CKB Newsletter 2022

Cross Keys Travel Club About nine years ago, we formed a partnership with Collette Travel Company to offer guided group travel to our customers and friends. We chose Collette because of their 100-year history of providing excellent service across the world. We like their practice of grouping less than 40 travelers in new Mercedes- Benz coaches. Collette provides an experienced Tour Manager who will be with us for the entire trip. We have now made 15 trips and visited 19 countries. From Canada to Australia, and from Costa Rica to much of Europe, we have enjoyed great experiences. We’ve also seen a lot of the USA, including Alaska, New England, Hawaii, and NewYork City. Our groups have been as large as 26 and as small as six. Many of our travelers have taken multiple trips with us and recruited their relatives and friends. This has resulted in people from Seattle, Albuquerque, St. Louis, Virginia Beach, Houston, Dallas, Ohio, and Florida meeting up with us along the way to new adventures. Many friendships were formed from these mergers and they have continued and strengthened through Facebook. Since Collette travels the world, we have seen the beaches of Hawaii and Normandy, the skyscrapers of NewYork City and London, the rain forests of Costa Rica and the Northern Lights of Iceland, the Canadian Rockies and the Alps. We’ve seen the beauty of the Irish Seacoast and the horror of Auschwitz, the joy of a Times Square Saturday night, and the solemnity of military cemeteries. We’ve seen grizzly bears and kangaroos, whales and quetzals, water buffaloes and koalas, sea lions and Icelandic horses, highland cattle and Howler Monkeys. Due to the experience and excellence of the Tour Managers at Collette, through all of our trips we were never alone, never lost, never late and never, ever hungry. In fact, we’ve had a hot dog in Central Park, poi in Honolulu, haggis in Glasgow, lobster in Cape Cod, lasagna in Rome, escargot in Paris, wiener schnitzel in Innsbruck, sauerbraten in Berlin, fish and chips in London, salmon in Anchorage and, of course, chocolate in Switzerland. The pandemic has grounded us for over two years, but we plan to carefully return to travel when we can safely do so. We have used the down time to improve the quality and variety of our travel options. We’ve added a choice of more free time or an optional guided tour to a venue not on the list. We offer pre-night and post-night hotel rooms to better enjoy the cities where our tours begin and end. And we increased the dining options for group meals, while also providing our popular lunch breaks where diners can choose their own restaurants or sidewalk cafes to truly enjoy the local flavors.

Our next group trip is uncertain at this time, but if you would like to be notified please contact us. Also, if you already have a destination in mind, we can provide information and make reservations through our connections with Collette for any trip that is going where you want to go.

For additional information, just contact Jim Cuthbert.

Jim Cuthbert 318.237.5833 bankerpaw@yahoo.com

2017 Alaska and the Canadian Yukon

2018 Switzerland, Austria, and Bavaria

2019 Amalfi Coast

Cross Keys Bank 2022 pg. 9