where these twenty-five trips actually go, region by region
Reserve a trip by region with a St Louis travel agent, gaps included
This office arranges travel in some places and not in others, and the gaps are on purpose rather than by accident. Here is the whole map, including the parts that are empty.
See all twenty-five trips, from $1,500 per personSend a booking request
To reserve a trip by region with a St Louis travel agent you first have to know where that agent can actually reach. The catalogue holds twenty-five trips, and every one exists because somebody asked for something else.
The catalogue here holds twenty-five trips, and every one of them exists because somebody walked into Willow Mile Press asking for something else. That is the honest shape of the map: it was drawn by subtraction. Somebody wanted Santorini in the last week of July, somebody wanted the Amalfi Coast in August, somebody wanted seven nights all inclusive in the Caribbean during hurricane season, and in each case this desk said it could not arrange that one and then had to have a real answer ready for what it could arrange instead. Twenty-five conversations, twenty-five answers, one catalogue.
So the map has holes in it, and the holes are the interesting part. There is no Santorini here and no Mykonos, no Amalfi, no Kyoto in the first ten days of April, no Danube sailing, no Camino Frances in high summer. Those are all real places worth going to, and the wish is not the problem. The problem is a specific fact about the place at a specific time of year: a caldera village that takes eleven thousand day visitors off ships in a single afternoon, a coast road where a nine mile drive takes two hours and twenty minutes in August, a cruise deck that arrives with four hundred other people at the same hour. This office cannot make those facts smaller, so it does not sell around them. It names them, and then it offers the trip it can actually deliver. The full list of wishes and answers sits below.
The twenty-five trips you can reserve
Every trip below is open to reserve today. The square counts how close it sits to the request it answers: four sides is the same wish at a different address, one side is a different kind of trip altogether.
the same wish, a different addressa different week, or the country next dooronly the reason for going survivesa different kind of trip altogether
What people ask for
What this desk will reserve
You asked forBanff and Lake Louise
hot springs, ferry crossings and small mountain towns in southeastern British Columbia
You asked forDubrovnik
vineyards, oyster beds and a coast road with room on it
You asked forKyoto in cherry blossom season
the same warm week, three hours north of the crowd
You asked forMarrakech
walled town, argan country and the road over Tizi n Test
You asked forSantorini in July
the same white town, the same sea, a tenth of the people
You asked forthe Amalfi Coast
the quieter shoreline that begins where the coaches turn back
You asked forthe Camino Frances
the old southern road, twenty-two walkers a day in season
You asked forthe South Island of New Zealand in three weeks
one coastline, walked slowly, instead of the whole island
You asked fora Danube river cruise
the gorge where the river narrows and the road climbs
You asked fora Greek island hopping week
You asked fora Norwegian fjord cruise
twenty-two crossings, a rented cabin, and no arrival announcement
You asked forBali
You asked forCosta Rica, zip lines and volcanoes
cloud forest, coffee farms and a warm gulf in one province
You asked forPetra and Wadi Rum in a long weekend
a walked descent from oak highland to desert floor
You asked forthe four day trek to Machu Picchu
a ruin two days from the nearest road, walked slowly
You asked forthe Golden Circle in Iceland
a west coast headland with one road around it
You asked forthe Scottish Highlands by coach tour
north coast crofting country, one bed for four nights at a time
You asked forAngkor Wat
temples with nobody at the gate, coffee farms, the Mekong going wide
You asked forPrague, Vienna and Budapest
one region, one bed, no travel days spent in transit
You asked forthe Cinque Terre
high grass, limestone rims and small towns in inland Marche
You asked forthe Serengeti in migration season
the same wildlife year, watched from a boat instead
You asked forTulum
walled town, limestone forest, four Maya sites with almost nobody in them
You asked fora Caribbean all-inclusive week
the same warm water, without the wristband or the fence
You asked fora Galapagos cruise
the working freighter that still carries passengers north
You asked forParis, Rome and Venice in ten days
one region, four towns, no morning spent hauling bags to a platform
Region by region, what can and cannot be arranged
Yes to Puglia, inland Sicily, the Peloponnese, northern Portugal and the smaller Cyclades outside July and August. No to Santorini and Mykonos at any date, no to the Amalfi Coast between June and September, no to Dubrovnik on a ship day.
