Confessions of a Tour Leader

The group’s vacation to Aruba began at various airports throughout the northeast. All flights funneled through Tampa’s complex airport with its terminal trains carrying travelers into a hub before shuttling them to their departure gates. Our company had sent each passenger a name tag and asked them to wear them, especially at airports, where we had staff waiting to conduct them to their departure gate.

The staff meet the planes they were assigned to. So far, so good. Except the flight from the small New England airport with a couple who had insisted that they could not make the two hour drive to a larger airport where a dozen of their friends were traveling in a group. I had forgotten this couple and there was no one to meet them upon their arrival in Tampa. They had to find Air Aruba departure terminal themselves.

I was waiting for the last group to pass through security at the entrance of the departure terminal when I saw them. I recognized them immediately since I had traveled with them before, a couple of times, and remembered them as trouble. As their carry-on bags emerged from the x-ray machine, and their red, puffy faces, scowling, looked up into mine, I instantly recognized that I had made a mistake. I had not sent a guide to meet them. They glared at me, angry. Of all the people to short change, this couple was a poor choice.

The man, short, rotund and balding with a round face was an executive of the company sponsoring the trip. His wife, a squat woman wearing a flower print dress and Sunday white shoes, had a reputation for being royalty. For an instant the emotions of being a tour leader converged in the pit of my stomach. Guilt. I had screwed up. Fear.  Had I jeopardized a solid account? Uncertainty. How could I make amends? Eventually pride prevailed. I prided myself on the way I managed our trips. For a moment I was paralyzed. Then I saw it. The solution to my quandary became evident. They were not wearing their name tags!

No sooner had they picked up their carry-on bags and started into the terminal where the gate for the flight to Aruba awaited, a long terminal length walk away then I was in their faces. “Where are your name tags?” I barked at them. “I have people all over this airport looking for you. Where are your name badges?” I spun on my heels and began to walk swiftly to the departure gate. When I turned and let them pass me so they could present their boarding passes to the gate agent, I said, “Next time wear your name badges.”

Carry your medicine with you, Please!

The lobby of one of the Ritz Hotels in Naples, Florida was a buzz.  It was late at night.  A woman was standing in front of the registration desk, tears running down her cheeks.  The clerk was wringing her hands.  The bell captain was the only person who appeared to be in control, of himself.  “No, ” he assured the woman, “no luggage had been delivered .”  “But my medicine,” she screeched.  “My insulin.”   Unfortunately this is not an uncommon scene.  People pack their prescription medications all the time.

The bell captain arranged to have the woman taken to a 24 hour pharmacy.  He assured her that they would give her enough medicine to get her through the night.  In the morning she would have to call her doctor and have a prescription faxed or phoned to the drugstore, if, of course, her shipped luggage was not delivered.

I have never heard of a person who has made this mistake twice.

Next Time You Fly Wear Loafers

There you are, lining up with what appears to be several hundred other people. You are wearing a jacket, a backpack is slung over your shoulder and you have a carry-on-bag too. You are approaching the larger than human size white frame x-ray that you must walk through. Before you do, however, you must put your carry-on bag, backpack, jacket, belt, coins from your pockets, and yes, your shoes in a small plastic container and push it onto the conveyor belt which carries your belongings into an MRI for stuff. Then, and only then, are you beckoned to pass into the frame. You catch your breath and hope that no buzzer sounds as you go through. All this time other travelers are going before and after you. You must be patient with those who are ahead of you, and you must not turn around and slug the man behind you. He seems to be in a rush, elbows flaying, hot breath forcing his path. Your physical discomfort does not prevent you from thinking about cattle passing into an abattoir. The airport security personnel lounging around the machines appear like the stockyard workers, bored and disinterested.

