Side Topic: High Tech Guided Tours

A neat new thing at the Egypt Antiquities Museum was the way they conducted the large group tours. The tour guides spoke quietly into a little microphone that transmitted to little radios the tourists in their groups had. This made it hard to join a tour we didn't belong with (good for the tour guide, bad for us), kept the museum relatively quiet (good for everyone), and we assume made the tour guide easier to hear for the participants. Now that we are in Italy, we are seeing this setup most places. It's pretty awesome, and we wish that sights would ban any other kind of group tour, because bellowing tour guides are so very obnoxious. It also allows the group to clump a little more loosely since they aren't all crowded in to hear the tour, which makes it easier to get past/around the groups.