Middle East

We enjoyed a driving tour of Greece and Turkey, May 3–26, ’05. We visited all the usual places, so I will limit comments to recommendations.

We took a 2-week trip to Malta plus an add-on week in Sicily, April 16-May 6, ’05, with Grand Circle Travel (Boston, MA; 800/221-2610 or www.gct.com). For my wife and me, the cost was approximately $6,254 from Los Angeles. The experience became a once-in-a-lifetime highlight.

All the credit goes to our Malta program director, Stephen Micallef-Grogan, who led our Grand Circle group of 27 experienced travelers. Stephen, a native of Malta, is fluent in English, Maltese, French and Italian and has been a registered tour director for 12 years.

(Part 2 of 3 on Morocco)

Casablanca

Moreen and I consider ourselves fortunate to have visited the Middle East often. Friends say perhaps we have tempted fate, though we disagree. We don’t speak Arabic, Turkish or other languages in this Muslim and Arab world, but we do respect carefully its many cultures. We believe personal travel articles, similar to those presented in ITN, permit readers to see behind national media reports. This preface leads us into this month’s travel for the adventuresome.

by Philip Wagenaar

(First of two parts)

Olpe, Germany, May 9, 2005. . .

With disbelief, I stared at the notice on the wall next to the ATM in the Volksbank’s small foyer.

Springtime turned out to be a great time of year for touring Turkey. As we drove through central Anatolia in April-May several years ago, the wheat fields, stretching to the horizon, were just greening up. Farther south, near the Mediterranean coast, fruit trees were blooming and brilliant red poppies were a splash of scarlet along the roads and in the pastures. Tomatoes were being harvested in the acres and acres of greenhouses.

Tell ITN about the funniest thing that ever happened to you while traveling in a foreign country. There are no restrictions on length. (ITN prints no info on destinations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean.) The ITN staff will choose each month’s winner, who will receive a free one-year subscription to ITN. Entries not chosen cannot be acknowledged.

This month’s winner is CIDNE ROSSI of Glendale, California:

by Wayne Wirtanen

(First of three parts)

Partway through my visit to Morocco in September ’04, I realized that there were similarities there to what one might find on a trip in California.

Fifteen hundred years ago, Kairouan was only a desert crossroads, a caravan stop in the sands of what is now Tunisia in North Africa. But this quickly changed. In fewer than 100 years following the death of Muhammad in A.D. 632, caravans from Saudi Arabia had spread his word of Islam from India to the Atlantic Ocean.

Five women and I spent two weeks in Israel and Jordan in October ’04.