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European Vacations for Winter School Breaks

Hey everyone, Doug Baker here, Wendy’s youngest son. Mom used to take us to Europe during our winter school breaks (such as Paris, above) when I was growing up. Now, I’m a college sophomore, and when my friends talk about where we should go for March break, I tell them Europe—and not just to avoid the summer rush.

Europe feels more authentic to me in winter. It’s easier to be part of the local scene. The weather might be colder and the days shorter, but there are so many fun activities, opportunities, and foods that are totally different from what you will find in summer.

A lot of people ice skating on an ice skating rink in front of Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Ice skating rink in front of Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Photo: Doug Baker

In winter, I’ve ice-skated on rinks from little town squares in Brussels and Bratislava to the Grand Palais in Paris and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (above). It’s a great way to meet local people! In winter, I’ve tried hot chocolate as thick and rich as a melted chocolate bar everywhere from Demel in Vienna to the ski slopes of Spain, and street food such as piping-hot kürtőskalács in Budapest, schupfnudeln in Germany, and this in Salzburg:

Doug at a pretzel and sweets shop in Salzburg, Austria. Photo: Tim Baker

In winter, you must spend more time indoors, but museums and castles are more fun when you have them to yourself. I was able to do a scavenger hunt with my brother inside the Centre Pompidou in Paris that took us through every floor of the museum, and in Bratislava there was nobody in the ancient church, so I was able to play one of the world’s oldest pipe organs.

Most of all, people are much nicer to you in winter because the tourist crowds aren’t there to annoy them. It is much easier to have conversations and build connections with the local people. One more thing I tell my college friends when they suggest the stereotypical spring-break spots (and maybe I shouldn’t share this with their parents): The drinking age is 18 in Europe!

You’ll find more—and more serious—reasons to experience Europe in winter in the traveler reviews below. First up: A 19- and 16-year-old get educated in Eastern Europe about the Holocaust and Ukraine.

START A WINTER TRIP

Eastern Europe: “Making pierogi with Marta in her home…she told us how she housed eight Ukrainians for two months at the onset of the war…”

The Nury family learn how to make pierogi. Photo: Traveler Doug Nury

“The current state of our world is disheartening. Our March 2023 travels (arranged by a Wendy Perrin WOW List agent) took us to Israel as tourists, never imagining that seven months later, Israel would be at war with Gaza. Since October 7, our family regularly discusses the conversations we had with our two tour guides, Daphne (Israel) and Isla (West Bank) about the conflict and how both of them want a peaceful but fair solution. Through our vast international travel experiences, our family has learned to seek as many perspectives as possible, particularly from non-US citizens on domestic and international issues. As a result, we jumped at the opportunity for Gwen to plan an Eastern European trip over Christmas, not only to enjoy the Christmas traditions and markets, but also to hear the views of Europeans very close to the Ukrainian/Russian conflict.

Gwen’s tour guides were the best part of our trip. During our first four days in Budapest, Julia explained to us the devastating history of the Jewish population and how close to 500,000 citizens were murdered during WWII. She also arranged an enjoyable boat tour (the boat had heat!) on the chilly Danube, pointing out architectural landmarks on the Buda and Pest side, while cruising on the river.

Kate and Will Nury peek out of a secret stairwell in Prague’s Strahov Monastery. Photo: Traveler Beth Nury

In Prague, our guide Christina spent the rainy morning with us inside the Strahov Monastery, an active monastery that houses the largest collection of Bibles in the world, and gave us a VIP tour of its two main halls, the Philosophical and Theological halls. In Poland, we toured Auschwitz privately with Wojtek Smolen, a tour guide with over 30 years of experience who had two family members imprisoned at the concentration camp. His narration and walking tour of Auschwitz and Birkenau was fact-based, with no political slant. The things I saw that day—the massive size and scope of the concentration camp, the vast piles of victims’ strands of hair, abandoned shoes and suitcases on display—will forever be tattooed on my brain.

Following Auschwitz, we drove back to Krakow and met Julie at the Krakow History Museum, which is located at Oscar Schindler’s factory, for a tour of Krakow before, during and after the Nazi occupation. The museum is well done and definitely worth visiting. Our final day in Krakow was spent making pierogi with Marta in her home. While rolling out dough, adding the fillings and pinching the pierogi before dropping it into the boiling water, she told us how she housed eight Ukrainians for two months at the onset of the war and is concerned about the conflict due to the proximity of Poland to Ukraine.

My husband and I hope that this trip punctuated the importance of visiting historical relics and learning from experts at the site about past events instead of watching a YouTube video for our teenagers (ages 19 and 16). It’s also essential to engage with people worldwide to gain insight on their perspective of US leadership and diplomacy.” —Beth Nury

Read more reviews of Eastern Europe trips. To get your own WOW trip, start with our trip questionnaire, reached via the black button below.

START A TRIP TO EASTERN EUROPE

Italy: “On our day trip to Florence we were able to attend a football match. That was wild!”

Enjoying a gelato cone in Rome. Photo: Shutterstock

“There were six of us: me, my husband, our three children (15, 13, 10), and my mom. It was a lovely time to be in Rome because, while still busy, it was not anything like what we would have experienced in the summer months. The weather was perfectly moderate for walking around, between 55° and 60° most days. Jennifer listened so closely to what our interests were and how we wanted to divide up the trip between time in and outside of Rome. She developed the perfect itinerary, even paying attention to timing of morning excursions so as not to start too early after a late night.

While we enjoyed all of our excursions, the ones we enjoyed most were not the main tourist attractions. Collectively, we all loved the cooking classes: one a pizza and gelato class, and the other a pasta and tiramisu class. Perfect for all six of us! Our other favorite excursions were Pompeii, Villa Adriana on the way to Tivoli, and our day spent in the Jewish neighborhood and former Jewish ghetto. I was extremely pleased that Jennifer’s team only works with Jewish guides in the Jewish neighborhood. I think that is a very important detail. Having all private tours made it easy to adapt tour and timing to all of our needs, which is particularly helpful with three kids/teens.

Timing worked out that on our day trip to Florence we were able to attend a football match. That was wild! My husband and oldest son are HUGE sports fans. Even though the rest of us are not as much, it was still really terrific to be part of an event that is so important to European culture.” —Aimee Kleiman

Read more reviews of Italy trips. To get your own WOW trip, start with our trip questionnaire, reached via the black button below.

START A TRIP TO ITALY

Norway & Copenhagen: “We got to see the Christmas lights in Tivoli Gardens and took a ride on a wild roller coaster, wandered with some hot drinks…”

Kate Ogg and son Will see the northern lights from the driveway of their lodge in Alta, Norway. Photo: Traveler Ryan Ogg

“My husband, Ryan Ogg and I (Kate Ogg), and our three children, Will (17), Charlotte (15), and Wyatt (12), went to Copenhagen, Denmark, and Oslo and Alta, Norway, from December 28 through January 6. Will is graduating from high school this spring, and so we let him choose the destination for a family vacation this year. He wanted to go someplace cold, snowy and dark, where we could do some fun outdoor adventures, and hopefully see the Northern Lights (which we had tried and failed to do in Iceland a couple of years ago).

It was a fantastic trip. Copenhagen was still pretty magical the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and we found some good restaurants despite a few of the ones we had hoped for being closed. We got to see the Christmas lights in Tivoli Gardens and took a ride on a wild roller coaster, wandered with some hot drinks, shopped and just enjoyed the festive vibe. The next day we started the day with a boat ride through the harbor and some of the bigger canals, which gave us a sense of the city’s geography as well as a lot of the architecture.

Oslo was all closed while we were there because it was both Sunday and New Year’s Eve, but a walk through the sculpture garden, to the Fram museum to see a polar expedition ship, and a chance to see the Nobel buildings and then along the harbor was a nice way to spend the day before a fancy dinner at our hotel (The Thief) and a midnight toast on the roof. On New Year’s morning in a snowstorm, we made it to Oslo airport and up to dark Alta. The Sorrisniva Hotel was fully booked by the time we planned our trip (August), so we stayed in a little fishing lodge in the woods, down the driveway from Tristin and Trine Restaurant and past some sled dogs.

It was absolutely charming, and best of all, the very first night as we walked out of our lodge to dinner, the sky lit up with northern lights that continued to brighten and dance until we gave up and went to bed. I credit our very dark spot in the woods for the fantastic viewing. Our adventures in snowmobiling, reindeer sledding, snowshoeing, and king crab fishing all showed us different parts of the landscape and culture in northern Norway, and it was just…magical. We truly loved it.” —Kate Ogg

Read more reviews of Scandinavia trips. To get your own WOW trip, start with our trip questionnaire, reached via the black button below.

START A TRIP TO SCANDINAVIA

Paris: “A trip fit for royalty…”

The Louvre Museum at night, Paris. Photo: EdiNugraha/Pixabay

“We had three weeks to plan a Paris trip with our adult children after our Israel trip was canceled. Jennifer, a WOW planner through Wendy Perrin, created a trip fit for royalty. We stayed in a gorgeous, boutique hotel in the Marais district and had private car and tour guides for the Louvre, Versailles, Chateau, Jewish and History Tours. We saw the Eiffel Tower with a private tour, the Dior Exhibit at the Foundation Giacometti, we had an amazing time.

Our WOW Moment started with a car picking us up at noon, taking us to an unknown destination which was a fabulous restaurant, Shabour. The owner told us that since we couldn’t go to Israel, this was a Jerusalem-Paris dining experience. We sat at the bar to watch the chefs prepare a delicious, fun, memorable lunch. It was awesome.

We had a concierge service at the airport on both ends, making it easy to maneuver. I can’t say enough about Jennifer and her staff who gave us a perfect trip in such a short period of time. We have traveled the world with Wendy Perrin’s WOW List. It is the best way and the only way we travel.” —Adrienne Goldberg

Read more reviews of Paris trips. To get your own WOW trip, start with our trip questionnaire, reached via the black button below.

START A TRIP TO PARIS

Austria & Czech Republic: “The cathedral tour was incredible! We were on the roof walking along the outside perimeter and inside the ceiling about the nave…”

Roof of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna captured from above. Photo: Julius Silver

“Gwen planned a wonderful Christmas week in Vienna, Bratislava and Prague. Both hotels—the Sans Souci in Vienna and the Andaz in Prague—were great choices. Both were near the center but in a quieter area. The rooms, staff and breakfasts were lovely.

Our private guided walking tour of Vienna was enjoyable. The cathedral tour was incredible! We were on the roof walking along the outside perimeter and inside the ceiling about the nave. A truly interesting and unique experience. The food tour was fun and enjoyable: We went to five different locations and got to sample different Viennese specialties. We enjoyed the outstanding museums and lovely shopping streets. We loved the tour of the magnificent Schönbrunn Palace. Another day we took a train to Bratislava and were met on the platform by the guide who showed us this interesting city.

The train to Prague was easy. We walked everywhere in Prague—Old Town, Jewish Quarter, Charles Bridge, Wenceslas Square. The Strahov Monastery library and Prague Castle complex were impressive. We were so lucky that the line to the remarkable St. Vitus Cathedral was quick and we got to see it. The Lobkowicz Palace is a treasure—we could have spent hours there.

Gwen suggested terrific restaurants, including two outstanding meals at Michelin-starred restaurants Field and La Degustation in Prague. It was a wonderful vacation—the days spent in each location were just right.” —Susan Sullivan

Read more reviews of Austria and Czechia trips. To get your own WOW trip, start with our trip questionnaire, reached via the black button below.

START A TRIP TO AUSTRIA AND CZECHIA

Portugal: “Sitting on the patio watching the sunset over the ocean was the perfect end to the trip…”

A winter sunny day with clear blue skies at Riberira beach in Ericeira, Portugal.

