Middle East articles

9-day / 7-night tour of TURKEY. Highlights: Istanbul / Troy / Pergamon / Seven Churches of the Revelation / theater in Ephesus where St. Paul preached. Land, $2,100. Single supp., $350. TEO World Culture Tours (New York, NY; 888 / 444-1110).
On Egypt’s Giza Plateau, six Old Kingdom tombs, constructed in the Fourth Dynasty (2890-2686 BC), are to be opened by the end of 2012. The most famous, that of Princess Meresankh III, granddaughter of the pharaoh Khufu, has been closed to the public for 25 years.
Second floor, Ilana Goor Museum, Jaffa, Israel.
For first-time visitors to Jerusalem, the Old City is unexpectedly chaotic and crowded. Welcome refuge can be found in the 154-year-old Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family (Via Dolorosa 37 91194 Jerusalem, Israel +972 2 626 58 00).
When traveling on your own within Israel, don’t overlook the option of flying. Admittedly, Israel is a small country, but domestic air travel is reasonably priced and quick.
Tell ITN about the funniest thing that ever happened to you while traveling in a foreign country. (ITN prints no info on destinations in the United States.) There are no restrictions on length.
REPORT ON MEXICO…
The winners of the essay contest announced in the December ’11 issue
At the end of January 2011, my daughter, LeAnn, 22, and I finalized our plans to visit Egypt. Our trip was not meant to be a traditional vacation but one arranged as we went along our way, using local guides and taking public transportation. We wanted to see the same Cairo that 18 million residents live and work in every day. However, only days after we booked our airline tickets for this 10-day journey, Cairo was ablaze in protest over the policies of the government of President Hosni Mubarak. We postponed our trip and departed for Cairo on Feb. 28. The adventure we sought proved to be much more than what we had bargained for.
In Israel, a complex of buildings from the tenth to sixth centuries BC that were exposed during a multiyear archaeological dig are now open to the public inside the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park (ph