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2023 tours posting on Tauck Website
I've noticed that 2023 tours are beginning to show up - the Xmas Markets only have 2 cruises per River - do you think it is just because they are slow to load them? Certainly they will do more than 2 per River? Seems they'd load them all instead of only a couple? Seems they usually list several per river in different directions.
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Terrilynn,
Just now I didn't see any 2023 XMAS Mkts departures, anywhere (not on the Tauck website nor other travel vendor sites), so it may have been a glitch that you saw them at all.
Remember, they cancelled all 2021 Rhine XMAS Mkts cruises but were only scheduling one boat, Ms Inspire that year, and also only one boat for for 2022. The other boat previously used on the Rhine XMAS Mkts cruises, Ms Grace, is now assigned to the Yuletide Spirit: Amsterdam to Brussels cruise so the number of departures has been reduced by half to only 4 instead of 7 or 8.
For 2021 they are still only showing 3 Danube departures, all on the Joy, but for 2022 they are showing both Ms Joy and Ms Savor with 6 departures. Ooops, now it is only showing 3- they must be working on it as I type. And now they are back to six! Still no 2023.
Someone else has mentioned seeing some 2023 tours up. I quickly looked at a tour I had interest in, but there is nothing. I’m a bit reluctant to reserve more than one tour, because when we last did this on a non finalized tour, we had to pay a deposit but they would not let us use the money from the wallets that we had with insurance money etc in them because it was not finalized or something like that. I don’t want even more money suspended in space so very far ahead. Our future choices also depend on whether our 2022 tours get cancelled or not, which is looking more likely again, especially because of the countries we have chosen to visit. If the US continues to lag behind with vaccinations, and keeps going on about rampantly rising infections and breakthroughs, who knows whether other countries will ban us.
I'm with you on this one, British! I'm thinking my February Vietnam/Cambodia/Thailand tour is not going to go but I am reluctant to schedule a 2023 for the reasons you mention. I have a couple of other tours scheduled for next year with Tauck as well, Ireland in September and Kenya/Tanzania in October. The Ireland trip is a back to back with Scotland with another provider. The Ireland/Scotland is a reschedule from this year. Was hoping to do another Greece trip in the May timeframe and combine with Turkey--obviously a different provider because Tauck doesn't offer or at least doesn't offer what I'm looking for. Given the situation there, I'm holding off. I do think some of the unvaccinated are beginning to get religion though because of the uptick in cases with younger adults and children. Once the children start getting sick, people take notice real fast.
Voikk - we have booked the VCT tour for early February 2023 as we wanted to lock in the date. The 2022 VCT tours probably will be a no go as Vietnam isn't letting anyone in so I suspect many folks will be moving their trips from 2022 to 2023. February appears to be the best month to travel given all the different north and south parts of the countries to be visited on the trip. Others on the Forum have gone in February and confirmed the date as perhaps the best time to go.
Thanks Virginia_Travelers. I've seen the comments about February being the best time to go. I was going to search a little bit and see about October. I live in the Northeast and am always concerned about blizzards in February. I booked the Feb 2022 date because I was feeling so desperate to travel internationally again that I thought I'd take a chance. All 3 countries require quarantining at the moment and I suspect things won't be much improved by then given the progression of the Delta variant. Appreciate your feedback and I know you're probably right so I should make a decision sooner rather than later. Thanks!
I went to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in mid-December. The weather was dry (except a day of liquid sunshine in Laos). Temps were very comfortable except Cambodia where it was warm but bearable. The trip ended on December 31 in Hanoi (I had to stay an extra night in order to get a flight back to Newark) ..the streets were filled with revelers, fireworks, dancing and music to celebrate the New Year. Amazing and memorable!
Thanks, NancyCohen. I was looking at potentially late October or early November. Still researching. Hate to give up my February 2022 slot if it's actually a go but don't want to tie more money up in tours that may or may not happen. Never thought that by Feb 2022 we'd still be in this thing when I booked way back when.
I admire you guys that can think ahead to 2023. I'm barely getting thru 2021 and 2022 is just a glimmer.
Voikk22- I understand completely. Twice I have rescheduled my Tauck Morocco trip plus a 2 1/2 week independent road trip from Lisbon to Spain to Gibraltar to Morocco … I’m scheduled to begin 10/6 … I was dubious about going much earlier, especially since I’ll be independently traveling through a number of countries. If this is my biggest problem, I’m a lucky lady!
NancyCohen--you are an intrepid traveler! Your independent road trip sounds fabulous but I'm not certain I'd do it under current conditions. Too many hassles. I loved Morocco but I did it with that other luxury tour provider. I was on the Tauck Spain/Portugal trip and we were at the Rock of Gibraltar and saw Morocco across the bay on a clear day and said I need to go there. Wished we had more time in Gibraltar. I really enjoyed it. Morocco is sublime--at least for me it was.
AlanS
They are there - just click on the dates - today there are even more - so they are adding
Thanks Terrilyn.
Nancy, your enthusiasm for Morocco and seeing what in fact was a reality show based in Morocco that showed all the mountain vistas made me look into Morocco again. Morocco was actually a country my sister visited over 40 years ago on a British package holiday, it’s very cheap to visit Morocco, Tunisia was also another common cheap p
Ace to go. Morocco was where she wore extremely skimpy clothing walking around the market, I was horrified, she was stunning in those days. Her husband filmed her, you should have seen the men’s faces and the disapproving looks in a Muslim country.
I have my eye on Morocco with another company that spends more time there, but won’t book it until I know exactly where I actually get to this year. It’s getting so complicated to space out and book vacations when you don’t know which ones might be cancelled and you have other commitments throughout the year.