Which tours are best for older solo travellers apart from roads scholars?
 

I'd like to travel with a group for a week or two to Europe. While I've travelled happily solo there, I want to try group travel. I'm looking for a midlevel price point, older but fit and well educated fellow travelers. I want free time but also a friendly, interactive attitude among the group.
Any thoughts?

Overseas Adventure Travel and Smartours are both options for that age range, though most of the tours are going to be for more than a week.

Rick Steves tour groups also tend to be the mostly over-40 crowd (like me). I took one of their week-long city tours last year and enjoyed it. Good balance of guided tours and free time.

Globus, Insight, Trafalgar are all decent. When you decide where you want to go compare the different tours.

Perhaps consider a river cruise where most meals are conveniently on board (open seating, thus opportunities for meeting and mixing built in) with morning and afternoon tours of areas near where the ship is docked, some bused, others walking directly from the ship. Unpacking once and settling in to a comfy cabin for the duration, with no single supplement charged is the way to go.

Check out the Cruise Forum here and the Cruise Critic site for more info. So far I have done three week long river cruises including Paris/Provence, The Netherlands/Belgium and a Bordeaux, Vineyards and Chateaux. All three were marvelous with the age range from a few 30-40's to mostly 59-70's. Total group number can be from 110-180 with multiple buses provided where needed. Of the daily three group split for touring, one is usually designated for "gentle walkers".

After many years of going (solo) on group land tours, I tired of the constant need to pack up and move on after a night or two. I find the river cruise mode of travel to be the perfect fit and only wish I had discovered it sooner!

My inlaws liked Smithsonian tours and Metropolitan Museum tours (if they still do them). I think sometimes you can buy into teacher's union tours. I'm sorry, but I don't know the price point of any of these.