Thoughts on Globus Tours

In 2012 I took my family on our first European vacation. Before that we didn't really have the money for it but in 2010 I went contracting and was able to mass enough savings to spend on the trip and reward my spouse for being patient while I saved for it. 

I planned the entire thing myself months in advance. Tours, hotels, transportation, the whole bit. It was a blast doing it and then seeing it all come to life. Granted, it was also a lot of work, but it was fun work. Thanks to the internet, there is no shortage of reviews and I was able to put together a nice trip. We flew to London and had an overnight layover there, which I combined with a day tour of the city. Then we flew to Rome, did a half-day tour, then hopped on a cruise ship that took us to parts of Italy, Greece, and Turkey. At each stop I used either the cruise company's excursions or private tours that I booked on my own. Upon the cruise's conclusion, I combined the transfer from the port to the airport with another day tour that visited some lakes and castles. It was a packed vacation and we had a great time.

Well, the spouse got the travel bug and most years after that we did a trip. Our passports picked up stamps from Spain, Costa Rica, Croatia, Mexico, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Thanks to contracting, I was able to do it while still making the mortgage. Except for Covid-19, where we took a year or two to do staycations. But each trip was a lot of work to plan.

Last year was the first time we did things differently. We had a travel agent take care of most of the planning by setting us up with a group tour with Globus [globusjourneys.com]. It was the Taste of Portugal trip, that spent a week visiting the north, central, and south areas of Portugal. 

Pros

• I didn't have to think too hard once all the paperwork was done. The travel agent took care of arranging our flights and transfers. I didn't have to scour TripAdvisor and other sites looking for the best tours or hotels. There is some value in the peace of mind in handing it over to someone else.
• I didn't have to think too hard during the trip either. Similar to taking a cruise, most of the cost is borne up front. Once you're in the hands of Globus, you're on a pretty set schedule. You're not completely off the hook; Globus takes care of transportation and lodging during the tour, as well as opening and closing night dinners, and each hotel typically includes a complimentary breakfast buffet. You will be responsible for your own lunches, dinners on the remaining evenings, and any extra excursions you want to take. So I still had to do some planning to pick out things to do during afternoon free time and to find good restaurants.
• The guides they select are generally pretty good. They're multilingual and know the regions you're traveling in. 
• Globus has been doing it a while, and they're pretty well organized. Communications are good; you'll get a steady stream of emails leading up to the departure day to remind you of what documents you need done and what you can do to prepare. Once the trip starts, you don't get much though, and some integration of the guide's notes and itinerary into a daily digest email would be kind of nice.

Cons

• Globus is in it to make money, as any good business should be. But some of their strategies broke down under duress, and you as the customer may feel it. I suspect Globus locks in costs by setting up long-term contracts with local providers such as hotels, restaurants, and local guides. That's smart and a good business strategy. But it affected our vacation in a couple ways; read on.
• You're set in the hotels you'll stay in. When I planned it myself, I could go cheaper or more expensive depending on the situation. If I just needed a clean, safe place to stay for a single night in-transit to another destination, I could go with something simple. Why pay for a five star set of amenities if you won't have time to use them? Globus put us up in decent hotels during the trip, so it's not a big deal, but if you're into min/maxing costs, you don't get a say here.
• The restaurants were where it made a bigger difference. The first dinner was at the same hotel where we were staying. This was a convenient and decent option that yielded a serviceable if not extravagant meal. But the final dinner was in a venue that I think they originally hoped would be special and it turned out to be less so. It was a fair drive from our regular hotel and we had to walk part way due to construction. Then the elevator access was limited and people had to wait a long time to get to the venue. It was at the top of a building and we were supposed to enjoy the view but the delays in getting everyone there meant we didn't all get to see it. This was in 2024, and while Globus had a contracted price, the restaurant was probably feeling the pinch of post-Covid inflation; it was clear they were cutting corners on the meal. Our options were fish or lamb, and the fish approached the thinness of the "meat" on a White Castle burger, and the lamb didn't look or taste like lamb. I can understand the restaurant's dilemma, but suffice to say, quite a disappointing last meal.
• We traveled from Porto to Agueda to Coimbra on the morning of the third day of the trip. Then on the fourth day, we traveled nearly halfway back to Porto to visit a winery in the morning, Wine before noon? Yes, but it's vacation, so whatever. Again, this stuff is probably locked in in advance, so you get what you get. If I'd been planning, I'd have gone to the winery around lunch time after Agueda and maybe arranged for heavier snacks to go with the wine tastings, then gotten into Coimbra in the late afternoon. The fourth morning could then be dedicated to a proper tour, and Coimbra was actually really cool, there were some neat things to see there that weren't formally part of the agenda that in my opinion should have been. Most of the time in Coimbra we were on our own.
• The final days in Lisbon were spent visiting three smaller towns. Each one had some charm and they were all worthy visits, but the last one, Cascais, was really beautiful and we only got an hour or two there. Would have liked more time at that one. 
• One size fits all. In case you couldn't tell from the above points, the tour has to be pretty generic since 30+ people of all ages and backgrounds are brought together for the trip. The daily format is typically this and doesn't deviate much:
• Breakfast at hotel
• Guided tour or event in the morning
• Free time declared starting at lunch. You're typically on your own for lunch, afternoon activities, and dinner. There are optional excursions hosted by Globus if you want to purchase them. On this particular trip the excursions didn't really grab us so we walked the city and found good restaurants to visit. 