A winter day with clear blue skies at Praia de Ribeira, Ericeira. Photo: Shutterstock

“Goncalo and Sofia created an itinerary that was perfect for our family. And, they gave us a trip that we will always remember! Some highlights…

The hotels were AMAZING!! We typically stay at the same hotel chain when we travel and were so grateful for their suggestion of boutique hotels. Not only did they provide our family plenty of space, but they each felt warm and welcoming every time we walked into the room. My daughters LOVED the set-up and decor of The Lumiares hotel in Lisbon, stating they never wanted to leave. The Rebello’s views of Porto were breathtaking (unless the fog rolled in) and the access to an incredible running path along the water made it the perfect place for us to stay. Our final hotel stay at the Immerso was exactly what we needed after a very busy trip. Sitting on the patio watching the sunset over the ocean was the perfect end to the trip; we only wish we had a few days to explore the area. : )

The guides they found for us were exceptional!! The tours provided us with interesting historical and present-day content. They were all engaging and ready to shape the tours to match our family. Tiago, in particular, was amazing!! The tour of Sintra could have been a disaster due to the weather, and he made it one of the most fun with his depth of knowledge and witty humor! For a family who loves to travel, Goncalo could not have put together a more perfect trip for us.” —Shannon Jones

Read more reviews of Portugal. To get your own WOW trip, start with our trip questionnaire, reached via the black button below.

START A TRIP TO PORTUGAL

Spain: “Traveling in January was surprisingly ideal! There were no crowds and the weather was comfortable…”

Placa Reial on a winter evening, not too crowded with people, Barcelona, Spain.

Placa Reial on a winter evening in Barcelona, Spain. Photo: Shutterstock

“We just returned from an amazing winter vacation in Barcelona and Lisbon. We traveled with our 2 college-aged kids and wanted to make sure they were as excited about the itinerary as we were. Luis and Silvia did a terrific job balancing all of our needs and interests.

Traveling in January was surprisingly ideal! There were no crowds and the weather was comfortable. We were able to see all of the popular sites without lines or overcrowding. Our favorite parts, however, were more off-the-beaten-path excursions. Silvia arranged for Alex, our tour guide through the Catalan neighborhoods, to cook paella and drink vermouth with him and his mother Lourdes in a flat with a rooftop deck. This was a highlight of the trip.

In addition to sightseeing and immersing ourselves in the culture, we were interested in recommendations for restaurants, nightlife, and vintage stores. Silvia provided detailed recommendations for each and arranged nightly restaurant reservations. Our favorite meal, a 17-course tasting at the Michelin-star Loco in Lisbon, was a very special night!” —Lisa Powers

This trip was arranged by a WOW List candidate. Here’s what that means.

Ask Wendy

Be a smarter traveler: Sign up for Wendy’s weekly newsletter to stay in the know. Read real travelers’ reviews, then use the black CONTACT buttons on Wendy’s WOW List to reach out to the right local fixer for your trip.

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

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Wendy wants to add a surprise WOW Moment to your itinerary — custom-designed for you, and complimentary!

A WOW Moment is an exclusive insider experience that helps make a trip extraordinary. (Here’s a sampling.) Each WOW Moment is totally different. They vary depending on a range of factors, including the country you’re headed to, the timing of your trip, logistics, availability, and more.

After two qualifying trips, Wendy will email you a WOW Moment gift certificate, which you can then redeem on a future qualifying trip before the certificate’s expiration date. Read the “Program Rules and FAQs” below so that you know how the process works and you don’t miss out.

PROGRAM RULES AND FAQs

1. How do I earn a WOW Moment?
2. Which trips qualify?
3. How do I redeem my WOW Moment gift certificate?
4. Do WOW Moments expire?
5. Does a trip qualify if it’s arranged by someone Wendy is testing for The WOW List?
6. Why is Wendy giving travelers WOW Moments anyway?

1. How do I earn a WOW Moment?

You return from two qualifying trips and submit reviews of those trips within 90 days of your return date. Shortly after submitting your second review, you will be awarded a WOW Moment gift certificate for use on a future trip. We automatically email you the gift certificate; you don’t even have to ask for it! Every set of three qualifying trips earns you a WOW Moment certificate to redeem during a future qualifying trip.
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2. Which trips qualify?

A trip will qualify if 3 criteria are met:

1. You must use Wendy’s questionnaire form when you contact the Trusted Travel Expert (TTE). That’s how Wendy learns about your trip so that she can monitor it, and that’s what registers you as a V.I.P. traveler. To reach Wendy’s questionnaire, browse The WOW List to find your ideal TTE, then click the black CONTACT button below that TTE’s listing, and you’ll reach Wendy’s form. If you don’t use that form—if your initial contact with a TTE is by phone, for example, or via the TTE’s website—that trip will not qualify. The only way Wendy can ensure you end up with an extraordinary trip is if she’s in on your trip planning from the start. NOTE: The WOW Moments program launched on October 18, 2015. Any trips that began with a form filled out before October 18, 2015, do not qualify.

2. You must review your trip within 90 days of your return date. Shortly after you get back, Wendy will invite you to review the services of the TTE you used. You have the choice of submitting a private review—for Wendy’s eyes only—or a public review that will be posted on WendyPerrin.com for everyone to read. It’s your honest reviews that determine who Wendy keeps on The WOW List and who gets removed.

3. The trip (the portion arranged by a TTE) must be five nights or longer. A small segment of a trip—say, a day tour or a two-night stopover—is not the same thing as a trip. Wendy’s mission is for you to experience the magic of a start-to-finish journey arranged by a WOW Lister. Complete trips—which we are defining as at least five nights in length—allow a TTE to shine and embellish your trip with special touches as your itinerary unfolds. And Wendy and the TTE need at least five nights to work with in order to add a WOW Moment to an itinerary; otherwise time is too limited, and opportunities are too few, to work a meaningful surprise into your trip.

Are you traveling with friends? Would the couple or family you’re traveling with like this trip to count toward a future WOW Moment for them too? If so, one member of the other couple or family must submit Wendy’s questionnaire form at the start of the trip-planning process, the same way you did, and mention that you are traveling together. Have your friend go to the WOW List, search for the TTE you’ve chosen for your trip, click the TTE’s CONTACT button, and fill out the questionnaire.

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3. How do I redeem my WOW Moment gift certificate?

After you return from your second qualifying trip, and if you’ve submitted a review for each trip within 90 days of your return date, then you will receive by email a WOW Moment gift certificate for use on a future trip.

Redeem that certificate the next time you contact a Trusted Travel Expert (TTE) on The WOW List: When you submit Wendy’s questionnaire form, a box will pop up where you can input your certificate number.

IMPORTANT:

1. Certificates cannot be redeemed on trips that are already in the works. We need to know at the start of the trip-planning process—meaning, at the time you submit Wendy’s questionnaire form—whether the itinerary will include a WOW Moment. When a TTE has already made lots of plans for your trip, there is often no opportunity left to squeeze in a WOW Moment!

2. Redeem your certificate for a WOW Moment in the destination/specialty that the TTE is listed for on The WOW List. If somebody is listed for, say, Argentina, that signifies that Wendy is confident that that person can deliver a WOW Moment in Argentina. It does not signify the ability to deliver a WOW Moment in Peru or Colombia!

3. Do not redeem your certificate on a trip arranged by someone who is being tested for The WOW List. See FAQ #5 below: “Does a trip qualify if it’s arranged by someone Wendy is testing for The WOW List?”

4. Each certificate covers two people: the traveler who earned it, plus one travel companion. (If a WOW Moment certificate was earned by parents and children traveling together on both trips, and the family would like to enjoy the WOW Moment together, please write to info@wendyperrin.com.)

5. Are you traveling with friends who would also like this trip to count toward a future WOW Moment? If so, one member of the other couple or family must submit Wendy’s questionnaire form for the same Trusted Travel Expert at the start of the trip-planning process and mention that you are traveling together.

6. Only one certificate may be redeemed per trip.

7. Remember, the WOW Moment is a surprise. Travelers do not get to pick their WOW Moment!

8. WOW Moments vary significantly, depending on your destination, trip timing, and TTE.

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4. Do WOW Moments expire?

When your certificate arrives in your inbox, you have one year from that date to redeem your certificate. That means you have one year in which to book the trip; it does not mean you have only one year in which to take the trip. (WOW Moment gift certificates that were awarded early in the history of the program had no expiration date.)

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5. Does a trip qualify if it’s arranged by someone Wendy is testing for The WOW List?

Perhaps you weren’t even aware that there are numerous destination specialists whom Wendy is testing behind the scenes for possible inclusion on The WOW List, pending feedback from the travelers she sends to them. Travelers who can’t find the person they need on The WOW List write to Ask Wendy, and that’s when Wendy often recommends one of these WOW List candidates.

Trips arranged by a WOW List candidate count toward a WOW Moment, as long as they meet all the other requirements listed in #2 above. But Wendy does not recommend redeeming a WOW Moment gift certificate on a trip arranged by a WOW List candidate—for the obvious reason that Wendy does not know yet whether that person can deliver a true WOW Moment, since that person is still being tested. In such cases, Wendy advises waiting and using your certificate on your next trip arranged by a full-fledged TTE on The WOW List, so please write to info@wendyperrin.com so we can postpone your certificate expiration date.

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6. Why is Wendy giving travelers WOW Moments anyway?

First, Wendy wants to thank you for trying out her unprecedented WOW trip-planning system. Since its launch in September 2014, many of you have provided constructive feedback to help Wendy iron out the bugs and improve the system as it develops.

Second, Wendy wants to encourage you to use The WOW List in the way that is most beneficial to you, and she wants to incentivize you to submit a review every time you use a travel specialist who is on The WOW List or being tested for it. It’s your reviews that determine who earns a spot on, or gets removed from, the List. It’s your reviews that keep The WOW List up-to-the-minute accurate and reliable.

Third, Wendy is well aware that, as travelers continue to use TTEs for trip after trip, their standards and expectations grow higher and higher with each trip. WOW Moments are a way to ensure that your TTE-designed trips just keep getting better.
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If you have any other questions, please write to info@wendyperrin.com.

Happy travels!

WOW Moment: A Fjord of One’s Own

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Photo: Seabourn

Photo: Seabourn

Photo: Seabourn

Photo: Seabourn

Photo: Frank Ott

Photo: Frank Ott

Photo: Frank Ott

Photo: Frank Ott

Photo: Frank Ott

Photo: Seabourn

Frank Ott is not a cruise person. “I don’t like cruises,” he told us on the phone from his home in Ringwood, New Jersey. “We once had a family reunion on a cruise out of New York. It was my worst nightmare because it was 3,800 people on the boat.”

Yet he and his wife, Angie Sebastiano, had always wanted to sail the Alaskan coastline. So when they started researching which ship would be best for them—one that had luxury and space but not crowds—they turned to Tom Baker, one of Wendy’s Trusted Travel Experts for cruises. Tom recommended the Seabourn Sojourn, which hosts just 458 passengers, provides 335 crew, and navigates into nooks and crannies that bigger ships can’t.

Adding to the challenge: Mr. Ott and Ms. Sebastiano were also due for a WOW Moment on this trip. Wendy’s WOW Moments are exclusive insider experiences earned by travelers who request trips through The WOW List. They vary depending on the location, timing, and logistics of a trip and could be anything from a meeting with a noteworthy local to an unusual activity to a special-access tour.

In this case, Wendy, Tom, and the folks at Seabourn collaborated to create a Moment that highlighted the unique beauty of this location and the personal preferences of these travelers: taking the couple on a private excursion to view the waterfalls, glaciers, harbor seals, and remote beauty of Endicott Arm. After they returned, we called Mr. Ott to hear how it played out.

Q: Were you surprised?

A: To be fair, it’s hard to keep a secret when you’re on a small ship. And we were 30 miles into this long fjord, so you really couldn’t surprise us. When all the passengers were getting ready to board the Zodiacs, the Seabourn Ventures team manager, named Chris, said, ‘Why don’t you and your wife wait here for a moment while I take everyone else down.’ So we figured it out. Especially when you step off the ship and get into the Zodiac and there’s a bottle of champagne in a bucket and caviar and a rose—you know it’s not the regular excursion you booked.

Q: Then what happened? Can you describe the WOW Moment for us?

A: So the ship’s Ventures photographer was there and a crew member was there and she was offering us champagne and caviar. (There’s nothing like champagne and caviar at 8:30 in the morning.) The Zodiac driver was an expert in geology—and that was perfect because she could explain the glaciers and how they were formed, why they recede, and what they leave behind. It was beautiful because we’re cruising around and trying to avoid small and medium-size icebergs and it was just the two of us. The location made it special—there’s nowhere more beautiful. We’ve traveled the world, but it was one of the most beautiful places to be in.

