December 2014

Could a 14-year-old girl find happiness taking Spanish lessons in Guatemala with her 75-year-old grandparents? We hoped so! 

I found Florence Drake’s letter, “Keeping a Travelogue” (Oct. ’14, pg. 32), to be interesting. Traveling with a group to Romania in 2007, I used a borrowed laptop and dial-up Internet to send my first travelogue. It was a difficult process, at best.

Over the years, I improved as I went along, purchasing a laptop and building a database of 200 email addresses. It then got to the point where sending pictures and travelogues required three separate emails because of the length of the address list.

I’ve been writing journals of my travels ever since my first trip to Italy in 1980 with my husband. 

My dad died just before he and my mom were supposed to go to Europe after waiting until he retired. My husband and I decided not to wait, and our first trip to Italy was followed by others to visit my husband’s family. 

We also visited Morocco, Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Cuba and many more. I kept notes on each one in a notebook, then wrote the journal after I returned home. 

Visitors to Barcelona who confine their sightseeing to the Gaudí architecture, Las Ramblas pedestrian mall, the Gothic Quarter and the inviting beach miss one of the city’s most enticing attractions.

El Poble Espanyol, or The Spanish Village, (Avda. Francesc Ferrer i Guardia, 13, 08038 Barcelona, Spain; phone +34 93 508 63 00, www.poble-espanyol.com/en), is an open-air museum that combines an introduction to that country’s architectural treasures and various cultures with an enjoyable shopping and dining experience.

Some banks do not charge wire fees if you have a good relationship with them — for example, if you have a bank account that’s connected to a stock brokerage account, as account holders with Bank of America could have with Merrill Lynch.

Someone with a significant stock brokerage account (perhaps $250,000) in an IRA or a large bank account with CDs may be given premier banking status. In that case, there would probably not be a charge for wire transfers. Another perk to having premier banking could be access to airport lounges.

I read the letter “Global Entry Advantages” (Sept. ’14, pg. 54), regarding programs allowing approved travelers expedited security screening for selected departures in US airports.

My husband and I have had and have used the Global Entry program flawlessly on our returns from international trips. However, it has seldom been the case for us that TSA Pre√™ (Pre-check) has been assigned us on any domestic trips. Even queues marked “TSA Pre√/Global Entry” refuse us if “TSA Pre√” is not actually printed on our boarding passes.

My husband and I had booked a cruise on Holland America Line’s Prinsendam, which had a port call in Fowey, Cornwall, England, on July 24, 2014. We’re great fans of the PBS British comedy “Doc Martin” and wanted to see the town of Port Isaac, where it’s filmed. In February, I decided to contact Dacey’s Cornish Tours (St. Paul, MN; 651/484-4689,

daceyscornishtours.com), an advertiser in ITN, to see if they would have suggestions on how to get there.

Uisge Beatha, Gaelic for “water of life,” is known around the world as Scotch whisky. When my wife, Margaret, and I traveled in Scotland in June 2014 (Nov. ’14, pg. 20), we knew we had to learn more about the national beverage.

There are more than 100 distilleries in Scotland, and more than 30 of those offer tours. We toured four distilleries and learned a great deal about making and tasting whisky.

My husband and I have been very blessed to travel to many places. One of the joys we have is bringing home treasures that remind us of our journeys and the people and places we’ve visited.

Over the years, we have found various items we love to collect. For example, we have interesting carpets in a variety of sizes, textures and colors. Some hang on the walls, and some we walk on every day.

We continue to add to our collection of Nativity scenes, which we display at Christmas. 

Before joining a Douro River cruise in Portugal in June 2014, my husband and I booked a small-group day trip from Lisbon to Sintra and Cascais at $70 per person. We booked it through Viator (San Francisco, CA; 866/648-5873, www.viator.com).