Hotels and Lodging

We had a lovely stay at the recently remodeled Hotel St. Josef (Hirschengraben 64/68, CH-8001 Zürich, SWITZERLAND; phone 044 250 57 57 or visit www.st-josef.ch) in November ’05.

My wife, Anne, and I took a tour of Sicily, Dec. 2-10, ’05, booked through Pilgrim Tours. The price was $794 per person, excluding airfare.

I took a month-long tour to both North and South India with Adventures Abroad in February ’06. The basic cost of the tour was $4,870, but my total of $6,203 included single accommodation and an extra night in New Delhi pre-tour.

We took the trip “The Amazon Basin & the Galápagos,” Nov. 2-12, ’05, with Overseas Adventure Travel (Cambridge, MA; 800/955-1925 or www.oattravel.com). It was a great trip, and I feel OAT is a very good company to travel with for adventure, but I wish to write about a different aspect, FUNDESIN, or Foundation for Integrated Education & Development (visit www.fundesin.org).

Dear reader, I am happy to say that people are reading my column. I’m getting nearly 20 questions a month, but, as mentioned before, I can only answer a few because of limitations on space and time.

My husband, Fred, and I, along with 13 others and two leaders, in June ’05 participated in a 16-day bicycle tour of the lakes region of Italy sponsored by the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point (www.uwsp.edu/hphd/bikehike).

by Herschell Gordon Lewis, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

We certainly weren’t about to travel all the way to Ulan Bator, Mongolia, without expanding the adventure to include the Gobi Desert.

Just minutes from Bern’s Hauptbahnhof, Hotel National (Hirschengraben 24, 3011 Bern, SWITZERLAND; phone +41 [3] 381 19 88 or visit www.nationalbern.ch) offers just about everything: a restaurant, a theater, a movie cinema, a disco and the hotel. Once out the door of the National, Bern’s famous Clock Tower is a quick three minutes away.

Hotel Monopol (11-13 Mannheimer Str., D-60329, Frankfurt, GERMANY; phone +49 69 22737 0 or visit www.hotelmonopol-frankfurt.de) is located right across the street from the railroad station — very convenient!

This hotel is about 100 years old and has been nicely renovated, with double doors that keep out hallway noises. For my 4-day stay in December ’05 I paid $395, which included a large buffet breakfast and free newspapers in English. One can order dinner there but not lunch, I believe.