August 2004

When we were in Paris for a week in early April ’04, we wanted to tour the D-Day battlefields in one day. We were staying at the Marriott on the Champs-Élysées, and tours from the hotel would be expensive, so I went online before we left and found Battlebus Tours under a “D-Day” search.

Both my wife, JoAnn, and I are World War II history buffs, primarily because family members were in uniform during that period. Beside the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944, probably the best known and most ferocious battle was the Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg and Belgium.

We received a letter today, April 15, from the American Canadian Caribbean Line (461 Water St., Warren, RI 02885; phone 800/556-7450). Inside we found a voucher along with a visa refund slip for a cruise we had planned to take from Belize City. This cruise, on their ship Grande Mariner, was to begin on March 25, ’04.

That day, 48 passengers were looking forward to 12 days in the sun, snorkeling and relaxing on a small ship. We had just come back from a company-planned pre-cruise trip into the Belize interior.

I took a Caribbean cruise aboard Mediterranean Shipping Company’s Lirica, Jan. 26-Feb. 6, ’04, and wish to give my impressions. My perspectives come from over 50 cruises, including canal and Atlantic crossings.

The Lirica left Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, for Montego Bay, Jamaica; Cartagena, Colombia; the San Blas Islands and Panama Canal; Puerto Limón, Costa Rica, and then back to Florida to Key West and Ft. Lauderdale. The fare was $1,995 for the first passenger and $700 for the second (special AARP rate).

Following are some good points:

My wife and I booked passage on Holland America’s ms Prinsendam for a 22-day cruise, Sept. 1-Oct. 3, ’03. The ship started in San Francisco, stopped in San Diego and continued to Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, the Panama Canal, Aruba and the Bahamas, then on to Philadelphia and Boston.

by Llewellyn M. Toulmin

Three cabin crew members saved the life of a pasenger who had become seriously ill with chest pains while on a British Midland Airways (bmi) flight from Chicago, Illinois, to Manchester, England, in February.

They used a system called Tempus 2000 Telemedicine to contact the Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, where staff have special training in airborne emergency medical management.

South Korean and North Korean officials have agreed to open two cross-border roads (the Seoul-Sinuiju road and one in the east) and to make test runs on the linked sections of two railways no later than October 2004.

They also are working on a joint industrial park project, with garment plants and other labor-intensive businesses, to be run by the South Koreans.

North Korea will be provided with a loan of 400,000 tons of rice “out of brotherly love and the principle of mutual help.”