Yes to walking weeks in the Dolomites, the Salzkammergut, Slovenian lakes and the Scottish Highlands, plus rail based city pairs. No to river sailings on the Danube, Rhine or Rhone, because this desk cannot place a cabin on any vessel.
Yes to the west of Ireland, Pembrokeshire, Northumberland and the Hebrides, road based or rail based with luggage moved between houses. No to anything sold as a coach circuit with a fixed daily seat.
Yes to Japan in late May, October and November, to Taiwan, to northern Vietnam outside the wet months and to Sri Lanka in the drier window. No to Kyoto during blossom season, which is a ten day scramble for beds priced four times normal, and no to Bali.
Yes to Oaxaca, Colombia's coffee country, Uruguay and the Dominican interior. No to the all inclusive resort format anywhere, because the operators this office works with do not sell it, and no to the hurricane belt between mid August and mid October.
Yes to the Sonoran desert in winter, the Gaspe Peninsula, the Utah canyon country in shoulder season and rail trips out of St Louis. No to summer dates inside the five most heavily visited national parks, where entry is timed and lodging is gone eleven months ahead.
Yes to Morocco outside July and August, to Jordan and to Namibia. No to safari itineraries, which need an operator relationship this office does not hold and will not pretend to hold.
Yes to South Island walking weeks and to Tasmania. No to anything that depends on a domestic flight this desk cannot confirm at the time of quoting.
Two of those refusals deserve a plainer word than the row gives them. The office turns down river sailings and resort weeks not out of taste but because it has no way to place them: the companies that run those products sell them through channels this desk is not part of, and it will not take a request it cannot fulfil. Everything listed as yes is arranged with a named operating company that runs the trip under its own contract, bills you directly, and pays Willow Mile Press Bookings LLC its commission only after you are back. No page on this site will take a card number, and there is nowhere here that one could be entered.
Nine nights on Folegandrosinstead of Santorini in July, from $3,570 per person
Nine nights in Sutherlandinstead of a Highlands coach tour, from $3,600 per person
Nine nights on the Rufijiinstead of the Serengeti migration, from $4,630 per person
Nine nights in Kanazawainstead of Kyoto in blossom season, from $4,150 per person
Ten nights in Chiriquiinstead of Costa Rica, from $1,750 per person
Nine nights on the Helgeland coastinstead of a Norwegian fjord cruise, from $4,040 per person
Reserve a trip in one of these regions
A request costs you nothing and commits you to nothing. Tell this desk the region, the rough dates and how many of you there are, and somebody reads it and comes back. Requests are read in the order they arrive and answered within one business day.
This office keeps no counter hours and publishes none, because a printed opening time would be a promise about a person rather than about the work. What is promised instead is a deadline: every request that reaches the form is read in the order it arrived and answered within one business day, and if the answer needs longer than that you will get a note saying so and what it is waiting on.
If your dates fall inside one of the closed windows above, say so anyway. A large share of the twenty-five trips in this catalogue started exactly there, with a request this office could not take as written, and the useful part of the reply was the alternative. What comes back is a written figure priced against your particular dates, currently between $1,500 and $5,070 a person depending on the region and the length of stay, with the operating company named, what the figure covers, what it leaves for you to pay locally, and the operator's own terms for changing or cancelling. Read the note on getting your money back before you commit to anything, since those terms are theirs and not this office's to soften. The order of events is set out at the working method, the questions people ask most often are answered at the frequently asked page, and the full list of wishes with what stands in for each one is at every request paired with its trip. If you would rather start from a blank sheet than from a region, the form for a written figure does that.
This office does not grade places, does not score operating companies and does not print opinions about either. What it prints is what a place is like on the dates you asked about, and whether it can get you a bed there.
Send this desk a booking request
This form is open 24/7 and takes booking requests at any hour. It asks for no card number and no payment, because nothing is ever paid to this office. Requests are read in the order they arrive and answered within one business day.
No card number is asked for on this page or held anywhere by this office, and sending this costs nothing and commits you to nothing. A request is not a reservation: nothing is held in your name until the operating company confirms it in writing and you have read its terms.