by Malori

Summers are always busy at Amazing Journeys and this was no exception. During three calendar months, we do nearly half of our year’s trips, and bring along nearly half of all of our year’s passengers! This summer, 250 amazing journeyers participated in a variety of trips to some incredible destinations.

From the North Pole to South America with Europe in-between, we covered a lot of the earth’s circumference.

We started with Spitsbergen, the closest place on earth to the North Pole.  Our adventure travelers headed north to Norway and then further north to the island of Svalbard in search of the polar bear and they were not disappointed.  Traveling by expedition ship, our Arctic travelers hiked on frozen tundra, rode on a sled pulled by dogs and were transported onto Spitsbergen by zodiac rafts.  Lots of wildlife was spotted, along with 30 polar bears!

Next was our Mediterranean Cruise that began in amusing and colorful Barcelona, this group of 30s, 40s, and 50s, many of them new to Amazing Journeys, discovered Spain, France and Italy and visited some of the Mediterranean coasts most loved cities. We spent our days enjoying the beauty of the Amalfi Coast in Italy, the beaches and foods of Southern France in Nice and the excitement of Barcelona. Biking, wine tasting, pizza eating, walking miles and miles, all with a great group and the warm summer sun, this cruise brought everything we wanted and more!

Our National Parks trip to Colorado and Utah was the perfect summer vacation for those who love nature and beauty. And it’s all right in our own backyard! Visiting four of the US National Parks was a highlight, and having time to hike and soak in the grandeur of it all was breathtaking. Everyday brought new awe-inspiring beauty and adventure, including white water rafting on the Colorado River, a jeep adventure riding over huge rocks and mountains in Moab, Utah, and a highlight, watching sunset over Arches National Park and seeing the “purple mountains majesty” set against rocks so orange and red, it made us cry over it’s sheer beauty! And thanks to our Denver friends who came out to party with us one night in Denver…we loved seeing all of you!

Our 74 Amazing Journeyers experienced a different kind of journey on our Jewish Heritage River Cruise along the Danube River in Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. Some started in Prague, offering an extra few days of touring, while others began their journey in Munich. This trip, our first river cruise, was an opportunity to explore part of our heritage and with it, part of ourselves. It was truly a journey of discovery as we delved into our past and the turbulent times of our Jewish people. Each day was a new opportunity for education as we met with locals like the 101-year-old Holocaust survivor, spending Shabbat with the local community at the Synagogue of Linz, and walking through the same streets that our family members had done in the not-so-distant past. Every day seemed to bring a new realization of our past, and our family members. And, all loved the river cruise experience and said they would do it again!

Peru and the Inca Trail, one of our summer trips, was offered to those in their 20s and 30s and this group got to challenge themselves on the 47 kilometer Inca Trail. This once-in-a-lifetime experience combined four days and three nights of hiking and camping, in the scenic valleys, mountains and high elevations of Peru. Their prize at the end of it all? Reaching Machu Picchu through the Sun Gate on the morning of the fourth day. They were rewarded with a spectacular sunrise, magnificent views, and bragging rights for life! They also enjoyed biking in Lima, the markets of Cusco, learning how to weave, visiting llamas and alpacas, tasting local foods and visiting ancient ruins which dot the country.

Our second Peru group, which was designed for our 40+ group of travelers, got to experience adventure as they hiked, biked and white water rafted their way through Peru. For this group of adventurers, visiting Machu Picchu, enjoying a cooking class and exploring ancient Incan sights were among the highlights.

For those who got to spend a part of their summer with Amazing Journeys, we thank you the opportunity to plan and share a part of your summer with you.

Come join us for next summer! We’re already planning and our trips will be appearing on our website soon! We’d love to show you our amazing world!

– by Malori

Greetings from Colorado and Utah where we are visiting some of our country’s greatest treasures, it’s natural beauty. Our National Parks were created to preserve some of the most awe inspiring scenery anywhere. Our group of 18 Amazing Journeyers are hitting the open roads in search of America’s inspirational landscapes. Today we are in Moab, Utah where we visited our collective favorite, Arches National Park. We visited by day and hiked up to and climbed through several of the actual arches here. The red colored sandstone was nature at it’s finest! In the evening, we went back to an area called “Balanced Rock” to watch the sunset, and with the sun setting against the rocks, we observed the natural colors of the rocks changing from orange to “burnt orange” to red. The colors of the mountains in the background were purple and the clouds in the sky turned pink. It was so beautiful, we broke out singing, “America the Beautiful” together.

This morning, some of the group participated in an exhilarating Hummer Safari tour up and over the red rocks and to the face of the cliffs, overlooking the Colorado River below. The rest of the group choose a white water rafting adventure in the Colorado River, and most of the group escaped the 106 degree heat and jumped right in the water, swimming alongside of the raft.

