March 2006

Protecting your money while traveling abroad has gotten more complicated over the years, but not for me.

Fit for Fiji

We visited the camera market in Warsaw, Poland, in June ’05. With new and used cameras, computer equipment, cell phones, etc., it’s open only on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Ancient Olympia and Delphi were two sites out of antiquity that my wife and I visited on an April trip to Greece. At Olympia, both of us were in awe. There isn’t a whole lot left, but what is there is impressive when you consider the history. We burned up several rolls of film.

My wife, Mary, and I took a 35-day cruise on Holland America Line’s Statendam, embarking Nov. 17, ’05. This was a wonderful experience for us, even though we had traveled on many shorter cruises. The stops in Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Easter Island, Tahiti, Bora Bora, American Samoa and New Zealand all were excellent, but I want to provide information to ITN readers about one special guide we had on Easter Island.

My husband and I were in the southern part of Chile in January ’05 and found the best tour operator we’ve encountered in our years of travel. He is Enrique Pavez of Lagos Andinos (Antonio Varas 445, Puerto Montt, Chile; phone/fax 56-65 254988 or mobile [9] 7079445, e-mail sales@lagosandinos.cl or visit www.lagosandinos.cl).

Alter Wartesaal (Johannisstrasse 11, Cologne, Germany; phone 49 [0] 221-912 885-0 or visit www.wartesaal.de [in German only]): located adjacent to Cologne’s Hauptbahnhof, this fine restaurant is in the rail station’s old first-class lounge.

Most travelers in France are familiar with the châteaux at Chenonceau and Chambord, but the Château de Veauce? Not likely. So Carole and I didn’t have high expectations when in July ’05 we spied Veauce on the IGN 1:100,000 map we were using to explore the Allier area north of Clermont-Ferrand and west of the auto route that snakes north toward Paris.

Over the last 20 years, China has built up its infrastructure so that it is quite reasonable for individual travelers to tour on their own. Still, there is some risk and one can have some trepidation in undertaking this adventure, especially outside of the big cities. There is an alternative to using a group tour or doing it on your own, however, and that is having a China-based travel agent make all the arrangements.

We spent three days on Cheung Chau, CHINA, a small island that is a 40-minute ferry ride from Hong Kong Central, in early December ’05. We stayed at the Warwick Hotel (East Bay, Cheung Chau; phone [852] 2981 0081, fax 2981 9673 or visit www.warwick hotel.com.hk).