by Joan Hansen, Sacramento, CA

Some people prefer to see the Danube River by boat, but my husband, Claude, and I decided that a leisurely drive along its banks, stopping at picturesque medieval villages along the way, would be our cup of tea. We found Austria in the springtime to be magical.

Vienna

We landed in Vienna on April 2, 2009, having decided to spend a few days in that beautiful city before picking up our rental car to tour the Danube region. As our arrival was at night, we decided to take advantage of our hotel’s €12-per-person airport pickup service.

Our hotel, Pension Neuer Markt (phone 01 512 2316, www.hotel
pension.at/neuermarkt), which we booked online prior to our departure, could not have been in a better location. Our comfortable room overlooked several outdoor cafés, and the cathedral was only half a block away.

The cost (€110, or $143, per night) was reasonable for Vienna, especially considering the superb location and the delicious included buffet breakfast, which offered every possible Austrian specialty.

Vienna is a city of music, cafés, designer shops and mind-blowing historical sites, most within walking distance of our hotel. St. Stephen’s Cathedral is one of the greatest Gothic structures in Europe, and it was there that mourners attended Mozart’s funeral in 1791 and Napoleon posted his farewell edict in 1805.

Just a few blocks away we visited the Hofburg Palace Complex. Once the winter palace of the Hapsburgs, it is now the place for a ride in a romantic horse-drawn carriage. You can also see the amazing Lipizzaner stallions prance to the music of Chopin or Strauss at the Spanish Riding School (Tuesday-Saturday), or try to catch the Vienna Boys’ Choir singing on a Sunday when they’re in town. If that isn’t enough, there is also the Sisi Museum, a tribute to Emperor Franz Josef’s mysterious and beautiful wife, Empress Elisabeth, to whom Princess Diana has been compared for her bittersweet life and tragic death.

And no visit to Vienna is complete without attacking one of the huge, plate-filling Wiener schnitzels, a golden brown, breaded veal delicacy. We ate ours (€15) at Figlmüller, a restaurant located in a thick-walled, 200-year-old-building within walking distance of our hotel. After a short wait in line, we were seated at a table with another couple and soon found that a meal in Austria is not just a meal but an event!

Along the Danube

Three days in Vienna were hardly enough, but we were anxious to pick up our rental car. We found out that the Avis rental office is closed on Sundays, and at the last minute we received a message to pick up our car at the airport. Our car rental, booked through Auto Europe (888/223-5555, www.autoeurope.com) before we left, cost $318 for two weeks.

After picking up the car, we managed to get lost a few times looking for the Romantic Road that winds along the beautiful Danube. Instead of taking the Autobahn, we had planned our journey along Route 3, or the Austrian Romantic Road, with stops in the Danube Valley and the lake district of Salzkammergut.

We used the more-than-1,000-year-old village of Krems as our base, taking day trips along the Danube over the next three days. After stopping to ask directions several times, we found our charming hotel, Gourmethotel am Förthof (phone +43 02732 83345, www.gourmethotel-foerthof.at), in the old Stein section of the city.

We had a spacious room overlooking the Danube. As no one was available to help us, we carried our luggage up some steps to the hotel entrance, then lugged it up to the second floor.

There were not many people in the hotel, perhaps because it was rather expensive (€424, or $553, for three nights). However, the view of the river across the road was lovely and the included breakfast buffet was elegant and delicious.

Exploring Krems was fascinating. We passed ancient decorated houses, visited beautiful old churches and entered taverns where people flock to sample the new wine each year.

Village visits

Only five miles down the road is Dürnstein, It didn’t take us long to agree that it is one of the loveliest and most picturesque villages along the Danube, and it was especially so during our visit, with fragrant and beautiful cherry blossoms everywhere.

Claude skillfully maneuvered our small Opel car down the narrow cobbled streets, trying to avoid hitting the throngs of people visiting during Easter week. One-way streets, dead-ends and pedestrians made it tricky driving, and we were happy to find a parking place so we could stroll at leisure.

