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Six miles from Schiphol Airport, near Amsterdam, I spent a night in Hotel Zwanenburg (Olmenlaan 52, 1161 JX Zwanenburg, The Netherlands; phone 31 20 497 80 20) on Sept. 28, 2011.
The hotel is convenient to the center of Zwanenburg, for restaurants and a supermarket. It is also close to bus service to Amsterdam (20 minutes away), and it runs a free airport shuttle from 5:30 a.m. to midnight. On arrival, I contacted the hotel and was picked up at bus stop B14.
From a trip to Wales and southwest England that my husband, Jim, and I took, here are some recommendations of low-cost lodgings.
Seventeen of us, friends and family, followed the wildebeest migration in Tanzania, June 30-July 12, 2011, and it was the trip of a lifetime. We traveled with Africa Dream Safaris (Rancho Palos Verdes, CA; 877/572-3274).
We discovered Africa Dream online in 2005 and took a trip that we were so satisfied with, we used them again for our migration adventure, booking in August ’10. Because of our large group, we received a discount; our land cost was $5,087 per person. Round-trip air from Miami cost $2,130 each.
My wife and I took the eight-day tour “Munich, Salzburg & Vienna” with Globus (Littleton, CO; 866/755-8581), Sept. 4-11, 2011. The land price was $1,549 per person.
It was described as a “leisurely paced tour.” Perhaps the designation came from the fact that we stayed two nights each in Munich and Salzburg and three nights in Vienna rather than one night in each location. However, with my weak legs and the amount of walking we did, in particular at Neuschwanstein Castle and in Salzburg and Vienna, I felt that it wasn’t leisurely.
My wife, Lois, and I took a Grand Circle Travel tour of Chile and Argentina, Jan. 9-23, 2011. We live in the Northwest and did not know when we booked the tour what air routing we would be assigned. For us, it was four flights and 32 hours to get from Bend, Oregon, to Santiago, Chile, and the same going from Buenos Aires back home.
The tour began upon our arrival in Santiago on Tuesday morning, and we had to stay awake all day. After three days in Santiago, we flew to Puerto Montt and spent two nights in Puerto Varas at the Cabaña del Lago Hotel.
Eight-hundred years of history in 30 minutes — the documentary “The Riga Story,” in English and Russian, runs daily on the hour from 10 to 3 at Cinema Riga/Splendid Palace (Elizabetes 61, Riga, Latvia; phone +371 67 18 11 44). A ticket costs LVL5 (near $9.70).
by Hugh Clark; Tampa, Florida
As ITN went to press, the State Department had travel warnings on 31 destinations: Afghanistan, Algeria, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Eritrea, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Israel/West Bank/Gaza, Kenya, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Republic of South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
For details, call the State Department at 202/647-5225 or visit www.travel.state.gov.
Celebrity Cruises, Royal Caribbean International and Norwegian Cruise Line are canceling parasailing excursions in the Caribbean indefinitely.
