I am writing this in response to an experience my folks had five years ago on a group tour in the U.S. and Canada. They took this tour thru a company that caters to the elderly. Since many seniors have low energy, you would think these tours would be slow-paced. But this one wasn't. People usually had to get up between 7 and 7:30 and had to keep going for 12 hours or more, except if they were able to doze off on the bus, which some people can't. This tour lasted for 9 days. My folks, who are in average health for people in their 70s, were able to keep up for the first few days, but then got badly fatigued and it took them a week after the trip to regain their energy. I am a low-energy person. Hearing about this, I realized I would not have been able to keep up with the pace of this trip either. I know there are group tours for handicapped people. This wouldn't be right for me either, because they would probably have to run the tours at such a slow pace to accommodate the handicapped people that I would probably get bored. What I suggest is a group tour that is paced halfway between these. That is, you would be able to get up to 10 hours of sleep at night, you would hit the road around 10 am, and finish dinner (and be free to take it easy from then on) around 7 pm. If the tour arranger wants the group to do something that can only be done in the evening, such as attend a performance, they would schedule a few hours of "down time" the afternoon before and also allow people to sleep longer the morning after. I'm talking about the kind of tour where you stay in a different place almost every night, such that you must go where the bus goes and can't go back to your hotel at midday to rest. This kind of tour is very common.

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