In Toledo, Spain, with a tour group of 40 teachers!
“Sell-out!” jeered a cyber-heckler when I posted my article about going on a 3-day Florida-Bahamas Cruise.
So I can only imagine this heckler’s horror when he learned that this “brave solo world traveler” (a.k.a. me) super “sold out” and accepted a free 40-person teacher travel tour to Spain over New Year’s through EF Tours.
Why are many hip travelers so against the idea of large-group travel?
“Ugh– It’s like being in a bubble of America, and you don’t get to really experience the culture.”
“In a tour group, you’re always waiting around if people in the group are late.”
“Group tours become a whirlwind as you rush from sight to sight. There’s no time to relax or just take it in.”
“I’m a smart person. Why would I want to turn off my brain and follow like a sheep all day?”
Toledo Cathedral, one of Europe's most famous Gothic buildings.
So, as miraculous as it was to have the opportunity to go to Spain with other teachers, I must admit that I was nervous that a 40-person group for 5 days would drive me bananas. I do, after all, have a very big ego, along with a penchant for both idiosyncratic wandering and alone time.
But you know what? The 40-person tour was actually great! We saw sights through Madrid, and (as you can see in these photos) we toured gorgeous and historic Toledo, which is an hour from Spain’s capital.
Here is why and how travel in a giant tour group can rock:
1. Tour group travel can be an extremely economical, safe, and easy way for newbie travelers to start seeing the world. A lot of the teachers on our 40-person Spain tour had not had many opportunities to travel before, due to family or finances, so the group tour was a giant treat… and perhaps a launching pad for many more travels to come.
Toledo Cathedral has sky-high ceilings. Wow!
2. Sometimes you just want to turn your planning mind off and focus on other things. It’s relaxing to simply hop onto a bus, be taken to all the big sights, and be told what they are!
3. Ticketing for major attractions is usually much more efficient for tour groups than for solo travel. At the Prado Museum in Madrid, our group cut the line of hundreds of waiting tourists, because our guide had pre-purchased our tickets through his connections.
4. In tour groups, you meet interesting people you wouldn’t have met otherwise. While I didn’t get a chance to hang out with many local folks on our Madrid-Toledo tour, I DID meet teachers from across the U.S. whose perspectives were fascinating. One Tennessee teacher was an Agriculture instructor and had just finished a Dairy-Judging competition! What a world apart from Boston, and funny it took a trip to Spain for me to see it.
This sculpture-surrounded window in the cathedral is AMAZING.
5. Group travel is sometimes beautifully inexpensive. As you probably know from Costco shopping, things are cheaper in bulk, so tour groups can often finagle more economical hotels, flights, meals, and guides.
6. On a tour, you see a LOT of famous and amazing things in a short period of time. You cut right to the chase (that is, the biggest sights) without spending a minute of your own time on coordinating the itinerary or transport.
One of the teachers on our tour joked, “These five days in Spain feel like three weeks!” because of how much we packed into so few hours. Of course, this whirlwind pace is both a positive and a problem with tours, but as our tour guide explained, “It’s not every day you’re in Spain. Let’s make the most of it!” Particularly for people with limited vacation time, this is key.
Majestic arches beneath rainbow stained glass.
7. Established tour companies have improved over time through trial and error. This means you will often get a positive (though usually breathless) experience due to all the tour group-ites before you who gave feedback to the company on what they should keep and what they should change.
8. There are customizable aspects to big group tours. In other words, you are not a prisoner, and you do have choices. During the evenings of our Madrid and Toledo tour, we had the option to continue staying out on the town, or to go home and sleep. I often slept, so tired was I from all the sightseeing! Other times we would have a two-hour block in which we had several options to choose from, such as shopping or museum sights. You can make the trip your own.
In total, I felt much more like an individual on the 40-person Madrid tour than I expected, and I had fun, too!
Readers, what other benefits or downsides of large tour groups have you experienced?
