((it's a big place).

I recently discussed Scandinavia in another thread. Patagonia - well, it's a big place. However, the drive back and forth to the silversmiths was a big waste of time, in my opinion.

We are going on the Tuscany & Umbria tour in 3 weeks. We are going with another couple. We are doing 3 weeks total as we are doing time in Venice, Florence, & Rome on our own also. I will post a review when we return.

In my experience, the tours in North America seem to attract far more people in their eighties, such as our experience on our most recent tour with them, the Great Lakes. It’s been like that on our North America tours.
We took the Puglia tour when it was new quite a few years ago. I do actually remember one woman collapsing on that tour and two doctors attending to her who were on our tour. Apparently, she was unwell at the start of the tour. They were extremely worried about her, and were on call all night for her. The next day, she got up and went shopping with her daughter, the doctors had suggested she rest. So everyone was really annoyed as the day before she had delayed our tour. I know anyone can get sick, but that really annoyed me, I felt bad for the doctors.
Another company we travel with wants doctors letters from anyone over 80 and you have to list all the medications you take. We still ended up on one tour with three people in that age range who needed to sit down every hundred yards, luckily they all got covid and had to leave the tour not long after it started.
Tauck has changed the Tuscany Umbria tour since I went on it. Personally, I would not do that myself, I would not want to drive.
I think when you take a tour and hope to see a lot of things and usually in no more than a two week period, you have to expect to have bus time, sometimes lengthy, unless you are visiting a small country such as say Ireland or Malta.

Terrilynn, I’ll be following your footsteps but in May 2025. We are touring two weeks on our own and then coming a week in Tuscany and a week in Puglia. Looking forward to your wonderful review.

This is a legitimate question from me….could anyone define what constitutes a LONG bus ride. I think it is different for everyone.