Best Of
Re: Australia
MichaelA1811, be sure to sign up for the balloon ride while staying at Silky Oaks, you do that ahead of time with Tauck. It’s worth getting up for at 3 am! And the spa treatments are wonderful too.
mfrancis
Re: London
The Savoy is a Fairmont hotel--our favorite brand of luxury hotels, especially in Canada and Eastern USA.
We took this tour Apr 2023. Tauck took us on a driving tour of the major sights, then free time, then an after-hours tour of Churchill's War Rooms/Bunker--fabulous! The next morning we were off to Paris on the high speed train.
We added several pre-and-post tour days since we had never been to London (I regret never traveling there before) and we always add extra days when in Paris. Dining at Guy Savoy's was possibly one of the best dining experiences we have had in a very long time.
kfnknfzk
Re: London
That's a bummer about not having the Savoy. That was a really special hotel - we stayed in it when we did the England tour.
Tauck got the Savoy because it came with the deal they made with the larger organization (chain of hotels). Don't remember who owns the Savoy. Tauck may have done a deal with a different hotel chain.
Re: Binoculars for B. Z and SA
No, they don't but you might want to contact the camp via email- they might rent them. Some camps rent photographic equipment, maybe binoculars too.
From my experience, you don't need them... you're always pretty close to animals as British Mentioned. In Chobe the biggest attraction from the river are the elephants and the boats do get pretty close to them.
a word of advice... take the least amount of equipment, take essentials if you are a photographer, phone and a camera, no tripods etc.. the jeeps are moving constantly, and Terraine is uneven, so you do shake a lot. The driver will stop for you to take a picture.
Amazing Safari.
Enjoy.
mil
Re: Immunizations
Thank you so much MOP. I’ve heard people being given the cow colostrum meds from here before, really alarming! We have not been to Passport Health for years, while partially helpful, they tried to sell us very expensive unnecessary drugs and charged us for each individual malaria pills, it was expensively . Our family dr will give us a script for that anytime we want, the same with antibiotics, he knows we travel a lot. The other thing was at Passport Health that the person we had had never traveled out of the US, so was not knowledgeable about what it is like on the ground in the exotic countries. I, going to look at the NHS site and if it is more useful, I will post a link.
British
Re: Immunizations
Here is a link to Fit for Travel. It is a very user friendly site and explains everything about yellow fever with PDF downloads etc. Far superior to the CDC website.
https://www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk/home
British
Re: Immunizations
I got my yellow fever shot at Costco. It was $182 for members. Not sure the cost for non-members. My physician sent over the "prescription" for it. If you can't get a prescription for it, then it's $40 for their doctor to prescribe it.
Carlen
Re: Binoculars for B. Z and SA
We have always able to get close to animals most of the time in K and T. I’m sure SeaLord would agree
British
Re: Blue Danube, Prague practical tips
In 2018 we did Blue Danube eastbound. We went two days early and used PragueWalker for two outside tours. We had Tereza for both as well- she was fantastic. That allowed us to see everything on Tauck's options list at that time- some with Tauck and some with PragueWalker. That included visiting both Salzburg and Cesky Krumlov. We had seen Salzburg on prior tours but wanted to see it again, so we went there with Tauck a few days later. We arranged with PragueWalker to take us for a full day excursion to Cesky Krumlov so saw them both! We were able to spend more time in Cesky Krumlov than Tauck normally does according to a TD friend. In fact, we arrived there just as a Tauck bus from the westbound Blue Danube did. They were gone well before we had to head back to Prague. We saw some of the countryside and had some great discussions with Tereza during the approx 2 hour van ride.
If your haven't heard of PragueWalker in posts here, you might have seen them in Rick Steves videos about Prague and the Czech Republic- he has a number of them you can watch for free on his website.
AlanS
Re: Immunizations
@MotherOfPoodles - We went to Costco. They have a travel immunization program - https://www.costco.com/full-service-travel-medicine-consultation-program*,-by-safegard.product.100123081.html
You fill out an online form and it's reviewed by a doctor. We’re in an older group and the recommendation was that we not get the Yellow Fever vaccine. They provided us with a very good waiver letter and a yellow booklet filled out with waiver. Absolutely no problems in any country. They claim they've never had a waiver refused.
We used the same waiver in every country. I don't see why you would need a new one every time if the reason for not getting the vaccine is your age. That's not going to change.
It’s $40 per person, and I highly recommend them.