This question is particularly on my mind, because, after years and years of solo world travel, I’m taking not one, but FOUR large-group international tours this year.
Our large tour group in the even larger cathedral.
- In January there was the Madrid Teacher Tour through EF Tours.
- In February (in 1.5 weeks!), I fly to China for 8 days with 42 Boston students.
- In April, I will tour Greece for a week with the “Teach Greece” curriculum group.
- In July, part of our Honeymoon will likely be a group safari in Tanzania, as it’s far cheaper to go with a group than with a solo vehicle. Romantic!
The way I see it, I love solo travel, and I now know very well how to do it after so much practice. This means that the current unexplored frontier is investigating the other forms of travel that folks (especially teachers and students) experience.
There will be moments of ego flare-up as I sit on these tour buses (“I run two travel blogs! I want to plan the trip, not just sit and listen!”) but this experiment will be worth it.
I shall go back to solo travel soon, but first I feel a duty and an interest as a thorough travel blogger and world explorer to mix things up. That is to say, it’s time to read my own article, “100 Different Ways to Finally Start to Travel!”
The future glistens bright, exploring different ways to travel!
Ultimately, especially as I am starting a new era of life with our upcoming wedding (woo hoo!), I will likely create a hybrid form of travel which combines unstructured, “let’s figure it out as we go” travel with structured day-long tours, with larger and longer group tours.
So, readers… I am highly curious to hear from YOU:
Which mix of structured, group, unstructured, and solo travel have YOU now embraced, and why?
[...] spend most of my evenings and weekends grading, but how many other working folks in 2011-12 spent: a week in December in Spain, a week in February in China, a week in April in Greece, and two summer [...]
Ms.M, you’re so lucky to travel all around the world! I wanted to go to Spain and Greece and travel. I can’t wait until 9th grade so I can travel with one of those teachers and travel with them.
The buildings are so beautiful! I want to go to Spain one day.
The sculptures in the Cathedral are AMAZING! It is so beautiful!
For those of you wondering whether my newfound respect for large group travel would hold up after chaperoning 42 Boston students through China, here’s the report: http://www.aroundtheworldl.com/2012/02/24/china-travel-with-42-boston-students-was-wonderful/
Well said and I am glad you had a good time. I haven’t done a large group tour, but we have done small group tours and enjoyed them very much. We like to mix it up when we travel and I agree with you when you say that sometimes you just want to turn off your brain and relax. Independent travel can be exhausting and sometimes it is nice to have someone take care of you. Travel is travel and it doesn’t matter what way you do it, what is right for some isn’t right for others but who is to say what is best?
Since Spain did not stink. What place did you visit was the best out of all of the places you visited? I bet that it is Boston!
I wrote a whole article about that: http://www.aroundtheworldl.com/2011/01/11/8-great-cities-of-rtw-travel-to-actually-move-to-and-live/
Wow. Spain is beautiful, first of all. Also, I like to say that I love traveling in groups. I hate being alone. It’s not fun and too silent.
I have never been to a solo travel before outside the state because my mom says I’m not old enough. Truthfully, I’m just scared to go alone. I’m scared of people staring at you and laugh because you don’t know how to speak “their” language. But I have been to a group cruise last year in April vacation. I went to the Bahamas, There were many beaches there and I got a horrible sunburn.
If I were to travel with forty people to Spain, I would feel the same way you felt before the trip started. I would probably decide not to go. I believe that everyone should be positive about things. Anyways it seems that you had fun after all. From those pictures you took I feel like i should travel to Spain one day.
This was funny. Sometimes I’m dead set against tours, but when I have opted to go this route I have been very pleasantly surprised at times.
For the church pictures, is it all of one church or many or them?
One! But Toledo has so many churches that it’s spawned the phrase: “Holy Toledo!”
Toledo is in Spain?
