Reserve a vacation week from Kansas City: all thirty-two weeks in one table

Everywhere else on this site you are asked something. Here you are asked nothing. Thirty-two weeks sit in one table, in a fixed order that carries no opinion, with the nights, the country, the starting figure per person and the number that says how much of the week you could have arranged without us.

• Down the Douro by slow trainPortugal, 9 nightsfrom $2,380 per personyou could arrange all of this yourself
• The Cantabrian coast in three stopsSpain, 10 nightsfrom $2,640 per personyou could arrange most of it yourself
• Two towns on the Apulian heelItaly, 8 nightsfrom $2,190 per personyou could arrange all of this yourself
• The Moselle bend, three bedsGermany, 9 nightsfrom $2,450 per personyou could arrange most of it yourself
• Island to island in the HebridesScotland, 11 nightsfrom $3,180 per personthe hard half needs a telephone call
• Six stations across the BalkansNorth Macedonia, 12 nightsfrom $2,870 per personthe hard half needs a telephone call
• A string of Baltic townsEstonia, 10 nightsfrom $2,560 per personyou could arrange most of it yourself
• Across the Pyrenees, hut to hutFrance, 9 nightsfrom $3,320 per personit does not exist without an introduction
• One Umbrian town, ten nightsItaly, 10 nightsfrom $2,280 per personyou could arrange all of this yourself
• A working port in GaliciaSpain, 9 nightsfrom $2,140 per personyou could arrange most of it yourself
• A lake town in CarinthiaAustria, 9 nightsfrom $2,410 per personyou could arrange all of this yourself
• A market town in lower NormandyFrance, 10 nightsfrom $2,320 per personyou could arrange most of it yourself
• A cottage above the BurrenIreland, 9 nightsfrom $2,540 per personyou could arrange most of it yourself
• A farm on the Aragon steppeSpain, 10 nightsfrom $2,260 per personthe hard half needs a telephone call
• A cabin north of the lineFinland, 8 nightsfrom $3,040 per personthe hard half needs a telephone call
• A stone hut in the high ApenninesItaly, 7 nightsfrom $2,180 per personit does not exist without an introduction
• The week of a Tuscan horse raceItaly, 7 nightsfrom $3,480 per personit does not exist without an introduction
• A festival week in upper FranconiaGermany, 8 nightsfrom $3,760 per personit does not exist without an introduction
• Harvest weeks above the DouroPortugal, 9 nightsfrom $2,980 per personthe hard half needs a telephone call
• The Alps in the fortnight everybody goesAustria, 10 nightsfrom $3,220 per personthe hard half needs a telephone call
• Twelfth night on the Alentejo plainPortugal, 8 nightsfrom $1,980 per personyou could arrange most of it yourself
• Candlemas in inland ProvenceFrance, 8 nightsfrom $2,120 per personyou could arrange most of it yourself
• The week after a Rhineland carnivalGermany, 7 nightsfrom $1,890 per personyou could arrange all of this yourself
• Lent in the Umbrian hillsItaly, 9 nightsfrom $2,040 per personyou could arrange all of this yourself
• Long days on the Kerry ridgesIreland, 9 nightsfrom $2,720 per personyou could arrange most of it yourself
• Pass to pass in the DolomitesItaly, 10 nightsfrom $3,140 per personthe hard half needs a telephone call
• Three days across the PicosSpain, 9 nightsfrom $2,880 per personthe hard half needs a telephone call
• A week of long days in JotunheimenNorway, 8 nightsfrom $3,560 per personit does not exist without an introduction
• Flat ground along the middle LoireFrance, 9 nightsfrom $2,260 per personyou could arrange all of this yourself
• Level tracks on the VeluweNetherlands, 8 nightsfrom $2,080 per personyou could arrange all of this yourself
• The Po plain at walking paceItaly, 9 nightsfrom $2,200 per personyou could arrange most of it yourself
• Boat and bench in the Mecklenburg lakesGermany, 10 nightsfrom $2,480 per personyou could arrange most of it yourself

One unbroken stroke means you could do all of it yourself. Four pieces mean it does not exist without an introduction. The written words beside the mark say the same thing, so the mark never carries the meaning alone.

