My wife, Jane, and I took a two-week private tour of the Philippines in May ’11 with Marsman Drysdale Travel (19F Robinsons Summit Center, 6783 Ayala Ave., Makati City 1227, Philippines; phone +632 8870000, ext. 302, 303 or 305, fax +632 8880228, e-mail reservations@marsmandrysdale.com). The tour price was $2,045 per person, including one internal flight, daily lunch and one dinner.

I have taken many tours with a guide and driver, but this was one of the best-organized, most...

In Israel for only one week (Sept. 1-7, 2011) for a family wedding, I hadn’t planned on any sightseeing. However, a friend who had moved to the town of Zichron Ya’akov, a place I had not toured before, invited me to spend the day.

Zichron Ya’akov, an hour north of Tel Aviv and a half-hour south of Haifa, is situated on the foothills of the Carmel mountain range, overlooking a fertile valley and the Mediterranean Sea. This picturesque town, with houses dating back to the 1880s, saw...

On July 29, 2011, my wife, Susann, was hit by a motorcycle while in a crosswalk in Paris. She sustained an injury to her leg that required surgery after we returned to the United States.

We had purchased airline tickets from Lufthansa via Expedia.com for various flights: from Paris to Prague on Aug. 6, to Budapest on Aug. 11 and back to Paris on Aug. 13. The cost was $1,982. The tickets were nonrefundable.

I nursed my wife in our Paris hotel until it became clear that she...