Though this travel specialist's presence was nearly invisible, his influence was as clear as day for Michael Kinsley, who discovered the princely rewards of having Rudi Steele closely monitor his trip of a lifetime

To this day, I have never met Rudi Steele. I have no idea what he looks like. I know nothing about his life, current or past, about his hopes and dreams, his likes and dislikes, his allergies (if any), or his politics. Rudi, by contrast, knows a tremendous amount about me and my life, both fantasy and real. Basically, ours is an e-mail relationship. But what a relationship! For one glorious week in May of last year, Rudi was my personal genie in a bottle, granting me many more than just three wishes, and so determined to cater to my every whim that I had to come up with whims for him to cater to.

There is a name for what Rudi does. It is travel agent. Once upon a time, boys and girls, travel agents—just like genies—used to be more common than they are today. You could walk into an agent's office and he or she would book you a seat on Amtrak to Washington as happily as a first-class ticket to Kathmandu (well, perhaps not quite as happily, but good travel agents could fake it). And they were all over the place. There was one on almost every commercial strip, like branch banks. (A branch bank, boys and girls, was a…oh, never mind.) And it was all free. Or at least the agent's commission came out of the price of the ticket, so it seemed free.

Those days are over, of course, done in by airline deregulation, competition, and the Internet. If you want the services of a travel agent, you usually have to pay a fee on top of the cost of the itinerary. And even then, they usually don't want your business unless you're a big spender. On this occasion, I qualified. It was my wife Patty's fiftieth birthday, and we had decided to make a big deal of it. I put aside a lifetime of penny-pinching travel and called up this magazine's editor in chief (for whom I've written from time to time), asking for advice. What I thought I wanted was the name of a great hotel or villa. The editor told me that what I really wanted was a travel agent. The thought hadn't occurred to me. But she put me in touch with Wendy Perrin, who, after asking a number of pointed questions, recommended Rudi.

Now Rudi claims—and I believe him—that he does his best for any customer. "I love a challenge and give the same attention to people who are on a shoestring," Rudi e-mailed me after my trip was over. "Who knows? The day may come when they will be able to splurge." Well, maybe everyone gets this treatment. Let me tell you about our trip, and what Rudi did for us, and you be the judge.

Wendy's Insights: Mike assumes, as do most people, that the agents on Condeacute; Nast Traveler's list are only interested in helping gazillionaires. Actually, most are so passionate about the place they specialize in that they want equally impassioned travelers to experience it, no matter what their budget. They don't however, want to book bits and pieces; they want to book the entire trip, thus ensuring that it will be seamless