Being interviewed by a website is not to everybody's taste

You can reserve a vacation week from Kansas City without answering a single question, and this page is where that happens. The rest of the site works the other way. It opens with one question and two answers, then another question, then a third, and at the end of that you are looking at four weeks instead of thirty-two. For a reader who arrives with nothing decided, that is a sound way to narrow a field.

It is a poor way to treat three other kinds of reader. The first kind dislikes being asked anything by a website and stops at the first fork. A second reader already knows the shape of the thing: a set number of nights, one country, one ceiling on the price, and no question of ours is going to move any of it. The third is not a person at all. Software that reads this site cannot click an answer or follow a branch, and it would see about an eighth of what we arrange if the tree were the only way in.

So the catalog is written out here as well, flat, in one table. Nothing is held back for the question route. Same weeks, same figures, same honest number.

Five things in every row, and one of them is a broken rule

Each row holds five pieces of information. The week, named the way we name it out loud. Then the country it sits in, and the number of nights. A starting figure per person, which is where that week begins and not where it lands: the figure that counts is confirmed when the reservation is made, once the dates and the number of people are settled. Across the table the starting figures run from $1,890 to $3,760 per person, in thirteen countries.

The fifth piece is a short rule drawn at the end of the row. It is the only opinion in the table, and it is an opinion about us rather than about the week. The rule is always the same length. What changes is how many pieces it has been cut into. One unbroken stroke means you could arrange all of this yourself. Two means you could arrange most of it. Three means the hard half needs a telephone call to somebody who already knows the answer. Four means the week does not exist without an introduction.

We print that number on every week, including the weeks where it says we are not needed. Some readers see a single stroke, reserve through us anyway, and the supplier pays our commission. Others see it, go and arrange the week themselves, and that is the number doing the job it was put there to do.

What reading this page instead of the tree will cost you

Thirty-two rows in one column is a worse instrument for choosing than three questions, and we are not going to pretend otherwise on the page that carries the rows. A table flattens the things that actually decide a week off. Whether anybody else has to agree to your dates, whether you want to be moving or to be somewhere, whether everybody traveling can manage a long day on foot: none of that appears in a column of nights and countries. Two rows can look almost the same here and be nothing alike in practice.

There is a second cost, and it is fatigue. By the twentieth row most people are comparing the price column, because price is the one thing in a flat list that compares cleanly, and it is a thin reason to choose between weeks that were put together for different kinds of time off.

If that lands, the tree is three clicks long and takes about a minute. Start with a question and you will be standing in front of four weeks instead of this table. Come back afterwards if the four are not right. Nothing here will have moved, and the list will be the same list.

The order of the rows means nothing at all

There is one order and there are no controls to change it. You cannot sort by price, by nights or by country, and the sort control is missing on purpose rather than waiting for some later version of the site. No row is marked as recommended. None is promoted, boxed, colored differently, lifted to the head of the list or repeated at the foot of it. Nothing here is starred, scored or ranked, and no week on this page is placed above another one, because that comparison does not mean much away from a particular set of dates and a particular set of people.

What the order is, then, is arbitrary and stable. It was fixed once, it stays the same between visits, and reading the fourth row before the twenty-ninth tells you nothing except that you read in the usual direction.

Two more absences are worth naming here. There is no checkout on this page or anywhere else on this site: no card is asked for, no payment could be taken if you wanted to make one, and money changes hands later, with the supplier. And the office arranges holidays, nothing else. We do not sell insurance, we do not advise on visas and we do not touch passports, and none of the three is a gap we mean to fill.

When a row is worth a conversation, the request form is short and can be filled in at any hour. A written reply comes back within one working day.

Written post reaches the desk at 6317 N Antioch Rd, Suite 108, Gladstone, MO 64119; the line is +1 (816) 414-3106. Everything on this site is published by Etre Super Travel Reservations LLC.