High above the town sits the castle fortress where Richard the Lionheart of England was held prisoner by a powerful Austrian Duke.

We continued down the road to Melk, where one of the greatest sites in Austria, Melk Abbey, stands on a rock-strewn bluff overlooking the village and the river. Its influence as a center of learning and culture spread all over Austria, a fact that is familiar to readers of Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose.”

We followed our tour of the abbey with a visit to the quaint village of Melk, where we gorged ourselves on a delicious Sacher-torte and strong Austrian coffee.

Salzburg’s Lake District

Sisi came into our lives again at Bad Ischl, located 139 miles from Krems. She and Emperor Franz Josef spent many summers in this spa town, staying at Kaiservilla.

Also notable is the wide array of wonderful pastries available at the oldest coffeehouse in Austria, Konditorei Zauner (Pfarrgasse 7). Who could resist the delicious treats? (Coffee cost $2.80, and pastries started at $3.90.)

At this point, it seems prudent to remind American drivers that most of the rental cars in Austria take diesel fuel. Putting unleaded in the tank could cause a lot of problems for both car and driver, so be smart and check your paperwork from the rental agency before filling up.

Several years ago when traveling by rail, we visited the beautiful village of Hallstatt, getting there by boat from the train station across the lake. We were surprised to discover that you can also get to this village by car — that is, if you don’t mind passing through a series of tunnels through the mountains. The oldest still-inhabited village in Europe, it is perched against a mountain and overlooks the lake.

Salzburg

We continued on to Salzburg, which was enchanting at Easter time. There were thousands of beautifully decorated Easter eggs everywhere. This fascinating city was our base for the next three days.

We checked into Hotel Jeder­mann (phone +43 [0] 662 8732410, www.hotel-jedermann.com) after an exciting ride on the high-speed Autobahn and found it to be both comfortable and well located for exploring the city. It was called a designer hotel, and it had a modern-art approach to decor.

The breakfast buffet offered delicious pastries, cold cuts and a variety of cheeses plus many other choices. The total price for our three nights was €190 ($247), including breakfast, a good value in Salzburg.

This is Mozart’s birthplace, so we attended a string quartet concert in the beautiful Mirabell Palace, surrounded by gorgeous gardens and fountains. This is also “The Sound of Music” country, and you can take a tour to the film sites.

In three days we were able to cover most of this charmingly preserved town, including the cathedral square, surrounded by palaces, and the Hohensalzburg Fortress, towering above the city. We also indulged in the most delectable strawberry-mousse pastry at a café on Mozartplatz. But just wandering down the streets of the Old Town — with all the Easter decorations, windows filled with every imaginable pastry and buffet-style cafés featuring many types of luscious seafood and a variety of salads — was magic!

We had a fantastic time in this region of Austria. The medieval villages nestled in vineyards and the charming larger cities with their historic Old Towns will long be remembered.

The food was special and we returned a few pounds heavier. The weather was perfect the entire time, even when we continued to the Alps in the south. We heartily recommend this independent driving tour to all of our fellow world travelers!

My objective in this article is to try to tie up what seemed to me to be a few loose ends and provide some clarification based on my many years in the tour industry. My general intention is to explain why the single supplement exists and is usually necessary. The issue of single supplements is anything but straightforward.

No free lunch

All travelers understand that tour companies exist to do business and make a profit.

Most tour companies try to operate, philosophically, under a general doctrine of fairness in which, with tour groups, they attempt to have their per-person profit margins equal, regardless of whether passengers are traveling as singles or doubles.

However, because hotels worldwide virtually never provide to tour operators rooms for single passengers at only half of the cost of the double rooms (the cost of a single room is generally 75% to 100% that of a double), a single supplement results.

Hotels sell rooms, not beds. A hotel’s actual cost, in most cases, is reduced very little if only one person is occupying the room. For example, statistically most couples traveling together use only one bed, the same as a single.

