Traveling Senior Citizen Style

written May 23:

Everyone knows that a bus tour means it’s an old people tour. I’m not trying to be mean, but seriously, how many bus tours have you seen with young people besides a school field trip??? This is pretty much the reason why Elaine didn’t want to go to Portugal with the “oldies”, as we called them during the trip. Plus the tour was like a little pilgrimage to the city of Fatima, where the Virgin Mary supposedly appeared to three children. Elaine didn’t want to go there either.

As much as she tried to avoid this senior citizen tour, she got involved anyway...and so did I. Once we found our parents early Thursday morning, they were about to leave for the Lisbon part of their tour. My mom thought we should just join them. Elaine and I, exhausted and completely out of it, agreed – more time with the family and we thought it might actually be nice to have someone show us around Lisbon.

My, was it a trip?! We were definitely the youngest people on the bus. These old people were crazy. There was one Brazilian woman who was everyone’s best friend. She was super friendly, talkative, and loud. She was always dancing and singing and providing lots of entertainment for all of us. At one point during the tour, the tour guide mentioned the famous Portuguese explorer Magellan and how he was killed in the Philippines. I jokingly did the fist pump with a “YES!!” and then she looked at me and gave me an approving nod and thumbs up. She was a hoot!

By the end of that day, Elaine and I were exhausted. Not only were we tired from the lack of sleep the night before, but also from having to keep up – or actually, slow down – for the old people. Friday, we still refused to go to Fatima and walked around Lisbon on our own. Saturday, we spent one more day with the oldies for the bus ride back to Madrid.

Some observations about old people tours:

• They are expensive! If I was on my own, it probably would have cost me a lot less if I had taken the Metro everywhere and stuck to some cheap ass restaurants.
• Old people will buy anything! Every time we made a stop for photos or whatever, there were always souvenir vendors waiting there. And of course, the old people would buy something from them all the time! Every time they got back on the bus, they would always have some new tapestry or magnets or whatever.
• Old people tours are SLOW! I think what we saw in four hours, I would’ve seen in two and a half. If the tour guide said to be back in the bus in ten minutes, they would come back in twenty. They were always taking their time!

So the moral of the story is that as amusing as traveling old people are, I cannot travel on their time and money. I really hope that I do not get to the point where I have to go on these bus tours. But now that I’ve just said it, I probably will!