I have never heard of a tour that doesn;t require 7 am bags outside the door and on the bus at 8 am. Just one of the many reasons we don;t do tours.

I hope you find what you're looking for.

Hi Poss,

If getting up and out early is a problem for you folks – forget about taking a tour. (Although Tauck provides an excellent trip.)

You might consider the LUBERON EXPERIENCE (www.luberonexperience.com) which offers a slower paced one week stay in a village in Provence. I have only read about it but have heard it well reviewed on this board. The company has been in business for many years.

You might also consider staying in Avignon, Aix en Provence, or Nice and taking day excursions to various sites. The south of France is truly beautiful…

You should call Tauck and ask them what the normal start time is. Usually there will be someone who has taken the trip and can answer all your questions.

I've traveled with Grand Circle Travel 3 times and we never started at 8:00. The normal start time is about 9:00. You bring your bags to the lobby and pile them all together about half an hour before departure. That way you have time for breakfast and can return to the room and pack the last few items. I'd much rather bring my own luggage to the lobby than put it outside the door at 7:00.

Excuse me for asking, but why is this an either or proposition?
I think there are many ways to travel, and you have listed only the first two:

1. Drive yourself
2. Take a group tour
3. Use public transportation yourself
4. Have a TA make all arrangements including the transportation
5. Find pre-packaged individual travel
6. Travel with family or friends who can still drive or manage logistics, etc.

I have occasionally shared hotels with Tauck tours. They use top hotels and book great rooms. Nevertheless the early morning packing is true. I knew they were Tauck tours because I saw luggage with Tauck tags in the hallways at wee hours in the morning.

I presume that different tours, even within the same company, have different morning departures, so I don't think you can make a generalization on this company vs. that company. I think researching the particular trip of interest, by any company for that matter, is more relevant to your trip.

I greatly appreciate the thoughtful, helpful comments and the varying perspectives.
I will for sure speak with Tauck to ask about times, but I've learned that it's difficult to get a definitive answer on questions like that. So many agents are not as informed as they should be (and simply "wing" their answers) and of course I realize that wake-up times can be different from one tour to the next, for one reason or another. But for sure we couldn't do one of these tours if we had to set the alarm for, say, 6:00 A.M.
Luberon Experience looks like a good, solid, pleasant tour company. Problem is that we can only travel in late June or July. They don't have trips in those months.
I am, of course, doing as much research as I can-- including making inquiries here on Fodor's, a real help indeed.
Traveling with still-driving friends/family is out for us for several reasons, and doing things ourselves (even pre-arranged by TA) is not an option, alas. We're elderly (husband up in his 80's) and while we are still able to enjoy traveling (and do a fair amount of walking, etc.) the logistics of travel become easily overwhelming to us. My husband does not have the patience to do public transportation anymore (and he worries about not making connections, etc.) and we are not comfortable doing independent touring, as we enjoyed for so many fortunate decades.
We can't imagine that we'll enjoy group touring anywhere near as much as we enjoyed our stick-out-the-thumb days, back-packing and other former adventures. But we didn't imagine that we would enjoy cruise-ship cruising either (we were sailors and loved our own trips), but we've come to love our yearly cruises.
Thanks again for your responses.

I don't know anything about this company except that I've read about it in several travel magazines:

http://www.traveloffthebeatenpath.com/index.html

They sound like they have good customer service so you may be able to get your questions answered.

I'm not a group tour person but I did do a Tauck tour with my mother a few years ago. It was their London/Paris trip, however, and not Provence. I can't remember having to get up extraordinarily early except for the one day when we had the whole Tower of London to ourselves before the Tower opened to the general public. That was special and I certainly didn't mind getting up early for that!

We have been on several tours and I don't remember ever leaving at 8am.

That os not to say some tours do not leave at 8am. Earliest for us was 8:30am

Breakfast at 7 or 7:30am.

But, yes, bags outside the room by 7am.

I would choose a base town or two (Avignon or St-Remy for instance) and hire a driver to take you to other towns. A driver is much less expensive than a tour guide and if Tauck tours is within your budget so is a driver. You may not need a driver for every day since you'll probably spend one day exploring the town you're staying in.

Off the beaten path has a tour based in central St Remy

I think what you are asking is difficult to find. The tours, probably for marketing reason, pack a lot of activities in a short time to be able to market to the would be travelers that it is a "good deal" -- meaning a lot of destinations in a short time at an acceptable cost. This many destinations in a short time can only be accomplished by having one packed day after another. This pretty much necessitates starting early. Even if the departure is, say 9:30am, the luggage chore is still before the breakfast. I don't think most tour companies can stay in business selling tours that start late morning and visit only a place or two a day. I think Tauck's itinerary is not as insanely packed as other offerings. Nevertheless, taking a tour means you have to live with the tour schedule. If this is not acceptable to you, you have to look for alternatives.