Also, just the amount of ice that we were Zodiac-ing between was incredible. We’ve been to Argentina, we’ve been to Punta Arenas, we’ve gone ferrying around glaciers, but this was spectacular because we were in a little boat surrounded by ice with a professional driving it. So we didn’t have any danger but we got up close and personal. And some of the pictures we have of the Seabourn ship just surrounded by ice….it’s a spectacularly beautiful place.

Q: You said you’re not a cruise person. What made this cruise different?

A: The draw was Alaska. And the ship Tom Baker recommended for us was ideal. This ship carries 450 passengers. There was so much space—so many empty places if you wanted to be by yourself, or you could join the crowd. And they had the best staff of anything I’d ever been on. I can’t think of anything that wasn’t good. There were 335 staff to 450 passengers, and the staff had 52 nationalities represented. I asked everyone, and I met 33 nationalities myself. Every single one seemed authentic in enjoying what they were doing, and they all knew your name by Day Two.

Q: How did the WOW Moment affect, or change, your experience of Alaska?

A: I expected Alaska to be beautiful, and it met that expectation; the WOW Moment made me understand the beauty better. Because of the Zodiac driver and her knowledge, I got to learn, more in-depth, the history and nature of Alaska. I wouldn’t have gotten that in a general Zodiac tour. I got to understand how the beauty came to be what it is today.

Wendy would like to thank Brian Badura, Seabourn’s Director of Global Public Relations and Strategic Initiatives, as well as the Seabourn Shore Excursions and Ventures teams, for creating such a magical WOW Moment for Mr. Ott and Ms. Sebastiano.

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

On every third qualifying trip, Wendy will add to your itinerary a surprise WOW Moment. A WOW Moment is an exclusive insider experience that helps make a trip extraordinary. Each WOW Moment is totally different. They vary depending on a huge range of factors, including the country you’re headed to, the timing of your trip, logistics, availability, and more. You can read a sampling of the more over-the-top WOW Moments (those most conducive to editorial coverage) here. Learn which trips qualify, and how the process works, here: Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

WOW Moment: An Extraordinary Church Ceremony in Ethiopia

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Robin and Linda Louis, frequent WOW List travelers from Vancouver, had already been to Africa several times. In fact, they had enjoyed a WOW Moment in Namibia only last year. So it was not easy to dream up another WOW Moment for them so soon, this time in Ethiopia. But dream we did. Wendy consulted with Cherri Briggs, her Trusted Travel Expert for Africa who was orchestrating the trip, and Cherri managed to pull off a remarkable—and, admittedly, over-the-top—surprise.

Wendy’s WOW Moments are exclusive insider experiences that are added to certain trips arranged via our WOW trip-planning system. Learn how to get your own WOW Moment here: Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip! They vary greatly, depending on the location, timing, length, and logistics of a trip. For instance, a WOW Moment could be a meeting with a noteworthy local, or an unusual family activity, or a special-access tour.

Or it could be the surprise that Robin and Linda Louis got in Ethiopia. Eager to find out how it went, we recently spoke with Linda on the phone:

Q: What drew you to Ethiopia?

A: We have been all across North Africa—Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt—as well as Tanzania twice, Kenya, Namibia, and South Africa. So I was reading about Ethiopia and Ethiopian culture, and the religious aspects of it really appealed to me as an interesting mix of Old Testament and Catholicism and Pentecostal Christianity. And it turns out Ethiopians are the most devout people I’ve ever seen or met anywhere. And the nicest, friendliest people as well. And there are churches and monasteries everywhere you look. It was really interesting.

ethiopian church ceremony with many priests walking in procession

“There are churches and monasteries everywhere you look. It was really interesting.” Photo: Robin Louis

Q: Walk me through your WOW Moment. What happened?

A: Ethiopian churches are really little, and they’re divided into three sections: one that nobody goes into, one that the priests can go into, and a smaller outer section that some people can go into but often not women. So, during church services, most of the people are outside. In Ethiopia it’s not unusual to see groupings of people outside churches or walking for miles—sometimes on a special feast day—dressed in white, walking to the churches.

On our second or third morning in Lalibela, our guide Elias led us to a village where some women were outdoors, cooking injera (flatbread) for the priests. Elias had me try our hand at cooking. Then we walked up a little hill and came to a church where there were dozens of priests, as well as musicians—particularly drummers—and a young deacon who greeted us. Then the high priest came and asked our names—because the first thing they do in a procession like this is to pray for someone, and then for the people of Ethiopia, and then for the people of the world. The priests and deacons and musicians sang and danced and proceeded around in a circle with their umbrellas, which are often the ones that they hold over the representative of the ark of the covenant. There were a few other people who came along and kind of joined and watched in the background, but this event was not part of a regular service—it was for us!

Q: Were you surprised?

A: We’d visited a lot of churches but hadn’t actually attended a service. So when we first walked over the hill and saw the church, I assumed that we had stumbled on a normal service. But then we realized they had been waiting for us!

What was special is that they brought us into their culture. They made us a part of it, rather than our just watching it. The deacon who had arranged it was able to explain some of what was going on. Being a woman in a lot of these places, you are on the outside, but they made me feel very welcome. The high priest asked our names and blessed us and prayed for us and our family. I’m not particularly religious, but I have to admire people who have beliefs like that and follow them. It was a perfect WOW Moment for me.

ethiopian church ceremony with many priests gathered outside by trees singing

“In Ethiopia it’s not unusual to see groupings of people outside churches or walking for miles—sometimes on a special feast day—dressed in white, walking to the churches.” Photo: Robin Louis

Q: Were there any other favorite Ethiopia trip moments you’d like to share?

A: We did have a cooking lesson with a chef at her school, and that was a lot of fun. I also loved the market in Bahir Dar (where the Blue Nile Falls are). I love these markets—they’re crazy. The people in the market gave us samples, and Elias explained all the different spices and grains and rices, and we could dip our hands in and taste things. There were no other tourists.

We had fabulous food and went to some really interesting local restaurants at night—places where local people would go for the evening for a date. We also visited a couple of families. And once, when we were going into the Semian Mountains, Elias stopped the car near a woman who was cooking injera in front of her house. We got out and chatted with her—through Elias—and learned the whole process. We liked having our guide Elias with us throughout the trip. You can’t do these kinds of things on your own or in a busload.

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

WOW Moment: A Private Visit to Nefertari’s Tomb

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two tourists Riding camels to the pyramids in Egypt

Riding camels to the pyramids. Photo: Stephen Behnen

Queen Hatshepsut's mortuary temple in Luxor as seen from our hot air balloon just after dawn

inside tomb KV14 in the Valley of the Kings Egypt

Julia and Mary inside tomb KV14 in the Valley of the Kings

Inside one of the Tombs of the Artisans outside Luxor

tourists taking a carriage to the Temple of Horus at Edfu Egypt

Steve, Mary and Julia taking a carriage to the Temple of Horus at Edfu

tourists in front of the 108-foot-high facade of Abu Simbel Egypt

Mary, Julia and Steve in front of the 108-foot-high facade of Abu Simbel

Whirling dervishes performance in Cairo

Mary and Julia at Wadi Rum in Jordan

tourist in the North Theater of Jerash Jordan

Julia in the North Theater of Jerash Jordan

When Stephen Behnen and his wife, Mary Hornsby, of Seattle were unable to find a small-group tour that covered everything they wanted to do in Egypt and Jordan, they turned to Wendy’s WOW List. Despite complex logistics—five interior flights, desert treks, a Nile cruise, tickets to roughly 20 historic sites—the trip that Jim Berkeley, Wendy’s Trusted Travel Expert for Egypt, arranged for the Behnens was, according to Stephen’s post-trip review, “flawless.” Among its highlights were the Temple of Philae (“one of the single nicest temples we saw in Egypt”) and a stay in a Bedouin Camp at Wadi Rum (“the best scenery of our trip”), neither of which was on the Behnens’ original wish list. Jim not only suggested additions and alterations based on the Behnens’ particular interests but also managed to secure upgrades at choice hotels and top-deck suites on the Sonesta Star Goddess cruise ship. Because this was the Behnens’ third qualifying WOW List trip, Wendy added a surprise WOW Moment—an exclusive insider experience based on the travelers’ particular interests. The surprise that Wendy and Jim put together for the Behnens was a visit to the tomb of Nefertari, the wife of Ramesses II. After they returned, we called Stephen to find out how it played out.

Q: I’m hoping you can educate those of us who are not Egyptologists. What’s so great about Nefertari’s tomb?

A: Nefertari is a very special tomb. It’s considered to be the best-preserved tomb in all of Egypt. It has what looks like a vault door, for climate control. They’re trying to minimize the risk that visitors will cause the tomb to deteriorate. For many years you had to get permission from the Ministry of Antiquities to be admitted. That went away a few years ago, but then it was like a thousand dollars a pop. The price has since dropped and it has become much more accessible, but I didn’t know that, and it was not on our itinerary. We had seen half a dozen tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens when the guide said, “We’re going into Nefertari’s tomb,” and I said, “Oh my goodness, this will be fabulous.”

Q: Where exactly were you?

A: The Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens are gorges in the hilly desert outside Luxor. There’s no vegetation of any kind. From the ground, you see nothing except the entrances to the little tunnels that allow visitors to access the tomb areas. There are 62 tombs in the Valley of the Kings and a bunch more in the Valley of the Queens. Most of them are over three thousand years old, so the fact that you can find anything at all is remarkable.

Every tomb experience is roughly similar in the sense that you duck down into the ground through a narrow opening—because they never made big openings—and usually steep stairs. You can just imagine people digging tunnels into the rock and smoothing everything out so they had a nice clean surface to work on. Limestone doesn’t smooth easily. You have to chip away at it. But they had the patience to make it just as smooth as it could be. They didn’t have power tools. They had wooden wedges that they soaked and allowed to expand and crack the rock. I’m guessing they used granite sledges to chip away a lot of that stuff, and they used some granite-like tools and harder rocks to smooth the surface down. Then they sent their artisans in to do relief carvings into the face of the wall and then paint the carvings, creating pictures of the gods and goddesses that were going to be important to them in the afterlife. All this was done in dim candlelight by people working underground for years, just so their pharoah and sometimes the queens and kids could have a resting place that would serve them as they made the transition from the current world to the afterworld. And it’s just . . . you have to see it to appreciate it.

Q: What was Nefertari’s tomb like?

A: My wife, my daughter, and I were the only people in the tomb besides the two security guards, which was wonderful for a variety of reasons. When you’re all by yourselves, you don’t have other people chattering around you and you’re not stumbling over everybody. You’re in a place that’s as quiet as can be—a place where somebody was buried, for crying out loud, and this is where they were going to spend their afterlife.

Because we had already visited half a dozen tombs, I knew how the chambers were oriented, what the burial chamber would look like, what the access would feel like, the kinds of gods we would see on the wall, where Osiris and Horus would be and what they’d be doing and the kind of offerings they’d be getting. We had a good feel for what we would see, but we didn’t know how artistic the works would be and how impressive in terms of their beauty. The colors are absolutely startlingly vivid. They just jump out at you.

There are signs everywhere reminding you that the maximum time is ten minutes, but because our guide was careful to arrange for us to arrive when nobody else was there, the guards were more lenient. They didn’t speak English, but they were motioning you might want to come over here and take a look at this. They didn’t try to shoo us out at ten minutes, and we didn’t volunteer to leave. We just drank it in.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to get to a lot of places, but Nefertari’s tomb was one of the nicest. It was the perfect way to end our visit to the tombs, and all of us loved it—not just me.

Q: Anything else you think other travelers should know about visiting this tomb?

A: The entire experience lasted 15 minutes. My only regret is that they’re particular about cameras, so it’s purely a memory situation, but that’s enough. You know going in that you’re not going to have any photographs, so better take in as much as you can and appreciate it while you have the opportunity.

In fact, there are pictures all over the Internet—but pictures only tell half the story. One of the benefits of travel is that it involves all your senses, including your sense of wonder: I’m actually here. I’m not leafing through a book or looking at a photo on the Internet. I’m actually here. Otherwise why would anybody ever travel?