The most famous Toledo is Spain, and that is the Toledo this article is about. There are, however, other Toledos around the world, including on in the U.S. state of Ohio! Apparently Toledo, Ohio has a “sister city” relationship with Toledo, Spain, and they frequently do exchanges and projects together.
For the first picture, I think the picture is gorgeous! It has a lot of buildings crowded in one spot. Also you look cool with that position you are standing while taking the picture. How do you do that like half bridge?
Thanks! I was a varsity high jumper for many years so I’m very good with the back-bends.
I have tons of photos like that on this site (it’s like my “signature move”, so see if you can find them all! Here’s one: http://www.aroundtheworldl.com/2010/05/10/fou-awesome-uses-for-twitter/
I really like the photo of the statues in a tunnel type of thing. It is really nice art and looks different but nice!
Thanks for posting the positives of group travel. For many of us, including Bret, it was a large school trip that first ignited our passion to see the world. I liked Toledo very much as well and I’m glad to hear your had a great time with your group. Some of my best friends are teachers and they are a blast.
Yay! And yes! And indeed, teachers are the best!!
The Toledo Cathedral is so big! Your large group must seem tiny compared to it.
What interesting timing–I just did my first ‘guided tour’ ever the other day (an excursion to Tulum whilst on…yes…a cruise). Admittedly, it wasn’t a whole guided tour vacation, but I was very opposed to it for many of the same reasons you listed. And some were valid, and some were not. While I will be writing about it in depth (actually I already have, I just haven’t posted it yet) the main point is this–it wasn’t as bad as I thought AND if I hadn’t done it, I’d not have been able to visit Tulum any time soon. So in my opinion, it was totally worth it.
Glad you had a good experience and were able to see the positives in it.
Great timing! I look forward to reading your piece. I LOVE Tulum and actually have been working on a piece about it, myself, about how my friend and I went there NOT on a tour, and ended up goofing around and taking “human sacrifice” photos instead of learning any legitimate history
Tours can keep us in line, eh?
Ive done some great group tours. Mostly smaller groups, but I like having people to hang out with. I like your points. For those that are not into Travel so much, groups can be a great intro without any of the work or hassle.
Glad you got to enjoy Spain.
Huzzah!
I’ve done both and it’s like all things, there are pluses and minuses. I started out my travels totally solo and in time started trying small group tours. I love traveling alone sometime because I do tend to only see the things that most interest me, but I guess the flip side of that is I’ve likely seen things on group tours I never would have bothered doing otherwise. So maybe in a way you get a bit more variety when you branch out to see what you’d have passed on otherwise. I still switch back and forth. Some trips with groups, some on my own. In some part it’s often whether or not I want to try and put together an itinerary or not. Sometimes honestly it’s just nice to have a little built in company for the trip.
I haven’t had a positive experience on anything sizable, though. My one large tour was around 60 people. And this is very much a personal thing. I’m enough of a wallflower that once you get me in a group that size, forget it. I have stayed in touch with people on all my small tours. There’s usually at least one or two people I’ll connect with. That large tour, a week with them and I couldn’t even tell you one person’s name two years later. But I’m sure the social butterflies on that trip have made life-long friends. So, your mileage may vary!
Well-said! Indeed, there is a big difference between a medium-sized tour group and a mammoth one. When I go to Greece, it will be on the smaller side, while China with students will be the biggest I’ve done. I shall report back!
I usually travel with my family in larger groups, it is easy to get lost in a unfamiliar place.
Funny! My latest post talked a lot about a wonderful Neapolitan tour guide who opened up my eyes to the wonder and mysteries of Herculaneum. That’s another advantage of a tour when you get a good guide: you get a perspective, or sometimes just sparkling little details, about what you’re seeing that really make history and art come alive. I have a much greater appreciation of everything we saw and did in Herculaneum because of it.
Good point! During solo travel I usually cut costs by skipping a guide and just reading books or websites about a place– but you do get a much richer taste with a human explaining!