08
I wanted to react to a comment a subscriber made in reviewing the Hotel Stone in Istanbul (March ’10, pg. 4). He noted two drawbacks of the hotel, the second being its proximity to mosques, where “the morning call to prayer is a wake-up call at around 6 a.m.”
I don’t want to disparage the writer’s likes and dislikes, for we all have them. I just want to say that what is a drawback for one man may be a benefit to another.
Pilgrimages fascinate me — the ritual, the pageantry, the dedication of the pilgrims, their willingness to undergo hardship and their sense of fulfillment upon the achievement of their quest. My own “pilgrimages” have been secular.
In August ’08 I was simply a traveler drawn to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain for the annual late-July festival of Santiago, the biblical Saint James.
Here are hotel recommendations from our trip to France, May 19-June 1, 2009.
We were looking for a quiet, smoke-free apartment for our stay in Brussels, Sept. 23-29, 2009, and B&B Maritiem (rue de Ribaucourtstraat 135, 1080 Brussels, Belgium; phone +32 0 498 33 97 32) was perfect.
Our hosts, Lies and Danny, answered all our questions prior to our booking online and provided travel advice later.
My wife, Rose, and I along with our English friends Betty and Allan Madden spent a few days in Wales in May ’09.
To see various regions of New Zealand without the hassles of driving, my husband, Keith, and I decided that the expedition-style ship of the Australian company Orion Expedition Cruises (New York, NY; 877/674-6687) was what we were looking for.
Please see the follow-up letter, Opals in Australia. —Editor
I bought what I believed were four loose opals for AUD196 (US$122) at Rochi's Opals, a major jeweler in Melbourne, Australia, on Jan. 4, 2010. Back home in Santa Fe on Jan. 9, my trusted local jeweler alerted me that what I thought were pure opals were not*.
The following is a greatly edited version of a subscriber’s letter.
by Harriet Hughes, Alexandria, VA
In February 2010 I toured Senegal and Mauritania with Spiekermann Travel (Eastpointe, MI; 800/645-2323). The food was good and the weather great, and our small group had a wonderful time exploring these two off-the-beaten-path countries.
In Europe, my husband, Jim, and I use our US-issued credit union debit card to make withdrawals from ATMs. We seldom use charge cards and mostly operate with the local currency.