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

WOW Moment: Port and the People Who Make It in Portugal

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Often the most memorable parts of a trip are not the places you see but the people you meet. That’s what made Tom and Linda Uhler’s WOW Moment in Portugal so memorable. “We saw four distinct areas of Portugal and liked them all,” Linda told us over the phone when we recently interviewed the couple about their fall trip. But what really stood out to her was “the people—how nice they were, and how happy they were to have us there.” Since this was their third qualifying trip using Wendy’s WOW List, the Uhlers had earned a WOW Moment. A WOW Moment is, of course, an exclusive insider experience added to your itinerary by Wendy and orchestrated by one of her Trusted Travel Experts—in this case, Portugal specialist Gonçalo Correia. When we spoke to the Uhlers (who are based in Sanibel Island, Florida), they shared how their WOW Moment gave them a taste not only of the Douro Valley’s famed wine but also of its people.

A peek behind the scenes, where the port is made.

Q: WOW Moments usually build on the traveler’s interests. What do you think inspired your WOW Moment?

Tom: Wendy’s recommended people are very diligent about getting to know what our interests are. Gonçalo understood there were things I wanted to learn about, including cork manufacturing and harvesting (because I collect antique corkscrews), wine in general, and port. He arranged for us to visit a port house, Quinta do Vesuvio, that is not open to the public. The estate is actually the private summer home of the Symington port wine family. And our guide that day was honest-to-god port royalty: the daughter of a famous local winemaker in the region. She was the real thing—she grew up in the business.

Touring the port house

Q: How did your WOW Moment unfold?

Linda: Our driver said, “Let’s go see more of the Douro Valley.” We had no idea where we were going.

Tom: He drove us around all these back roads, down the river, and eventually onto this property—which was quite dramatic—and introduced us to our guide. One of the things that impressed us was how hospitable everyone is in Portugal. Our guide’s English was excellent. She had this depth of knowledge, so as someone who asks a ton of questions, as I do, could not stump her. She was amazing. And then she gave us a tour of the property, including the place where they dump the grapes for stomping. Then we went to the mansion on the property, and onto their porch with a view across the water, and we had a delicious lunch with port.

Linda: We started out with a drink that we had read a lot about: white port and tonic. And I think they had homemade sausage and almonds to go with it. Then we sat down with a melon and a dish they called duck rice—a casserole that is a very traditional meal. It was filled with duck and blood sausage, which I had never had, and it was delicious.

Q: Did the experience give you a feel for the local culture?

Linda: It was like we were part of their family, like we were friends they had invited to lunch. It was just us two, plus our host and the housekeeper. And there was this magnificent view. I can still picture us sitting there. It’s a great memory.

Tom: I was interested in learning the family relationships. There are only a handful of families that control the port industry. Our host’s knowledge was just extremely deep, and she was willing to share her story. I asked her some questions I thought not everybody would know—and she knew. This is what we have trouble explaining to people about our trips arranged through Wendy’s List. They say, You did what? For example, in Sicily, when we were on Mount Etna, our guide was a licensed volcanologist with a degree in volcanology; for two days, our guides were archaeologists who could reach down and pick up potshards. It’s amazing.

Linda: We could never have gotten into this place on our own because it’s not open to the public. And when we got to Porto and told people where’d we’d been, they were like, Wow, how did you get in?

The view from lunch.

Q: How else has The WOW List improved your travels?

Tom: When we want to stay in really nice places…how do you sort through all the junk that’s on the Internet?

Linda: You probably could, but it takes time. Reading the reviews is one thing, but having someone say, “I’ve been to that room where you’re going to stay, and this is what it’s about”—that’s different. In fact, we thought we wanted to stay in one wing of a property, but Gonçalo said, “No no no, you want to stay in this other one.” We could have booked it by ourselves, but we would not have had the same experience. Also, we had our first driver for six days, and we bonded with him and learned a lot about what life is like for an average Portuguese citizen.

Tom: That’s another of the takeaways from the trips we’ve done with Wendy’s people: The drivers and guides—especially the drivers, and especially if you have them for more time—are anxious to please you. They go out of their way. I collect antique corks, and we’d had very poor luck finding them. But our driver dropped us off at one of the markets and, while he was gone, he went and bought me a traditional rooster corkscrew from that area. People just go out of their way to be hospitable. That’s one of the intangibles you get.

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

WOW Moment: Mountaintop Cocktails in Brazil

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Gerry and Anne O’Connor of Stony Brook, New York, visited Brazil in fall 2018, where their adventures included a surprise WOW Moment. A WOW Moment is, of course, an exclusive insider experience that Wendy adds to every third qualifying WOW List trip. The O’Connors’ WOW Moment came on Day 7 of a 22-day itinerary designed by Rio-based Brazil specialist Paul Irvine. Usually, when a traveler returns from a WOW Moment, we interview them. But Gerry was so moved by his Rio surprise that he wrote an article for us before we even had a chance to ask him. What follows are his own words about what Paul orchestrated for them in Rio.

How It Began

We were seven days into our trip when our local guide, Carlos, piloting a propane-gas-driven Ford through Rio traffic, turned toward us and said with a devilish glint in his eye, “Today begins your WOW Moment.”

Anne and I were dumbfounded. During our many conversations with Paul, we had never talked specifically about the WOW Moment. We had become so focused on the journey that we had forgotten all about it. But after numerous emails and itinerary modifications, Paul knew us well—our interests, limitations, hopes, and dreams.

We had met Carlos after our first night in Rio. As we were leaving the hotel for our first day of touring Rio, the concierge nodded toward Carlos, gave us the thumbs-up sign, and mouthed, “He’s the best!” We knew we were in good hands.

Now, however, he was smiling but totally non-communicative, which was very unlike him. Normally loquacious, he had pressed his mute button.

The Surprise Is Revealed

At Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, Carlos parked the car and asked if we were up for a short walk. I grabbed my camera, water bottle, and backpack. We walked, strolled, and walked some more, almost completely circumnavigating the lagoon. Anne and I began exchanging puzzled glances and shrugging our shoulders, convinced that Carlos was either lost or stalling for time.

As we passed through a slightly open iron gate, I suddenly saw a windsock. That’s when I remembered telling Paul about a helicopter ride we’d had in Kauai, and how much we had enjoyed seeing inaccessible terrain from aloft. At the same time, I recalled Carlos, our normally talkative guide, telling us how much he hates heights.

The helicopter arrived, and from it emerged a female pilot festooned with military-like epaulettes—most impressive! After a quick pause for introductions and photos, off we went.

A Different Perspective on the City

The aerial view of Rio is awe-inspiring. It revealed in graphic detail the scope and depth of the city’s architecture, its variable terrain, and its population density. It also highlighted the city’s diversity of housing and, unfortunately, its cultural inequality and the poverty of the favelas surrounding sections of Ipanema and Copa.

Rio, as seen from a helicopter. Photo: Gerry O’Connor

We flew south along the coast and then turned north, flying over Copacabana Beach, with the statue of Christ the Redeemer looming just off our port side.

We gradually descended to a postage-stamp platform that jutted from the side of Morro da Urca, a smaller peak adjacent to Sugarloaf. Engines and blades rotating, we exchanged handshakes and mouthed our farewells to the pilot, who was off to São Paulo to ferry an executive to a private villa.

A Hands-on Lesson in a Brazilian Tradition

After buying tickets for the cable car ride to the summit of Sugarloaf, Carlos ushered us to a portico with a spectacular view of the mountain. For the next 45 minutes, in an area cordoned off for us, we were given a private tutorial by a master mixologist that included the making of a perfect caipirinha, Brazil’s national drink, as well as an explanation of the origin and cultural significance of cachaça, the distilled spirit made from fermented sugarcane juice that is the drink’s main ingredient. Our bartender was specific and exacting, the consummate chemist, peering sternly over our shoulders as we gleefully attempted to replicate his precision and exactness. Consuming our beverages—with maybe a little more cachaça than was originally recommended—was the final component of this drink-making experience. The drinks were bloody delicious.

A Perfect Ending to a Perfect Day

The O’Connors making caipirinhas, with Rio’s Sugarloaf mountain in the background.

Paul is a good puppet master, but even he couldn’t pull off a perfect sunset, as clouds rolled in to obscure the view from the upper reaches of Sugarloaf. Still, nothing could dull or dim the thrill of the afternoon.

We rode the Swiss-style gondola back down the mountain and took an Uber back to town. While in traffic, Carlos—having regained his comfort level now that we were safe and secure on the ground—called the restaurant where we had dinner reservations and explained our more-than-one-hour delay. The restaurant not only held our reservations but also welcomed us with complimentary margaritas. In all our travels, a finer day would be hard to recall.

Mark Twain famously said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” The WOW Moment is another tool that opens us to world views that are nearly impossible to comprehend without this kind of first-hand experience.

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

WOW Moment: Summer Sledding in the Bavarian Alps

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boy eating bratwurst in Bavaria with clouds behind him

bakery items on a round table in Bavaria

tourist family in Bavaria at top of mountain

Thanks to their frequent WOW List trips, Ruth and Tai Chang had earned a WOW Moment to enjoy on a trip to Germany. Wendy’s Trusted Travel Experts often arrange WOW Moments that occur up high – say, on a restaurant rooftop, atop a glacier, or in a helicopter. So it wasn’t such a surprise, really, for the Changs’ WOW Moment to occur at the highest point in Germany. It was planned to perfection by one of Wendy’s Trusted Travel Experts for Germany, Claudia Schwenger, as we learned when we spoke with Ruth to find out how it went:

Q: Do you know what the inspiration was for your WOW Moment?

I had told Claudia that I wanted to see Bavaria’s castles built by Mad King Ludwig. So she worked to include those castles in our itinerary, but she said she wanted us to experience quintessential Bavaria in other ways too.

Q: How did your WOW Moment unfold?

Claudia arranged for a local guide, Andreas, to show us the real Bavaria. First we took the cable car up to the top of the Zugspitze, the highest peak in Germany. We got up there right before the clouds rolled in, and the views were beautiful. At the top was a vendor who was roasting bratwurst—you could smell it in the air. Our son said it would be so cool to have a bratwurst in the clouds. And we did. [Laughs.]

I thought Andreas was joking when he said that next we were going to go sledding down a glacier. It was the middle of June. Yet we went snow sledding—in our sneakers and shorts!

Q: What else did Claudia plan for that day?

After that was lunch near the base of the mountain, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where we went to a bakery where you pick your desserts first. They had all these German cakes and pastries. I loved my raspberry cake. Then Andreas and the waiter recommended a traditional item on the menu that they’d both loved when they were kids—a dish of bread with butter, ham, and eggs that their mother and grandmother used to make. They had such great memories that I said okay I’ll try it. We had a traditional, fun lunch up on the roof, in a beautiful setting. When you think of Bavaria, we were there.

Q: What happened after lunch?

We took the chairlift back to the top of the mountain, then raced down via Alpine coaster. Nathan (our son) and I had done something similar before in Colorado, but this was 100% better.

Then Andreas took us on a tour of Linderhof Palace, one of Mad King Ludwig’s castles. We ended the day in Ettal at an amazing monastery run by Benedictine monks who still make their own beer.

Our whole day was quintessential Bavaria, as Claudia had promised. And our whole vacation was one we will never forget.

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

WOW Moment: Dogsledding in Alaska

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Frequent travelers Patty and Len Campbell of Washington, D.C., recently took an Alaska cruise aboard Seabourn’s 458-passenger Sojourn. The trip sounded spectacular enough—a two-week journey past glaciers and through fjords, complete with whale watching and grizzly bear viewing—but Wendy’s mission was to make it even more spectacular. That’s because the Campbells had earned a WOW Moment, thanks to their frequent WOW List trips. So we reached out to the folks at Seabourn to see what they could dream up—and dream they did. The Seabourn team created a special day in Juneau: “It was beautifully executed, it was a complete surprise, and it was absolutely wonderful,” says Patty. WOW-ness achieved! We wanted to hear all about it, so we spoke with Patty on the phone.

Q: Did you have any idea that your WOW Moment would involve dogsledding?

A: I love dogs and had told Tom Baker [Wendy’s Trusted Travel Expert for Alaska cruises, who planned Patty’s trip] that we absolutely wanted to go dogsledding during our cruise. But we had no idea what exactly our WOW Moment was going to be.

Q: So how did it unfold?