If a hotel charges a tour operator $100 for a room regardless of whether it is occupied by one person or two, the tour operator will charge a couple $50 per person and will charge a single person $50 plus an additional supplement of $50. If a hotel charges a tour operator $100 for a room occupied by two people and $80 if it’s occupied by one person, then the single supplement cost is $30 ($50 + $30 = $80).

This cost differential multiplied by the number of hotel nights on the trip totals the actual single supplement cost to the tour operator, so this is usually the amount passed on to the single traveler in the form of a single supplement.

Roommate matching

Reason dictates that it is not the responsibility of the tour company to find a roommate for a traveler who cannot secure his or her own roommate. Nevertheless, today many, if not most, tour operators assist prospective tour members by means of a roommate-matching service, which can have some variations depending on the companies.

With some companies, if a roommate match is requested but does not occur, the single is required to pay the single supplement under the doctrine of fairness referred to above.

One practice that is increasing among tour companies is to waive the single supplement if a single requests a roommate but then the company is unable to find a suitable match. This is done by companies that can afford to do so either through volume or sufficient markup.

A very few charge no single supplement of any kind, however. How can they do this? The answer is they mark up the tour price for doubles high enough to allow for this practice. In fact, it means that those traveling as doubles are subsidizing the singles. For singles, this is a great benefit, not an entitlement, but it is hard to make a case that it is fair to the majority who are traveling as doubles.

Make no mistake that tour companies build this consideration into their markups/profits. When the single requesting a match does not get one, that single receives a bonus of a room of his/her own at no extra cost.

Some tour companies, when approaching a tour departure date, will grant a discount to a single who requests a roommate or sometimes will waive the fee altogether to fill out the group or allow the affected person to travel if he/she could not or would not do so otherwise. This is a case of the tour operator being generous to the single traveler and perhaps practical at the same time.

In my opinion, however, it is improper and unfair, if not unethical, for a tour operator to offer this last-minute waiver or discount option unless it is offered to all singles on the departure who requested a roommate but would rather have a room to himself or herself.

What if you requested a roommate and were matched, thereby avoiding the single supplement, and then someone else later made the same request, was unmatched and ended up with a room to himself, a situation you would have greatly preferred, yourself? Would you feel that is fair? Are you being penalized for possibly signing up too early?

The tour operator has to be very careful with this practice to insure all singles are treated equally. There is definitely some abuse with this issue in the tour industry.

Bottom line

Virtually all tour companies want the business of single travelers, and they usually do everything possible to assist single travelers financially because it is good business to do so. But the facts clearly reveal that single travelers often are the beneficiaries of these efforts and rarely the victims in today’s travel marketplace.

Single travelers also should realize that the companies that do not offer this option often are smaller or are small-profit-margin operators that cannot afford to do so. Other companies just may not be prepared to raise the tour price for doubles, something which makes the tour more difficult to sell.

My advice is to appreciate those companies that can and do offer these options and not blame those that do not. The “woe is me” financial argument on the part of the single traveler objecting to paying single supplements rarely stands up to scrutiny “under the microscope.”

From 1787 to 1868, more than 160,000 prisoners were transported from Britain to Australia. Once they reached Australia, anyone who reoffended was sent to the subject of May’s photo, the Penitentiary at Port Arthur, Tasmania. It was nearly an “inescapable” prison. One convict, George Hunt, famously attempted to gain his freedom by disguising himself as a kangaroo, only to throw off the pelt and give himself up when hungry guards tried to shoot him for dinner.

Thirty-four correct entries were sent by the deadline, and JACK ORR of Hot Springs, Arkansas, won the drawing. We thank Grace Newman of Ponte Vedra, Florida, for contributing the photo.

