My wife, Rita, and I returned on Nov. 21, 2006, from a tour of Japan with Overseas Adventure Travel (625 Mount Auburn St., Ste. 200 North, Cambridge, MA 02138; 800/493-6824, www.oattravel.com), the best group tour we have ever taken.
The land portion was $5,458 for two for 13 days. We bought only the land tour because we had frequent-flyer miles with which to upgrade; we flew over three days early to see more of Tokyo.
I had the opportunity to travel to Mendoza, the attractive city of 100,000-plus in the heart of northern Argentina’s booming viticulture region, in April ’06. While the city is a thriving regional commercial center, it is the huge wine industry — featuring literally scores of wineries (bodegas) in Mendoza and the surrounding districts — that primarily provides both its national identity and its popularity with foreign visitors. Mendoza has an annual 3-day wine festival the first weekend of March.
Here are a few of the latest travel-book reviews written by ITN readers.
At the conclusion of our October ’05 trip to Slovenia, my wife, Paula, and I felt that it was the most beautiful and photogenic of the 18 countries we had visited. Here are some resources and tips we would like to share from that trip.
Story by Dana McMahan, Photos by Dana & Brian McMahan and Holly Maynard.
My traveling companion, Pat, and I spent 12 days on a barging trip on the Burgundy Canal in France, June 23-July 6, 2006.
This letter deals with a cruise to Mexico and Hawaii, areas that ITN does not cover, however the ports are not at matter but the ship itself, which makes voyages around the world. — Editor
My husband Don, and I attended a marvelous “tango lesson/dinner show” called Complejo Tango Cena-Show (Escuela de Baile-Canto-Musica, Av. Belgrano 2608, C1096AAQ, Buenos Aires, Argentina; phone [54] [0] 11 4941 1119, fax 43082106 or visit www.complejotango.com.ar) in Buenos Aires in January ’06. It was one of the best events of our 24-day trip to South America.
Our travel agent prearranged the evening, which costs $60. It included a hotel pickup and return. Our group was small, 10 to 12 people.
The recently created prohibitions for carrying liquid substances in carry-ons aboard airplanes makes shipping wine in hold baggage an exercise in creativity to prevent breakage, leakage or other calamities. On a November ’06 trip to the Mediterranean, I managed to get a bottle of wine home safely in hold baggage, but I held my breath until I opened the suitcase in which it had been secured.
For some years I have watched travelers in restaurants in central and southern France, northern Italy and the islands of Corsica, Sicily and Sardinia both struggling with menus in a mysterious foreign language and failing to use any of a series of little paperbacks on eating and drinking in the country they are visiting. When I ask them if they have ever come across restaurant guides, the answer is consistently negative.