There's nothing wrong with that but if you're used to tailoring things to the preferences of your family, you're out of luck unless you do some of your own planning in advance.

• The old joke says, "Hell is other people," but the people in a group tour can be both a blessing and a curse. When you throw 30+ strangers together on a bus, you're bound to come across someone that doesn't see eye-to-eye with you. Most of our crew was great, we met some nice people and had a good time. There was one guy that was quite vocal and complained about some things, and there were some who had mobility limits and probably wouldn't have been very good on high-adventure vacations, but none of that took away from our enjoyment.

Summary

Would I use Globus again? Yes, if I was in a situation where I wanted to just chill and let someone else to most of the planning (although with Globus you're still responsible for planning your afternoons and evenings.). It is kind of nice to pay a lump sum up front and not have to worry too much about most of the trip. But if I have the time, I'd prefer to plan it. In some spots it will be more expensive but I also can compensate for that by adjusting the lodging and events, and I can choose where I want to spend more, for example on a particular activity or restaurant. 

A Return to Scale Modeling

I lamented in a past post my hobbies that take up time, money, and space, namely book collecting. Welp, I'm about to make it worse. 

A Forty-Year Absence

I built scale model kits when I was a kid and probably haven't touched a model since my sophomore year in high school. That would make it about forty years since I was involved in the hobby. 

I didn't make a quick, conscious decision to get back in. It was something that sort of came to me indirectly while collecting the Squadron Signal books. In the course of researching Squadron, I learned about how the company has changed hands and is being revitalized by Brandon Lowe. I started to listen to the Wednesday night YouTube show "Squadron Live" and after seeing such beautiful work done by other visitors to the show and from various scale model pictures on facebook and other sites, I became inspired. 

How Things Have Changed

To say the least, since I was last involved, the hobby has evolved. Kits are more detailed and more expensive. The glues have changed and there are many different types. Paints have evolved too, and acrylics are very common now as a safer alternative to enamels. And tools for everything from painting to sanding to supplies storage and more have changed. Although not the most expensive pursuit, it's not exactly cheap. 

But I was amazed mostly at how popular modeling is. You hear so much now about how youth these days don't get outside or do activities besides video games. But there are droves of people doing it; some are like me and getting back in, others never left, and new modelers are coming in all the time. I liken modeling to the comics industry, where the materials became a bit more of a niche and more expensive, but the audiences got older and often richer, and this disposable income allowed them to keep up with the hobby.

There was one more bit of inspiration. Decades ago when I was still just dating my current spouse, she got me an aircraft model for my birthday, and, get this, a Squadron book to go with it. Then for my birthday last year, she got me another one. Over all this time I never built the first one but I made it a goal to eventually get to it. Now that we're going empty nest, this is the time. 

My goals are simple: I'm not going to try to be those guys that make the absolutely incredible dioramas, at least not yet. I'd like in the next couple years to be able to reconnect with the hobby, get my tools and skills in order, and put together a kit or two a year. When I'm ready, I've got some ideas for dioramas I'd like to do, but I won't beat myself up too much if I don't get to them because they look like they would take too much time. But if I can get a few kits together and make respectable kits I can display in the house that would be great. I initially wondered, how much was it going to cost?

You can Go Back again, if you're Willing to Pay

I was fortunate enough to be able to kick start my re-entry by finding a guy on OfferUp that was letting go of his paints and kits because he's in the place I was twenty-five years ago with kids on the way and no time or money for modeling. I bought the whole bundle and then took stock of it. There were a couple of 1/72 scale planes that were the key for me, and a couple planes in other scales. There were also a few funny car kits, some Warhammer 40K space marine sets, and some boats. I'm not going to use the space marines or cars, so I sold those off and I've nearly recovered all the money I spent on the bundle in the first place. What I have left are a few kits and a bunch of paints that were effectively free. 

Then of course I had to go ruin a good thing and buy a bunch of kits during the Hobby Lobby 40% off model kits sale, and then I got hooked on the Lightning Deals at the Sprue Brothers online store and the Squadron holiday sale late last year. So now I'm a couple hundred bucks in and I still need to get an airbrush. I'm also interested in the new Scale Color paints Squadron is coming out with, so perhaps I'll sell off the paints I got in the bundle too. It'll be the first time I've used an airbrush so I'm looking forward to picking up this new skill.

A Bunch to Do 

It's crazy how the hobby has changed. When I was a kid, I didn't primer my models. I pretty much just glued them together, and sometimes I painted right on the kit afterward. The old adage says if you had fun then your build was successful. Well then, I guess I did ok. 

