Features

Throughout its history, the Danube has flowed through dozens of empires, kingdoms and principalities and, now, nations whose independence was won through struggle and endurance. In April-May 2016, I followed its route on an 11-night cruise with Value World Tours* aboard the MS River Navigator.

This “Southern Danube Discovery” cruise, priced from $2,799 to $4,098 per person, double, depending on cabin category, began in Austria and included stops in Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria, ending in Romania.

The English-speaking group that I was a part of...

For more than a hundred years, Timbuktu (Tombouctou) has been used as a metaphor for the most isolated place in the world. Unlike the fictional Shangri-la (invented by James Hilton in his novel “Lost Horizon”), however, Timbuktu is a very real place.

A bit of history

Its reputation for faraway isolation developed during the 19th century, but it did have a golden age, based on trade and scholarship, from the 12th to the 16th centuries. The University of Timbuktu was a thriving center of learning, and the city amassed hundreds of thousands of historically priceless...

In pandemic mode, temporarily cut off from our travels, all that we have left to satisfy our adventurous spirits are our memories… and planning for the next trip.

As longtime friends and travel companions, we plan our own trips over several months, sometimes years, scouring blogs, asking others about their experiences and always reading everything available in ITN! We travel together about once a year to places that aren’t of interest to our other travel companions. We try to focus on the lived experiences of a typical resident, including local cultural and historical...