A: When our ship arrived in Juneau, we got on a helicopter, and there were 25 to 30 people going dogsledding as part of a regular Seabourn shore excursion. We were told to get off last, and that’s when we were whisked to the side for our own private experience. A lovely young woman was our guide to the mushers’ camp. Another woman, Grace, was the actual musher. She told us about the history of the dogs and what their life is like, and we got to meet all the dogs. I was petting the dogs while my husband harnessed and booted up the dog team. We loved getting up close and personal with these beautiful creatures. Then we took off on a spin all the way around the perimeter of the glacier.

We both got to take a turn in the back, working the brake. There’s such a difference between just sitting there on the sled vs. standing up and working at the directions of the musher.

It was the most beautiful, bright, sunny day, and we felt like we were on top of the world. It was absolutely heavenly.

The Campbells had the chance to meet the dogs, help harness them, control the brake during the ride, and learn all about life at the musher’s camp. Photo: Seabourn

Q: What happened after the dogsled ride?

A: When we got back after the mushing adventure, we got a behind-the-scenes tour of the crew’s camp and learned how they live there. There’s no electricity, no running water. It was fascinating to hear what they have to go through to keep things operational, how they live there and how they cook there. And then we got to have a lunch prepared by the camp’s chef! How cool is that? We’re on top of the world, having lunch, with a beautiful bottle of wine. [The dog camp is “dry,” so Seabourn flew the bottle of wine, a corkscrew, and wine glasses up on the helicopter.] Len and I kept looking at each other thinking, ‘How did we get to do this?’ [Laughs.] We just had no words, it was so cool.

After lunch a private helicopter picked us up and took us back to the helipad, where another lady was waiting to take us to see Mendenhall Glacier, which we drove to before heading back to the ship. That was totally unexpected and quite extraordinary.

Q: And what happened to your fellow travelers from the original helicopter?

A: We spoke to a couple that did the other dogsledding adventure, and they had a great time, but nobody got to do what we did. We will be talking about this for a long time to come.

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

WOW Moment: A New View on Cape Town

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Aerial view of Cape Town from a helicopter tour

Photo: NAC Helicopters

Photo: Tony Forcella

“We’re kind of a little obsessive about our trip planning,” says Susan Forcella, with a laugh. It’s easy to understand why: She and her husband, Tony, are very frequent travelers. They have been all over the world, taking an average of three big trips per year. “I used to enjoy doing the research and planning myself, but in recent years it’s become so complicated,” she says. “There’s so much information out there. I wouldn’t trust myself, or unknown sources on the Internet, to have the most up-to-date as well as the most experienced information. So we just go right to The WOW List. I think we’ve used at least ten of Wendy’s travel specialists by now, and it’s just made the trip planning much simpler.”

The Forcellas’ latest trip was a city-and-safari adventure in South Africa and Botswana, arranged by Julian Harrison, one of Wendy’s Trusted Travel Experts for African safaris. Because the Forcellas are frequent WOW List travelers, they had earned a WOW Moment from Wendy to enjoy on this trip. A WOW Moment is a surprise insider experience, custom-designed for you and complimentary. (Learn how to get one here). And the WOW Moment that Wendy and Julian dreamed up went above and beyond. Quite literally. We spoke with Susan about it on the phone once she was back home.

Q: You say you’re usually very involved in the trip planning. But the WOW Moment was a surprise. How did you feel about being surprised?

A: Tony and I, the more we plan what we’re doing, the happier we are. We realized the surprise was the whole fun of it, but we had some anxiety about it because my husband’s primary focus and passion and interest when we travel is photography. He said, “Uh-oh, what if in the early part of the day I want to stick around longer to take pictures? What if I’d rather be taking pictures than rushing back for the WOW Moment?” But the day of the WOW Moment went very smoothly. Our guide deposited us at the V&A Waterfront right on time for what turned out to be this phenomenal helicopter ride.

Q: How surprised were you?

A: We’d been to the Waterfront on our first day and seen the booth where they had things like that. So we weren’t shocked. To tell you the truth, I was a little nervous because I’d been on helicopter rides before—in the Canadian Rockies and Alaska. Those rides were extremely exciting and we loved them, but that was 12 years ago. Since then, I’ve gotten older and become more fearful. So I was a little scared, but also excited.

Q: How did the WOW Moment turn out?

A: The heli company could not have been better at making us feel welcome and comfortable. The pilot was fantastic, the owner of the company was fantastic. And the ride was so smooth—so different from what it was like 12 years ago. We just lifted up effortlessly. One of the most exciting parts was when the pilot said, ‘I’m going to show you a full-circle rainbow.’ And we said, ‘What? What’s that?’ He said, ‘You only ever see half a rainbow, but when you’re in the air it’s this whole circular thing because there’s no place for it to get blocked.’ I’d never thought of that. And, sure enough, we saw this full-circle rainbow. It was probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was also exciting to see by helicopter where we’d gone with our guide—out of Cape Town, toward the Cape of Good Hope. Seeing it from the air gave us a whole new perspective. And it’s such a dramatic place on earth to see. It was very exciting, and very comfortable, and just a wonderful experience.

Q: What were some other highlights of your trip?

A: Our guide who picked us up at the airport and was with us the whole time and even took us back through the security line was delightful. At each camp in Botswana we had a superb guide too. It seemed to me (because you talk to your fellow campers) we got the guide who’d been there the longest and was most experienced, and that was through Julian. We had told him what we were looking for, and what our concerns were, and then he chose these three camps with three different ecosystems, and we were thoroughly satisfied with his choices. [Reporter’s note: You can read the Forcellas’ review of their trip on Julian’s reviews page.]

Q: What other value did Julian bring to your experience?

A: He advised us very well on what season to go. Since Tony is a photographer, we wanted to go at the time for the best pictures. Julian suggested the cusp of the rainy season, so we were at the edge when the seasons change. We had spectacular weather and beautiful scenery. My husband didn’t want a brown barren landscape; he wanted greenery and grass. So we got that, and we got to see tons of animals, and we also paid a better price. Julian really honed in on that. What he told us turned out to be true: he said you will get quality, not quantity. You’re not going to see thousands of animals in a herd, but you are going to see all these varieties. And he was right. He did a great job of listening to our needs and concerns, and his guidance really panned out beautifully. It was such an amazing trip.

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

WOW Moment: A Private Champagne Lunch on the Namibian Coast

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Photo: Shutterstock

Photo: Robin Louis

Photo: Robin Louis

Photo: Robin Louis

Photo: Robin Louis

Photo: Robin Louis

Photo: Robin Louis

Photo: Explore

Linda and Robin Louis are frequent travelers. They’d even been to Africa twice before. So when they decided they wanted to return to the continent and experience something new, they looked to Wendy’s WOW List and found Cherri Briggs. There were two challenges they brought to the table: First, they wanted to leave in three weeks’ time; and second, since this was their third trip using a WOW List Trusted Travel Expert, they had earned a WOW Moment that would have to be arranged for this vacation.

WOW Moments—complimentary insider experiences, custom-designed by Wendy in collaboration with a Trusted Travel Expert—are meant to be a surprise, so Cherri and Wendy had to do some quick thinking and planning in order to deliver something truly special.

We recently spoke to Linda Louis, at her home in Vancouver, to find out how that WOW Moment went down and to learn more about the rest of their memorable trip to Namibia and South Africa.

Q: Who went on the trip and where did you travel?

A: My husband and I had decided we wanted to go somewhere in Africa, maybe Madagascar. We’ve used Wendy’s list before, so my husband, Robin, looked up Africa and we found Cherri and [her colleague] Katie. Katie said it wasn’t a good time to go to Madagascar because it was the rainy season, and recommended Namibia and South Africa instead.

We flew to Johannesburg and spent time in Tswalu in the Kalahari, and then we went to Cape Town and the wine district, then to Namibia and stayed in three separate camps, then back to Joburg and up to Singita, in Kruger National Park.

Q: This wasn’t your first time in Africa. Why did Namibia appeal to you?

A: We’d been to Kenya and Tanzania before, but we’d never been to the south. Namibia is very different than anywhere else. It’s all desert. It’s staggering that there’s anything living there at all. It’s very beautiful but very different than South Africa, so it was a good mix.

Q: Did you have any clue what was going to happen for your WOW Moment?

A: Not really. We moved in little planes for a lot of the trip. So when the flight from Sossusvlei to Mowani Mountain Camp required a stop “for refueling,” we kind of looked at the map and thought, Hmmm, it doesn’t look so far that we would need to refuel. Then, when we landed and got picked up for lunch, we knew something was up, but we thought we’d be going to a restaurant. Instead, after a tour through the small town of Swokopmund, we ended up in a beautiful tent on the beach.

Q: What was served for lunch?

A: Oh, we started with champagne. Then there was smoked salmon wrapped around asparagus and fresh oysters—the best oysters I’ve ever had. They farm oysters in Namibia, so they were very fresh. And then we had crayfish, mussels, and calamari, and salads and vegetables. All with wine.

Q: It sounds like the food and location were very special. Anything else?

A: The plane ride itself was really a highlight of the trip because we flew over to the coast and then up the coast. We flew really low, so we could see the shipwrecks and seals and birds. It was only a four-passenger plane—two pilots and us. Robin had walked up Big Daddy, one of the dunes, a couple of days before, so they flew us over and around it, so Robin could get a look. So the flight itself was amazing, not just the lunch.

Q: What were some other highlights from this trip?

A: Namibia is spectacularly scenic, especially in the evening because the color of the sands and the shadows on the sands changes. And we saw lots of animals—including lions, really up close and beautiful—and because it’s so sandy, they’re quite easy to track: Their footprints are just right there. We also visited the Himba, which is a tribe that lives like they’ve always lived, all by themselves.

Q: And in South Africa?

A: When we were in Cape Town, we had two very fun days with women. One was a wine day, and one was a food day. For the food day, our guide picked us up in the morning and we went to the Biscuit Mill area; it was Saturday morning, so the Biscuit Mill was full of food stands, and we had rosti and smoked salmon cooked by the chef of the Test Kitchen. Then we just moved around the city eating and going to markets. We had lunch in the shipping containers on the roof of the train station, and we just kind of ate our way around the city. It was an interesting way to visit different areas of the city rather than just driving around and looking at architecture. We went to the Cape Malay area and the Muslim area and to a little spice shop—and our local guide talked to everyone, which made it easy for us to talk to everyone. Local guides make it so that you’re not an outsider looking in.

Q: Aside from the WOW Moment, in what ways did it help to have a Trusted Travel Expert plan this trip?

A: They know the people on the ground. We’ve had some amazing guides—people who take us around—and that’s always really nice when you can meet the local people. Also, we have a bad habit of not planning too far in advance, which perhaps is another reason I like to use an expert. Every once in a while Robin just says, “The weather is bad here, we need to go somewhere!”

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

WOW Moment: A Special Dinner With One of Morocco’s Finest Chefs

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Andrea and Ron Klausner's WOW Moment was a special private dinner at Nur, a buzzy new restaurant in the Fez Medina that amazed Wendy when she dined here last year.

Chef Najat Kaanache of Nur Restaurant, Fez, Morocco

Nur is the creation of chef Najat Kaanache, a Moroccan who grew up in Spain’s Basque Country.

The dining room at Nur Restaurant, Fez, Morocco

The restaurant is tiny and fills up fast; reservations are a must. The Klausners’ complimentary dinner would include a private dining room, wine pairings, a personal greeting from the chef, and a professional photographer to capture the moment.

Chef Najat Kaanache prepares dinner at Nur, her restaurant in the Fez Medina, Morocco

Using the haute-cuisine techniques she learned at some of the world’s top restaurants, including Spain’s El Bulli, Najat creates a ten-course tasting menu that is based on fresh ingredients and changes daily.

Cuisine at Nur Restaurant, Fez, Morocco. Photo: Nur Restaurant

Some of Chef Najat's many inventions…

"Chef Najat came out before dessert and introduced herself. She and her partner made us feel 100 percent at home. After the meal, we sat around with the two of them for an hour and just talked. We talked food, we talked Morocco, we talked travel, we talked restaurants. We talked about family and children. We talked about where she had worked, where she had learned her skills."

Desserts…

This one is called Choco Planet.

The Klausner family enjoying their dinner.

Ron Klausner and his wife, Andrea, are frequent travelers who like to experience a culture in depth; often their trips include their adult children. On December 23, 2018, the family gathered in Morocco for a ten-day vacation. As repeat users of Wendy’s trip-planning system, the Klausners had qualified for what we call a WOW Moment: a complimentary insider experience, custom-designed for them by Wendy in collaboration with a Trusted Travel Expert.

