Smithsonian Offers More Than Just A Night At The Museum With New Expeditions

Smithsonian Offers More Than Just A Night At The Museum With New Expeditions

August 18, 2009 at 9:14 AM | by Jennifer Kester , jaunted.com

If you've always wanted to make the hike to Machu Picchu to see the Incan ruins, or snorkel alongside the fish at the Great Barrier Reef, Smithsonian Journeys is foaming at the mouth with the desire to plan your trip. Journeys—the official travel program of the granddaddy of all museums, the Smithsonian—launched a new blog series and photo gallery focusing on UNESCO World Heritage sites, those places around the planet that the group deems to have "outstanding value to humanity."

Of course, both the blog and the photo gallery are a way for Journeys to entice you to take its educational tours. But the blog does offer mini history lessons (what do you expect, it's the Smithsonian) for each featured site. For example, one post discusses how shifting commercial routes helped preserve the traditional Vietnamese trading town of Hoi An. And to ensure you're learning something, the Smithsonian enlisted historians, scientists and travel experts to do the blogging.

If you're so inclined, Journeys suggests related tours after each post. Following the Hoi An story, there's a link to the "Journey Through Vietnam" tour, which starts at $5,395 and includes airfare. It's a 16-day trip that includes exploring the Mekong River Delta, cruising to the floating markets at Cai Rang and Cai Be, getting a Vietnamese cooking lesson and meeting a former royal family. What's good is that alongside the tours the blog also lists bios of the tour guides (or, as the all-work-and-no-play Smithsonian calls them, "study leaders") and recommended reading.

The tours alone are worth checking out. Journeys has a bunch planned for 2010, including the "Egyptian Odyssey" tour (starting from $5,895, including airfare), in which you'll hit the Giza pyramids with an Egyptologist. It'll also tailor the "Odyssey" trip for the ladies with a "Women Only" tour (March 15-26) featuring a panel discussion with Egyptian women and offer a kid-friendly "Family" edition (July 5-12) that will include games and a camel ride.

But of course the ultimate travel geek-out option is the "Around the World by Private Jet" tour (Feb. 5-26, Sept. 29-Oct. 20). It's first class all the way in a private Boeing 757 that'll fly you to Lima, Cuzco and Machu Picchu in Peru; Easter Island in Chile; the Great Barrier Reef in Australia; the Taj Mahal in India; and ancient sites in Cambodia, Egypt and Jordan. That's one scholarly pursuit for which we'd study extra hard.