Travelers' Intercom

March 2013 issue

Ecuador and Galápagos tour
By Janet Landfried

With 22 other people, I took a “Landlubber’s Galápagos” tour of Ecuador and the Galápagos with Adult Customized Tours (Palm Springs, CA; 888/605-8280), June 20-27, 2012.

The cost of $2,635 included airfare (Los Angeles-Quito-Galápagos-Guayaquil-Los Angeles) and two nights in Quito, four on Santa Cruz and one in Guayaquil. Breakfasts were included, but we were on our own for other meals. There was a fee of $10 to fly to the Galápagos and a fee of $100 for the national park. Optional tours were available to Guayaquil and the Andean town of Otavalo.

Our hotel on Santa Cruz was...

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December 2013 issue

B&B Hof van Eerde

By Ethel Brodie

While on a driving tour of the Benelux countries with my husband, Colin, April 2-30, 2013, we mainly took back roads, wandering through the countryside. We had made some lodging reservations in advance, but since we were uncertain where we would be some days, we chose to rely on last-minute accommodations at those times.

After driving from Luxembourg through Belgium and into the Netherlands, we found ourselves in an area with many small towns but no lodging options readily apparent. We stopped at a Rabobank in the town of Veghel and asked if there were any inns nearby. We discovered...

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April 2013 issue

Market day in Burkina Faso
By Julie Baker
A typical market day in Burkina Faso.

I’m not one for traveling with busloads of tourists to places everyone else goes, which is why I decided to explore Burkina Faso for two weeks with just four other travelers, a guide and a driver. While the country is not geared toward tourism — the food lacked the variety of some of the other West African countries, and places to stay were few and far between — I wouldn’t have missed it!

JULIE BAKER Rapid City, MI

June 2013 issue

Labrang Monastery, China
By John Schilling

I was going to be in Beijing in June ’11 with some time to spare. What to do? I have always been interested in Buddhist monasteries and had visited most of the important ones in Tibet (Gandan, Sera, Drepung and Tashilhunpo of the Yellow Hat sect) but not two elsewhere in China: Labrang and Ta’er Si (aka Kumbum). They are quite near each other, but I felt I had time to see only one, so I chose Labrang, near Xiahe, in Gansu province, northwest China. 

To arrange for transportation and lodging to this wonderful site, I feel very lucky that my lodging in Beijing suggested that I hire...

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August 2013 issue

Adventures Abroad ‘runs great trips’
By Stanley Gorcik

The subscriber who wrote the letter “On Canceled Tours” (June ’13, pg. 26) was disappointed at not being able to take several tours with the company Adventures Abroad.

I have taken 12 trips with Adventures Abroad and, despite having six other scheduled trips canceled by them due to an insufficient number of clients signing up, I would readily recommend them. In each case, I received notice a couple months ahead of departure so that I had plenty of time to make other plans. 

Adventures Abroad runs great trips, but they do have a large catalog with many unusual destinations and...

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January 2013 issue

Hungarian cowboys
By Mary Hollis

During a late-spring tour to Eastern Europe with Grand Circle Travel (Boston, MA; 800/221-2610) in 2011, my husband, Mike, and I visited the town of Bakodpuszta, where we were entertained by Hungarian cowboys at a horse show. We were awed by their whip-cracking performance!

MARY HOLLIS Moline, IL

November 2013 issue

Memorable Kurdistan
By Phyllis Schlesinger

The most memorable trip I have taken is the tour “Exploring Iraqi Kurdistan,” from Adventures Abroad (Blaine, WA; 800/665-3998), April 13-21, 2013. Including breakfasts, dinners and very good accommodations, the land price of the 9-day tour was $3,390 plus $600 for the single supplement. Airfare from New York was $1,390.

The Kurds were friendly and welcoming to us. Even the checkpoint guards were friendly as they waved us on. We never felt as though there was any threat to our safety. 

While visiting bazaars, we were not harassed to buy things; the vendors...

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July 2013 issue

Black Madonna quandary
By Sharon VanDewark

A subscriber wrote about his day trip to Montserrat, Spain, to see the Black Madonna (April ’13, pg. 46). He and his companions had purchased their tickets at a tourist information office near the harbor in Barcelona, below the Christopher Columbus statue. They took a train from the Barcelona Espanya station to Montserrat.

At the end of a tour of Iberia, I flew to Barcelona for a 5-day stay, during which, on Sept. 19, 2012, I took a trip to Montserrat with Pullmantur (phone 902 09 55 12 or, outside Spain, 00 34 915 56 32 13). I had purchased my ticket via my travel agent before...

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