WOW Moments are meant to be a surprise. When the Klausners arrived in Morocco—where they were met by a driver and a local guide—they knew only that they would get to experience a WOW Moment at some point during their trip.

What lay in store for them was a private room at Nur, a buzzy new restaurant in the Fez Medina that Wendy was amazed by when she dined there with her own family on a recent trip. Nur is the creation of chef Najat Kaanache, a Moroccan who grew up in Spain’s Basque Country. Using the haute-cuisine techniques she learned at some of the world’s top restaurants, including Spain’s El Bulli, Najat creates a ten-course tasting menu that is based on fresh ingredients and changes daily. Nur is tiny and fills up fast; reservations are a must. The Klausners’ complimentary dinner would include wine pairings, a personal greeting from the chef, and a professional photographer to capture the moment. This WOW Moment, like the rest of the Klausners’ trip, was arranged by Michael Diamond, one of Wendy’s Trusted Travel Experts for Morocco. As always, we were eager to hear how it had turned out, so after the family’s return to the U.S., we called Ron Klausner to find out.

Q: We want to hear all about your trip, but let’s start with the WOW Moment. Were you surprised?

A: It was a complete surprise. It came at the beginning of our trip, on day two or three. We walked to this restaurant, and of course, in Fez you can never tell what anything looks like from the outside, because everything looks like it did in the eighth or ninth century. We walked inside, and there was this beautiful restaurant. It was small—eight, nine tables—and the art was incredible. The seven of us were seated in a very private area, where we proceeded to have the most amazing meal using Moroccan ingredients but in a totally different way. There were Moroccan spices but combined differently, with different presentations. We had a ten-course meal with different wines. I don’t eat at every super-duper restaurant in the world, but this was certainly one of the top ten meals of my life.

Chef Najat came out before dessert and introduced herself. She and her partner [Charles Accivatti, Najat’s husband and business partner] made us feel 100 percent at home. After the meal, we sat around with the two of them for an hour and just talked. We talked food, we talked Morocco, we talked travel, we talked restaurants. We talked about family and children. We talked about where she had worked, where she had learned her skills. She’s very picky about every ingredient; the meal changes every night based upon what comes from the market.

The only bad thing was that we had to get going early in the morning, so I had to cut it short. It was midnight when we left. We had arrived for dinner at eight, and they were willing to keep talking, but I had to break it up because we had to get up early in the morning.

I’m amazed that in this little town, which is not very well touristed, there is this amazing chef. I would come to Fez just to eat at that restaurant. We traveled for another three weeks through Morocco, Kenya, and the UAE, and no other meal came close to that one. And I never once had to reach for my wallet, although we did leave some gratuities for the staff.

Q: You qualified for a WOW Moment because you’ve used Wendy’s trip-planning system multiple times. Why do you use WOW List destination specialists to plan your trips?

A: We’ve used Wendy’s people seven or eight times. Why do we use them? That I can answer very well. We go to places usually for a long time and in depth, so we want to benefit from a specialist’s in-depth knowledge. Last year we went to Myanmar for six weeks. I mean, who can plan that unless they’ve really been there and know it? The year before, we went to Chile and Argentina for eight weeks. I want to work with somebody who knows the area, who responds immediately, and who translates my wishes into reality. Somebody who gets me access to local events. For example, we went to Uzbekistan, and the Trusted Travel Expert asked, “What would you like to do?” I said, “I’d like to have dinner at your mother’s house.” Believe it or not, we had a feast at her mother’s house in Samarkand. Not only for us—twenty other relatives came. She taught my son how to make a rice pilaf over the open fire for two hours. We then shared a family meal, danced together in the dining room—I’m speechless about it. I had a problem with one of the local guides in Myanmar, just a personality clash. I called up and within an hour I had a new guide. The communication, the oversight when we’re there, the knowledge… To get deep into a country, as I like to do, Wendy’s people are able to put it together.

Q: What are some of your travel criteria? What, in your opinion, makes a trip special?

A: About half our trips are with our children, and the other half are just my wife and me. It’s very important to us to take the children; we’ve traveled the world with them. We want them to see and experience other cultures—to realize that America is not the center of the universe, to be able to interact with other people, to learn from them, to enrich their lives, not to be afraid of strangers.

The trip to Morocco was one of our best trips together. We like to go away as a family over Christmastime, and often there are struggles over what different people want to do. Our children are millennials in their late twenties and early thirties, and when I asked everybody at the end of the trip to name their top three activities, they all came up with different top threes. Some of them were things I hadn’t expected them to appreciate as much as they did.

Q: Like what?

A: Sleeping in a tent in the Sahara even though it was 35 degrees. A day’s shopping with a local designer who brought us to the best shops, where we were able to buy at his special prices. I hate shopping, but I enjoyed that day, surprisingly enough. It was easy with a driver, and we had an amazing guide. He was the Trusted Travel Expert’s person on the ground. He buys rugs for ABC Carpets, so he has already negotiated a price with them. If we saw a carpet we liked, we didn’t have to worry about whether we were overpaying—we just bought it. So we bought carpets and leather and clothing, and then he shipped it back for us, which was fantastic. Everyone enjoyed that.

Q: What were some other highlights of the Morocco trip?

A: A cooking class outside Marrakech was high on the list—we all liked that. We like to do local things. We like to stay in more authentic local places, and the local riads gave us a taste of Morocco. At the Kasbah Ait Ben Haddou in Ouarzazate, a woman who has lived there for 80 years took us around her home in this ancient town. Jardin Majorelle, in Marrakech, was also surprisingly well received; I’m not big on museums but some people enjoyed that tremendously. The sunset walk at Volubilis was very cool, with incredible photo opportunities, and the timing was perfect, just to get out of the car on our way to Fez and walk around the Roman ruins for a quick half hour. A hike and a picnic lunch in the mountains outside Marrakech was another highlight.

Q: Is there anything that you would have done differently?

A: No, for the amount of time we had, I think it was perfect. We got everybody busy, everybody moving at a good pace. We didn’t do too much, so nobody got cranky, and we didn’t do too little, so they didn’t get bored. We like experiencing a country and drinking it in, but we also enjoy just being together as a family.

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

WOW Moment: A Bora Bora Overwater Bungalow Surprise

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Sharonne and David Hayes recently returned from a trip to French Polynesia that included something special: a surprise insider experience curated by Wendy. We call these WOW Moments, and travelers can start on the path to earning one by using our WOW List buttons to launch a trip and then reviewing their Trusted Travel Expert after their trip. (Here’s info on how to get your own complimentary WOW Moment on every third trip).

The Hayeses’ trip was masterminded by Trusted Travel Expert Leslie Fambrini. Its centerpiece was a luxury small-ship cruise of the Society Islands aboard the Paul Gauguin. What the couple didn’t know was that they would be spending one night in a brand-new overwater villa at the InterContinental Bora Bora Resort and Thalasso Spa. The resort’s four Brando Suites, which only just opened in December, have 3,400 square feet of indoor/outdoor living space and 180-degree views of Mount Otemanu. The Hayeses were among the first travelers to get to experience these much-buzzed-about new overwater “bungalows.”

Sharonne and David posted a review of their whole trip—you can read it on Leslie’s reviews page—but of course we wanted to find out more about how their WOW Moment went. The Hayeses live in Minnesota, and on a frigid day in January, Sharonne pulled up her snapshots of blue lagoons and petal-strewn tablecloths to answer our questions.

Q: Let’s start with your WOW Moment. Were you surprised?

A: The WOW Moment was way more than a moment. It was 24 hours of WOW. It was far more than we had expected.

We had been told in advance that on a certain day we were to pack an overnight bag. So we realized that our WOW Moment was not going to be on the ship.

The day before we reached Bora Bora, we were taken to the bridge, where the captain told us we were going to have our WOW Moment the next day—which we kind of knew, but it was fun to go up on the bridge.

We were told to get off on the 10:30 tender and take an overnight bag, and there would be a cab waiting for us. That was pretty much it.

The cab took us to the InterContinental, and the woman at the desk said, “Oh, your boat’s at 12:45.” That’s when we thought, Oh, maybe the WOW Moment is a snorkeling trip.

The boat, a little shuttle, took us to one of these fabulous houses at the end of a row of overwater bungalows; we were admiring them from the boat. They told us we were going to stay there, and they brought out some Champagne. It had a tub with a view, you’ve got your own little pool, and you can hop right into the ocean. And we were standing there saying, “This is ours?”

They said, “Just enjoy your afternoon; we’re going to come pick you up at 5:30 for a manager’s reception.” So we did. We just enjoyed ourselves. We just stayed outside and marveled at this place.

“They told us we were going to stay there, and they brought out some Champagne. It had a tub with a view, you’ve got your own little pool, and you can hop right into the ocean. And we were standing there saying, ‘This is ours?'”

I’m looking at my pictures now, and…there was a certain wonderment about this WOW Moment. There was this school of fish under our bungalow and I was swimming around trying to capture a picture of them with my waterproof camera. I never was successful—they were always ten feet away from me. It really was just magical.

There were other people at the general manager’s reception; it wasn’t just for us. It was just lovely, and we had a great conversation with the general manager.

We had been told that we were going to be picked up for dinner, and we were actually taken back to our place, where they had strewn flowers along the walkway into our bungalow. We had our meal on the deck as we watched the sunset. The weather was perfect, the colors were beautiful, and we enjoyed talking with the servers, a man and a woman, and learning about their lives. They cleaned up and left, and we had a lovely night.

When we arrived at breakfast the next morning they asked for our room number and then directed us to a private table overlooking the water in an area adjacent to the restaurant.

So the whole thing was in keeping with the fact that we were looking to be pampered and relaxed on this trip, and that’s what it was all about.

The whole time I’m there I’m thinking, “Oh, I wish my daughter and her husband were in the other bedroom.” It’s the kind of thing you really wanted to share with people.

Q: How was the rest of your cruise?

A: The Paul Gauguin was wonderful, and it was fun to be there on New Year’s Eve. We do like cruises, but there were things that I really liked about that particular cruise. One was the age mix. There were a few families, a few kids, a lot of honeymooners, people in their twenties and thirties, young couples. This was an upscale cruise, so the ages skewed older, but many grandmas and grandpas were probably funding the trip for their extended families.

There were a lot of Polynesians. One night on the beach, the musicians were playing their ukuleles and singing, and a whole group of Polynesians joined in and it was just magical. Ten cruise-ship guests were out there singing this song, harmonizing and echoing back and forth.

Another thing I liked was you didn’t feel pushed to sign up for shore excursions, but on every stop there was something you could do that was free, like a shuttle into town. I love to go to foreign grocery stores, so we went to shore but didn’t do anything formal.

Q: How did you decide on the Paul Gauguin?

A: We’ve had two prior trips using the specialists on Wendy’s WOW List—Costa Rica and Peru. Although the Peru trip was fabulous, it was also incredibly rigorous, and as my husband and I were walking down the Andes, breathless, he turned to me and said, “Our next trip is going to be a cruise.”

My husband travels a lot for work. He does a lot of hard travel. So when the time came to book something, I said, “Do you really want to get on another plane, or should we just drive up to northern Minnesota and sit in a cozy cabin?” And he said, “No, I really want to get away.”

We didn’t know exactly where to go at that time of year. We were looking for the right itinerary and ways to fit it into our schedule. We had just nine days, and we wanted to go somewhere we had never been before, but we were not looking for an adventure cruise. What we really wanted was relaxation.

I went to Wendy’s WOW List, and I couldn’t tell which of the cruise specialists would be the best fit for us, so I sent an email to Wendy and got a response from one of her assistants within 24 hours. I think that speaks to the personal service.

Q: In retrospect, aside from the WOW Moment, did it help to have a travel specialist plan this trip?

A: I felt like we really benefited from Leslie’s advice. We decided on the Paul Gauguin, and after that it was the logistics of getting it planned. For instance, we were going to have to fly in a day early and have an extra night on either end, and we didn’t know what to do with it. One of the things that was really good advice, even though it was costly, was to have a hotel room ready and waiting for us in the early morning when we landed in Tahiti.

