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No stupid things are going to happen to me as they did on previous trips to Europe.
For the first time, this Sardine’s going to take THE TOUR.
No luggage to carry. No flea bag hotels. Don’t have to worry about catching the right train.
No, not exactly first class accommodations, but all the rooms have hot water, showers, and a television.
In fact, I don’t want to see my two suitcases at any point during this trip except inside my hotel rooms.
No more fighting lines to get into museums. The tour guides will cut through the masses of people waiting to see the Crown Jewels, the Mona Lisa, Versailles, the David, “Venus on the Half-Shell,” the Coliseum, the Sistine Chapel, and the Parthenon; we won’t have to wait a minute in line.
Of course, that’s quite a bit to see in twelve days--the longest time I could put off my trial and the Logged-In Public. London to Athens. I guess I won’t get to Stonehenge, as I had hoped when I booked the tour. The brochure assured me that the company ran tours there, as well as to Stratford-on-Avon where I could watch an authentic recreation of a Shakespeare play.
That’s all right, maybe next time. Besides, the grim attempts to sleep on the plane failed, and the jet lag was too much to overcome, so I skipped the afternoon tour anyway. I awoke around seven o’clock that night, in time for dinner and a show at a London theater that I had seen several years ago: Fiddler on the Roof.
The next day we left the hotel by bus for Calais, stopping for an hour at Canterbury Cathedral. Just my luck the room Thomas Becket was beheaded in is being refurbished. We nearly missed the ferry at Dover because two of the women on the tour got lost or where souvenir hunting and didn’t return to the bus promptly. As soon as we reached the ferry a fog had rolled in and we couldn’t see the white cliffs.
By nightfall we had reached Paris, and I awakened in time for a glance at the city’s panorama, although nothing distinct was visible--a combination of my distance away and the smog. We went to Montmartre in the evening but couldn’t get inside Sacre Coeur, which was just as well, I had seen enough churches in my travels. Instead of going to Notre Dame the next day, I walked along the banks of the Seine perusing the book stalls for books by my favorite French authors, deluding myself that one day I might learn French.
In the afternoon, a trip was planned for the Pantheon and the Louvre. I asked the tour guide when we would go to the Louvre.
“Tomorrow afternoon,” the young Greek women said in perfect English, “just before we go to the station to get a train to Florence.”
She had an apartment in London and a house in Athens.
We weren’t going to Versailles?
“There is no time.”
I thought the itinerary included that.
“I do not think.”
I didn’t have the original package given to me by the travel agency. If I had known this, I would have gone to Versailles that day. I had also hopes of visiting Napoleon’s tomb and the Rodin museum.
We will be going to the Eiffel Tower?
“We will pass it by when we go to the Louvre.”
As it turned out, I was on the wrong side of the bus and couldn’t get across the aisle quickly enough to get a good view let alone a picture. How could I prove I had been in Paris? And I hadn’t even thought about the Arc de Triomphe until I got home!
On the way to Florence, we changed trains at Pisa but didn’t have time to go to the Leaning Tower. Florence was great but I wished I could have slept better on the train; my back was killing me. Michelangelo’s David I suggest is not appreciated well when viewed with eyes less than bloodshot and a body feeling a cold coming on. I was as disappointed in the Academia as I was in the Louvre: failing to get close to an archetypal work of art.
Racing around Florence, the tour missed the Uffizi Gallery and two-thirds of the Renaissance, the Pitti Palace (another quarter), the Palazzo Vecchio, the Medici Chapels, but it seemed that the members of the tour were well-stocked with leather goods bought from stores along the piazza in front of Santa Croce.
Was I alone feeling that I was missing something? Most of the tour members were over fifty and may have been to Europe once before. I heard no griping, however, and I was afraid to question the Greek woman, who had enthralled the forty of us with her knowledge of the cities and countries, besides the fact that she was good-looking, with a large mouth and vivacious personality, and jet black hair. She inspired great confidence in all of us that this, the package tour, was the only way to “do” Europe.
Also, to do Europe as quickly as possible. The tour companies understood that their customers hated traveling and hearing alien languages (I noticed several people on this tour always suspected the Italians and French of talking about them).
The Sardine was stuck with the potential readers of this column, enjoying his own suspicions, waiting for the unattainable moment of touristic gratification which went so much against his sardinic nature. This moment certainly would not be the purchase of leather goods or a visit to the Borgia Apartments in the Vatican.
Maybe instead of traveling immediately to Athens, from the port of Patris, we could take a quick excursion to the ruins of Olympia. Or on the way to Athens stop at Mycenae or Corinth.
“I’ll be glad when we get home,” said a women next to me on the bus.
This was said on the bus to the Dover ferry!
That’s how I was first clued in to the secret mysteries of successful touring groups. Try to get the mostest with the fastest tour. The less seen, the better. This was the price one paid for not lugging around a couple bags.
The Sardine's essays, articles, and stories have appeared around the Internet in the last few years at 3 A.M., Facets, Eclectica magazine, Fiction Funhouse, The Fiction Warehouse, 5_trope, and several film journals. Who and what he is probably will be revealed at various points through the articles appearing at this site. The first fifteen installments of his saga can be viewed at the old Unlikely Stories.