Travel Briefs

The Museo del Violino (Piazza Marconi 5, Cremona; phone + 39 0372 801801, www.museodelviolino.org [in Italian]) opened Sept. 15, 2013, in the Italian city of Cremona, home of the famous luthier Antonio Stradivari.

The galleries show the origins of the violin, violin construction, drawings and violin-making tools. Priceless instruments from Stradivari and other Cremona luthiers are on display. There is as an audio guide in English. Open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun. €10 (near $12.50).

In Warwickshire, England, the Earl of Leicester’s chambers on the grounds of Kenilworth Castle opened to the public. In the late 1500s, the Earl John Dudley began expanding and renovating the castle from an extant medieval castle. Queen Elizabeth, who gave the castle to the Earl, visited on four occasions.

The Museum of the Family Home of John Paul II (Koscielna 7, 34-100 Wadowice, Poland; phone +48 33 823 35 55, www.domjp2.pl/en), located in the house where Karol Wojtyła, the future Pope John Paul II, was born, reopened on April 9, 2014, after four years of renovation, just in time for his canonization on April 27. 

Exhibits include personal items from his family and his time as pontiff and the pistol used by Mehmet Ali Ag˘ca in an attempt to assassinate John Paul II in 1981.

In Berlin’s Pergamon Museum (Bodestraße 1-3, 10178 Berlin, Germany; phone +49 30 26 642 4242, www.smb.museum/en/home), the Pergamon Altar, north wing and gallery of Hellenistic art will remain closed for renovations until at least 2020. The south wing of the museum, which includes the Ishtar Gate and the Museum of Islamic Art, is unaffected by the renovations and will remain open. 

Open 10-6 Mon.-Wed. and Fri.-Sun. and 10-8 Thurs. €12 ($15).

In three private locations in the Netherlands (De Heen, Marnemoende and De Cleypoel) and one in Belgium (De Wissen), you can stay in a 42-square-foot cabin aboard an 82-square-foot raft that you have rented. Each raft is accessible only by canoe.

Aug. 29-Sept. 22, two nights’ raft rental costs €146.50 (near $200) and three nights, €199.50 ($272). Sept. 23-Oct. 30, two nights cost €139 and three, €193.50. November-April, two nights, €100, or three, €150. 

Visitors to the Cebu Zoo (Woolbright Dr., Beverly Hills, Cebu City, Cebu 6000, Philippines; phone +63 32 414 7103) can each experience a massage from giant pythons. 

For only the price of admission — PHP25 per adult or PHP10 per child (near 60¢/23¢) — a brave volunteer can lie under four pythons, with a combined weight of 550 pounds, and let their writhing bodies rub the stress away. 

The annual Hogmanay Festival takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland, Dec. 30-Jan. 1. It is preceded by the Hogmanay Carnival, Dec. 27-Jan. 5, with rides on the 137-foot-tall Edinburgh Wheel and the nearly 200-foot-tall spinning Star Flyer in St. Andrew’s Square.

The festival begins with a torchlight procession through the city center led by Vikings from Shetland’s Up Helly Aa Festival. Accompanied by pipes and drums, visitors can join in, having reserved a torch for £10 (near $16.50) plus a £1 booking fee.

My Airport Guide, a new service available at Germany’s Frankfurt Airport (FRA), offers personal assistants to help departing and arriving travelers.

The “Welcome Service,” costing €30 (near $40) for two people, includes, for departing passengers, being met at a prearranged point in the airport, helped with bags and escorted to the check-in counter… or, for arriving passengers, welcome at baggage claim, help with baggage and escort to a prearranged location at the airport.

The original gravesite of English king Richard III (1452-1485) — discovered under a city parking lot on the former grounds of Greyfriars Church in Leicester, England, in 2012 — is now home to the Richard III Visitor Centre (4A St. Martin’s, Leicester, LE1 5DB, U.K.; phone +44 0300 300 0900, www.kriii.com).

The center includes exhibits on its excavation and the methods of proving the grave was that of the infamous king. A replica of his skeleton shows battle wounds.

In Moscow, Russia, until now, visitors could enter and exit the Kremlin only through the Kutafya Tower gate. On Aug. 4, for the first time since the time of the czars, the Spasskaya Tower gate was opened for visitors, allowing people to move directly from the Kremlin to Red Square.