In 1985 I traveled to India and found it to be one of the most exotic, fascinating and diverse cultures I had ever seen. Eighteen years and 24 countries later I traveled again to India — and found it to be one of the most exotic, fascinating and diverse cultures I had ever seen.
The ITN staff found the strategy described in the following letter clever and thought that, with the wealth of guidebooks available on so many destinations, some readers might be inspired to use this method in planning which sites to visit.
In view of the plethora of guidebooks on England and their sometimes divergent opinions, a few years ago I thought it might be both interesting and useful to determine the degree of conformity among them in choosing what they considered that country’s top tourist attractions.
by Russ Ellis, ITN
In October ’02, I was a guest on a 4-night tour of Vienna jointly hosted by Austrian Airlines and the Vienna Tourist Board.
Having been to all but a handful of European countries, my wife and I were thinking, “Where next?” As luck would have it, she had just read Randy Keck’s article on Romania (June ’03, pg. 108). She immediately got on the Internet and contacted all the companies mentioned in the story. Each responded, and we chose Balkan Travel & Tours (325 West 38th St., New York, NY 10018; phone 888/763-4288, e-mail balkantravel@worldnet.att.net or visit www.balkan-travel.com).
We are a senior couple who love London. After reading how someone used one location as a hub for sightseeing rather than moving luggage from place to place, we decided to follow that strategy on a visit to London, Sept. 19-Oct. 7, ’03.
Here are some notes on our October-November ’03 trip to New Zealand. We spent 13 days on the North Island and 16 days on the South Island.
I led a group through the Himalayas, Sept. 23-Oct. 17, traveling in India and then entering Bhutan at the southern border town of Phuntsholing.
After checking into our group’s London hotel in March ’03, my roommate and I caught the underground (the ticket seller advised us to buy a day pass instead of a round-trip ticket) to go to the Imperial War Museum to see the many World War II tanks, planes, guns, V-1 and V-2 rockets, Enigma secret code machine, etc.
At El Alamein in Egypt and Normandy in France, I saw NO German tanks. This museum had a German tank buster on a Panzer chassis with an 88mm gun in the turret. A BIG BABY!
We wanted to share notes from a vacation we had in Sweden, July 16-28, ’03. This trip certainly is one we will repeat. We gathered information from the Swedish Travel & Tourism Council (www.visit-sweden.com) and from articles written by ITN subscribers, some of whom we contacted.
We were a little reluctant to try the express train from Arlanda Airport to Stockholm, but it was inexpensive; we paid a family rate of $23 for the two of us. We had our luggage carts from entry and merely took the elevator to the airport’s lower level and boarded the train.
I stayed in London for two weeks, July 7-22, ’03, on a trip booked for $2,528 with Grand Circle Travel (347 Congress St., Boston, MA 02210; phone 800/221-2610).