You are through the x-ray machine without setting off the alarm. Now you must claim your backpack, carry-on-bag, coins, belt and shoes from the conveyor belt where your stuff has been jammed into a pile with the couple’s who have gone before and so has that of the sweating man in a hurry behind you. He pushes against your back as you wait for the people ahead of you to gather their things and, picking up their shoes, move into the terminal. You have only an instant to notice that the woman has stepped into her shoes as she hops along, one hand on her husband’s arm. The man, however, looks stricken, holding his shoes and bags as he desperately looks for a place to sit down. Now it’s your turn. You too hobble along, trying to juggle you bags, put on your belt, pocket your change and avoid the man behind you., carrying your sneakers, fashionably high, red, with laces, long laces!

By the time you find a chair, one wedged between people waiting at a gate to board their flight, and have laced up your shoes, you begin to fear you will miss your flight. Having tied your shoes and gathered your belongings — and reenter the concourse where you can at last try to locate your departure gate — you are a nervous wreck. When you locate the gate where your fellow passengers look like patients in the waiting room of a dentist you see the man who had followed you thought the x-ray machine. And you know, with a certainty unusual in your easy going nature, that he was going to sit next to you on the flight.

While it will not change much, next time you fly wear loafers. Bon voyage.

Renting a car in Rome — ugh.

I had the great good fortune to spend at week in Italy at a farm house in Umbria with my wife.   Farm house is a mis-nomer, really.  It was a villa with lots of bedrooms, all of them with private baths.  There was also a large swimming pool.  It was heaven.  Getting there was not, however, so wonderful.

Rome’s principle international airport was known as Fiumicino, it is now called Leonardo da Vinci.  This is important since if you are renting a car the chances are that you will have to return the car and knowing which highway signs to follow can be confusing;   The Italian roads are beautifully marked and finding the airport is easier than New York’s Kenny, for example.  Finding where to return the car to its rental agency owners is not, however.  This has to do with one of the airport’s most outstanding features.  The rental desks are located in a central place–a large room, with one entrance.

Afer you complete the rental formalities you need only turn to the left when leaving the rental station, struggle through the people waiting for their companions who are renting cars as they watch their luggage–all of it.   The cars are available inside the building!  There may be a dozen rental agencies located along a corridor.  We were fortunate as our car was shared a building with Hertz so we did not have far to walk with out luggage.  I am sure that some of the cars are located some distance from the rental hub.  Be sure to ask which building your car is to be returned to.  It is easy to overlook this detail and will  cause confusion when  you return the car.  If the highways are clearly marked, the specific entrance you will have to find in order to return your car are not.  There are four of them, A,B,C and D (I think.)  There are elevators within these garages so lugging the baggage up and down stairs are not a major problem.

We went up to the 4th floor where a woman sitting in a glasses in cage looked at the rental papers we had completed and told us where to find the car we had rented.  We took the bags down another floor and found the car.  Getting through the process of registering  was another story and the reason this  blog is being written.

You have cleared Italian customs, spent perhaps 20 minutes trying to find your luggage in one of the largest and most confusing baggage claim I have ever seen with no one to ask for help.  So now you have your luggage and you begin to locate and then follow signs to “car rental.”  Tubes and escalators, stairways, hallways and people movers, apparently designed by an angry child, eventually lead you to the rental room discussed earlier.  The last people mover deposits you in an circular anti-room where all the car rental companies have their desks.  In the middle of this area is a large circular column.   At the entrance are all the people waiting for the person delegated to complete the paperwork.  They are guarding their luggage, strollers and the children that may or may not be sitting in them.  You must negotiate your way through the throning crowds and enter the circular chamber where the companies have their counters.   Imagine a cattle pen, a circular one, filled with milling, throning, pushing, hot, impatient cattle and you might have a fairly good idea of what this ill conceived arena is like.

