Very widely travelled couple have always travelled independently but now in 80's. Recommend good tour companies for people who have been almost everywhere but still love to travel.

Grand Circle Travel is a great company to travel with and caters to seniors, although very active trips also. Very dependable. To inquire about catalogs (and they send far too many, but fun to look at anyway) call 800-321-2835. I have traveled with them 13 times SO FAR. Halfpint.

In addition to their well respected tours, Grand Circle Travel also has a division called Overseas Adventure Tours or OAT. These are usually very small groups and many seniors, but tend to be more "action" oriented. That doesn't necessarily mean they are too active for seniors though, and they rate them easy to moderate in terms of how strenuous they might be. They tend to combine a little more of "meeting the locals" or education, along with the usual tourist things.

And thank you, by the way, for really depressing me. I just realized that I immediately opened and read a post called "older travellers" -- well, if the shoe fits. . .

My mom who is also a seasoned traveller, recommends ABERCROMBIE & FITCH, or tours organized by colleges and/or museum groups.

Good luck, and have a wonderful time!

A friend of mine in her late 70s has enjoyed many Grand Circle tours. They're not too expensive, she likes the itineraries, and since she's a very sociable talkative type, she enjoys mixing with the other tour members. A few times she became ill on a tour, and she was able to sleep on the bus. She's very intelligent and pretty well informed about the places where she travels, and has traveled independently in 'sicily with her daughter in recent years. But when she doesn't have a family member to travel with, she feels safe with Grand Circle. I know she has been on several of their Italy tours, and I think when she went to China and to Turkey it was with Grand Circle, but I'm nopt sure. (I'm pretty sure it was not with OAT, which would be too active for her at this point.)

If your friends can afford it, I think some of the museum sponsored travel programs would be great. Smithsomian tours look good, but they're extremely expensive (by my standards). I used to have a nice, intellectually curious dentist who loved the Smithsonian tours. British Museum tours look really fascinating to me. I think they are geared for well travelled people, since they go to some unusual places, or they go to special areas of more commonly visited countries. They're pretty expensive, too, but not as high as the Smithsonian tours.

For some reason I thought you were asking on behalf of friends, so I asnwered "if your friends...." But same reply goes if it's for you.

I can only wish and hope that I too will be referred to as an Older Traveler some day
My neighbors used Gold Circle often. And they definitely seemed to have been Everywhere!

I have friends who have used Elderhostel extensively. It does not, as the name would imply, mean staying in hostels. The website is:
http://www.elderhostel.org/welcome/home.asp

I also know a number of older travellers who have used Tauck Tours. A google search will find them.

Grand Circle does an excellent job. I have traveled to Thailand and Malta with them and am looking at their Eastern Europe tour. The latter 2 trips have a lot of free time which appeals to me. Their guides are very knowledgeable and the pace is not too fast. The age group is from 50 to 80s and everyone on my trips really wanted to be there. You really can't beat the price and the hotels are good. If you have any questions regarding my tours please e-mail me at [email protected].

I get mailings from Lord Addison Travel located in, I believe, PA but doing numerous and varied trips to Britain. They are expensive for me, but they say their groups are small and they stay in nice hotels and include meals. You can find them on Google, I think.

I think Weadles was talking about Abercrombie and Kent not Fitch as that is a clothing chain. Grand Circles website is www.gct.com and Overseas Adventure Travel is www.oattravel.com

In the past three years, my wife (75) and I (77) have traveled to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam with Overseas Adventure Travel. This past spring we went with them to Australia plus the island state of Tasmania. In November we will be going with them to India. Could we recommend OAT more? No, we simply could not. They are superb. Great guides, good itineraries, fine quarters, good meals, fair prices, and they keep every promise they make in their web site and in their literature. They are a service organization with a capital S.

I have a dear friend who always goes on Elderhostel tours. She's 60 but says she is usually the baby of her groups. She's been with them to Seychilles, China, Spain in the past few years. She said they take very good care of their people, and I like the itinerary because it was not rushed and focused on history and more educational endeavors than forced shopping stops.

We've had wonderful luck with Elderhostel. We've been on 3 different hiking trips in Europe with them, and each has been superb. We've also taken several overseas trips with Tauck (not hiking), and we definitely prefer our Elderhostel experiences. The people who are drawn to Elderhostel seem to have an intellectual curiousity that appeals to us. That's generalizing, I know, but I am simply speaking of our experiences.