Following a visit to Peru in January-February ’07 (Nov. ’07, pg. 41), my husband, Joe, and I continued on to Quito, Ecuador, then flew TAME airlines to the Galápagos Islands. We boarded the S/S Mary Anne, a cruise ship run by Angermeyer Cruises.

The cruise we took, which cost $2,800 per person (excluding international airfare), can be booked through Andando Tours-Angermeyer Cruises (Mariana de Jesús E7-113 y Pradera, Quito, Ecuador; phone 593 2 2568 195, fax 593 2 3238309 or...

I thought the Four Seasons Hotel Buenos Aires was way beyond my budget, but, thanks to an incredible package from WOW! Argentina (Santa Fe 882 12th floor, C1059ABP, Buenos Aires, Argentina; www.wow argentina.com), we stayed there July 18-20, 2007.

For the two of us, $866 plus tax included three nights’ stay in a double room and two dinners for two in the hotel’s Le Mistral restaurant, including two glasses of the wine of the week (a delicious Catena Zapata’s malbec). An outstanding...

We can highly recommend the tour “Great Trains of Europe,” which we took July 8-20, 2007. This was our fourth trip with Grand European Tours, or GET (6000 Meadows Rd., Ste. 520, Lake Oswego, OR 97035; 800/552-5545, www.getours.com), and we were more than satisfied.

The nice thing about GET is they give you a day of leisure at most stops. We flew to London and stayed three nights, took the high-speed Eurostar to Paris, staying two nights, rode the TGV train (200 mph) to Geneva, bused...