Public Transportation

Our daughter and 14-year-old grandson spent two weeks with us in Italy in July ’09.

When we think of buses in Central or South America, we often think of old buses where people ride on the top. Well, our bus from Cusco to Puno, the Gateway to Lake Titicaca, was the Inca Express (office in Puno and Lima and at Av. La Paz C-32 Urb El Ovalo, Wanchaq, Cusco, Peru; phone 084 247887, www.inkaexpress.com) and was large and quite nice.

The trip took nearly 10 hours and covered about 235 miles. We stopped often to visit missions or to take a rest stop and eat.

On their way to the Peruvian Amazon, most people fly into and out of Iquitos and never see more of the city than the drive from the airport to the boat dock and back. My husband, Jerry, and I decided to spend one day (two nights) in Iquitos, Feb. 18-19, 2009, as part of our Amazon trip with Explorama (Nahant, MA; 800/707-5275, www.explorama.com).

My wife and I spent 3½ weeks in Chile in January ’08. We had been there before and, in addition to wanting to explore new places, we had friends to visit, so we decided to design our own plan, but we needed help with reservations and logistics.

We called upon Scott Jones, longtime resident of Chile and director of Chilean Special Journeys (phone 888/345-6077, www.chileanspecialjourneys.com), which we found via an ad in ITN. Communication was easy because Scott, headquartered in Santiago, has a toll-free number from the US in addition to e-mail access.

Tell ITN about the funniest thing that ever happened to you while traveling in a foreign country. There are no restrictions on length. (ITN prints no info on destinations in the US, Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean.) The ITN staff will choose each month’s winner, who will receive a free one-year subscription to ITN. Entries not chosen cannot be acknowledged.

This month’s winner is J.P. WILLIAMS of San Jose, California:

Prior to our trip to Romania in April ’07, we had read many bad things about the taxi drivers in Bucharest, so we had the hotel send a taxi to the airport for us since we would be arriving at 12:30 a.m. on British Air.

The hotel did that, but it was not a good idea as the flight was over an hour late; instead of its costing $20, it cost us $50 because the driver had waited for the flight.

Plus we had to use American currency because the driver spoke no English and did not understand we wanted to get some Romanian money at the airport.

RACHEL BALDWIN

My wife, Jane, and I traveled to Copenhagen for the first time in 2006. We went to the town square to find a sightseeing bus and boarded one which had “Hop On-Hop Off” prominently displayed on the side. We rode for two or three stops and then hopped off at a palace that had been made into a museum.

After visiting the museum, we returned to the bus stop and within five minutes another bus appeared. We hopped on and went to see the Little Mermaid for the photo op. Another bus picked us up within 15 minutes.

A reader remarked that in November ’07 the Bucharest subway was “filthy but worked” (Nov. ’08, pg. 14). Things have changed. Both lines I rode on in October ’08 were served by beautiful new articulated trains open from one end to the other, and the whole system was clean.

The historic quarter was in the midst of massive street work, as if they were determined to have the entire area redone at once.

The weakened dollar certainly affects our US friends who visit us here in Outer London (Wimbledon), but a bit of research and knowledge can reveal good deals and plenty of freebies.

by Jay Brunhouse