Tour of the Balkans with Insight Vacations

The itinerary for our 12-day “Aegean, Danube & Black Sea Explorer” tour from Insight Vacations, Inc. (801 Katella Ave., Anaheim, CA 92805; 800/582-8380, www.insightvacations.com), while demanding, offered rewarding traveling experiences in each country. Our May 22-June 2, ’06, trip covered approximately 3,000 miles in its 12-day itinerary through TURKEY, BULGARIA, ROMANIA and GREECE.

Turkey and Greece are favorite destinations of ours, and we enjoy them each time we visit. Frankly, we had modest expectations with respect to both Romania and Bulgaria, but Bulgaria was a total delight. The Black Sea coast area is enjoying a boom in building, and we would recommend that readers who desire to experience the quaint charm of this area’s small towns do it soon before the construction of new resort areas increases the volume of tourism. Our two days in Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, was one of the highlights of the trip.

Romania currently has a more rustic appeal but will no doubt become more tourist-friendly as they interact more with their European neighbors. There were certainly many destinations in Romania that more than justified the time spent in the country.

We had a generally positive experience with Insight Vacations. Their approach appears to be to offer a slightly more upscale tour, as they advertise coaches with more legroom and nicer, more centrally located hotels. Many dinners and excursions were included in the tour price. Participants in our tour were primarily from Australia and the United States.

We arranged to arrive in ISTANBUL, Turkey, the departure point, three days early and booked a Turkish tour operator via e-mail who had been recommended by ITN readers. Mehmet Ozbalci owns Turfantastik Tourism Travel Agency (Millet cad. Inan Is Hani No: 5/610, Aksaray, Istanbul, Turkey; phone [90] 212 586 32 56, fax 589 33 25 or visit www. turfantastik.com).

The time we spent with Mehmet was a delight as he amiably showed us many facets of Istanbul that we had not experienced on prior visits.

We paid him $150 per day, which included his using the company car. The arrangement was somewhat informal; he paid for some admissions and I paid for others. I bought one lunch and he bought the other. If there were attractions he felt we could see on our own (e.g., the Topkapi Palace and a ferry trip on the Bosphorus), he would give us the necessary directions and would not charge us for the time we were on our own. He was totally flexible.

Mehmet specializes in individual and small-group tours throughout Turkey, and we would not hesitate to recommend him. His experience with tours for serious amateur photographers resulted in my vacation photos being taken from the most scenic vantage points during the most advantageous lighting conditions for each scene.

We anticipate booking future trips to the eastern and Aegean regions of Turkey with Turfantastik.

— JOHN LEAPTROTT, Statesboro, GA