Cruise

14-day / 13-night cruise-tour, departing May 17 & Sept. 18, 2013. Highlights: Monte Carlo, MONACO / Chagall and Matisse artworks in Nice, FRANCE / Roman ruins in Arles / Cézanne works in Granet Museum, Aix-en-Provence / Avignon / Dijon / Lyon / private tour of Marmottan Museum’s Monet collection in Paris. Cruise-tour, from $7,160. Note: no single supplement for Category 1 cabins for ANY Tauck Europe cruise in 2013. Tauck (Norwalk, CT; 800 / 788-7885, www.tauck.com).

Having enjoyed a cruise in Europe in 2006 and another in China in 2007, both with Viking River Cruises (Woodland Hills, CA; 800/706-1483), my husband, Tom, and I were puzzled by a subscriber’s critique of his “Romantic Rhine” cruise with Viking (“Found Anchorages Inconvenient,” May ’10, pg. 24).

An optional extension to Madeira proved to be the highlight of a trip my husband, Al, and I took this spring. It followed our eighth trip with Grand Circle Travel (Boston, MA; 800/321-2835), the 15-day “Spain and Portugal in Depth” tour, March 18-April 6, 2012, which cost $2,395 per person plus $910 each for air from St. Louis.

(First of two parts)

To reduce the potential for flight delays due to weather on our way to Dubai for a round-trip 7-day cruise, my wife, Maxine, and I arrived in Dubai the evening before embarkation. We stayed at the Hilton Dubai Creek, an excellent hotel with excellent service. I used Hilton “points” for a free night.

Via e-mail, I also had arranged with the concierge for the Hilton to pick us up at the airport and, the next day, take us to the ship. Each trip was more expensive than taking a cab, about $25 instead of $12, but it was worth it, for us.

My wife, Susan, has end-stage renal disease and needs to have dialysis treatments at least three times a week. My question for ITN readers is, ‘What are some travel packages on which this is possible?’

To get the ball rolling, I’ll tell you about a company we used for a cruise we took.

When my wife, Jean, and I wanted to take a Danube cruise, we contacted several ITN advertisers. While speaking with Corinna Vargas at Value World Tours (Fountain Valley, CA; 800/795-1633), I knew I had found the right person at the right agency.

European Christmas markets have enchanted me since I bought my first carved wooden nutcracker at one in Nürnberg in 1962 while teaching in Germany. Since retiring, I have gone six years in a row to these festive markets, which are open during the Advent season. On a “Rhine Winter Voyage” aboard AmaCello, Dec. 2-14, 2011, I was there with AmaWaterways (Chatsworth, CA; 800/626-0126).

On Aug. 13, 2010, I booked a cruise for my wife and myself on the Ocean Princess, selecting it because we were particularly interested in the stops in Japan and Russia. We were to embark in Osaka on April 1, 2011, and the ship would make stops in Hiroshima, Hakata (Japan), Vladivostok (Russia), Inchon (South Korea), Tianjin and Dalian (China), with disembarkation in Shanghai on April 11.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake occurred in northern Japan, nearly 500 miles north of Osaka, resulting in a tsunami and damaged nuclear reactors.

On its “Three Gorges” cruises on the Yangtze River in China, Victoria Cruises now begins and ends in Yichang rather than Wuhan. The upstream trip now takes five days instead of six, while the downstream voyage is still four days. Reasons cited for the change include better air connections and fewer problems with locks being closed during the flood season.