I’ve been on cruises before where the shore excursions are very important. And I didn’t know if that was the case here. Leslie said, after several conversations, “What I’m hearing is, I don’t think you should sign up for anything,” which was my gut feeling, but it was nice to be given permission, and she was right.

“For me, using a travel specialist is a no-brainer for a more complex trip, but even for a cruise, I can’t see a reason not to.”

Q: Can you tell us more about why, as frequent travelers, you rely on Wendy’s WOW List?

A: I bought into using specialized travel agents more than a decade ago when we were going to Africa, and I’ve referred many people to Wendy’s WOW List, partly because I think it’s really curated. I enjoy the process of doing the research, but you can only do so much online.

Our Peru trip is a good example. It was two families. There were six of us, aged 17 to 60, with three different itineraries. Part of our time was together and part of it was apart. Our adult son didn’t want to go on the Andean trek, so the travel specialist gave him some other options. It helped to be able to say, “The 20-year-old son is not buying this. What can you do?”

For the Peru trip, we had eight or ten hours from the time we got back from our Amazon cruise to our return flight, which normally would have meant an icky time in an airport. Instead, somebody picked us up and took us around to show us sights they wanted us to see—I couldn’t have orchestrated that on my own. I would have had to find a car service and tell them where to go. I didn’t have to do that.

For me, using a travel specialist is a no-brainer for a more complex trip, but even for a cruise, I can’t see a reason not to. If you’re booking through a cruise line and you have a question, you won’t get an answer, or you’ll get an answer that benefits the cruise line, versus the unbiased insider look.

Q: Is there anything else would you like to tell us about your cruise, or the WOW List in general?

A: Somebody who saw my pictures of Bora Bora said, “Is that like the best vacation you ever had?” I haven’t asked my husband, but I would say it’s the best vacation I ever had with just him, and I would include my honeymoon in that.

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

This Traveler Has Used The WOW List to Plan 15 Trips: How and Why

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What sort of traveler uses The WOW List? You might assume it’s travelers who can’t plan their own trips, but you’d be wrong. It’s people who have planned so many trips so well that they have an exhaustive grasp of just how much you miss out on when you don’t utilize the best local expertise and connections—and a deep appreciation of just how much time and effort such meticulous planning takes.

Jeff Bernfield, for instance. He’s a physician from the Chicago area who has used Wendy’s recommended Trusted Travel Experts (TTEs) more than anyone else—a whopping 15 times. With his wife, and sometimes with the rest of his family, he’s been all over the globe on trips arranged by these destination specialists, including Italy, Africa, England, Japan, Costa Rica, the Galapagos Islands, Norway, even Disney World. As you’d expect, he’s got a lot of tips to share when it comes to collaborating with travel specialists. So, in a phone call after a trip to Florence, Italy (where Wendy surprised him with a WOW Moment loyalty reward), we asked Dr. Bernfield to share his advice for how to get the best trip possible.

You’re more than capable of arranging your own travel. Why do you use The WOW List?

I could plan each trip myself—I’m a voracious researcher—but it’s so much easier to let one of these experts plan the whole thing for you and not worry about what could go wrong and what you’d do if something went wrong. I never ever have to worry because, even if something might go wrong, they fix it. They always fix it. It doesn’t happen very often, but it’s like having an insurance policy.

How do you choose which travel specialist to use for each trip?

What I usually do, I email Wendy. Wendy knows me by now, so I tell her where we’re going, and she’ll recommend the right one for me.

Do you read the reviews posted about each travel specialist on WendyPerrin.com?

I read all of the TTE’s reviews on Wendy’s site before contacting that TTE. I want to find out what that travel expert has planned and whether they’ve done something special—like, say, getting a traveler into Downton Abbey. I’ve never been able to get that; my wife is an obsessed Downtown Abbey fan but I couldn’t pull it off. My point is: If I read something in a review, that might tip my hand.

What’s most important to you in a travel planner?

I’m pretty big on communication and being accessible. Some Trusted Travel Experts are just incredible and if you shoot them an email, you get a response in ten minutes.

Do you prefer email or phone?

I definitely like the phone call. I always like to talk to somebody and know who I’m dealing with before I do business with them. And I like to have a back-and-forth discussion. I’m not the kind of person who says give me an itinerary for Southeast Asia and then I just do that itinerary. That’s not my nature. I like to pick people’s brains. I ask them: Why are you recommending this over this? I do a lot of reading, so maybe I’m on somebody’s dartboard somewhere [Laughs], but I like to have discussions about the itinerary.

In that first phone call, what should a traveler tell the Trusted Travel Expert?

I’ll tell them from the start what I’m looking for, and I’ll ask what are some of the things you offer, and then I’ll listen. I also ask about private experiences, since we like to dig into the culture and history. I always tell the TTEs: Let’s do something different, something that other people won’t do, don’t know to do. When we planned our trip to Japan, the Trusted Travel Expert sent us a list of 20 private experiences and told me to pick from them. I picked them all. I’m not saying everyone can or should do that, but I think if you like doing things different, that’s one of the advantages of having these experts plan your itinerary. So you’re not just going to the Louvre, not just doing the things any travelers can do; you’re going to someone’s home, taking a cooking lesson, taking a samurai sword lesson, meeting a priest at a high temple. In Italy we got to go to a dairy farm and see how they make Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. If you like doing different cultural experiences, there are a lot of assets that people on Wendy’s list have that I would try to find out about.

What are some of the questions travelers should ask?

I start with: What do you offer that’s different from the average tourist things? What cultural experiences can you access? Example: My wife is a picky eater. It so happens that she loves pizza, but in northern Italy pizza is not as common as in southern Italy. I told our Italy travel specialist, Maria, that my wife loves pizza, and would it be possible to take a pizza-making lesson? At first she said, “Huh, I don’t know, pizza’s not that popular in northern Italy.” But she called me back a couple hours later and she said, “I got it!” She had arranged for us to meet a chef who would give us a pizza lesson. I asked the question, I didn’t know what kind of answer I would get, but if you have something specific in mind, ask for it—because even if they don’t normally do it, unless you ask for something impossible, they’re going to try really hard to accommodate your request. That’s important.

What else is important to communicate to your Trusted Travel Expert?

You have to know what you are and what you want. We don’t like beaches. We don’t like to sit around and do nothing. Some travel specialists will schedule you starting at 11am, but we get up at 7am. So you need to know what you want and ask the questions. Then we can figure out if they can handle my needs. It’s like anything else: You talk to somebody. Some are easier to talk to, more communicative, have an easy-going personality—but you figure that out quickly. That’s why a phone call is so important.

Thinking about reaching out to a WOW List travel specialist? Wendy’s got key advice for you too: How To Get The Best Possible Trip.

Italy WOW Moment: A Private Michelin-Star Dinner with Fireworks

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Michelin-starred restaurant La Leggenda dei Frati in Florence, Italy

The view overlooking Florence from the restaurant rooftop where our traveler enjoyed his WOW Moment. Photo: Georgio Magini

Photo: Giorgio Magini

How do you impress a traveler who’s been everywhere and done everything? That’s our challenge with a lot of our readers. You are a very well-traveled and discerning bunch! Even those of you finding The WOW List for the first time arrive with very high expectations—and we love that about you.

But it does create a challenge for us—and for the Trusted Travel Experts on Wendy’s WOW List—to dazzle you with something new and unexpected. Yet that’s exactly what Wendy aims to do with her WOW Moments. She personally adds a complimentary insider-access experience to your itinerary on your third trip with a WOW List–recommended travel specialist. It’s a thank-you for trying our new WOW trip-planning system and helping us test and fine-tune it.

The best WOW Moments come as a complete surprise. And that’s why we are thrilled with the response Jeff Bernfield had to his WOW Moment in Florence, Italy, last month. Dr. Bernfield, a physician in the Chicago area, is a special case: He’s used 15 of Wendy’s recommended travel specialists over the years.

“I could plan each trip myself, but it’s so much easier to use one of these people and let them plan the whole thing for you,” he told us over the phone after his trip to Italy arranged by Maria Gabriella Landers and Brian Dore. “I never ever worry about things that can go wrong because even if something might go wrong, they fix it. They always fix it. It doesn’t happen very often, but it’s like having an insurance policy.”

Knowing that Dr. Bernfield and his wife would be in Florence during the June Feast of San Giovanni—celebrated with historical parades, music, and fireworks over the Arno—Wendy worked with Maria and Brian to come up with something very special. Maria suggested dinner at La Leggenda dei Frati—a restaurant located in the Bardini Gardens—on the Terrazzo dei Limoni, an exclusive part of the restaurant with only five tables of two and fantastic views of the fireworks at night. Maria explained that, while there is another, larger terrace at the famed Michelin-starred restaurant, the Terrazzo dei Limoni would be more atmospheric and exclusive. Wendy agreed it sounded perfect, so Maria set it up, and we waited to hear the Bernfields’ reaction. Dr. Bernfield emailed Wendy right after they got home from their dinner, and then we followed up on the phone to hear all the fun details. This what he had to say:

Q: Did you have any clue what was being planned?

A: We knew something was up because I’m a voracious reader and researcher. Even with these travel experts, if they make a recommendation, I read about it and make sure it fits—I’m not good at just accepting things. For this, we got an itinerary, and I kept noticing that Saturday night was empty, and I kept questioning Maria about it. We had originally planned to go to the festival of St. John because Maria told us it was a great event in Florence—we scheduled our whole trip around being in Florence that day. And then there was nothing written on the itinerary for that evening. Our itinerary said, “Meet your guide at 3pm and she’ll show you around and then you’ll be left for the evening.” I had a feeling something was up, but I couldn’t find out what it was. Back at our hotel, we were told someone would meet us in our hotel lobby at 8.

Q: Sneaky. Who was it?

A: We went down to the lobby and, to our surprise, Maria and Brian were there! That to me was the highlight. For me, it’s always about the people. I don’t care what museum or what church or what holy site or any activity that we do. For us, travel is always 100 percent about the people, and I thought that was one of the nicest things she could have done. Even though that technically wasn’t our WOW Moment, for us that was it.

Q: But of course it wasn’t! What had they arranged for you?

A: They had arranged a taxi to take us to a beautiful Michelin-starred restaurant overlooking the Arno River, La Leggenda dei Frati, where we didn’t just have dinner—they took us to an open-air roof on top of the restaurant that we had to ourselves, and they hired an Italian opera singer to serenade us. That was incredible. There was also a harp player, and a private photographer taking pictures of us.

Q: This restaurant was special because of the Feast of San Giovanni. What was the location like?

A: We had basically a private viewing of the fireworks over the river. In fact, other people sitting on the lower level of the restaurant could not see the fireworks because the trees blocked it. We’ve been sent the photos since then and they are great—much better than what we did with my iPhone. [Laughs]

After the fireworks, the chef introduced himself, took us into the kitchen, and took us to the separate private museum roof overlay, which had all kinds of art. It was outrageous. If I had tried to plan the most romantic evening I could for my wife, I would have fallen short of what Wendy and Maria and Brian planned for us. It could not have gone any better. For that, I thank her. I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but we are very appreciative. It was the highlight of our trip. We’ve had amazing experiences all over the globe, but this ranks number one.

Q: You’ve used travel specialists on Wendy’s WOW List more than a dozen times. How did you originally find Wendy’s list of travel specialists?

A: To make a long story short, I used to use a local boutique luxury travel agent here in the Chicago area, and my wife got sick and we were off the grid for a couple years. We couldn’t really travel, waiting to see if she got better, and she did, thankfully. When she got better, we decided that tomorrow isn’t promised, so to speak, and we’re going to live each day to the fullest. and we’re going to go out and see the world. So I called this travel agent, and she didn’t want to offer her services because we hadn’t used her in the past six months. And when I explained why, she still didn’t want to offer her services. I didn’t really know what to do. I’d told my wife that when she got better she could pick her bucket-list trip as long as I could pick mine. She picked Greece, and I picked Africa. And then kind of out of the blue, I reached out to Wendy, who was at Condé Nast Traveler magazine at the time, and I think I sent Wendy a tweet or an email, I don’t remember. I was not expecting a response—but she answered! [Laughs] I was stunned, because I didn’t know her and took a shot in the dark and she answered. I was looking for help and advice on how to do this and I didn’t have anybody local and one thing led to another. I think I’ve used about 15 WOW List people over the past few years, and in her nice way, Wendy reciprocated—she didn’t have to—with this WOW Moment.

