Featured Article

An Apartment in Paris: a great base for a week-long visit

Martha and I, like many travelers, are drawn to Paris and seem to return there more often than to any other European city. On a recent 3-week trip to France, we spent our first week in Paris.

From Last Month's Issue

Looking for luxury in and around London

Looking for some royal treatment on your next trip overseas? What better place to be treated like a royal than London, where they’ve been perfecting the art of luxury for centuries? Granted, with current exchange rates, it’s not the first destination that comes to mind for those on a tight budget, but if you’re ready for a bit of a splurge, perhaps an account of my September ’07 visit will provide a few suggestions to make your trip a more memorable one.

Recent Columns

• Adventure Travel » Cape Verde Islands — by Wayne Wirtanen (Third of three parts on The Gambia and the Cape Verde Islands, jump to part 1, part 2, part 3) Volcanoes, salt and slavery When I opened the Bradt Travel Guide “Cape Verde Islands” (Globe Pequot Press; www.bradtguides. com), which I bought for an October ’07 trip, I was fascinated with one of the […]
• Adventure Travel » Exploring West Africa in 4-star comfort — There’s an apocryphal story, probably not true but fun to tell, about the establishment of The Gambia’s borders. When the British, during sailing-ship days, wanted to set boundaries for a country along the river, they fired a ship’s cannons in both directions perpendicular to the river, and where the cannon balls fell, that’s where the boundaries were drawn.

From the Archives

• Eye on flora of South America — During a 17-day February-March ’04 South America cruise aboard the Amsterdam of Holland America Line (Seattle, WA; 800/426-0327) and on land tours that we booked separately, I was interested in observing the different types of flowers, plants and trees in each country visited. We flew into Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Feb. 19, and the agent from the local tour company was awaiting us at the gate. We were taken by private car to the Luxor Regente, a newly renovated hotel
• All Aboard: Germany’s Rhineland Magic — Düsseldorf (phone +49 [0] 211/1720 20, www.duesseldorf-tourismus.de), which means “Village on the Düssel River,” is no longer a fishing village on the right bank of the Rhine River where the Düssel joins it. It is one of Germany’s Magic Cities (www.magic.cities.de), a great commercial and administrative center and the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia. To feel the pulse of the vibrant city, take a stroll along Düsseldorf’s elegant and lively heartbeat, Königsallee, commonly known as the “Kö,” which has been laid out