May 2011

On a visit to Paris, Sept. 21-29, 2010, several times my wife and I had problems getting Métro tickets at the smaller stations that had only one agent, who seemed only to supply information and did not dispense tickets anymore.

He’d tell us to use the automated machine, which only took chip-and-PIN cards or coinage. Some machines did take paper money, but it was hard to tell which were which.

We always tried to get a carnet of 10 tickets at a time to avoid having to repeatedly depend on the machines.

I traveled in France, Sept. 15-Oct. 10, 2010, and visited Paris, Lyon, Dijon and several small towns and villages in Burgundy. I used my American-issued Visa credit card, American Express card and Visa debit card without any problems at all in ATM machines and at merchants’, restaurants and hotels.

There were only two minor problems. My American cards did not work in the automated ticket machines in the Paris Métro or in the automated ticket machines at the railroad stations. However, at the rail stations I was able to use my credit cards in the ticket office.

We read the letters about using American credit cards (not the chip-and-PIN type) in Europe (May ’10, pg. 36) and were a bit concerned about it before our trip to Germany and Switzerland in September ’10; we have a MasterCard and a Visa card.

We need not have worried. Everywhere we went, we had no problems.

I stayed 3½ weeks in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, in June ’10 with my children and grandchildren, ages 13 to 50, mostly visiting the smaller towns in Provence.

I took a 12-day Caribbean cruise, “Sun-Splashed Holiday,” on the Regatta of Oceania Cruises (Miami, FL; 800/531-5619), Dec. 22, 2010-Jan. 2, 2011. Sailing out of Miami, the ship called at Turks & Caicos, Dominican Republic, British Virgin Islands (Tortola), Antigua (St. John’s), Martinique and St. Croix. We didn’t get into St. Barts because the seas were too rough.

My cruises are portions of longer trips, up to two months in duration, and because this octogenarian doesn’t want to struggle with luggage or porters, he travels light — an old nylon garment bag with big zippered pockets slung on one shoulder and a carry-on nylon shoulder bag on the other.

Namibia may not be everyone’s idea of a safari country. It doesn’t have the variety, large herds or impressive migrations of animals one can experience in East Africa or Botswana. However, as my wife and I discovered in September ’10, Namibia impresses with spectacular scenery, wildlife that have adapted to the incredibly harsh desert environment, and the opportunity to meet native people little affected by the outside world.