History

by Deanna Palic

My husband and I stayed at the Duodo Palace Hotel (Calle Minelli San Marco, 1887/1888, 30124 Venezia, ITALY; phone +39 041 5203329, fax 041 2415940, www.duodopalacehotel. com), April 10 and April 18-19, 2007.

In a very convenient location between San Marco and Rialto, it’s a charming little hotel with a helpful, English-speaking staff.

I don’t remember the price, but it was around $250 a night, with breakfast, but that might have been a special deal.

ANNE HELMS

Salinas, CA

I love to visit churches when I am abroad. My favorites are in Sweden, where there are small churches in the countryside that still have their wall paintings from the Middle Ages. I went to Sweden five times from 1996 to 2007.

To find these churches, one uses a very good map on which many are marked. In Sweden about five or six years ago I bought the most expensive selection of maps I could find: a bound book titled “Sverige Vägatlas.” With about 275 pages, it measures about 8"x12".

(2 of 4 on Vietnam & Cambodia)

by June Griffin, Lewiston, ME

by Jay Brunhouse

My husband, R.C., and I cannot speak highly enough for Inside Japan Tours (Lewins House, Lewins Mead, Bristol, BS1 2NN, U.K.; phone ++ 44 [0] 870 120 5600, fax 870 746 1047) and the trip we took with them in October ’06.

M. Lewis Stein, Irvine, CA

Surveying the drab station and its equally unimpressive surroundings as we alighted from the train at Orvieto, my wife, Barbara, queried, “So, where is the picturesque village you promised me?”

Here are a few of the latest travel-book reviews written by ITN readers.

“Saving Private Ryan” and “The Thin Red Line” are about as realistic as war movies get, but I saw a couple of battle films that they couldn’t hold a rifle to. In one, British Tommies in World War I clambered over the top of their muddy trench to face withering German fire that cut many down. In another, Russian troops in World War II made their final assault on Berlin, a destroyed city that looked like the backyard of hell.