Honestly, I think it was the nicest, most enjoyable evening the two of us have ever been lucky enough to spend. Apart from my son’s wedding five weeks ago, this ranks right up there with one of the unexpected enjoyable evenings.

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

WOW Moment: A Helicopter Ride Over The Great Wall of China

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We take our jobs very seriously here at WendyPerrin.com—to report on and recommend the best travel solutions and trip-planning help out there. After all, if we’re wrong about anything, we must answer to you—an audience of the most experienced and discerning travelers around. That’s why the review process is such an integral part of Wendy’s Trip Support System. In fact, it’s the main reason we ask all of you who use The WOW List to use the black CONTACT buttons on it when you contact a Trusted Travel Expert. That way, we can stay in touch with you and, after your trip, find out how everything went. Your feedback is enormously helpful to your fellow travelers—and, in turn, their reviews are enormously helpful to you, when you come back to use The WOW List again.

But don’t listen to us when we tell you the benefits of using Wendy’s WOW system to plan your trips. Listen to Lisa and Scott Dettmer, frequent travelers from the Silicon Valley area who’ve been using Wendy’s travel specialists for years. They recently returned from their latest adventure, arranged by Mei Zhang, Wendy’s Trusted Travel Expert for China. Since this was the Dettmers’ third trip using the WOW system, they earned something special: a surprise insider experience curated by Wendy and added to their itinerary for free. We call these WOW Moments, and anyone who uses our trip-planning system can earn one if they simply use our WOW List buttons and review their Trusted Travel Expert after their trip. (Here’s more info on how to get your own WOW Moment).

We’re not sure all of you have heard about WOW Moments yet, so we called up Lisa and Scott to let them share, in their own words, their experience working with Wendy’s Trusted Travel Experts, and what they thought of their WOW Moment surprise.

Q: How often do you two travel?

Lisa: We do one significant trip each year—like a two-week, far-away trip—and then we do quite a few smaller trips throughout the year. Our first trip [using one of Wendy’s travel specialists] was to Africa when Wendy was at Condé Nast Traveler. The planning worked so well, and the trip was so tailored to our needs, that I’ve continued to use her specialists throughout the last four or five years. Every single time we’ve had just wonderful experiences. I wouldn’t plan a trip without doing it that way—because it works.

Q: You recently returned from China. Was this a special trip?

Scott: We wanted to approach it a little differently. We didn’t want a traditional tourist approach to China, and it was nice that [Mei and her team] were able to do something we thought was unique and customized to our preferences.

Q: Can you give an example?

Scott: We like to hike and be outdoors, and we like animals, and a lot of travelers would not think you would go to China to have those experiences. Most think it’s going to be an urban experience: You’ll see the Great Wall, the terra-cotta warriors, and the Forbidden City, and that’s it. But WildChina delivered. Lisa’s experience of being up close and personal with a panda made the trip for her, and the other was being able to hike out into the forest in the southwestern area of China to find the endangered snub-nosed monkeys and hang out for hours watching them play around in the trees. They did a nice job of giving us the urban experience and the rural experience.

Q: Walk me through your WOW Moment: What happened?

Scott: It was a ton of fun and a great surprise, and the lead-up to it was amusing. We were in Beijing and had already gone out to one portion of the Great Wall, at Mutianyu, and had a great visit there. The next day I was supposed to visit my office in Beijing, but when our tour guide found out that I wasn’t going in, he started making a bunch of texts and phone calls. Then he said, “Since you’re not going to the office, we would really like to take you to another portion of the Great Wall.” We thought, “Well, we’ve already seen the Great Wall.” I should back up and explain that our guide was such a gentle and accommodating guy—really nice—but now he was like, “No, I think you should go to this other section of the Great Wall.” So we said, [adopts a skeptical voice] “Okay…I guess we’ll follow your good judgment.” [Laughs]

Lisa: That morning I started to put on my tennis shoes, thinking we’re going to hike, and our guide gets this big smile on his face and says, “Oh, you won’t be needing your tennis shoes.” And as soon as he told us that, he told us this was our WOW Moment.

Scott: I have a special affinity for helicopters because I started taking lessons in the past year—and we went up in one of the types I’ve flown, or kind of flown. [Laughs] And what a kick! Flying over different portions of the Great Wall! It certainly is a very different perspective. And to see the wall winding in its serpentine terrain across that mountainous terrain—it was gorgeous. The guide got to go up with us, and he’d never been up in a helicopter before. It was a ton of fun, and everyone had giant smiles.

Q: Lisa, you’re the one who worked with our Trusted Travel Expert to plan the trip. Did you have any idea what the WOW Moment was going to be?

Lisa: It was a total surprise, and that makes it really fun. I’d thought the WOW Moment was another thing that wasn’t in the original itinerary: WildChina had added in a sidecar ride through Shanghai. So, in my mind, since we’d never talked about what the WOW Moment would be, I assumed that’s what it was—I thought we’d already had it. So [the helicopter ride] was really a surprise, even though I was the planner of the trip!

Q: What’s your take on working with a Trusted Travel Expert to plan a trip? We’d like your honest opinion.

Lisa: It was neat that we felt like [Mei’s deputy] Jenny Zhao was constantly monitoring us throughout the trip and always knew where we were. She was our air-traffic controller on this trip. We also appreciated her on-the-spot analysis of our options: At one point, the weather was going to be pretty cold, and they were predicting snow in an area that was a significant drive away, and we thought maybe we should not do that portion. So we contacted Jenny to talk about alternatives, and she very quickly did the research to let us know what our options were. She encouraged us to go because if we canceled it we’d miss out on [a connecting portion] of the trip, and this way we could use the day to relax if the weather wasn’t that good. But it was a lovely day: We went on a hike with our guide, and we are so glad we didn’t make the changes. She encouraged us to stay the course, and that worked out really well.

Q: What should other travelers know about Wendy’s WOW system?

Scott: Our view is why wouldn’t everyone in the world do this? Using the sort of approach we do with your organization and with the local travel experts—why wouldn’t everyone do that? It makes so much sense. It really is terrific.

Lisa: For me, it was doing one trip and making a mistake before I found Wendy. One time we went to Belize, and I booked us at a resort that had just recently opened. It looked awesome on the website, but we got there and they had not worked out the kinks yet. It was an expensive trip, and it was really a bummer because that would never have happened with a Wendy specialist. I did a couple trips where it felt like we spent a lot of money and took time, and they were fine but they were not great. And then we did our first Wendy trip, and I was amazed. It’s not that it’s more expensive [to use one of Wendy’s Trusted Travel Experts]. I feel like it’s a great deal: the resources that the travel specialists provide and for what we spend on these trips. If I think about the total trip cost, it’s so worth it to have that guaranteed. Basically, it’s a guarantee that the trip is going to be successful, that the places we stay and the activities are going to be good. I feel like it’s an insurance policy for us.

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

WOW Moment: A Surprise Pastry Class and Picnic in London

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The best trips are packed with unique, memorable experiences that you couldn’t have anticipated or that turned out even better than what they sounded like in your itinerary. That’s the magic we all hope for when we travel, and it’s the magic that Wendy’s recommended travel specialists have up their sleeves—it’s part of the reason she names them to her list of the world’s best trip designers in the first place.

To thank all of you loyal users of Wendy’s WOW trip-planning system, we launched a reward program a while back: Wendy’s WOW Moments. Readers who’ve used our trip-request forms to contact one of our Trusted Travel Experts, and who have contributed reviews of those trips afterward, receive a complimentary gift from Wendy herself on their third trip. And we’re not talking fruit baskets or late checkouts. We’re talking about a personalized insider-access experience, hand-picked to suit your itinerary and arranged by the Trusted Travel Expert. Read eligibility requirements and program details here.

This loyalty program is now in full swing, and the first WendyPerrin.com traveler to earn a WOW Moment got to experience it on a trip to London. We wanted to find out from the traveler how this first-ever WOW Moment went, so we spoke to her by telephone to get the scoop.

Paula da Rosa and her family enjoyed a picnic in Hyde Park. Photo: Celebrated Experiences

The travelers:

Paula da Rosa, her husband John, and her three children live in Vancouver, and as Paula told us over the phone, they are not big travelers. “We keep things pretty tight between Vancouver and Whistler. We ski,” she said. But this summer, her husband had a sabbatical and the family wanted to plan a special trip for their eight weeks off. They started with time in Hawaii (planned by Jay Johnson), followed by a villa rental in France (planned by Annie Flogaus) and then London, where they used to live. The London portion is where we provided their WOW Moment, working with Jonathan Epstein, one of Wendy’s Trusted Travel Experts for England.

The WOW Moment:

For the WOW Moment, Jonathan arranged a special afternoon at London’s Milestone Hotel, where the grown-ups would try their hands at the art of Sabrage and sip Champagne, and the kids would dive into the art of pastry decoration. The family of five was then whisked away to a luxurious picnic in Hyde Park, with the Champagne they had sabered, the macarons and cupcakes they had adorned, and a cornucopia of other treats.

The kids got to decorate pastries while the grown-ups got to sip Champagne. Photo: Celebrated Experiences

The traveler’s review:

“Did the experience meet my expectations? It was expertly executed, it was super smooth,” Paula reported back to us over the phone. “It was definitely more than I thought it was going to be. I guess I was hoping it wasn’t going to be super cheesy, you know what I mean? We just don’t do cheesy. We’re not the family in Disneyland with the ears—that’s just not us.”

“When we arrived and there was a whole line of staff to greet us—the hotel manager through the pastry chef through the young woman who led it all, and she was quite exceptional—I did have what I like to call a ‘Canadian moment’, where I thought, ‘Really? All this fuss just for us?’ We sort of looked at each other thinking we should be sharing some of this bounty.’ [Paula laughs] It was very, very memorable, that’s for sure.”

“We go into a conservatory within the hotel and they were giving us history about the hotel and location, which was interesting, and they had John sabre a bottle of Champagne. That was pretty funny. [Laughs] He put on this cape and hat, and we both looked at each other and thought we were stepping into cheesy, but it was for the fun of it.”

The Conservatory restaurant at the Milestone Hotel, London

Afterward, Paula and John enjoyed some of the Champagne they’d opened while the kids were taken to the Oratory dining room to decorate macarons and cupcakes. “That was very nice, because the five of us had been traveling together for weeks at that point, so it was lovely for mom and dad to have a minute to be husband and wife,” she says. “And it was nice for the kids to meet the pastry chef, and have the lady who was organizing it snap pictures.”

When tea was announced a short while later, Paula says she expected to be walked right into the next room. “But they said, ‘Oh no, we’ll do it outside.’” Packing up baskets of tea treats plus the kids’ macarons and John’s Champagne, the staff led the family across the street to Hyde Park, where they’d already set up a picnic site. “We sat back and enjoyed the afternoon,” Paula recalls. “When we finished, we called over, and they came over and packed it all up, and then as parting gifts they gave us gift bags of teddy bears and things from the hotel and had made a framed photo of our family, and then we were driven back to our hotel.”

“This was nowhere near what we were expecting. But I had been thinking in the back of my mind, Wouldn’t it be neat to have a picnic? So this wasn’t that far off from something we would do—but it felt very posh.” Then she adds with a laugh, “But I think I might start doing that.”

The traveler’s review of the WOW trip-planning system:

Paula had heard about Wendy Perrin through a friend and checked out our website. “I thought it looked straightforward and easy to deal with,” she says. “And the people I chatted with—it all seemed pretty tight. And someone else does the planning.” That appealed to her greatly, she says: “I don’t have that expertise, and I don’t want to spend the time building that expertise. I’d rather just hand it over to someone else who does know—and that worked well because it’s not just booking a flight, it’s booking different places.” Thinking back to before she found WendyPerrin.com, Paula laughs and says, “We were trying to plan what to do with eight weeks, and almost needed a divorce lawyer, because we had to work though a lot of stuff, prioritizing people’s wants and needs, and working through a lot of logistics, with three children.”

“People asked me why didn’t you just use VRBO. I don’t want to land and be surprised, and if there is a surprise, I want someone else to deal with it. This wasn’t meant to be cost-effective. We don’t get sabbaticals often, so I didn’t want to get into a situation of I took a less expensive route and then I’m paying for it on my holiday.”

Wendy Wants To Amp Up Your Trip!

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