Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Very friendly staff
Amazing, thank you Courtney!
Thank you Rebecca Wilkie
All good as promised and helpful Mr Harvey
Ewan understood our requirements clearly and put together an excellent itinerary. We'll be coming back - once we've saved up!
The flight from London to Manchester was rescheduled by BA as not enough time in between flights.
The itinerary worked perfectly.. some delays of course (as ever) but good flights and seats. Virgin Dreamliner excellent
The attention to detail you get from the staff is amazing. Knowing you have 24/7 back up is very reassuring. Many thanks to Amy and the team for everything. They are always there to help.
When our Air Tahiti flight was cancelled you moved us to Air France quickly and helpfully. Many thanks!
So helpful and efficient and your app is great too!
Excellent work
I recommend you all the time
The trip was amazing and all the flights worked perfectly
Awesome. Just excellent
All went very well
Very good service = been using this for my last three trips aboard and will use them again
Nicole and her team were wonderful! She went to such great lengths to find suitable flights and then willingly helped me with so many issues over the formal requirements. I honestly couldn't have made this trip without her. Always a cheerful and calming voice on the other end of the line when I was on the verge of panic. I can't thank her enough!
All in all, my trip went well. Mission accomplished. Thank you and looking forward to book again in the future.
Grant is a great asset to your company and has been helping us holiday since 2012.
Very good service. Thanks to Jessica and Howard and the rest of the team.
Good experience
Brilliant holiday in Bora Bora and Tahiti!
We were delighted with everything DialAFlight did, from the original organisation and booking to changing flights because of the coronavirus outbreak and alerting us to floods in New Zealand that affected our plans. Brilliant from start to finish and special thanks to Marco who went above and beyond to help and advise. I would definitely recommend DialAFlight.
I’m all in favour of security checks but we had to stand in a queue of about 1000 people at LA to get through immigragtion. Of the 44 kiosks available 2 were in use initially which went up to 6 after 1 1/2 hours as they returned from lunch. One airport I will definitely avoid in the future.
Whole trip went well apart from both Air NZ flights being delayed. Thankfully it did not cause any problems.
Toby was very helpful and picked lovely hotels. Made our honeymoon memorable.
Jake was so helpful and he helped us with a payment plan. I would highly recommend your service to our friends.
Jamie was excellent and very responsive to my queries.
Samuel was very helpful, our holiday was great.
Reece was very helpful and professional. I will definitely use DialAFlight again - excellent
An 11-hour overnight flight from Heathrow finds you blinking into the sunrise of another clear blue Cape Town morning. We had come to sample the sauvignon, sip the shiraz, marvel at the malbec, and also savour the world-class cuisine. But why, you may ask, travel to the southern hemisphere to experience what we have right here on our European doorstep? You obviously haven’t been to South Africa.
This pilgrimage to the wine-taster’s paradise of Franschhoek began not with an aperitif - say a Graham Beck Game Reserve chenin blanc - but with an appetising few days in Cape Town to acclimatise.
Our hotel, the Cape Grace, sits like a luxury liner alongside the lively marina. It’s in a fantastic location, with the harbour flanked by the flat-topped Table Mountain.
From here, you can take a tourist bus ride around the city, a cable-car trip to the top of Table Mountain, and then shop until you drop when you return to the Waterfront area.
At the Baia restaurant, we feasted on seafood bisque, lobster and langoustine - and were then presented with a bill as cheap as chips.
If you are looking for something more sedate, the colonial grandeur of Mount Nelson is the place to take afternoon tea. However, if I could eat only one meal on the Cape it would be at The Pot Luck Club, the hottest restaurant in town.
After our stay in Cape Town, we drove past skyscrapers, high-priced apartment blocks and the sobering miles upon miles of poverty stricken townships before breaking into open countryside and climbing through the Helshoogte Pass, with its amazing panoramic mountain views.
Just 90 minutes later we were in a different country - think Tuscany comes to Cumbria, with some Dutch gable architecture thrown in for good measure.
In fact, it was the Huguenots who brought their distillery skills to this verdant triangle of South Africa. Hotel and villa operator Relais & Chateaux has now captured a corner of Franschhoek and discreetly created the Provencal-style retreat of Le Quartier Francais - so discreetly, in fact, that we drove past without noticing it.
In the spirit of, say, a complex table wine, the hotel opened up with a series of delicious surprises. An opal-shaped pool, a tranquil hidden garden, a lavender-lined walkway, the inner sanctum of The Tasting Room restaurant, and stylish glass-walled conservatory, all set within the charm of a Victorian village square and leading out towards the colourful Franschhoek Main Street. For the connoisseur there is a glorious menu of wine estates to visit in this area, with restaurants and tastings on tap.
La Petite Ferme sits up at the back of Franschhoek and has spectacular mountain views and a mouth-watering lunch menu. Delaire Graff is a gem of a wine estate, where you can view the oak-barrelled seasoning process, or visit its famous art collection, including Tretchikoff’s Chinese Girl (it’s said to be the most reproduced painting in the world), and a diamond showroom on which the Graff fortune is built.
We opted for the hop-on, hop-off Franschhoek tram tour of the vineyards, along with a boisterous party who got ever squiffier as we rum-bled from one distinguished estate to the next.
The history of Franschhoek stretches back more than 300 years to when persecuted Protestants from France fled to the Netherlands only to be persecuted there too. From the Netherlands, they were transported as refugees to the South African Cape.
Nine of those Huguenot families settled in Franschhoek and transformed the wilderness into one of the most beautiful wine valleys in the world. It’s a pleasure to drive in South Africa - and on the left too. But the open-sided tram left us free to really enjoy the exceptional wines on offer.
There was Mont Rochelle’s chardonnay, fermented in a butterscotch-flavoured barrel, La Couronne’s plummy malbec which we partnered with a local cheese platter, and my favourite, Moreson’s In My Bed cabernet sauvignon merlot.
Moreson’s has a brilliant collection of wines, wittily named around the good-natured naughtiness of their Weimaraner dog. Rather tipsily, we left the tram party to the strains of Chicago’s If You Leave Me Now, as the rest of the travellers continued the journey.
We needed all our concentration for the task ahead: a night in The Tasting Room at Le Quartier Francais. There are restaurants around the world that are worth making a pilgrimage to - and this is certainly one of them. Award-winning chef Margot Janse weaves her magic in the kitchen, combining earthy African and sophisticated French to create some audacious flavour combinations.
Janse once considered a career in the theatre - and each of the eight courses, accompanied by a different wine, was drama on a plate. There was texture, humour, sex appeal and surprises with every mouthful. The Eastern Cape marron crayfish, Cape gooseberry and lemon verbena was like leaping into the freezing Atlantic - so tinglingly exhilarating I nearly had to go change into my swimwear to eat it.
We finished our trip on the coast at the glamorous Twelve Apostles Hotel and Spa in Camps Bay, but not before sweeping up some booty from Ebony, the Cape’s equivalent of the Conran Shop.
Dropping down into the foothills of Table Mountain to the unabashed luxury of Twelve Apostles was like being greeted with a glass of Klein Constantia Vin de Constance - a silky, rich dessert wine much loved by Napoleon.
But there was one more thing left to do before we returned to Britain. Well aware that we had the good fortune to taste the best that South Africa had to offer, we took the sobering trip out to Robben Island, where the country’s former president Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for more than 27 years.
To be privileged enough to come here and not pay homage to one of the most inspiring figures of our time - or any time - would be missing the point of South Africa today.
First published in the Mail on Sunday - January 2015
More articles below...
Not quite what you're looking for?
We can easily customise an offer to suit your exact requirements