Is there anyone who hasn't yet heard of easyCruise? Anyone who doesn't know that it now operates in the Greek islands? Because there's such an obvious desire for less expensive ways of touring Europe, it may be the right time to update you about this odd cruiseline.

The idea behind easyCruise was to provide very cheap vacations by stripping down the oceangoing experience. Cabins essentially consist of a bed and a bathroom, with no furniture, phones, or TV. And they can usually be booked for as little as a few nights, enabling passengers to get on and off at interesting ports and catch the ship when it swings around again the next week.

Because of the ship's relatively small size and the fact its stops are just a few hours' sail apart, it's able to linger in port much longer than the typical cruise ship. Rather than piling back on board at sunset for departure, as on most cruises, easyCruise passengers can hang out in the port's bars and restaurants, sampling Ouzo and fresh fish, well into the night. Sometimes, you don't leave port until dawn the next day. The ship can also dock at locations close to the center of town, keeping taxi expenses low, while many of the large vessels must find berths at newly dredged harbors many miles out of town. Food is available for purchase at a decent restaurant on board (prices are decidedly sensible), but most passengers choose to eat ashore.

Critics predicted that easyCruise would turn into nothing but a floating hostel, or a rowdy party boat. That apparently didn't happen. Instead, the concept appears to have attracted people of all ages (mostly curious and well-behaved lovers of travel) who were interested in accessing ports that the major lines couldn't offer on schedules that allowed them to truly explore the islands. I have now received two e-mails from listeners to my Sunday radio program, stating that they -- in their 50s and 60s -- had greatly enjoyed a recent easyCruise, among passengers who were only partially under-40 and included a number over that age.

After two winters in the Caribbean, the line is now centered on the islands of Greece and has added a second ship, slightly larger but as simple as the first. The value is just as strong as when the concept was new. Through early October, it offers seven-night trips of the Cyclades or the Aegean Islands including Bodrum, Turkey, for about $400 per person. From then until mid-December, a quiet time in the region, EasyCruise also runs its week-long classical Greece (five ports including Corinth, Patras, Kiato, all sites little-visited by the major lines, plus two days in Athens) for about $250 a week per person, including port charges.

If your goal is to get around these difficult-to-reach areas of Eastern Europe, and not in loitering for hours in onboard casinos or at interminable meals, then you won't be able to do better than those prices.

As I write this, the easyCruise website (www.easycruise.com) is promoting a sale of about 30 percent off for customers who use this booking code: egaug08.

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Labels: cruise, easycruise, europe, greece, turkey

As trans-Atlantic travel slows, one tour operator after another is designing package offers to overcome the current worry about the cost of European travel. The latest entrant is Gate1Travel (tel. 800/682-3333; www.gate1travel.com), which has produced a dilly: round-trip airfare from New York to Istanbul, Turkey, including all fuel surcharges, and four nights' accommodation with breakfast daily at a four-star Istanbul hotel, for as little as $749. (You can extend the stay for only slightly more, and fly out of numerous other U.S. cities for reasonable add-on fares.)

Specifically, the $749 price is available for departures on September 11 and throughout the month of October. The rate goes up to $829 on September 18, $869 for September 25, and $959 for September 4. When you consider the distance flown, and that airfare alone to a less-distant city like Rome would be higher than $1,000 on those dates, you can see that pencils have been sharpened to create the rate. Taxes, fees, and security charges add only $120 more.

This may be the first in a series of attempts to make a short trip to Europe affordable, and it's a pretty impressive start, especially when you consider that some trans-Atlantic airlines are charging $260 for round-trip fuel surcharges alone. To one of Europe's cheaper destinations -- Turkey -- and in a high season period, you can still take a quick trip for only $749.

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Labels: deals, turkey

When one of my step-daughters got married a few years back, she and her husband chose a cruise off the waters of Greece, Turkey and Croatia for their honeymoon. It was an excellent choice; all three countries are among the least expensive of European nations, and shore excursions (including restaurant meals) were far less costly than if they had cruised in the western Mediterranean.

I mention that choice because the newest ship of MSC Cruises (www.msccruisesusa.com), the MSC Poesia, will be making 7-day cruises of Greece, Turkey and Croatia departing from Venice every Saturday from April 19 to November 8, and inside cabins aboard those cruises will be available for as little as $899 per person. Here's a remarkable honeymoon trip at an affordable price, even adding round-trip airfare to Venice.

