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March 2007 issue

Guide for Spain and Brazil

We took a trip to Brazil with Elderhostel (Boston, MA; 877/426-8056, www.elderhostel.org), Sept. 30-Oct. 20, 2006. It was a great trip with fantastic sites, excellent and delicious food, good hotels and terrific local guides. The cost was $5,262, land only, and $6,199 including airfare from New York (JFK).

Best of all was our tour leader, Alex Paiva (xanikhouse@gmail.com). We have been on many tours, visiting about 80 countries, and he is the BEST tour leader we have ever had. He was kind, helpful and very knowledgeable.

Based in Barcelona, he leads tours in Spain, Portugal,...

July 2008 issue

Travel clocks, timers, and timepieces

Quentin Burke of Holtville, California, wrote the following to ITN readers: “Is it preferable to carry a timer or an alarm clock when traveling? Mostly, we’ve found it better to simply set a miniature digital interval timer to ‘eight hours’ for a night’s sleep than fumble with teeny buttons and worry whether we got a.m. or p.m. right on a so-called travel alarm clock. Also, a timer is handy to have in the pocket in certain instances to signal ‘Got to get back to the boat/airport/bus depot in two hours.’

“What kind of timing device do you take on trips? What size is it and how much...

December 2007 issue

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Along with a group of nine other adventurers, I went on a tour of a country that few travelers have ever been allowed to visit, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), March 24-April 8, 2007.

We went with Bestway Tours & Safaris (Ste. 206, 8678 Greenall Ave., Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5J 3M6; 800/663-0844 or 604/264-7378, www.bestway.com), which arranged the visas for us. For this tour, I paid about $4,500 from New York.

When King Abdullah (Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Said) of the KSA met with President Bush at Crawford, Texas, in April 2005, he agreed to allow restricted...

April 2007 issue

Complaining brought police

In an exception to ITN’s policy of not covering travel in North America (or the Caribbean), we are printing the following letter from an ITN subscriber as a complement to the previous letter from Ruth Weiss.

For eight months my husband, Martin, and I had looked forward to sharing a Christmas with family members in Ixtapa, Mexico. Our plans included flying early on the morning of Dec. 17 out of Louisville, Kentucky, through Dallas to Houston, where we were to pick up our Aeromexico flight.

For our 6:31 a.m. flight, we arrived at the airport at 5:15 a.m. and were pleased to...

November 2008 issue

Currency exchange in Bali

Upon arriving in Bali, Indonesia, Americans, Canadians and Europeans are required to pay $25 for a Visa On Arrival (VOA). The visa will be applied to a page in your passport. Most travelers from Asian countries are spared this expense.

For the convenience of visitors, many money changers are available to convert dollars to rupiah. A word of caution from someone who has traveled often to Bali, most recently in May ’08 — many of these people are less than honest.

Just be sure you understand that the rate of exchange is the same as that posted on the board in front where they do...

May 2008 issue

Initial snag at Immigration

My name is J. William. On my passport, my first name has always read “JWilliam.” This has been on several passports over about 50 years without any problems.

However, when we returned to Dallas from Mexico on Feb. 25, 2008, the computer at Immigration would not recognize my passport. I was taken into a private room. After I waited about 45 minutes for other people to be processed, the officer came out, apologized and returned my passport.

He said the State Department had put in a new system in December ’07 and these computers at Immigration control can no longer read any...

October 2007 issue

Guatemala insights

My wife and I took a great 2-week tour, “Guatemala: Land of Eternal Spring,” April 17-30, 2007, led by an exceptional director, the best we have had in our many years of travel. Sergio Garcia (not the Sergio Garcia), a full-blooded Maya, speaks excellent English and is well educated and extremely knowledgeable about his country and its extraordinary culture.

This tour was with Odysseys Unlimited (Watertown, MA), an agency that emphasizes in small-group travel. There were 14 in our group.

At a cost of $1,995 plus airline taxes and fees of $297, the tour included round-trip air...

March 2008 issue

Best airline to/from the U.S.

Of all the airlines you’ve flown between the U.S. and a foreign country in the last three years, which airline’s flight(s) did you most appreciate? That’s what we asked readers to write about, using the following parameters.

Compare only the airlines’ flights on which you traveled in the same class of service. Rate only the in-flight experience. Do not consider ground personnel or processes, the on-time record, delays due to mechanical problems, etc. Name the airline(s) and where (cities) and when you flew.

Following are responses received. To share your views, write to Best...