Later, we visited Canyonlands National Park, another beauty in our four-National Parks Tour. The views and vistas were amazing, and the hiking at both of the National Parks in Utah were incredible.

Earlier in the week, we visited Rocky Mountain National Park outside of Denver and tomorrow we will be visiting Mesa Verde National Park.

The Amazing Journeyers who choose to come with us on this tour love seeing the majestic landscapes we have had the opportunity to visit.

-by Erin

What is it that makes Amazing Journeys truly amazing?

If you’ve traveled with us before, you already know the answer to this question. But if you’ve never been on a vacation with us, you might just be wondering what is it that makes Amazing Journeys so amazing?

At Amazing Journeys, we believe that traveling is about more than escaping your daily cares – it’s about enhancing your life by viewing it through an always-fresh, often-exotic new lens. Every year is different; each trip is unique. What remains consistent is our unfailing commitment to quality, our unparalleled expertise with the Jewish group travel experience and our genuine passion for discovering new destinations. With over 75 years of combined travel experience, we take the guesswork out of vacation planning, so that all you have to do is sit back, relax and enjoy the ride! Click here for introductions to the Amazing Journeys team.

New to AJ and want more information? Click here so we can answer some of your most commonly asked questions.

Throughout the years, we have sent over 10,000 passengers on their dream vacations! These trips have been incredible – but don’t just take our word for it – click here to see what some of our passengers have had to say.

We are always adding new trips to our upcoming line-up so check back to our trips page often so you don’t miss the opportunity to cross another location off your bucket list. We will be posting new trips soon including a cruise to Spain, Italy and France, a National Parks Adventure in the States, a land tour in Ireland, exploring Morocco and a long weekend getaway to Hawaii. Also on the horizon, a brand new division with trips exclusively for those in their 20s and 30s including adventure travel! Tell your friends, your family members and your co-workers that we may just have the perfect trip for them in 2014.

Join in on the fun and get to know our friends on Facebook. We always have something fun to share! Hope to travel with you soon!

After a long and committed relationship with couples and families, the travel industry is hitting the singles scene full force. There is a growing number of companies exclusively catering to unattached travelers organizing journeys that mix high-end vacationing with coed bonding. Many of these outfits are going beyond the old lonely hearts Carnival booze cruise, rolling out extended excursions to both nearby US National Parks and far-flung locales like Asia, Australia, South America and even Spitsbergen, Norway. 

According to the latest census, nearly half of all adult Americans are unmarried. With young people waiting till later in life to settle down and with more boomers retiring and getting their second wind, the travel industry has a lot of potential single clients. Research has found that 26 percent of leisure travelers took at least one trip by themselves last year. So while many others in the business are just starting to recover from the recession, solo-specific tour operators are reporting two or three times as many 2011 bookings as the industry overall.

Of course, going solo isn’t without its quirks. To begin with, singles-only companies sometimes avoid the single supplement by matching travelers with roommates, a delicate procedure. Then there’s the age factor: Since these trips draw nearly all ages, age-specific trips can lend itself to some people who miss the spectrum to feel left out….yet if a trip is open to too wide an age range it can tend to be too diverse for an interest group.

And women hoping to be surrounded by travel-loving men may be disappointed to discover that the clientele skews so heavily female that a few companies even reserve “emergency” spots for men. 

If you’re already humming the theme to The Love Boat, you’re not far off; while Julie and Gopher may not have been aboard, most early singles tours were cruises. Singles cruises today are no longer limited to just romantic Caribbean getaways.  Quite the contrary as experienced cruisers “outgrow” the fun in the sun idea in lieu of more destination-oriented endeavors.  Indeed, ocean-faring trips are still popular and becoming even more broad with cruising opportunties that not only include Europe, Alaska and Southeast Asia, but unique cruising experiences to far away places like Antarctica, Galapagos Islands and The Amazon.

Still, the singles-travel market now looks much like the general travel industry, with its constant stream of new and more unusual trips designed to appeal to experienced travelers. But no matter how much these companies tout their travel bona fides and stress that they’re not dating services, they say vacationers only care about one thing: more than where they are going, a recent survey showed that they want to know who else is going.

Despite even exotic destinations, it’s really the social side of the trips that has prompts many to sign up again and again.The preponderance of repeat bookers, though, can be intimidating to travelers who show up without knowing a soul. Travelers also report that the trips sometimes develop their own cliques, and even the companies admit that there are often one or two people who need a lot of help being eased into the group. Amazing Journeys, for example works diligently to “cater to the solo traveler”- expressing to first time travelers that everyone traveled with us for the first time once.  By nourishing the lasting value of repeat business while cultivating and catering to first time travelers, Amazing Journeys has had exceptional results in blending the two sources into each and every successful trip.