California Dreamin': Monterey, Yosemite & Napa

Overall it was a great tour experience. Our tour guide was great and always ready to help with any issues. She had a wealth of knowledge about the areas we visited. Her idea of rotating our seats on the bus each day was a wonderful idea. Our baggage was always handeled by the hotels. The only time we had to drag our baggage was at the airport. Most of the hotels were nice and the breakfast food was great each morning. The Farm to Table meals were excellent. I loved hearing about the farming industry at each of the farms we stopped at. Very interesting. This was my first "senior" bus tour trip so I don't have much to benchmark it against but our days were full and we were up early each morning and went until early evening. The only negative thing I have to say is that Customer Service (or whoever books the flights) had us going out of the airport and coming home at a god awful hour. In retrospect, if I did another tour I would try and find a better flight myself and hook up with the tour at the first hotel. Other than that it was a great trip!

Tour manager spoke much too fast most of the time. Many complained it was hard to understand in the back half of the bus. Hadn't been to Yosemite NP in 50 yrs it was great. First time at Lake Tahoe, very nice boat ride.

Sweet Kelley made our tour a joy! I loved seeing the Monterey coastline. I loved Yosemite National Park and cruising on Lake Tahoe. I enjoyed San Francisco--riding in a driverless car, Alcatraz, Muir Woods, riding on a trolley, doing the hop on, hop off bus tour. (I know all of San Francisco was on my own, but I enjoyed the opportunity.) One thing of disappointment--we had a great tour of an olive farm and learned all about grading and processing. But, yet--when we got to Napa Valley, we had no tour of any kind. Yes, we had a good meal, but there were no "tastings" or opportunities to ship product home, like we got at the olive farm. Please change this for future trips. Napa Valley did not include the tour we anticipated.