End of Oriental Express, Tour #5, and Tour #6.

The Oriental Express tour, as we now refer to it, turned out great. I was able to more or less confront each group of people and explain to them that there was and obvious clash of cultures on the motorcoach and we needed to fix it if we wanted to have an enjoyable tour. Everyone agreed and voila! The end.

Our fifth tour of the season was a Tour 14. When Andy was single and working as a tour driver, this was his favorite tour. I, however, did it once last year and hated it. Something about the flow of things just didn't work for me. Well, we were assigned it again this last week and it was great! We had by far the best group of the year. However, we had the most high maintenance lady I've ever met on the tour, but she survived our wilderness style haha. She threw a fit one day because she didn't have a view room (don't worry, it was raining and cloudy anyway so view or not, you saw the same thing out of every window). She seriously told her husband that he better get her a new room or she'd divorce him. Wow! Annnnd we had an instance where two of our guests went into their room to find three housekeepers laying on the beds watching tv. I was not happy. Thank goodness the guests were super cool once the housekeepers split. Other than that, nothing too eventful happened.

Tomorrow we start a new tour, but we're not running together. Andy is going to be with our friend Bryan (lucky for him because Bryan is awesome) and I am with a driver who I'm not very fond of but will deal with. I had him once last year and we totally did not get along. What can ya do? On the flip side, I am doing a tour I haven't yet done and am totally stoked for it! It does two things that I cannot wait to do. First, it does a Kenai Fjords Tour which is a boat tour in Resurrection Bay where we get to see whaaaaaaaales (hopefully) and second, we get to take the train from Seward to Girdwood which is supposedly one of the prettiest rides in the state! Downside, I have like 15 kids on my bus. That makes it sound like I don't like children, but to be honest, no one wants kids on their bus; suddenly you become the vacation babysitter = NOT COOL. As always, will let you know how it goes!