Correct answers to the puzzle were sent in by the following readers: Janet Ambrose, Phoenix, AZ; Gary & Lajetta Atwood, Burten, WA; Peter Basto, Newtown, NJ; Patricia Bunyard, Cambria, CA; Adam Cash, Berkeley, CA; Ona Castenada, Roseville, CA; Meg Churchill, Jefferson City, MO; Brad Clark, Kea’au, HI; Al Clem, Sedona, AZ; Tamara Compton, Bellingham, WA; Katrina Donnelly, Tauranga, New Zealand; Elizabeth & Jerold Gard, Los Altos, CA; Kenneth Gould, Clearwater Beach, FL; Anne Jeffries, Centennial, CO; Marvin Leon, Encino, CA; Gregory Mannion, Fountain Hills, AZ; Frank Marsh, Los Angeles, CA; Ellen Melton (no city given); Diane Morris, San Jose, CA; Derald Nye, Corona de Tucson, AZ; WINNER Jack Orr, Hot Springs, AR; Marcia Oswalt & Reed Oswalt (No city given); John Penisten, Hilo, HI; David Riegert, Reno, NV; Earl Rogers, Iowa City, IA; Lorenz Rychner, Denver, CO; Helga Saitowitz, Sherwood, OR; Robert Specker, Wildwood, MO; Tom Sullivan, Santa Clarita, CA; David Sutcliffe, The Villages, FL; Claire Troop, Wernersville, PA; Ruben & Carolyn Wacker, Princeville, HI; Scott White, Durango, CO, and James Ziegler, Perkiomenville, PA.

Fred DeVinney, Walnut Creek, CA

In Condé Nast’s 2009 Readers’ Choice poll, Oaxaca, Mexico, was listed among the top 10 cities in the Americas (excluding the US). After my late-October ’09 trip there for the marvelously colorful Day of the Dead festivities, I can certainly understand why.

El Diá de los Muertos is celebrated each year in Oaxaca during the week leading up to the first of November. Instead of mourning the dead, Mexicans celebrate their memory, and this is the time for a joyous reunion of family members, living and dead.

Colorfully decorated cemeteries and plazas and people wearing outrageous and often macabre costumes and masks, plus music, parades and revelry, engulf Oaxaca in an atmosphere of Carnival.

Settling in

My wife and I arrived on Oct. 26 and were able to witness the buildup to the celebrations that were to climax on the nights of Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.

Much of life in Oaxaca centers around the town’s main square, the Zócalo. This large, colorful square with a park in the middle is surrounded by restaurants, hotels and shops. We spent a great deal of time in outdoor cafés there, relaxing, people-watching and soaking up the ambience.

Be sure to visit the Palacio de Gobierno statehouse and its excellent murals. And during festival time there are colorful altar displays, sand sculptures and a number of special activities.

The Zócalo is a wonderful place for lunch or a respite from sightseeing or shopping. We ate at Café del Jardín, twice. The very good grande-sized sandwiches (about $8) were ample for two, but the encore of complimentary chili-garlic Spanish peanuts drizzled with fresh lime juice was the decider! Another lunch was enjoyed on the terrace of Hotel Marqués del Valle, also located right on the Zócalo.

Most evenings featured concerts from a variety of musical groups from 6 to 8, which made for a nice break before dinner. Invariably, we would head back to the square after dinner to absorb more of the local color, often walking along the Andador Macedonio Alcalá, a pleasant pedestrian mall of shops, galleries and restaurants.

Discovering Oaxaca

On our second day, truckloads of sand showed up in the Plaza de Alameda de León, located next to the Zócalo and fronted by the landmark Catedral de Oaxaca. Over the next three days, a splendid array of colorfully decorated and painted sand sculptures took form.

Macabre figures, giant skeletons (even one on a motorcycle) and an entire re-creation of the façade of the cathedral plus a wide variety of skulls and animals turned this plaza into a wonderful sight to behold.

As we had ample time to explore at a leisurely pace, we spread the highlights out, taking in one or two major events each day and leaving time to stroll, shop and, yes, hang out on the Zócalo.

