Features

August 2019 issue

Exploring the elegant gardens of Tuscany
By Beth Habian
View of the beautiful garden at Villa Poggio Torselli near San Casciano Val di Pesa.

I’m not a big planner. Many of my life experiences have been the result of my opening the door each time opportunity knocked.

After earning my college degree, I took a 3-month “temp” position at a publishing office in Sacramento to bridge the gap between graduation and figuring out what it was I was going to do next. Twenty-five years later, I’m still at ITN, my life enriched by the travels I’ve been blessed to have experienced as part of my job.

So when a planned “work” trip to Sicily in May of this year was canceled, I simply...

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September 2019 issue

Walking the ‘blue paths’ of Greece’s Cyclades
By Yvonne Horn
Blue-domed church seen on the way to Ancient Arkesini, on the island of Amorgos.

In the Cyclades, a group of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, trails are called “blue paths.” With every turn, you can expect a view of the sea. How prescient of our group of 11 walkers to have signed up to explore paths on three of these islands with an organization called The Blue Walk!

Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, The Blue Walk (phone, in the US, 551/258-3955, www.thebluewalk.com) offers small-group walking vacations in Italy, Spain and France as well as the Cyclades. Its tag line, “Travel at the speed of you,” sounded irresistible to one of my weekly...

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October 2019 issue

From the capital to the southern coast – exploring Spain independently
By Susan DeMaggio
View of the walled city of Ávila from the Mirador Los Cuatro Postes.

My husband, Emmett Lee, and I are avid travel enthusiasts (65 and 70, respectively) who enjoy the planning process as well as the actual travel experience, and we almost always rent a car to travel our own itinerary. We travel about four months per year, and when we aren’t traveling, we’re planning our next trip or the one after.

To celebrate my 70th birthday, we decided on a trip to Spain, spending three weeks on the Costa del Sol and 10 days in and around Madrid in February 2019. All the arrangements for this 35-day off-season trip were made from our lounge chairs at...

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July 2019 issue

A dream realized in Southern Africa
By Dorothy Botnick
Cape Town’s harbor, with Table Mountain in the background.

Sometimes, when you dream of a trip for a long time and begin planning far in advance, you wonder if everything will live up to your expectations. In our case, our adventure to Southern Africa (May 20-June 11, 2018) was almost everything we wanted it to be, and we returned home excited about having taken one of our best trips ever.

Making plans

I began planning this trip about a year and a half in advance. As part of my research, I looked at articles on the International Travel News website. One article, in the February 2013 issue, caught my attention: “Spending 20...

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June 2019 issue

Going cold Turkey on a skiing adventure tour
By Dan Barr
A view of Mt. Erciyes and the ski resort.

It was dawn when the soulful call to prayer woke me up, lifting me from my bed, the ethereal quality of the cries wafting into my window like the scent of a freshly baked cartoon pie. Suddenly, a train clattered by underneath my window, breaking the spell.

I was waking up in Istanbul, near the old city walls of Constantinople. Despite the fact that I had just gotten back to sleep after waking up at 3:30, suffering from the dreaded effects of jet lag — having recently arrived from Los Angeles on a direct Turkish Airlines flight — I don’t think I’ve ever...

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April 2019 issue

A guided, solo trip to Egypt offers exceptional views inside the tombs of Luxor’s West Bank
By Laurel Glassman
Inside the tomb of Ramesses III in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.

After a visit to Egypt some years ago, I developed a particular interest in the tombs of the pharaohs and their queens.

Inspired by The Great Courses lectures by Professor Bob Brier, the "History of Ancient Egypt" and "Decoding the Secrets of Egyptian Heiroglyphs," I booked a solo trip to Egypt (Feb. 22-March 2, 2018) with Museum Tours (Littleton, CO; 888/932-2230, www.museumtours.com).

The goal of this trip was to see every single tomb in the West Bank of Luxor (ancient Thebes). More particularly, I planned to see every single tomb of the pharaohs, the...

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January 2008 issue

Laos — land of a million elephants

by Richard Shally, Walnut Creek, CA. Photos by Henk Ten Dam, Netherlands

Laos is known as “the land of a million elephants,” but are there really a million? To find out, I took a 17-day Small Group Discovery Tour with Carpe Diem Travel, a UK-based socially responsible tour company. The January ’07 tour started and ended in Bangkok.

After our arrival, an introductory meeting was held by our tour leader, Marc Lansu, for the 12 world travelers who were about to begin this memorable journey to Laos, one of the least-visited and poorest of the Southeast...

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June 2015 issue

Two weeks in the seaside town of Sperlonga – the ultimate Italian experience
By Renee Rubin
The beach at Sperlonga

My husband, Jack, and I are longtime subscribers of International Travel News and have gleaned much from readers’ advice over the years. However, a September 2014 trip to Italy was the first we took from an ad we found in The Mart section, printed at the end of each month’s magazine — a small ad that finally drew me in after years of reading it. With our first phone call, I immediately took to June Morrocco, owner of To Italy With Love Tours (Grants Pass, OR; 971/706-9328, www.toitalywithlovetours.com). She sent me materials that were interesting but, frankly, not exactly...

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