Informing the international traveler since 1976.
Archive for December, 2006
All Aboard! » European railpass travel
Last January’s railpass price increases were very friendly. We won’t know most of the 2007 prices until the first of next year, but you can insure that you won’t have any unpleasant surprises by locking in 2006 prices before year-end. When you buy before the turn of the calendar, you have six months to validate your [...]December Report Cards
FIRST, FAST & FURIOUS — The following is a sampling of reports received from ITN readers around the globe. ITN invites you to join our corps of reporters — just drop a card in the mail while the travel impressions are fresh in your mind. To obtain your ITN Report Cards, send a self-addressed, stamped, [...]Far Horizons » San Blas Islands, Panama
(Fourth of four parts, jump to part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4). Just prior to the conclusion of my two weeks in Panama as a guest of tour operator Panama Jones, I had the opportunity to fly to the San Blas Islands and overnight at Dolphin Island Lodge. These islands stretch along some 200 miles [...]The Discerning Traveler » Glimpses of rural northern Portugal
(Second of two parts, click here for part 1) Sitting in a small café in May 2006, my bica (espresso) in front of me, I put the finishing touch on the second installment of my Portugal travelogue. The results appear below. The Alto Douro wine region Beautiful vistas of the Douro River, of small picturesque villages, of quintas [...]Travel & Health » Travel-specific immunizations
(Second of three parts) In the last issue, I covered routine immunizations, telling which ones and how many to get as well as when to get them prior to going on a journey. In this issue I will cover the recommended travel-specific immunizations worth considering before traveling abroad. Hepatitis A: this is the most common vaccine-preventable travel [...]Ask Steve » Friendly French, transportation options in Ireland
DEAR READER, I’d like to share an incident with you that I had on a recent trip to France. Nearly a thousand years ago, in 1066 to be exact, one of my ancestors moved from a small village in Normandy to England and founded our family. He became known as “Gilbert of (or from) Venables,” and [...]Reason to smile
While on a tour in France in the fall of 2005, my husband and I feared that we were going to run out of toothpaste before we got home, so we went to a pharmacy and bought a tube of toothpaste called Elmex. Even though we couldn’t read French, we could see that it had [...]Bardo mosaics
I enjoyed the article in the September ’06 “Mideast and Mediterranean” column regarding the Bardo museum in Tunis. I’ve been there and it just keeps getting better. I thought readers would enjoy going online to www.worldisround.com. Put Tunisia in the search box, then go to the photos of the Bardo posted by Paolo Motta, they are [...]Exceeding posted limits
A reader recently “fumed” about speed traps in New Zealand after receiving a $25 fine for exceeding the posted 100 km/h speed limit by 10 km/h (Oct. ’06, pg. 79). $25? Just wait until you get to Switzerland, where exceeding the posted limit by as little as either 2 or 3 km/h (depending on the officer’s [...]Sweet Confections: Kopinko, Hopjes and Chocolate
Kopinko in SE Asia A wonderful and intense-flavored coffee drop named Kopinko is made in Indonesia but is available in Thailand as well as Viet-Nam. We bought as much as we could carry in January ’05. A fellow traveler who had lived in Thailand clued us in. The deep flavor is not to be believed. A 150-gram [...]
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