July 2006

(First of three parts on Australia, jump to part 1, p

I plan on traveling to France for two weeks in the middle of October. I have scanned my passports, driver’s license, airline tickets and other papers and put them on a flash drive. I find that I need a 512mb drive to hold it all.

These flash drives (or jump drives) are about the size of my little finger and mainly plastic. It should be very easy to carry copies of all of my paperwork, in case I lose anything.

Flents Ear Stopples, which have been my trusted companion during 50 years of travel, have come in handy whenever loud noise has kept me awake.

The reader’s letter about drying clothes by twisting them in towels (June ’06, pg. 92) describes what we’ve done for years. Rather than reuse towels damp after showering, though, I have a twist on her scheme.

When we are first shown to our hotel room, I always ask for two extra bath towels to be delivered immediately as well as daily thereafter, thus giving us extra DRY towels with which to wring out the laundry.

JANE B. HOLT
Hinesburg, VT

I believe in some literary license, but the reader’s comparison of the Flaming Cliffs in Mongolia to the Grand Canyon (May ’06, pg. 64) goes way too far and creates unrealistic expectations for future travelers.

We, too, visited the Flaming Cliffs in July ’05, and we have just returned from our third visit to the Grand Canyon. The latter continues to be awe-inspiring, regardless of our having seen it before, and remains near the top of our long list of sites seen around the world.

We toured Prague for two days in August ’05 and on a third day took a trip to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Cesky Krumlov with a guide and an air-conditioned car.

We took a trip to Libya with Distant Horizons (Long Beach, CA; 800/333-1240), an ITN advertiser. We were quite fortunate to have received visas, which arrived at almost the last minute. Other tours had to be canceled because the Libyans had not issued visas for those groups.

It seems the Libyan government relaxed its restrictions on visas, at least temporarily, to take advantage of the thousands of people who wanted to watch the total solar eclipse on March 29, ’06. Our group left Libya on March 27, and Distant Horizons had to pay a special “eclipse tax.”

I visited several countries in the Arabian Peninsula, including the United Arab Emirates, in early December ’05. One day in the northern emirate of Ras al Khaimah (locally known as RAK), I was traveling around in my hired car with driver when I spotted what looked like a racetrack near the community of Diqdaqa. I immediately thought “Camel racing!”

While on my independent tour of Australia in March ’06, I was waiting for the Adelaide-Alice Springs train to board and got into a conversation with Lois, a lady who had lived in Alice Springs for 20 years.

Every year I spend a wonderful four days in London, seeing as many theatrical productions as I can squeeze in. This year’s visit, in April, was one of my best experiences so far.