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Labels: croatia, cruise, greece, turkey

When it comes to choosing the world's single best travel bargain, Turkey competes with China. The tour operators of Turkey all participate in operating a 17-day escorted motor coach tour through all of western Turkey, on which there are guaranteed weekly departures, all-inclusive arrangements (all three meals daily are included), no hidden costs whatsoever -- and round-trip fare from the United States is included. Starting in late November, the price for all this goes down to $1,665 per person, which comes to $98 a day including airfare across the Atlantic. I last described that tour in June of this year, but the fact that the lowest rates are being offered just two months from now warrants another description of this world-class opportunity.

All the major tour operators to Turkey operate, essentially, the same tour (they undoubtedly sell into the same, jointly-managed arrangements); and one of the oldest among those companies is Pacha Tours (tel. 800/722-4288; www.pachatours.com), which bills its deal as "Super Value Western Turkey." November 16 and 23 are departure dates sold at the lowest rate ($1,665) in 2007, and that price will undoubtedly re-emerge in March of 2008, as it has in previous years. You'll be missing a big travel opportunity by failing to consider this broad-ranging tour, which goes to Istanbul, Gallipoli, Troy, Pergamum, Ephesus, Pamukkale, Antalya, Cappadocia, and Ankara, a spine-tingling assortment related to important eras of human history.

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Labels: turkey

They're a travel wonder, these tours of Turkey, as fully all-inclusive as such arrangements can possibly be. They operate nearly all-year around (March through December) for a full 17 days on each guaranteed weekly departure (the 17 days include the days of your departure and return flights), and they take you to every one of the major sights and locations of western Turkey, including Istanbul, Ankara, Antalya, Izmir, Pamukkale, Canukkale, and Cappadocia, feeding you three full meals each day and lodging you at four-star hotels.

And yet the price for all this (air to and from Turkey, hotels, all meals, all sightseeing, all admissions, all transportation within Turkey), from New York, is as little as $2,100 to $2,476 in June through October and thereafter from $1,665 to $1,905. Counting only the 14 days actually spent on tour, the price works out to an average of $120 to $175 per person per day, including round-trip air fare and all three meals daily -- the basis for calling it a "travel wonder."

Because Turkey, with its difficult language, is regarded as best for escorted, group arrangements, this is one group motorcoach tour that even the most independent of adventurous tourists will prefer to self-drive tourism. It is available from a number of tour operators at almost uniform prices, but a company called Pacha Tours is especially active in operating them. You'll find further, detailed information at www.pachatours.com, or call 800/722-4288, referring to the "Super Value Turkey Tour." A "super value" it certainly is, about which I've received several recent and totally positive reactions from persons who booked the program.

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Labels: turkey

To the surprise of everyone in travel, the nation of Turkey will have enjoyed a near record number of 500,000 American tourists in 2006, more than went there in the heady travel days prior to September 11. And that's as it should be: Turkey is a colorful and friendly destination that receives a grand total of over 20 million tourists a year.

Among that group, the American tourist is especially valued. Unlike the bulk of European visitors, who buy inexpensive air-and-land packages to Mediterranean and Aegean beach resorts of Turkey, the American seeks out the culture and history of Turkey, and spends far more than the average European. And while the general decline of the American dollar (now exchanged at a rate of 1.4 Turkish lire to one dollar) has made Turkey more expensive than before, it remains a moderately-priced tourist experience in which family-run boutique hotels are available for $100 to $140 a night per double room, and private "hostels" for unpretentious tourists can often be had for $20 per person per night.

But is it safe? For the answer to that perennial question, I phoned Tom Brosnahan, whom I hired some 30 years ago to write Turkey on $5 a Day for the Frommer's series, probably the first American guidebook to Turkey. Tom is today the author of a superb Turkey blog called www.turkeytravelplanner.com, and a travel authority of unquestioned integrity. From visits there as recently as last month, he emphasized that our own preoccupation with travel dangers, with animosity towards American policies, with events in Iraq, is simply not an item of discussion within Turkey -- or else it is relegated to page 24 of the newspapers.

Though Turkey has not been free from occasional acts of violence like a small bomb placed in front of a police station, it is no more roiled by those events than any other nation in western or eastern Europe, Brosnahan firmly asserts. The government maintains friendly relations not simply with Syria and Iran, but with Israel as well. A great many Israeli tourists are found in Turkey, which is probably the best indication of Turkey's safety for foreign visitors.

Turkeytravelplanner.com now consists of more than 2,000 pages of informative, up-to-day commentary on every aspect of a trip to Turkey. It is a model of what a travel website should be, and I recommend it enthusiastically.

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Labels: emerging destinations, turkey