Hotels and Lodging

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.

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.

by Cecilia Morrissey, Port Townsend, Wa.

I spent a month in Brazil, Aug. 6-Sept. 5, 2011, to study Portuguese (June ’12, pg. 16).

My husband, Gary, and I took a 16-day trip to Spain, Portugal and the Canary Islands, Feb. 6-21, 2012, which included three nights in Barcelona prior to a cruise and three nights afterward. On the first day of our visit, we learned that an employee at our hotel on Barcelona’s Plaza Espanya, the B-Hotel (Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes; phone 93 552 95 00), had been accosted on the bus on her way to work.

 I spent 10 nights traveling in Peru with two friends in October ’03. We started with two nights at the Puno Hotel at Lake Titicaca and ended the trip staying at the Sanctuary Hotel at the entrance to Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu was fantastic and the Sanctuary Hotel was great. I would go again.

MARLENE SNEDAKER
Pt. Pleasant, NJ

by Jack Ogg; Houston, TX

(Part 3 of 3 on the Balkans)

A reader in the March ’04 issue, page 48, correctly places Hanoi on the “Favorite Cities” list, but to state, “Hanoi, on the other hand, has changed very little in the past 30 years,” is inaccurate. The changes we noted between our trip in February ’93 (the year before the U.S. established diplomatic relations with Viet-Nam) and trips in October ’02 and March ’03 were monumental.

I do not recommend the “Italy-Austria: Cultures and Landscapes” biking tour to anyone who is a strong biker or who wants to experience some adventure. The 14-day tour, offered by Elderhostel (11 Ave. de Lafayette, Boston, MA 02111; phone 877/426-8056, e-mail registration@elderhostel.org), placed great emphasis on biking safety. However, in my opinion, this emphasis was quite extreme and created a very rigid, boring biking experience.