A Great Bus Driver Enhances a Tour

If you’ve ever been on a bus tour, you know what an important part of the mix your driver is. And if you’ve ever been a tour guide, you know that the driver can be your best friend…or a real obstacle to a smooth tour. We love our bus drivers and consider them part of our traveling family. (While we can’t promise this, several of our drivers have actually fallen in love with and married our tour members.)

Rick Steves with Richard bus driver

Photo: thetravelphile.com / facebook.com/thetravelphile

Bus driver Richard plays tour guide, and lets me imagine driving his wonderful coach.

 

Richard and tour member

Each year we give our tour members a patch as a memento of their tour. About 40 percent of the more than 20,000 travelers who joined us this year were return travelers. Here, Mike — a proud six-time tour alum — shows off the six patches he’s collected over his many years of touring with us.

 

Rick Steves tour group

Travelers on our tours are limited to a carry-on-sized bag. While we don’t strictly enforce that limit, our tour members are expected to carry their own bags from the bus to the hotel, and then to their rooms. And, because we strive to have centrally located hotels in delightfully traffic-free towns and old city centers, there are many times when getting to or from the bus involves a bit of a hike. Here’s our group leaving our Florence hotel (in another newly pedestrian-friendly, traffic-free center), and ready for Rome.

(Thanks for following along here on my blog and on Facebook as I guide our Best of Europe in 21 Days tour.)

Comments

8 Replies to “A Great Bus Driver Enhances a Tour”

  1. Dear Rick Steves,
    Richard the bus driver should be removed from your tours. His reflection in the mirror on the bus distracted us from the beautiful scenery.
    Just kidding. He was wonderful.

  2. Traveling by bus is always become a thing when we travel in a place. Once we visit a place i think we should try the local bus trip. Richard looks gorgeus and its kinda great trip along with him

  3. Wonderful drivers all. On this traveler’s several tours, each driver, like our guide, gained our trust even before that first mile behind the wheel. Often the driver was there to be introduced during our orientation time that first tour day…but not always. Many times the driver was finishing another tour before bringing the bus to ours. Yet it took no time at all to see the skill, the experience and the character of every driver from that initial meeting at the bus. Smiling, helpful with the bag storage and placement, always, and all this when often, the bus was in unusually tight parking spaces, and with time constraints on busy streets! Then we’d entered traffic, and that traffic could be difficult to say the least. Recalling times when impossibly narrow roads, or tight turning points and even livestock on the right-of ways, seemed to make the situation un-drivable, they safely succeeded in always reaching our next destination, with quiet, calm deliberation. Thank you all!

  4. Greetings fellow travelers,

    I’m glad our guy drove like our lives depended on him.

    Because it did.

    Thanks to all the bus drivers out there.

    Bravo,

    Doppelganger
    Tampa

  5. We had a great bus driver – Silvan – on our 2015 “Best of Europe in 14 Days” your.

    We did not receive a patch. How do we obtain them?

    1. Hi there, this is Rick’s assistant Evelynn. If you contact our Tour Department via email (tour@ricksteves.com) or phone (425-608-4217) they would be happy to send you a 2015 Tour patch. Keep on travelin’!

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