Hotels and Lodging

by Philip Wagenaar, first of four parts

A large gate filled the arch, which gave access to the hotel’s front garden.

“Would they have room for us?,” I mused.

The Pacific International Hotel (43 Esplanade, Cairns, Queensland, Australia; phone +61 7 4051 7888, fax 4031 1445, www.pacifichotelcairns.com) was recommended by a fellow traveler who visits Cairns each year for diving and stays at this hotel. It’s within walking distance of the Esplanade, the night market, the harbor and the shopping and tourist areas.

Hotel Aberdeen (Via Firenze 48, 00184 Rome, ITALY; phone +39 06 4823920, fax 21092, www.travel.it/roma/aberdeen) is a 10-minute walk from Rome’s Termini train station; you can avoid crossing several busy, wide streets by taking the metro to the Repubblica stop.

The hotel is on a relatively quiet street just off of the busy Via Nazionale with its convenient bus stops. The lobby is up a flight of stairs from the main entrance of a large, elegant structure that was once a palace.

My wife and I spent three glorious days in Velden-Auen, Austria, June 29-July 2, 2008. We stayed at the Flair-Hotel (Süduferstrasse/Quellenweg 97, A-9220 Velden-Auen, Austria; phone +43 [0] 42 74 25 34 0,

www.flairhotel.com), a 5-minute drive from the center of Velden. The hotel is right on the lake and has an indoor heated pool.

We paid €118 (about $180 in June ’08) for two people for a spacious room with a balcony facing the lake. The included breakfast was a full buffet.

I led a group of college students on a trip to GERMANY in May ’08. Here is a review of our hotels.

Many travelers book hotel rooms in advance for the first and last nights of their trips but wing it for all the nights in between. Some just start out cold, blowing with the wind. We asked you independent travelers to tell us how you go about finding nonreserved rooms in places you’ve never been to overseas and to answer the following questions.

by Beth Habian, Features Editor

Ask tour guide Marie Rizziello to sum up Italy in a few words and you’re bound to hear, “It’s the center of the universe.”

by Nancy Tardy, Henderson, NV

Forget the stories you may have heard about the difficulties of traveling to Easter Island. Though one of the most remote inhabited spots in the world, it is neither hard to reach nor outrageously expensive to visit.

I had the pleasure of taking an outstanding 20-day tour of Papua New Guinea with ElderTreks (Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 800/741-7956, www.eldertreks.com), Sept. 3-23, 2008. The land price was $8,995.

Most companies “do” PNG in 10 to 14 days and tour perhaps a festival and the main cities. ElderTreks’ 20-day program was the only group tour I found which spent three days on Kiriwina in the Trobriand Islands and two nights in a village setting on the Sepik River.