The Centro Cultural Santo Domingo, including the beautiful church of Santo Domingo and the Museum of Culture of Oaxaca, is a great place to start your exploration of the city. The church has a spectacular interior. I had to let my eyes get adjusted as I entered to appreciate the soaring Sistine Chapel-like ceiling of the nave.

The museum next door chronicles the history of Oaxaca from ancient times up to the present. With 14 large rooms to cover, it looked daunting. We found the first four rooms, covering the ancient cultures prior to the Spanish conquests, the most interesting and focused the majority of our time there. I would suggest using the audio headset.

The ethnobotanical gardens that are also part of this complex required separate admission.

I would highly recommend the Museo de Rufino Tamayo with its pre-Columbian collection that includes some wonderful works with animal motifs, but you might want to save that for another day.

Several blocks north of the Santo Domingo church and museum is the neighborhood Los Arquitos, where residents have adapted an old aqueduct into homes and shops. The very pleasant Pochote Market takes place there on Friday and Saturday.

I’d also recommend a visit to the vast labyrinth of the colorful Mercado Juárez, a couple blocks southwest of the Zócalo, and then maybe a walk over to the baroque Basílica de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad and its museum.

A number of folkloric dance performances can be seen throughout the city. We opted for a colorful presentation at the Monte Albán hotel, just off the Zócalo. A dinner option was offered, but we chose to attend just the 8:30 p.m. show for about $15 per person.

Area exploration

There are some great sights surrounding Oaxaca, and the Monte Albán archaeological site should be at or near the top of the list. We took a half-day guided bus tour to Monte Albán, a UNESCO World Heritage Site set in the hills above Oaxaca that provides dramatic views of the surrounding mountains and valley.

This city of the present-day ancestors of the Zapotec peoples flourished from 500 BC to AD 750, and today it provides some fascinating ruins to explore.

Our half-day tour cost around $18. There is also a full-day option, which includes visits to a village market and other areas of interest, for $30.

We also enjoyed a half-day tour to Mitla. It was scheduled to last until 2 p.m. but ended close to 4 p.m. due to our wonderfully enthusiastic guide.

While not on the scale of Monte Albán, Mitla, which reached its apex in the 13th century, is worth a visit if you have the time. Our “half-day” tour also included visits to a village market and a rug-weaving exhibit and a stop at El Tule, an awesomely massive cypress tree.

Joining the crowd

Our other excursions out of Oaxaca were provided by the lovely B&B Casa de Mis Recuerdos, where we stayed for the last four days of our trip. They had a full week of activities that we could take advantage of. This ended up providing some of the most meaningful experiences of our trip.

Many in our group loved the all-day cooking class taught by Nora, who runs this small, family-owned hotel along with her husband, William Frederick.

We chose to join two night tours, on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1. On the first night, after a very nice light supper of tamales and hors d’oeuvres in the B&B’s courtyard, we boarded a small bus for a short drive to the festivities taking place at the cemeteries of Xoxocotlán.

The gravesites were festooned with beautiful flowers, candles and dishes of the favorite foods of the deceased. Skulls, skeletons and other macabre figures were prevalent.

We visited two cemeteries linked by a midway of entertainment, games and food stalls. William, Nora and Juan, holding high a huge head on a stick, were our guides for this colorful evening.

A wonderful concert with a large orchestra and splendid vocalists took place right outside the first cemetery. Topped off with a full moon, it was a night to remember.

On Nov. 1 we traveled to three villages in the Etla Valley for a night of wild celebrations. Nora and Juan led us first to a village where the celebrants, in a riot of costumes and masks, were dancing up a storm to a very enthusiastic band. After about an hour of this revelry we headed for another village where there were only a few people following a band through the streets. At first it was a little of a letdown — until we joined in the parade, which got bigger and bigger as we walked along. As opposed to the first frenzied stop, where we were just observers, here we became part of the celebration.

