Day - Last - Friday November 21, 2025 - Heading home

By Ellen Outten

 Summing up some thoughts about this trip. 30 days of active physical touring is too much    Unlikely to do another back to back Odysseys Unlimited tour. 

In the future, if I choose Odysseys, it will be for  a Level 2  2.  They rank their tours won a scale of 1-5 and both Sicily and The Nile are a “3” .   A month of 8,000 + step days is more than I can enjoy.

Choose your tour carefully.  Where do you really want to go?  In the case of the Nile trip, I had a little too much of tombs after about the 5th straight day.   It didn’t seem to bother others in our group.  Everyone else seemed to have come for tomb “overload “   

There are pluses and minuses to every tour.   Odysseys plus is the small group tour, only 24 people maximum.  We got along with a good number in the Sicily tour; not so much on the Nile tour.   I didn’t warm up to many at all.  There was a group of 5 from new Hampshire that were the best of the lot.  The rest were people I never want to associate with.  Odysseys markets to colleges and alumni.   They have been a superior group and I find many of them to be very self centered.  You’re stuck to some degree with all these people as many meals are group meals.  On the other hand, their tour guides are superior and the hotels used are usually 4+ stars.

Stay back and don’t go if you’ve had enough. Save your energy for what’s important to you.  Perhaps more research on my part.   I loved seeing the great pyramid and Sphinx and found our guide’s interpretation of hieroglyphics amazing but had enough long before others did.

Cruises are a different story.  You can stay onboard and miss your excursion.  And, you don’t have to pack luggage every few days.

Cruises also allow you to do your own laundry or on the riverboats, pay for it and allows you to take much less luggage.  

The seat cane I’ve taken works great, especially with tour guides that go in and on.  But it’s unwieldy and often falls.  I better handle is needed that rounder and can hook onto railings.  I will be glad to put it in the closet for a few months.








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