Thank you for the kind words - very much appreciated!

Regards,

Chris

Thanks Chris for sharing your experciences. Nice to know, and I'll be sure to take my camera with me at all times (it's very small).

Good to see the list of options that may be available. Not sure I need to walk around the red light district!

Brenda

HI CHRIS, MANY THANKS FOR POSTING THE OPTIONS YOU HAD ON YOUR WINTER EXPLORER TOUR. iT CERTAINLY HAS GIVEN US SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT. IF OUR TOUR IS FULL 48 PEOPLE SHOULD BE QUITE GOOD
REGARDS JEAN.F

hello chris,

by now you must be sick of talking about your rotten experience in rome but i just wanted to say that your information will be in my mind when we go in may 2004 and i will think twice before leaving anything of value in the bus!! we get a bit complacent whilst enjoying the excitement of these tours and this is a good example of why to stay vigilant - no one looks after our stuff better than we do ourselves!!!

regards di

Thanks so much for the list of optionals. Sorry about late Thanks, but Thanksgiving got in the way.

I read somewhere on this board that most everything was included on Insight tours. 13 optionals seems like a lot to me. What was included?

Thanks.

Pat

The basic purpose of a tour is to take you _to_ places and tell you something about the area you're in. That's what you get on all tours.

With Insight, what you also get in the major places is a tour with a local guide - on Winter Explorer we had local tours in Venice, Paris, and Rome. On top of that, you get a few what are called "highlights"; on this tour these include:

- Visiting the Sistine Chapel and Vatican museum in Rome.
- A guided tour inside the Colosseum in Rome.
- A walking tour of Florence, and a visit to the Academia museum to see Michaelangelo's "David".
- Visiting Napolean's tomb in Paris.
- Ascending the Eifel tower to the 2nd level.
- A boat trip on the river Seine.

Options are something completely different; they tend to fall into two categories:

- Optional dinners on the nights when the tour doesn't include a dinner.
- Optional excursions in what would otherwise be free time in a place.

Most people don't want every instant of a tour to be "planned" - the ideal tour is a mixture of organized activities and time at leasure to do your own thing. Options are something you can choose either to do or not to do as you wish; eg in Paris I chose not to do the Versaille/Louvre option because I'd visited those places before, and I wanted to spend a day to myself in Paris. If it's your first visit to Paris, however, you'd be mad not to visit Versailles and the Louvre, and the option provides a good way to do so.

Regards,

Chris

Chris, thanks again for the valuable information on options. Nice to know ahead of time on what may be offered as an additional tour.

Question - 2nd level of Eifel Tower, does that go to the top? I've been to the Paris Eifel Tower in Las Vegas, Nevada USA . The tower there is a replica about 1/2 size (or about 500 feet. When in Paris, I'm going to do the real thing!! Is this something that I should plan on doing on my own (in case 2nd level isn't the top)??

Hi Brenda,

No, the second level is the second "platform" of the Eiffel tower, about 1/3 of the way up.

The reason you only go to the second level is that from the ground to the second level there is a large elevator which runs up each "leg" of the tower, so it's easy for groups to do. To get to the top, you need to transfer on the second level to a second, much smaller elevator which runs up the middle of the tower to the top. This isn't practical for groups to do.

The views from the second level are absolutely amazing. You're not missing anything, view-wise, by being on the second level rather than the top.

Regards,

Chris

Thanks again! Who would have known, unless one knows! Will you be my personal guide? ;-)

Chris - I only just saw your comments on losing your gear in Rome. When we travelled through Europe I couldn't get over the way we were constantly told to "WATCH OUT FOR PICK-POCKETS" and "DON'T LEAVE ANYTHING ON THE BUS". (Whoops, sorry, Coach ....).

After a few weeks of this I realised what a safe place Oz must be. Even the driver questioned me on this asking "don't you have thieves in Australia". I said we did, but it wasn't something you constantly thought about. The TG was like a broken record on pick-pockets.

Mind you, if you lose something here, you still expect it to be handed in. Although, there are exceptions to this of course. Funny, in Ireland/Britain the subject rarely came up. (I hope this doesn't sound like I'm having a dig at Europeans - it was just what happened).