Hotels and Lodging

We love to travel frequently and for several months at a time, so we spend a lot of effort on stretching our money. We’d like to share how we visited eight Central and Eastern European capitals for 50 days at a cost of $6,900 total for the two of us in fall 2016.

This total included $600 in airline fees. We used airline miles for business-class flights (Atlanta-to-Budapest and Bucharest-to-Atlanta).

In Gwadar, Balochistan province, southwestern Pakistan, gunmen attacked the Zaver Pearl-Continental Hotel on May 11, killing four employees. The Pakistan military responded to the scene, and three of the attackers and one soldier were killed.

A separatist group, the Balochistan Liberation Army, which opposes foreign influence in the province, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the hotel was targeted because it is part of a larger, China-backed infrastructure project in the city.

My husband’s cousin, Diana, and I had scheduled a trip to Paris and Amsterdam with Tripmasters (Rockville, MD; 800/430-0484, www.tripmasters.com). We had purchased travel insurance through Allianz Global Assistance, which Tripmasters had recommended; we chose the Horizon Plan.