Francis Ford Coppola Resorts’ Blancaneaux Lodge (Mountain Pine Ridge Reserve, P.O. Box B, Central Farm, Cayo District, Belize; phone 011 501 824 3878 or, from US and Canada, 800/746-3743, www.coppolaresorts.com) offers hotel guests day trips to three local caves.
Barton Creek Cave, an ancient burial site that is visited via canoe, allows viewers to see stalagmites and stalactites, pottery shards and remains in the water below.
14 days/13 nights or 20 days/19 nights, departing May 25 & Sept. 14, 2012. Highlights: Nine UNESCO World Heritage Sites/Belgrade in SERBIA/in BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA, Mostar, Sarajevo, Mount Zlatibor National Park/in MACEDONIA, 2,000-year-old Skopje and Ohrid, “City of 365 Churches”/in ALBANIA, Berat, Durres, Tirana/Riviera town of Buda in MONTENEGRO/For 20-day tour, CROATIA, including Dubrovnik, Split, Plitvice Lakes, Zagreb. Land price, 14-day tour, $4,785; single supp., $595. 20-day tour, $7,690; single supp., $850.
My wife and I took the eight-day tour “Munich, Salzburg & Vienna” with Globus (Littleton, CO; 866/755-8581), Sept. 4-11, 2011. The land price was $1,549 per person.
It was described as a “leisurely paced tour.” Perhaps the designation came from the fact that we stayed two nights each in Munich and Salzburg and three nights in Vienna rather than one night in each location. However, with my weak legs and the amount of walking we did, in particular at Neuschwanstein Castle and in Salzburg and Vienna, I felt that it wasn’t leisurely.
by Joe Phelan; Lincoln, CA
by Barbara McMahon; Bethesda, MD
Almost 9,000 guided day trips in more than 150 countries (mostly in Europe, the Caribbean and South America) and most major cities are listed on the booking and review website Viator.com. Users can build an itinerary for a location and book all the tours online.
Searches for the excursions can be filtered by location, region, city, dates, type of activity and more. Search results can be sorted by price, best sellers and travelers’ ratings. Each tour listing shows the itinerary, times, price and inclusions and exclusions.
by Dorothy Aksamit; Sausalito, CA
REPORT ON BRITISH AIR…
My wife and I were assigned Juan B. Padilla (mobile phone [505] 86641048 or e-mail juansinmiedo44@hotmail.com) as our guide on four days of our visit to Nicaragua, Dec. 27, 2010-Jan. 3, 2011. We were using a package of hotels and day tours purchased through Tara Tours (Miami, FL; 800/327-0080), which advertises in ITN.
My husband, Neal, and I booked a trip with Elderhostel that was to begin in Berlin. Following a few days of touring there, the group would be bused to Potsdam, then board the Peter Deilmann Cruises ship Katharina von Bora for a cruise through Saxony to Prague.
We arrived in Berlin on Sept. 22, 2009. At the end of our four days there, our tour leader called the group together late at night and told us that the Elbe River was low and so our cruise had to be rerouted north to the Oder River.