I am not sure how much resources you can muster, but I have seen from time to time couples taken around by a dedicated guide in a group as small as two. I presumed these were super premium tours packages just for people with resources. I am not in such a social class, so I don't know how this kind of super premium escorted trip works. You can google custom private tours Europe and find companies offering such tours -- at breathtaking prices, of course.

I have read your other postings and it appears you have always driven in Europe until you have switched to cruises? Is it possible that you are not familiar with using public transportation in Europe? In Europe, I have seen many older adults even on walkers using trains. Obviously, these people probably had used trains all their life and were familiar with how it worked. If you always pack like you have a car or go on a cruise, then it would be difficult to use trains.

In Aix-en-Provence, the local tourist authority has day trips by minibus from their offices to interesting and beautiful places throughout the region. I know these do not run after November 1, but I do not know when they begin. Our son and his wife enjoyed them on their honeymoon. He had lived in Aix and knew he did not want to deal with parking and traffic in the high tourist season.

Some of the tours are in English and some are bilingual, I believe. I assume other cities (Avignon, for example) have similar tours. They are an option since you can get to these cities easily by train, bus or plane.

We took two tours with Oddyseys Unlimited. One was excellent, the other not based on the personalities of the tour conductors. But neither tour had us on the road before 9 AM, neither kept us going until late at night, and both were realistic in their assessments of the physical stamina required for that particulat trip.

I enormously appreciate people taking the time to respond so thoughtfully.
I've been doing more and more research, and it seems pretty clear that tour groups start at around 8:30. That means a wake-up call at around 7:00. Alas, that's about an hour too early for us: we'd not be able to enjoy the rest of the day; we'd feel pushed.
So I've begun looking into the possibility of staying put somewhere for a week or so, a town that has easy access to train or bus. Since even with public transportation, I know that there are many places we wouldn't be able to get to, I'm now looking into the private driver possibilities. I've also found, as one of the responders kindly mentioned, that several of the towns have tours in small buses. Having to get going early once or twice wouldn't be awful (we do it sometimes for cruise excursions).
I suppose that Avignon would be a sensible place to find accommodations, though I think we'd enjoy a smaller town more.
Many thanks.

You could stay in Avignon and take day train-trips to towns like Arles, Nimes, Aix-en-Provence, and possibly Orange. Click on this link for a thread and answers related to your question.

http://www.fodors.com/community/europe/avignon-to-provence-villages-by-bus.cfm

Also, you might check the Provence tour offered by Cosmos called Discover Provence. Most of the nights in this tour are in Avignon.

Good luck with your search.

If it has been ok for you to take shore excursion for two all these years, then hiring a taxi for similar period should be comparative or better than shore excursion without having to visit mandatory commissioned souvenir stores. You get to decide when to leave, where to go, and when to come back.

Avignon, Arles, and Aix (and others) are cities but not cities like Providence, Rhode Island, or Oklahoma City.

They all have small, walkable, contained historic centers, and the sprawl is in places you will never go except to pass through.

In Avignon, the railway station (not the TGV through station but the one for local trains) is just outside the city walls, an easy walk from the Palace. Aix is similar, and local and intercity buses are not far beyond the center. I have only been to Arles by bus from Aix, and it was easy. From there, we visited Les Baux, also by an ordinary bus, the kind people ride to work or the market.

So any of these towns would work for you, I think. They all have great charm in their own right, there are interesting and attractive shopping opportunities in the downtown streets, and many different types of accomodation.

Many thanks-- and especially for the very good link.
I guess our choice of where to stay may come down to in which town we find the most reasonable and appealing accommodations-Aix or Avignon. Unless I'm misunderstanding, ease of movement in each of those places seems to be about the same.

Tauck is quite different from most tour companies. They do everything possible to make you feel as though you're *not* on a bus tour. Things are very individualized. This could work for you.

I was hoping to try Tauck, but I learned that one needs to wake up around 7:00 A.M. The buses get going around 8:30, sometimes even 8:00. This wouldn't work for us, though I wish it were otherwise: We're at the stage where we would like to do as little of the planning and managing as possible. We just don't have that strength anymore. We like to be waited on, as on cruise ships and their excursions. But I SO badly want to re-visit Provence and Paris before we have to stop traveling altogether.