I was recommended to Fran and Beemster Travel and therefore was very surprised by the experience that I had. I was planning a trip to Italy for a milestone birthday and felt I would be more comfortable booking with a travel agency since it was an overseas trip. The good: Fran is a very nice and cheerful woman. She was alway a delight to speak with and found us an amazing travel group that I would not have found on my own. The trip itself was amazing and we had a great time! The bad: We felt like we had very little guidance during this trip. It was very difficult to get in touch with Fran and it would take her weeks to respond to emails. When she did respond she did not always address all questions. When the pandemic hit(we were originally scheduled to travel in 2020) there was very little guidance as to what our options were and I was told that other trips that were fast approaching had more priority and she would address ours later. Understandable, however there was no follow up and we had to find information on our own. Important details regarding our trip( vaccination requirement, trip requirements)were not shared. We found the this information on our own which led to some of the women traveling with us originally being unable to attend the trip. If we hadn't found out about Italy's vaccination requirements prior we would had people booked, paid and traveling who were ineligible to travel with us. Due to our uncertainly regarding the language barrier and ease of finding transportation (as this was our first time traveling to Italy) we asked that we prearrange and pay for transportation to our hotel. Her response was no and she urged us to find a taxi at the airport. As we expected there was a language barrier and lead us to using a taxi we weren't 100 percent sure of. The biggest disappointment throughout was the lack of follow up during and after the trip. Once our monies were paid, we heard very little from Fran. She did not provide important and relevant information besides the basic documents that were needed for the trip, did not check to see if we went on the trip or what our experience was like. I have used other travel agents prior and they have always been very helpful and diligent with follow up, this was not the case in this experience unfortunately. read more