Hertz, being Hertz, is located on the left as you enter the space.  Above the counter is a digital sign with a number in red, like you may be familiar with this sign from the deli counter at you super market.  There was a long line waiting.  Since they were in the entrance to the room anyone going to other counters had to push their way through the Hertzies.  For whatever reason we took one of the little paper numbers from the machine and discover, much to our pleasure, that the people waiting for Hertz were more than 25 people away from being served.   Why pleasure?  Because we were not renting from Hertz.  Nor were we going to have to wait for National, Budget, Enterprise or any of the other large, well advertised and promoted companies.  We had rented on line with a company that gave  us a good rate.  No, we did not know the name of the rental company the discount service had  assigned us to.  When we located the desk it was at the end of the room opposite the entrance.  We had to run the gauntlet, pushing through the long lines of people mingled with other lines waiting for other counters, other famous rental agencies  When we got to the desk of Sixty we discovered two clerks waiting for us!   This is the moral of the story:  Unless you are a gold or platinum member stay away from the giants if you are renting a car in Rome.   Gold Hertz customers go directly to the garage where Hertz has a special check-in counter.  For those of us who are not gold card members, well, it hurts.

The trail from claiming our luggage  to the car was long.  The crowded corridors outside the rental station and the packed room was difficult and irritating.  It was clear that the Italian rental companies were less busy than the competition, and the car was first class.  I’d do it all again.  And hope to.

So you wanna know what I think?

This blog will be about travel. My travels, experience as a group travel agent/manager, other peoples’ travels, the travel industry and the world. Why not? It will only become fun if it is read and people respond, with comments and questions.

This is Wednesday here. In Bali it is Thursday. Travel can be tricky, stretching my brain, anyway. I must pause every time the International Date Line enters my consciousness. Since I am getting ready to go to Italy on Friday, the more mundane details of travel are on my mind: packing, tickets, passports, euros (ugh), scheduling, packing, and, well packing. I really do not enjoy the period immediately before a trip, especially now when we have to take our shoes off as we pass through security at the airport. The next time I can truly relax is when I snap my seatbelt closed.

By the time the army flew me from California to Georgia in 1958, the first time I had been on an airplane, I had crossed the United States three times, twice by train and once by Greyhound bus. So I have been at it for quite some time. That will either be a good thing for a travel blogger or an outlet for an outdated old, opinionated crank. I am sure that at some point I will bemoan the state of the airline industry and much of my complaints are based on a half century of experience. The military flight was on a charter propeller driven aircraft belonging to the historic Flying Tigers. From my canvas seat I could look out the window where flames were spewing out of the engines. When I warned the stewardess, she laughed and told me it was ok.

For years after that flight, every time I flew I wore a necktie and dressed as it I was going to church. Things have changed. No flames, no stewardesses, no meals and now, not even peanuts. Sad. There is still a whole wonderful, exiting world out there and that is what this blog will be about.

So you wanna know what I think about travel

By the time the army took me for my first airplane ride a half a century ago I had crossed the United States three times. Twice by train, the glorious Santa Fe Chief and 20th Century Limited, and once by Greyhound Bus. The army flight was from California to Georgia on a chartered propeller driven Flying Tiger aircraft with flames shooting out of the engines. I could see the engines exhaust from my canvas seat that was slotted into the floor of the freight aircraft. I told the stewardess what was clearly wrong. She laughed and told me it was ok. I could do nothing but take her word for it. Travel has always been much like that flight. There always seems to be a moment or circumstance where I am no longer in control.

A lot has changed since that flight. Not much of it good, in my opinion. Travel is, however, still exciting. Seeing and experiencing the marvels of new places, cultures, foods, even the magic quality of the light north of Rome. Today is Wednesday and the fact that I am flying to Italy on Friday makes me think about the first time I experienced that phenomenon. It brings my thinking about this blog together. I had been a group travel manager. Nevertheless, the act of traveling is ultimately personal. The closer the flight to Italy gets the more the details begin: What have I forgotten? Will I arrive at the airport on time? Will flames shoot out of the engines?

This blog will be about travel, my opinions, experiences and stories about other people too. It will only be fun if people read it, have comments and questions. We will see.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!