Travelers' Intercom

May we add our voices to the antiduvet crowd?

Whenever my wife, Peggy, and I enter a new hotel room, the very first thing we do is rush to the bed and peek under the coverlet, hoping against hope that there is no duvet hiding beneath. Increasingly often, there is. We, too, combat the beast by gutting it of the duvet and sleeping under the cover only.

I still remember our introduction to duvets, at the home of friends in Denmark in June 1968. We were given a twin-bedded room, each bed covered by a puffy quilt, or so we thought. There was no top sheet, just a bottom one and the...

I felt the letter titled “Tour Members’ Encounters Distorted?” (Jan. ’09, pg. 26) presented an unusually negative characterization of a tour experience in Southern Africa with Overseas Adventure Travel (Cambridge, MA; 800/493-6824, www.oattravel.com).

My wife and I traveled independently to many of the world’s countries, and, following her untimely death, I decided to take group tours since I didn’t want to eat by myself. Subsequently, I have taken 17 overseas group tours with different companies.

Although not all of the group members on every tour were people I would have...

For a stay in Yerevan, Armenia, the week of Sept. 13-20, 2009, I hired a private car (Mercedes) and driver from Beau Monde Service (Republic Square, 1 Amiryan St., Yerevan, 0010 Armenia; phone 374 10 59 99 64, fax 99 65, www.rentcar.am), located in the Marriott Hotel where I stayed. They have cars and drivers available 24 hours a day.

My guide, Karo Kouyoundjian, was an excellent driver and spoke perfect English.

I had a list of things I wanted to see, and we did the following tours, each about five hours: visits to St. Hripsimé Church, St. Echmiadzin Cathedral and the ruins...