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August 2011 issue

Danube cruise with GCT

My friend Eileen Mine and I took the 13-day “Eastern Europe & the Black Sea” river cruise with Grand Circle Travel (Boston, MA; 800/959-0405), May 1-13, 2010. Including round-trip air from Raleigh-Durham airport, it cost $3,564 apiece.

Aboard the River Concerto, we sailed over 1,100 miles on the Danube, with visits in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and, finally, Romania.

There were three Program Directors on board the ship: the leader, Miklos Maleczki, a native of Hungary; Sonya Bakalova from Bulgaria, and Cristian Pirv from Croatia. All three were multilingual, spoke...

June 2009 issue

Scoping out bargain airfares online

Finding the best airfare can be almost as much of a journey as the trip itself. ITN readers may find the following airfare journey an instructive example.

My late March ’09 journey to the graduation of Raquel, a nursing student whom I have supported through college, as well as a visit to several Rotary International friends in Bacolod, Philippines, began in January.

Bacolod is a rather undistinguished city in the Visayas, the central part of the Philippines between the big islands of Luzon in the north and Mindanao in the south. Most of the wonderful Philippines beach resorts...

November 2011 issue

A winter day in Ghent

While many may not view Brussels in December as an ideal getaway, my husband and I have long loved visiting Europe close to the Christmas holidays. In 2010 we centered ourselves at the Floris Arlequin Grand Place Hotel (€146-€179) in the I’llôt Sacré, Dec. 8-14, and took advantage of the holiday schedule to spend a weekend day in Ghent (Gent).

It was a quick 10-minute walk to the Gare Centraal, where we purchased round-trip train tickets to Ghent for a mere €8 ($11) each (weekend rate), departing from Gate 2. In just under half an hour we arrived at the Ghent-...

January 2012 issue

Kindness in the Philippines

My wife, Jane, and I took a two-week private tour of the Philippines in May ’11 with Marsman Drysdale Travel (19F Robinsons Summit Center, 6783 Ayala Ave., Makati City 1227, Philippines; phone +632 8870000, ext. 302, 303 or 305, fax +632 8880228, e-mail reservations@marsmandrysdale.com). The tour price was $2,045 per person, including one internal flight, daily lunch and one dinner.

I have taken many tours with a guide and driver, but this was one of the best-organized, most enjoyable tours I have ever taken.

While planning our trip, I was in constant communication with...

July 2011 issue

Athens stay

From a trip my husband, Ed, and I took to Greece, I really recommend the following.

In Athens we stayed at the Athenian Callirhoe (32 Kallirois Ave. & Petmeza, GR-117 43 Athens, Greece; phone +30 210 9215353). This lovely, small hotel was well situated only two blocks from the new Acropolis Museum, and we stayed there Sept. 30-Oct. 4, 2010. (Rates run €142 [near $201] for a single to €235 [$333] junior suite.)

The front desk staff was very helpful. Our first day in Athens, an ATM ate our debit card. The staff made calls and found a real, live person with whom we could...

April 2011 issue

Book cottages directly

It had been a few years since my husband and I (now 70) booked a cottage in England, so what we discovered when planning our fall 2011 trip to the Cotswolds was a big disappointment: some of our favorite websites that we’ve used in the past are now using a booking agent, such as Cottages4u.com or Travelbuddi.com.

On top of the weekly rental, these agencies add £30 (near $49) as a booking fee and charge £27.50 for insurance. This adds almost $100 on top of the rental price. Sometimes the booking fee is included in the rental price.

If you’re looking for a cottage, you can keep...

May 2011 issue

Preemptive Pepto

Prior to traveling to Mongolia and China with Overseas Adventure Travel in July ’10, I was advised by friends who had taken the China portion of the trip the previous year that their doctor recommended taking a chewable Pepto-Bismol tablet with every meal when traveling. The doctor suggested that this reduces the likelihood that bacteria will be absorbed in the digestive tract.

My friends followed this advice and were the only people in their group NOT to have some kind of sickness during the three-week trip.

I followed this regimen religiously for the first 22 days of the...

June 2009 issue

Trieste’s castles

Bruce Hardy wrote of his memories of Trieste, Italy (April ’09, pg. 39), which he last visited in 2001, and it was asked if anyone had been to the city recently. We were there in August ’08, and it was everything Mr. Hardy wrote about and much more. Had we only known, we would have stayed more than two days.

There are two marvelous castles: Miramare and Duino. We had time to see only one, so we chose Miramare (€4 admission). An excellent audio guide was available.

Castello di Miramare was the home of Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg and his wife, Charlotte. They were crowned...