I often use the Rome2Rio site to get an initial view of travel options. I’ve used it for initial planning ideas on big trips as well as smaller hops between locations. Then, “ah… European train line xyz travels that route…. “ - check that website.
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It does look nice! We’ll only have our arrival day to explore Auckland on our own; I already have lunch reservations at the Sky Tower. But we should have time to walk down to the harbour aka harbor before our welcome dinner. The next morning is a sightseeing tour of the city, then on to Bay of Islands.
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2025 travels: Florida, cruise to Cozumel, Virginia for a wedding, long weekend in Montreal, Philly/NJ a couple of times, a week in Northern Ireland, visited D in Ohio, Glacier NP and the national parks near Seattle, South Spain and Gibraltar pre-cruise, Spain, Portugal and Morocco on a cruise, NYC for thanksgiving, a quick weekend trip to the Bahamas and finally Austin/San Antonio over Xmas. I think we traveled somewhere 10 of the 12 months.
We are trying to finalize plans for a trip in Jan/Feb - will likely be gone for 2-3 weeks. May has us in NYC for S’s graduation. August is Iceland. This is a milestone year for several of my friends so planning a few friends only trips. Looking forward to 2026.
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Everyone, enjoy your New Year’s travels. We are usually in Charleston SC for New Year’s Eve but decided to stay at home this year and are hoping we will get an announcement for ShawD’s engagement but who knows. ShawWife’s mentor from art school is coming for New Year’s Eve for dinner.
I put our Jan-April travel above. I think we are going to Italy in September with our Italophile friends whom we often travel with. Maybe Abruzzo or La Marche (unsure about the spelling of either).
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My folks did a lot of Tauk tours and really enjoyed them, especially since a client paid all the expenses and tour company. We’ve never used them but may, one of these days. We seem to only do one international tour/year, unlike my sibs that sometimes do several in ONE MONTH!
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These trips look fantastic! I love the planning as much as the going!
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My impression of Tauck Tours is that they are a high-end tour company, in that they stay at top-tier hotels, and offer things other companies do not–such as when they visit Blenheim Palace in England for example, they include a talk given by a member of the Churchill family. When in Paris they do an after-hours tour of the Louvre.
They are more expensive than other tour companies but their product appears to be top shelf. Their river cruises carry fewer passengers than Viking, Amawaterways, Avalon, etc.
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The smaller group size is definitely appealing! Of the options I have looked at, Tauck offers the most items of interest. I’ll have to see if it works into the budget for this year.
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ShawWife and I created a custom for New Year’s. We and our kids and now our kids’ partners fill out a questionnaire that we store away. It asks questions like your favorite book/movie/food this year but then switches to assessments. What accomplishments you are most proud of, three skills you learned, favorite trip for the year, favorite possessions, closest friends, etc. It then focuses on desires, predictions and actions in the New Year: What skill or skills you want to acquire, tree things you want to do in the New Year, where you would like to travel, what you would like to do with your family, … . In answering the travel for the upcoming year, I realized that I have been fortunate to have traveled so extensively for business and pleasure that I don’t have the same hunger for travel that I did before. We will still travel (as I noted, we have Sea Ranch in CA, Banff and Mexico lined up in the next three months) and I will still enjoy it, but the hunger has subsided a little bit. I love where live although I would not mind being somewhere warmer in the winter.
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I was binge watching Stranger Things yesterday (New Year), and decided to go on a tour to Puglia. I texted a good friend to see if she wanted to go. She responded right away to say she was in. In less than 10 mins we have signed up for the tour and I had my flights booked. We became friends at our first job out of school. One thing we have in common is we don’t take long to make decisions. It is either a yes or no right away.
I have the Puglia trip planned for April, Portugal trip in July, Canada cruise with my mom/siblings in Sept, and a Cancun trip in Dec.
I am not sure if I am going to have much time for work. 
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@oldfort I am right there with you on not sure if I have much time to work with all of the trips planned for 2026! My working goal was to retire in 2027, but I don’t know if I’ll make it until then especially with D1, SIL and GD moving across the country.
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If we go again Bay of Islands will be on our agenda. We opted to go to the Coromandel (sp?) peninsula, and we were underwhelmed.
Oh yes, I failed to mention that Tauck caps even their bus-based tours at around 25-30 or so. Most others cap it at a full bus, which can be mid to upper 40s, unless a departure is designated as small-group.
All the Viking busses (very nice by the way) were smaller luxury busses and they used multiple busses if necessary. I doubt any that we were on were more than 30/40 people either. We were on a river cruise though, so perhaps they use larger busses on the ocean cruises?
This is a crazy travel year for us too. Cruise, month across country, Europe, back across country— twice. And that only gets us to June!
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Bay of Islands is on our Globus tour for two nights at the Copthorne resort in Waitangi by the Treaty Grounds and museum. They’ll take us to those, and a boat tour the next day. We’ll only have part of an afternoon and both evenings free, so not much we can plan. I’m hoping there might be snorkeling off the little hotel beach, and maybe good nighttime stat gazing.
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OK, I think we are talking about different things—when you mentioned interest in a Tauck tour, did you mean river cruises specifically? Because I wasn’t comparing Tauck RIVER cruises to other companies, but thought you were interested in Tauck LAND (i.e., bus) tours, which are smaller in size than land tours with Trafalgar, Collette, Globus, etc.
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When we did a Viking river cruise, Viking used their own buses. On a Viking ocean cruise to Alaska, they used local bus companies. But I didn’t think that’s what we were discussing, haha.
The Tauck land tour I am looking at is capped at 15 individuals. It would be 14 days and includes TGV travel. I have found a Tauck forum and will do some reading there rather than derail this thread, thanks to those who responded.