One week, set down twice, at one figure
Nine places, each written out twice: reserve a week with a San Diego travel agent
Nine places sit on the books of this San Diego reservations office. Each gets written out two ways: one week at its finest, then the very same week at its ugliest, with the dates, the rooms and the sum left untouched. All that differs is the behaviour of the place, which nobody governs.
Reserve one of these weeksSend the form whenever it suits: it never shuts. Someone here replies inside one working day, and no charge arises at this end.
Why anything here is printed twice
A catalogue that prints only the first version is describing half of what it sells. Here both go down at equal size for one identical sum, since which of the two turns up is beyond this office and it declines to pretend otherwise. A range is the thing being sold.
How far apart the two versions sit
Of everything that could order this list, only that distance seemed worth using, so a mark for it sits against every place. Where the distance is narrow, the poor week amounts to a letdown: dimmer light, birds thinner on the ground, a walk you turn back from early. Where it is very wide, the poor week has become some other holiday entirely, so settle beforehand whether being there would still suit you. That scale, and no other, puts the nine in order.
The part this end plays
Your reservation is lodged with whichever company is running that week on the ground. Billing comes to you from them, under their own name, and a commission reaches this office once you are back. Nothing of yours is paid at this end, and card details are never kept here. Reaching the country is a booking you make yourself: aircraft seats and berths at sea fall right outside this business, and not one carrier holds a contract with it. One thing more, since the name invites the question: this office publishes nothing at all, keeps no mailing list, and has no connection to finance or to digital currencies.
The Camargue
France6 nightsfrom $1,340narrow spreadsalt lagoons and grazing marsh between the two arms of the Rhone
Alentejo cork country
Portugal7 nightsfrom $1,490moderate spreadcork oak on wide dry plains, and the fortified villages between them
Zagori and the Vikos gorge
Greece8 nightsfrom $1,580moderate spreadstone villages and arched bridges above one of the deepest gorges in Europe
Shetland in June
Scotland6 nightsfrom $1,940wide spreadtreeless islands, nineteen hours of light and cliffs full of nesting birds
The Danube delta
Romania7 nightsfrom $1,520wide spreada flat water maze of reed and willow where the river gives up
Lofoten in late winter
Norway6 nightsfrom $2,740very wide spreadgranite walls straight out of the sea, and the sky doing whatever it does
The Burren and the Aran shore
Ireland7 nightsfrom $1,680very wide spreadlimestone pavement running to the Atlantic, with gentians in the grikes
The Majella
Italy7 nightsfrom $1,610very wide spreada high limestone massif with hermitages cut into it and very few people on it
Not one price on this shelf has ever held a seat on a plane, and that button does not change it. The six entries above travel to a booking company, a separate firm reached through a host answering to a name this domain lends out, and what returns is wholly theirs: the figures, live while you look at them, the conditions, the ticket, and a card typed on their pages, since nothing here can take one. Whatever they settle with this office was settled ahead of your visit and comes off their side of the transaction, never on top of yours. What the box passes on, and what it reckons here.
Finish the sentence and a week gets reserved
Whatever the hour, what you send lands here and is read by a person, who replies inside one working day. Sending it binds you to nothing, and no sum is ever taken at this end.