Testimonials

“The whole experience was great, with no hiccups, no emergencies, no misunderstandings. Overall, a five-star experience! Thank you, and Dmitri, and your team for a wonderful j-term. The students will never forget it! ”

“We loved our time in Greece, and felt utterly taken care of by you and Dimitri . Thank you for the final dinner, and the lovely gifts. You are much more than travel agents - it is like returning home and seeing friends.”

“Thank you for an excellent trip”

“Thank you for providing yet another flawless trip through Greece. Each year I think the same thing – this trip couldn’t get any better”

“Thank you so much for the wonderful farewell dinner this evening,
I hope you could tell how grateful the students are for everything that you have done to make this a memorable and life-changing experience for them. We are all indebted to you for having taken such good care of us over the years. According to our records, this was our department’s 42nd January program in Greece since Lloyd Gunderson began it in 1973. Wow! Θαύμα! ”

“Thalia and Dimitri Cocconi, who run Educational Tours & Cruises, are simply marvelous at what they do, and the thoroughness and professionalism with which they organized a new and reasonably complicated month-long tour were a great blessing. Thalia and her husband even showed up at the Rome airport on our first day, treats in hand, to welcome us and to spend the first day of our trip with our group. If any other group has such excellent tour organizers to work with as we do, they are lucky indeed.”

“We should add that our confidence rests in no small part on the diligence of Thalia and Dimitri Cocconi and their staff at Educational Tours and Cruises. They do not merely set up our lodging and travel; they attend to our course and to our students from the time we arrive to the time we leave. They provide us with a local cell phone, and they call us daily to give us relevant news and weather reports and to ensure that everything is running smoothly. In the event of transit strikes or stoppages, they arrange flawless and inexpensive travel wherever we need to go. On the one occasion that we had a student in the hospital in Athens (due to an unforeseeable illness) they visited our student twice daily until she was discharged, and refused to allow us to pay them for their costs in traveling to and from the hospital. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine our students and faculty in better hands.”

“It is indeed a successful trip when on returning we can look back and say that every one of our students has had as rich an experience as a trip of this kind can offer. We find this hard to believe, given the extraordinary setbacks we encountered in getting out to Greece. We owe it to you all that the trip was a success. Your quick thinking and good judgment ensured the best outcome to changing circumstances, and always you went out of your way to make sure the changes were as favorable to us as possible. Here we would especially like to thank Dimitri for his efforts “on the ground,” as it were. His position regarding booking rooms for an extra night, in the case we were successful in rescheduling our return flight, was not an enviable one, and we are grateful to him for helping to keep the option open. Smaro quickly got the measure of the capacity of the group and worked with them very well. She was excellent at finding ways around the stress-points of the revised itinerary and she was not only a pleasure to work with but also a fount of new knowledge for us classicists who do like to ask questions! Thank you”

“I very much enjoyed meeting you and Dimitri at long last, and I had a great experience during my time in Greece, thanks in large part to the excellent hospitality and vigilant care displayed by Educational Tours. The students as well seemed to enjoy their first extended encounter with Greek culture very much. The meals provided and the hotels we stayed in were excellent. Anastassia, as guide, and the drivers, Georgos, Nikos, and Giannes, made the travel and the tours very enjoyable. I very much hope we can repeat the course at the next opportunity”

“We made it home safely last night. We finished our last day in Sicily with the visit to Monreale, followed by gelato for the students. It was the perfect way to end a fabulous trip. Thanks again for the excellent arrangements. I can’t imagine the first run-through of a travel course working any better. Brandon and I have already been discussing how we want to tweak the course for our next offering of it. The experience in Sicily was a perfect complement to the excellent experience we had in Greece. ”

“Thank you for your constant flexibility and hard work on this course. We very much appreciate the relationship our faculty have developed with Educational Tours. Your work ethic and your commitment to the success of our programs set you apart...and it is the reason we love sending students to Greece.”

“One of the students, who is of Greek ancestry, spoke in very emotional terms about what it meant for him to connect with his heritage. He said that seeing the Hermes of Praxiteles in person brought him to tears. I wanted you to know what a difference these study tours can make in a student’s life. Thank you very much.”

“Thank you for an absolutely wonderful time in Greece! I am extremely grateful for your advice and assistance. This was my first time leading a student group overseas. You helped to make this a very rewarding experience for me. I am very grateful for our daily contact by phone. All of the arrangements you made were wonderfully suited to the needs of the students and the academic program”

“Thank you again for everything you did for us on this trip…. we really appreciated the many things you did outside the scope of the trip itself, such as arranging for the doctor visit, spending your free time getting the medications, providing me with a cell phone…. We loved the hotels, the meals, the drivers, and especially Gabriele, our esteemed guide, who also went out of her way to make the trip extra special. Thank you, Thalia and Dimitri, for all of your care, hospitality, and assistance. ”

“How can I express the gratitude I feel for all you both did to make our Greece tour so memorable. The planning, the hotels, the food and all the many details were wonderful. I was so delighted to have both of you with us graciously extending yourselves so every detail was perfect. This was a truely generous gesture. My crew really appreciated all you did for us, I heard over and over again their appreciation
I felt so privileged to have both Dimitri and Myrto Coconni accompany us on the trip. He is the owner and founder of Educational Tours and Myrto has been one of their finest professional guides. She actually came out of retirement to do this trip for us. Her expert guiding and fussing over every aspect of the food and housing really assured us that we would be comfortable and well fed”

“This really has been our best trip ever—and Kostas was wonderful too: so helpful and interesting, as well as fluent in English. We enjoyed hanging out with him, as we do with all of you. And, as always, the Zotos family is simply above praise. The cooking class (despite the wet that kept us out of the orchard and in the cozy new kitchen) was terrific fun. We had cookie versions of owls, dogs, cats—even Botticelli’s Birth of Venus! We loved the winery—and the lunch was delicious.

So the gods were with us—and so were Kostas, the Zotos brothers and family, and the whole extended Cocconi clan. You have all spoiled us completely. Eucharisto (epharistó) for everything to all of you from all of us! ”