Our last stop was at a small arena with bleachers where, after a short satirical play was performed, the arena filled with dancers in outrageous costumes and masks in a chaotic celebration of music and dance. Those two nights indeed had a feeling of Carnival.

Accommodations

Our loose-knit group of 12 stayed at two different charming, small hotels/B&Bs. We ended up staying four days at each and loved both.

The first four nights were at Hotel Las Golondrinas (phone 951 514 3298, www.hotellasgolondrinas.com), with pleasant rooms situated around lovely gardens. Our room, B6, had a little terrace and was a real bargain at $53 per night. Breakfast in a nice garden setting was extra but offered wonderful fresh fruit, yogurt and granola combinations in addition to the usual fare.

Casa de Mis Recuerdos (toll-free from the US, 877/234-4706, www.misrecuerdos.net) cost $105 for a spacious double room and included an excellent full breakfast that Nora and her staff prepared, served in our choice of the lovely dining room or the courtyard. The rooms were beautifully decorated, and the open lounge/patio area was a nice place to relax, gather and enjoy a margarita.

The full program of activity options made this place special. The program the first night, with supper, cost $60 per person and the night in Etla Valley, $40. Nora’s all-day cooking class cost $60 each and included an elaborate meal.

We sampled a number of restaurants, and our favorite was Los Pacos, where our meal cost around $20 per person, with Chilean wine. We also liked the much-touted Casa Oaxaca, a block from the Camino Real hotel, with its rooftop garden setting overlooking the back of the Iglesia de Santo Domingo ($35 per person, with wine), and we enjoyed an inexpensive dinner ($12-$15 per person) and lunch ($10) at the rustic Zandunga restaurant.

In Lake Mälaren, 18 miles west of Stockholm, Sweden, lies the small island of Björkö. Its size belies its importance in the Viking world of 1,100 years ago. On this island are the ruins of the town of Birka, which, together with the towns of Hedeby in Denmark and Kaupang in Norway, was one of the most important trading centers in Scandinavia during the Viking Age.

Founded around AD 790, Birka was part of a royal strategy to control trade in the Baltic through the establishment of trading centers. Traders came to Birka from all over Europe — England, Germany, Greece and the lands of the eastern Baltic — bringing their cloth, silks, glass and weapons to trade for furs, antlers and iron. There is even evidence that Arabs and Orientals came with their goods.

Crafts flourished: woodcarving, bronze casting, textile weaving, leather work and wrought ironwork, among others. As trade grew, so did Birka, expanding along the lakeshore with small wattle-and-daub houses and workshops arranged in rows separated from each other by fences.

The permanent population of Birka was never very large, probably no more than 700 to 1,000 at its height. Merchants who came from other lands increased that population temporarily, especially in wintertime, when trading was most brisk.

Birka lasted only two centuries. Founded at the end of the eighth century, it was abandoned by the end of the 10th. It wasn’t war, plague or natural disaster that was the death knell for Birka but probably a combination of other circumstances.

Water levels in Lake Mälaren fell, making Birka’s harbors less usable or unusable; trade patterns changed, and — perhaps most importantly — the town of Sigtuna was founded on the Swedish mainland around AD 970. Birka’s population either moved to Sigtuna or was ordered to move.

Christianity was on the rise all over Scandinavia at this time. Sigtuna was a Christian town from its founding, eclipsing predominantly pagan Birka.

Burial mounds

What visitors to Birka first notice when they arrive are the gentle green hills dotting the island. These “hills” are actually burial mounds — thousands of them. In Viking times, on the island there were six cemeteries encircling the town of Birka. In the largest of the cemeteries, Hemlanden, there are over 1,600 burial mounds. It is estimated that there are at least another 1,400 burial mounds scattered around the island in the other cemeteries.