But now you do some variation of this sequence: wash the parts. dry the parts, build, add photo etched parts, primer, pre-shade, apply base paint color, mask, paint patterns or camoflage, mask again, paint the canopy frame, mask again, maybe build a bit more and add accoutrements, apply a gloss coat, apply decals, apply matte coat, apply panel wash (weathering), apply more weathering, de-mask, and you might finally be done.

And the chemistry involved! Styrene plastic is still the main ingredient in most kits, but you may also have resin parts that were 3D printed, or metal photo etched parts that add extra detail. So you may have multiple types of glue in a build for the different materials, and special types of glue for clear parts. Same for paints, where you might have acrylics, enamels, lacquers, different clear coats, and more.

I have a lot to learn, but it's all pretty cool. Onward.

Review: EcoViva Reverse Osmosis 600G system

Where I live, the city water is pretty crummy. Tap water rates 200+ on the total dissolved solids meter, and it smells and tastes like chlorine. It's poor quality water to drink and to bathe in, although I suppose it is disinfected and will kill you slowly rather than quickly.

The Brondell Circle: Great Concept, Poor Execution

For the last six years I've been using an ingenious product: the under-sink reverse osmosis water filtration system. These have been around a while actually, and I had one in my old house, but over time the technology has continuously improved and now they're smaller and easier to use than ever.

My first system was from Rainsoft; the salesman was a pompous, insulting ass and I should have never bought from him, but I really liked the idea of drinking cleaner water. It was a three chamber system with storage tank, installed in a rack on the side of the under-sink cabinet. It would filter water into a holding tank that kept a cache of about two liters of water. It was a decent system but involved cumbersome maintenance. You had to backwash the filters every so often, replacement filters were not cheap, and you also had to use a compressor to recharge a bladder inside the storage tank so that it would push water to the sink spigot. 

At my current home the sink came with a Dupure two chamber system, but it was ass. It was basically a taste and smell filter that only weakly removed the chlorine smell and the water still tasted like crap. I did a lot of research and settled on the Brondell Circle system. I was really excited about the Brondell at first. It was not cheap but it featured improvements over the Rainsoft. It contained all the equipment in a single assembly. Inside a box about a foot tall, a foot and a half deep, and about nine inches wide, it integrated four filters and a storage tank. It also self-backwashed with each use so you didn't have to do that chore manually. 

Unfortunately, the Brondell had some serious design flaws. About a year and a half into its life, some of the valves ceased to work right and the output dropped to a trickle. It would work ok after each filter change for a few days and then would return to a super slow output. It was maddening because there seemed to be no fix for it. Online, the truth about the Brondell would come out and many customers would complain about this happening. We lived with this deficiency for the last few years by having a pitcher or a large lemonade dispenser by the sink that we'd fill and then use that for drinking water as needed, and refill it as needed. Refills took a long time but once you were done you had water for a couple days. Still, this was inconvenient and I went from being a Brondell fan to a Brondell hater. Further, the Brondell filters weren't cheap and there was no recycling program for the old filters, so each refill created three to four plastic cylinders that went to the landfill. And from a product out of California...for shame!

Recently the Brondell sprung a leak and started dripping water everywhere. Rather than try to fix it I decided it was time to be rid of it. Like so many poorly implemented products before it, it was time to  let it go, and feel blessed to be in an economy that encourages competition. Looking online, I found many other directions I could go.

EcoViva: Benefits of Evolution

There were lots of the Rainsoft-style traditional systems, with the wall mounted rack of filter chambers and separate storage tank. But was was cool to see were that there were now also many new RO filter systems that were tankless. Tankless would mean less space needed under the sink, which is important because my sink area is cramped, but moreover, many of these newer systems were smaller even without tanks. One of them, the EcoViva WP-RO-600G-W, is the one I ended up choosing.

So how does it work? The EcoViva and others like it swap a storage tank for a small electric pump integrated into the unit. That's the one big difference and drawback from the other systems; you have to have power connected to the unit. The pump accelerates the flow of the water through the system and alleviates the need for a storage tank to provide a ready supply of filtered water. 

There are other benefits too: the EcoViva is more efficient. The Brondell created more than two gallons of wastewater for each gallon of filtered water (although Brondell's marketing material claims that is more efficient than other traditional systems). The EcoViva flips that equation and delivers two gallons of filtered water with a gallon of wastewater. It also uses fewer replacement objects when you change the filters. The front of the unit has two cylindrical chambers; in each you have a filter unit, one is the sediment and carbon filter, the other is the RO chamber. You can easily twist each cylinder a quarter-turn to unlock it, then pull it out and replace it in moments. To be fair, the Brondell Circle's filters were similarly easy to replace. The EcoViva's filters are a little cheaper than the Brondell units, and the system itself costs about half what Brondell charges for the Circle.

So far so good. I've been running with the EcoViva for a couple weeks and it's really nice not having to take up counter space with an extra pitcher or punch dispenser. And the idea that it's more efficient than the former system is comforting. I'll update here if the EcoViva doesn't hold up. Happy to be getting rid of the Brondell.