Airport Transfer

My partner and I departed the Rome airport (FCO) for Seattle (SEA), with a one-hour layover at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG) along the way, on Sept. 25, 2015.
The FCO-CDG flight left 40 minutes late. The flight gate — whose number was not even announced until well past the scheduled boarding time — consisted of little more than a corridor in a lower level that led to a bus that took passengers to the plane. The bus made about four trips to transport everyone.

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.

It seems like all “roads” in Africa go through O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa, and on a trip to Namibia and Zimbabwe, my husband, George, and I passed through several times.

On the first leg, we flew KLM Royal Dutch Airlines from Los Angeles to Amsterdam to Johannesburg. We had been sitting 20-plus hours in economy on the long-haul flights when we arrived on June 25, 2014, at about 10 p.m.

Northern Ireland is experiencing increased tourism, with fans of “Game of Thrones” arriving to visit locations where much of this popular TV series is filmed. In addition, the new Titanic Belfast museum (1 Olympic Way, Queen’s Road, Belfast) is drawing visitors in numbers well above expectations.

My wife and I booked a cruise on Voyager, of the Voyages of Discovery line (866/623-2689), which would depart from the Port of Tokyo. I was told, at the time, by a rep at the cruise line’s Ft. Lauderdale office that they did not book flights or airport-port transfers.