10 days / 8 nights. Highlights: In London, ENGLAND, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, theater performance / Cambridge / medieval York / Edinburgh, SCOTLAND / Gretna Green / back in England, Lake District / Stratford-upon-Avon / Stonehenge / Cotswolds / in WALES, Ruthin Castle. Land, from $2,349. Single supp., $450. Collette Vacations (Pawtucket, RI; 800/340-5158).
I enjoyed the article “Impressed with Ireland on a Chauffeured Tour” by Barbara McMahon (Dec. ’11, pg. 6). I’ve traveled to Ireland twice, and I always encourage friends to take a guided trip.
On escorted motorcoach tours in many countries, the drivers do, unfortunately, stop at gift shops, where passengers jump out and stock up on expensive items for which the drivers get kickbacks from the shops. But that’s an acceptable tradeoff for letting them maneuver the narrow streets.
Deanna Palić’s feature article on Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (March ’12, pg. 52), brought back memories of a devastated city.
When my wife, Sandy, and I were in Carcassonne, France, in October ’11, we asked the clerk at our Novotel to suggest a great place to eat. He directed us to La Divine Comedie (29 blvd. Jean-Jaures, Carcassonne, France; phone 04 68 72 30 36), an unassuming restaurant/pizzeria on the main square near the center of town, just 10 minutes’ walk from the hotel. We noticed that the patrons were mostly locals.
In Torgiano, Italy, in the heart of Umbria, my wife, Rosalie, and I spent a few days at the wonderful, unique, 5-star Le Tre Vaselle (Via Garibaldi 48 06089 Torgiano, Perugia, Italy; phone 075 9880447, fax 9880214) in June ’11. This beautiful hotel, complete with a swimming pool and spa, was converted from a 17th-century mansion.
I took a Rhine River cruise aboard Uniworld’s River Empress, April 3-10, 2011. Before the cruise, I stayed at the Golden Leaf Hotel (Launhardtstrasse 2-4, D-60314, Frankfurt am Main, GERMANY; phone +49 69 94 99 00).
Booked through Hotels.com, the three nights at this excellent hotel cost $154, total, without breakfast.
Perks included a kitchenette with a four-burner stove, microwave, coffeepot, cooking utensils, dinnerware and glassware; CNN on TV, and Internet in the lobby along with complimentary coffee, tea and apples.
by Jonathan Hayes; Corvallis, OR
My wife, Susan, had signed up for a month-long German-language immersion course in Kassel, Germany, so I decided to join her after the course was over. Instead of flying directly to Germany, however, I planned to fly to Vladivostok, on the Pacific coast of Russia, and catch a train from there.
We asked any of you who attended a concert, a recital or any music or dance performance or stage production outside of the US in the last couple of years to tell us how you learned about it and how you obtained tickets. The responses this month, comprising part six in this ongoing series, are mostly about events in Croatia and Hungary.
Well before you travel somewhere, browse the Internet to learn what you can about upcoming events.
I had traveled in Romania with the choreographer Theodor Vasilescu on his annual folk-dance tour in 2009. A group of us were eager to dance in Romania again in summer 2011, but Theodor was not available.
I recalled seeing (while researching a trip to Bulgaria) trips to Romania listed on the website of Penguin Travel (St. Orpheus 9, 1421 Sofia, Bulgaria; e-mail info@penguin.bg).
To top off a tour of Russia and the Baltic States in September ’11, I decided to tour Bulgaria as an independent traveler. My local travel agent arranged air transportation from Warsaw, the end point of my escorted tour, to Sofia, Bulgaria. She also arranged a reservation at the Best Western Plus City Hotel (6 Stara Planina Str., Sofia 100, Bulgaria; phone +359 2 915 15 00), in the heart of downtown Sofia. From there, I was on my own.