Thoughts on a Tour Guide Becoming (and highlights from Europe)

Thoughts on a Tour Guide Becoming (and highlights from Europe) -

I knew it would be difficult. I knew it to be a lot of work. I just did not realize how much work or how stressful it would be located.

Earlier this year, I decided to start organizing tours. In May, I've put together to take a tour of Europe and the planned 10 readers on an epic two week trip to Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Stockholm.

I organized day tours, meals, hostel rooms, train tickets out, walking tours and nights on the town.

and when the tour began in Paris last month, all my assumptions about a tour guide were to be thrown out the window.

I now have a new appreciation for each tour guide I have ever met in the world. They recognize that it is not, if you are part of a group, but on the other hand, after I see how much work to be a guide.

You are constantly checking each keep an eye, so no one will be lost, and keep all together and on task. It is not easy.

ball with dealing with botched reservations, closed attractions and lost phones, and you end up dealing with endless stress and fatigue. They are "on" from morning to night, and it is incredible to empty. I never thought I would be on the bed so prepared from 9 at night. (For each guide, trips running for months, I salute you!)

And it was because of all the stuff that I loved leading the tour.

I loved every minute of it.

to plan a tour for 10 Strangers, is planning very different from a trip with your friends, but in both cases I get people excited about traveling and share what I am about other passionately.

And I could not ask for a better group of people.

We had a super group of different age groups (19-69), who got along fabulously. I suppose we had an advantage. Everyone reading this blog, so we all had the same views about traveling

We beat them immediately, and I believe that everyone stay on my tour in contact with each other to come for a long time. Some highlights from our trip are:

• Karaoke in Denmark! (We rocked hard that night!)
• Our boat trip in Amsterdam:

• cooking dinner our hostel in Stockholm:

• our crazy night in Amsterdam
[(toohottowriteaboutonline!)
• our archipelago tour Stockholm (even if it was freezing!):
  
• our food tour in Paris
• All of our dinners for groups (especially the never -. ending cheeseboard in Paris)
• and naturally, get all these amazing and beautiful people to know:

(I have already with one of the tour participants up in Chicago. He has me Japanese market to a large took (Tensuke) for sushi.)

But that was my first tour, and as done for the first time, learn how to make things better. Errors were made and notes were taken. At the end of the tour, I asked everyone to complete a questionnaire and their comments echoed my thoughts. I'm a lot of changes to my future tours are to make, including:

• make prints of local attractions every day along with their costs
• Streamlining Buy ticket (there is only so much can be obtained in advance, though)
• printing maps with highlighted attractions ahead of time if this results in my first time was also a tour for each target

, my Group and I both very happy with how finished the tour. It was not perfect, but I have learned how to improve it and to make the operation more smoothly in the future.

This is probably to be expected, and perhaps too hard, I mean it to me (a lot of people on my tour told me to relax and things were fine), but I'm a perfectionist and it is important that it perfectly for me is your vacation

lead a tour is exhausting -. but fun - work. There is a lot of pressure - you are responsible for these people and their holiday. If you now, you mess on their holiday. They put their trust in the hands, and while you do is just your best with a few things out of your control, it is still stressful.

I had a lot more introduced down time. But that never happened (You may have noticed the blog and newsletter were non-existent for a while). to be a tour guide, is a 24/7 job. The time that I'd planned on trains for writing? Nee. Work went to each bed? Too tired.

But I (had never traveled a person on the tour as an adult and now adventure planning all over the world!) Enjoyed with others to share my love for travel. It is a challenge, but the performance of the work.

My tour guide days are just beginning, and I look forward to lead more trips in the future!

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