I have long been an admirer of James Tufenkian via articles published in design magazines. He has partially restored Armenia’s rug industry and is now building hotels in his homeland. In September ’13, my daughter, Amanda, and I vacationed in Armenia.
My husband, James, and I arrived at the lovely Hilton Los Cabos Beach & Golf Resort (Carretera Transpeninsular Km. 19.5, Los Cabos, BCS, Mexico 23447; 877/354-1399, www.hilton loscabos.com) on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2014. We enjoyed a fabulous week’s sojourn and were scheduled to fly home the evening of Monday, Sept. 15.
On Sunday evening, Sept. 14, Hurricane Odile hit with a vengeance. Winds reached over 130 mph, ripping tiles off the hotel roof, downing huge palm trees and destroying the roof of the swim-up café.
Dear Globetrotter:
Welcome to the 468th issue of your monthly foreign travel magazine. That’s one issue per month for 39 years! We must be doing something right.
Ken Wadland of Albion, Rhode Island, thinks so. That’s him in the above photo proudly holding a copy of our November issue… in Croatia.
Dear Globetrotter:
Welcome to the 467th issue of your monthly foreign travel magazine. Whew! I’ve worked on 463 of them… and still love doing it. Every month brings interesting mail, and it helps to have good-spirited, dedicated coworkers.
Guests at Shanghai’s The Langham, Xintiandi (99 Madang Rd., Xintiandi, Shanghai 200021, P.R. China; phone +86 [21] 2330 2288, http://xintiandi.langhamhotels.com) may book a 3-hour class British etiquette that covers afternoon tea, pastry manners and one’s duties as a host or guest. The class costs $450 and must be prebooked.
A room at the hotel costs from CNY1,840 ($300) to CNY2,800 ($456) per night.
This month’s winner is NORMA KLOECKENER of Greenville, South Carolina:
At the beginning of our honeymoon, my husband and I flew into Mexico City. By the time we had reached our hotel, I had altitude sickness and was on oxygen.
We were supposed to go days later to a hotel in Acapulco, but staff in our Mexico City hotel recommended that we go to Acapulco as soon as possible. There was no flight that day, but a hotel employee knew of two brothers who would be glad to drive us to Acapulco, “down to the sea.”
I spent five super-great weeks in the UK, mostly in Scotland, in late summer of 2013. Two of those weeks were spent doing tours with Explore! (Nelson House, 55-59 Victoria Rd., Farnborough, Hampshire, GU14 7PA, U.K.; phone 0843 634 5157, www.explore.co.uk). one in Orkney and one in Hebrides and Skye.
I flew into Scotland on July 29 and around Aug. 4 joined the tour “Discover Orkney,” priced at £699 (near $1,093). It ended around Aug. 10. There wasn’t much walking on that one.
A few years ago I got the British Airways Chase Visa card, since I had been promised 100,000 bonus miles and was told that it would charge no foreign transaction fees. I quickly racked up 150,000 miles and a companion voucher for British Airways. However, this turned out to be worthless.
First, I never found seats available for the times that I wanted to travel.
