Middle East

The following is a greatly edited version of a subscriber’s letter.

The following is supplemental advice for your first trip to Egypt, based upon experiences from an April ’10 trip I made with my wife and several friends. These tips and observations cover topics that either were not addressed or, more commonly, did not receive sufficient emphasis in the guidebooks and Internet resources we consulted pretrip.

These tips only complement your guidebooks. Guidebooks contain lots of good information and useful suggestions that are omitted here (e.g., don’t drink the water).

We couldn’t have picked a better place for our first four nights in Tunisia than the Dar Said (Rue Toumi, Sidi Bu Said, Tunisia; www.darsaid.com.tn), a small, elegant boutique hotel with rooms set around small courtyards.

No two rooms are alike, but all are smartly decorated with lots of Tunisian touches. Some have views of the hotel garden and the Gulf of Tunis beyond.

by Julie Skurdenis (First of three parts)

My husband, Bernard, and I were part of a 15-member “Iraqi Kurdistan” tour in October ’09 with Distant Horizons (Long Beach, CA; 800/333-1240). The land price for the 12-day/11-night trip was $5,860 per person.

My companion and I visited western Turkey on the 14-day/13-night “Glories of Turkey” tour from Neon Tours (Istanbul, Turkey; phone +90 [212] 274 90 00), a subsidiary of Key Tours (Fairfax, VA; 800/576-1784), in October-November ’09.

The land cost was $1,499 per person. The hotels were excellent, mostly five-star, alternating two-night stops with one-nighters.

Thank you, Bruce Kerfoot (April ’06, pg. 83), for recommending Mehmet Ozbalci of Turfantastik Tours (Istanbul, Turkey; phone +90 212 589 33 25 or fax 589 32 56).

I signed up for the April ’10 “Egypt & Eastern Mediterranean” cruise with Voyages of Discovery (Ft. Lauderdale, FL; 866/623-2689). It cost $6,238 including air from San Diego, two nights in London, one night in Istanbul and my single supplement.

I wished to snorkel in the Red Sea, transit the Suez Canal and tour Jordan, Syria and the WWI battle site at Gallipoli in Turkey. None of these events were realized due to the volcano in Iceland.

Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 413th issue of your monthly overseas travel magazine.

(Part 3 of 3 on Egypt)