Columns

by Yvonne Horn

Ah, the gardens of Iran. Pictured in my mind’s eye were the celestial paradises of the Koran in which flowers bloom, fruit ripens and man and beasts live in harmony. I pictured the romantic gardens of Persian poets. “The rose has flushed red, the bud has burst, and drunk with joy is the nightingale,” wrote the 14th-century poet Hafez.

Pictured, too, were mental images of the royal pleasure gardens of the 17th-century Safavids along with the enclosed, designed-to-...

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Looking over Westminster Bridge toward Big Ben — London. Photos: Keck

by Randy Keck (Part 1 of 2 on the UK)

London cuisine today is clearly on par with those of the major gastronomy centers of Europe. This was one of the primary discoveries of a March ’10 visit I made to the city as a guest of the tourism promotion organization Visit Britain and Ireland. Our group of five writers had the chance not only to visit the annual “Best of Britain and Ireland” travel and tourism exhibition but to experience some of London’s finest...

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Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 415th issue of your monthly overseas travel magazine.

Vacation apartments in Paris now may be more difficult to find.

The city’s government housing agency has begun enforcing a 2005 law that requires any lease on a residential apartment to be for a year or more. To be legally rented for less than a year, an apartment must be classified as a commercial property.

This law does not affect commercial short-term apartment rentals by...

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by Sandra Scott

Dim sum is uniquely Chinese. Consisting of a variety of dumplings and other items usually served in individual bamboo steamers, it could be equated to hors d’oeuvres, and when several are ordered they make a wonderful meal.

Dim sum translates to “touch your heart.” My husband, John, and I were introduced to dim sum in Hong Kong several years ago. A friend took us to a dim sum restaurant where a wheeled cart with a variety of dim sum choices went from table to...

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by Philip Wagenaar, M.D. (Part 2 of a series)

After relating last month the beginning of the 72-day, ’round-the-world trip that my wife, Flory, and I took, Aug. 31-Nov. 11, 2009, in this issue I describe some highlights of the Australia portion.

Note that an electronic visa (ETA), costing AUD20 (near US$18), is required for US and Canadian citizens for a stay of up to 90 days in Australia. This is available online at www.eta.immi.gov.au or through a travel agent.

On Sept...

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by Julie Skurdenis (Third of three parts)

For my husband, Paul, and me, this was the last part of a 22-night trip through Tunisia that began in the north of the country in Carthage, one of Tunisia’s prime archaeological sites, and ended on the island of Jerba in the Mediterranean just off the coast of Tunisia.

The first two weeks of our trip had been full of Numidian, Phoenician, Roman and Byzantine archaeological sites as well as medinas, souks and museums interspersed with...

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Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 414th issue of your monthly overseas travel magazine.

A European Union commission released a report in June calling full-body security scanners a reliable security method.

Currently, the scanners are being used at some airports in the US, Canada, Britain and Russia. The US has purchased 150 and plans to buy 300 more by year’s end. The Netherlands, Finland, France and Italy have run trials of the machines. Italy plans to install them at...

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by Philip Wagenaar (Part one of a series)

I heaved a sigh of relief. For months I had been preparing a trip ’round the world (RTW) for my wife, Flory, and myself. For each of us, I had amassed the 220,000 frequent-flyer miles which Northwest Airlines required for RTW business-class travel.

I wondered if Northwest would ever let me do it, given the airline’s restrictions on traveling with miles. (Northwest was one of the airlines in the alliance SkyTeam and has, since then, been...

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