Welcome to "Travels With the Diva", a newsletter for women who love to travel!

In this issue, I'll tell you about a couple of great vacations - the first is a river cruise through Europe that features wine tasting, as well as a private concert by the Vienna Boys Choir and an exclusive tour of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna for you horse-lovers!

And we'll focus on some of the wine and food tours offered by Globus tours - they're one of the best in the business, and have some great specialty tours to offer.

I'll also tell you a little bit about TripDiva Travel, and give you a chance to participate in the website by adding your travel stories or trip reviews.

Travel News and Updates

Bad News for Air Travelers

Remember when hundreds of passengers were stranded on the runway, in a plane, for hours on end? That resulted in an Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights, enacted in the state of New York. The bill required airlines to provide food, water, and clean toilets to passengers in this situation.

Today, unfortunately, that bill was struck down by a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. The court found that, while the bill was "laudable" (in their words), it conflicted with Federal authority over air travel. In other words, this is not a state issue and individual states don't have the authority to pass such laws.

So I guess it's time to write your representatives in Congress if you're interested in enacting such a law on the Federal level. For more information, click here.

Great Food, Wine and Music Vacations

A Special European River Cruise - General Tours is offering a special cruise from Passau to Budaspest aboard the MV Mozart from September 14 - 21, 2008.

This is General Tour's exclusive charter of a Peter Deilmann cruise - among the best in Europe.

This private excursion has tours and events on available on any other sailing:

- a private tour and viewing of a riding rehearsal at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna

- wine-tasting in a castle overlooking the Wachau valley

- a private concert of operettas at a Baroque summer palace

- a private concert by the Vienna Boys Choir with dessert and coffee

And, you can extend your tour with a pre-cruise visit to Prague, or end the tour with a visit to Oktoberfest!

Best of all, this cruise is offered at special prices, $1250 off per person!. Prices start at $2749 per person (based on double occupancy).

Globus Tours has Food, Wine and Music vacations in the U.S. and Europe - Globus Tours has been in business for over 80 years - I took a tour of southern England with them a few years ago, and had a great time. It was my mother's one and only trip outside of the U.S. - she was 75 at the time - and I know it was an experience she never forgot. It was also one of my first "girl trips" - just me, my sister and our mom.

So I have no qualms about recommending Globus for their land or river cruise tours.

They have both land tours and river cruises that feature food, wine and music.

Their tour of Italy focuses on the cheeses and wines of Tuscany, and starts in Rome, ending in Vienna.

Their tour of France, in the Bordeaux region, focuses on wine, but also includes a cooking demonstration at the Cordon Bleu, and a chocolate tasting at the Museum of Chocolate!

These are both land tours, and they also offer river cruises in France and along the Danube focusing on wine.

Their U.S. tours include lobster, apple pastries and maple sugar in New England (tours take place in the fall only!), or sourdough bread, Dungeness crab, and California wine in the San Francisco tour.

Contact me for more information on any of these tours or cruises.

Write a Review or Tell us Your Story and get a T-shirt!

Have a great travel story, or know of a good restaurant somewhere that you want to tell everyone about?

Send it to us using our contact me page.

You can tell us about a great experience, funny story, fascinating destination, or whatever you want to share.

Tell us about your last trip - where did you go, what did you do, what was great about it, what would you avoid next time?

If your story or review is published, we'll send you a TripDiva T-shirt or mug with the Hula Girl logo.

This doesn't have to be professional quality writing - just share your experiences! We want to hear them!

Until next time - Happy Travels!

About TripDiva Travel

TripDiva Travel is a home-based travel agency, associated with Dugan's Travels (a nation-wide group of over 500 agents). TripDiva specializes in great vacations for women (hence the website domain, www.great-womens-vacations.com).

Some of the vacations we talk about are for women only; most are not (so if you see something you would like to explore with your husband or significant other, you can do that, too).

But women's vacations tend to be a bit different than most couples or family vacations. They're a bit "smaller" in scale, allowing for interaction and connections with your fellow travelers and companions. It can be hard to get to know people on a large cruise ship; there are just so many of them! On a small ship cruise, there are no more than 200 people on board and you can make many new friends, or have a nice conversation with your travel companions without shouting over the crowds!

The vacations we look for are focused on experiences, not destinations (although there are a lot of great destinations, too). Would you like to learn to paint or speak Italian, join a cooking class or just learn to enjoy fine wine, take a tour that lets you get close and interact with the locals instead of just passing by an historical site while riding a bus? Those are great women's vacations.

At www.great-womens-vacations.com (or www.tripdivatravel.com - it will get you to the same place), we try to give you the tools to find great vacation experiences and contact information to book your trip. We will be adding a booking engine (via Travelocity), so you can book air and hotels, if needed; or you can simply contact us and we'll help you arrange your trip.