"In my opinion, you can never go wrong with NETC. I have traveled with NETC four times with students, and I attended three teacher's conventions as well. All seven trips were fantastic. I have also traveled with CHA and EF. Both CHA and EF offer budget tours, but you can really tell the difference. I definitely recommend NETC. Some differences are:

Better hotels. Other companies had us staying in hotels that were not centrally located. This made night activities hard to take, and wasted a lot of time. Plus, the students did not really get a feel for the atmosphere.

Better tour guides!! NETC tour guides actually do go the extra mile for you. My CHA/EF tour director would not help us book a Flamenco evening in Madrid because we did not purchase it from the company. The NETC guides will help you no matter what. All of my NETC guides have actually suggested free time activities and accompanied us to the places.

Educational activities. NETC makes the activities and excursions more meaningful. The Tour Director gets you involved by acting out scenes from history and including the kids in the skits. If you go to Spain, there is a cooking demo that the kids love, and painting class in Paris. My kids loved the extras. I felt guilty that for my '01 trip I tried to save money by switching companies. I will never do that again, because the kids really do enjoy the extras.

Local food. The food really is better. Other companies offer chicken and potatoes every day. NETC tries to get you out with the locals as much as they can. Students get to try the local cuisine. They really put forth a lot of effort with the restaurants. On every trip I have met a person (or more) from NETC's Boston office who is staying at the hotels, going on the excursions, and eating at the restaurants to make sure all is well. Last time in both Paris and Madrid, we were accompanied by a Boston staff member on one excursion and one dinner.

Extras. All rooms are for triples or quads. If the numbers work out so you only have two to a room, so what with NETC! With CHA, they charged my students extra if this happened. If you schedule to travel on a Thursday and NETC bumps it to Friday, they do not charge you the extra fee. CHA bumped my trip to Friday and charged every student an extra $40!

As you can tell, I really enjoy traveling with NETC. No matter what, you will get a good program. NETC is just better!"

Marian Dunlevy, KY