Both Christian and pagan burials have been found beneath the mounds. Christians generally were buried without grave goods, while pagan graves contained goods necessary for the afterlife, including weapons, tools and ornaments. What was buried indicated the social status and the wealth of the dead person.

Defensive ramparts

Near the first set of burial mounds are the ruins of Birka’s fort high on a cliff. There’s a semicircular earth-and-stone rampart with three openings facing toward the town that once existed there. A thousand years ago the cliff dropped steeply into the lake on its west side, making defense unnecessary there. Because the lake has receded, the cliff now drops onto dry land.

Northeast of the town was another long rampart with six openings that were probably where wooden defense towers once stood. Archaeologists discovered more than 50 graves that were incorporated into this rampart when it was built at the end of the ninth century. The builders of the rampart apparently found it easier to make the graves part of the wall rather than move them.

There is little visible evidence of the town of Birka, itself. It was located in the northwest corner of the island, covered an area of about 30 acres and had at least three harbors. It lay between the fort and the long protective town rampart to the east.

Museum and village

There are two excellent ways to visualize what Birka must have looked like 1,100 years ago. One is to visit the museum near the boat dock, where there’s a scale model of Viking Birka, complete down to the smallest details: there’s a man fishing on the ice, children romping, a vessel unloading cargo and a man pulling a sleigh loaded with antlers over the ice.

The other way is to visit the Viking Age houses that are being built, full size, a five-minute walk from the museum. It’s like stepping back into the year AD 900.

Birka is on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

If you go…

My husband, Paul, and I journeyed to Birka from Stockholm by boat. Strömma Kanalbolaget (phone [46] 812 004 000, www.stromma.se) has a sailing every day between May and early September, leaving at 9:30 a.m. and returning from Björkö Island at 2:45 p.m. Between the end of June and mid-August there is a second sailing at 1 p.m., returning from Björkö at 6:15 p.m.

The trip over takes about one hour and 45 minutes and departs from Stadhusbron, just steps from Stockholm’s beautiful City Hall. The price is 290 Swedish kroner (about $40) for the round-trip boat trip, guide and museum admission or SEK200 ($28) for the boat trip only. Visitors have 3½ hours on the island. Stromma offers a wide variety of other excursions.

In Stockholm, don’t miss a visit to the superlative Historiska Museum at Narvavägen 13. It houses an incredible gold and silver collection which includes Viking Age jewelry and ornaments. Archaeological finds from Birka are also displayed there as part of the world’s largest Viking exhibition.

We rented a spacious, gracious apartment, with a working old-fashioned tile stove, on Nybrogatan, about a 25-minute walk from Stockholm’s Gamla Stan (Old Town) or a 10-minute bus ride. The apartment had a large living room, dining room, modern kitchen, bedroom, two bathrooms and lots of natural light through large windows. Our cost for 10 days was $2,671 at the time we rented in June ’09.

We rented through Via Nicoline (Stockholm; phone [46] 707 77 335, www.vianicoline.com), a company run by Nicoline Kinch, the owner of the apartment we stayed in. Via Nicoline offers 18 other rental apartments in Stockhom.

We flew SAS (www.flysas.com) from New York/Newark to Stockholm as we almost always do on trips to Scandinavia.

“When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning or in rain?” contemporary legend has it that Shakespeare penned the opening lines of “Macbeth,” the meeting of the three witches, with this month’s subject in mind for his setting.

Sueno’s Stone, near Forres, Scotland, is thought to have been built by a Pictish tribe somewhere between AD 800 and 900. The carvings on the 21-foot tall stone may depict a battle scene.

Six readers sent in the correct answer by the deadline and CYNTHIA BAUZON of Carmel, Indiana, won the drawing. We thank Sol Gold of Las Vegas, Nevada, for contributing the photo.

Correct answers to the puzzle were sent in by the following readers: Lizzie Bailey, Holly Springs, NC; WINNER Cynthia Bauzon, Carmel, IN; Tom DeChaine, Penn Valley,