PARIS, FRANCE - Any tour, especially in a foreign country, can be hectic and a bit disorienting.
You wake up and have breakfast earlier than usual. You can't skip the meal because your next trip by motor coach could take four hours. The only pit stops are for the restrooms. Multiply this challenge of punctuality when your tour involves seven countries.
For moments like this, consider yourself blessed when you're assigned a compleat director. And that's what we got in Patricia Sutrell of Cosmos Tours. Towards the expected boom in tourism next year, every tourist guide and tourism student will profit well from using Patricia as model.
Patricia is a polyglot. Born French, she lives in Italy, and also speaks German and very good English. Her languages were most handy with our tour group from UK, USA, Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines and Saudi Arabia.
Her competence and knowledgeability of the countries we visited was superb, including the legends and folk takes.
We learned about Germany's Loreley, the siren who until today people believe would come back and lure sailors with her beautiful voice. Also of Austria's surprise when, through voting, Venetians preferred to be annexed to Italy than stay with Austria.
Venice is an island surrounded by 400 other islands. But because most of the basic services like firefighting, hospital care and police force were initially not available, many of the early Venetians left and preferred not to attend to tourists.
Thus, immigrants now attend to the tourists' needs.
In Verona, Italy Patricia fulfilled one of the items in my bucket list since high school--seeing the Capulet family's balcony down which the love-smitten Romeo whispered, "But, soft! What light through yonder breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!" From that balcony, too, Juliet had requited Romeo's love in this classic and best-loved of Shakespeare's plays.
We saw the countless love letters and post-its plastered on the walls leading to the balcony. In various languages. Akin to the many locks in the Bridge of Locks in Paris, all avowing unconditional and undying love.
Patricia is an engaging storyteller as well. Rather than rattle off hard, boring data, she dramatizes and launches off into monologues--of Bavaria, Germany's King Ludwig, often referred to as "The Mad King" when he eventually snapped after knowing he had run his country aground.
Her dramatized delivery of the Romeo-Juliet romantic exchanges sent the women listeners into reminders of teenage giddiness and suppressed giggles! At our age! And her delivery of Ludwig's uncontrolled laughter sent us worrying when she'd rise up for air.
Approachable but professional, Patricia is. Smiling broadly when we first met her, she immediately laid down the SOPs. Punctuality is the key to our tour's success. That's because each day's itinerary is made up of many stops, some involving compliance with ferry schedules, riverboats for lake cruises, mountain trains, avoiding time clashes with other touring groups, and pre-set dinner appointments.
Also, the driver is not paid overtime for unjustifiable delays. To be factored into his schedule is the law mandating a 3-hour rest during the trip.
Initially, the group was lax about punctuality. But after giving a fifteen-minute slack to four members, she said it was time to go. So off we went to Belgium, complete with the luggage of the four no-shows.
Seated in the front seat, I could see, however, that she was burning the telcom wires calling up the pit stops we had covered, in hot pursuit of the missing four. They, a family, eventually met up with us in Belgium, through their own personal resources.
This must have cost them an unexpected sum to shell out.
That experience did it for all of us. The Asian legs learned to walk faster, we did the restrooms and lunch breaks in 30 minutes, and squeeze in Internet time in hotels with commonly weak Wi-Fi systems.
Always proactive, she informs us what to expect before and when we reach our next stop, whether these are the border police or a local tour guide. Already familiar with our stops, she always visualizes to us the areas for the restrooms, the dining areas marked out for our group, even the ingredients of each meal course in the menu.
And always, like a mother hen, she counted when we embarked and disembarked. When the doors of the motor coach closed and just before we drove away, she counted again, often in French.
Always, too, she warned us to watch our bags, and not to trust anyone who approached us, except our group. She shared all the tricks that swindlers and thieves use to hoodwink us.
My husband and I experienced an attempt from such a thief in Brussels, Belgium. But this story can keep for later.