When do we have to choose what optional tours we want to take and how do we pay for them. Do we pay by the day or at the end of the tour?

When you begin your tour the TD will hand out a list of the optionals on offer. He will give you time to read thru and decide which ones you like and if there is enough people wanting to do each particular optional then they will go ahead. You will be also given the options for payment and sometime before the end of the tour he will ask you all to pay. You may find that sometimes an optional not mentioned on the Tour explanation can be offered. On the Winter wonderland we were offered a visit to Dachau Concentration camp which was not on the Website.It is a good idea to familiarise yourself with the optional list on the website to see what interests you but not all of them will eventually be offered.

When you recieve your documents you will recieve a listing of all the included and all the optional tours. The Tour Director usually decides which optionals will be offered, as he or she usually plans the optionals so that they fit in with the included excursions. Sometimes they change the order of the included excursions, this has happened on a couple of my tours, it means that if you are in a place for two nights that the included may be brought forward a day to give more free time or time to do longer optional excurions. The Tour Director will usually collect payment for the excursions towards the end of the tour. On the whole I have found that they wil accept, cash, credit card or traveller's cheques for payment. I had one Tour Director who was even happy to take foreign currency, once he had worked out the exchange rate to Euro.

Sometimes even though an optional is offered, it may be cancelled due to lack of numbers. Each optional usually has a required attendance number. I have been disappointed on a couple of occasions because there were not enough members in the tour party interested in taking part.

Hi, I could be wrong, it won't be the first time, but I am fairly certain that I read on this very site that Travellers Cheques were no longer being accepted.

Best to 'Cheque' this out !

I have just returned from Easy Pace France and Easy Pace Italy and both Tour Directors mentioned that they accepted Traveller's cheques for Optional's payments.

A big welcome back Gennevive. Hope Italy was as wonderful as ever. When you're fully settled back into 'normal' life please write a TT about your tours. It's always enjoyable reading fellow BB's TTs.

Happy travelling.

Regardless of whether or not Traveller's Cheques are take for the Optional Tours, they are becoming a relic of the past. Although they are inexpensive to buy, they are expensive and difficult to cash. I have always paid with cash early in the tour in either US$ or Euro. However, most use credit cards.