Travelers' Intercom | International Travel News

December 2005 issue

Ruminating on laminating

While I was spending a month in Paris, May 5-June 4, ’04, my daughter visited me for eight days. Both of us paid attention to visitors of various nationalities and found a couple of things that would have helped them navigate the tortuous streets of this city.

My daughter was happy to have a compass to line up its arrow with the creases of the maps we were using.

Perhaps the very best thing I did was to follow the advice of a young lady and 6-year resident of Paris who waited on me in San Diego’s Le Travel Store prior to the trip. I purchased a copy of the “DK Eyewitness...

April 2005 issue

LHSDGT, anyone?

Randy Keck’s article on long-haul, single-destination group tours, or “LHSDGT” (Sept. ’04, pg. 106), really hit home with me. For 25 years, when working in the corporate world, I was lucky to be able to go away for a whole week. Now that I am retired, I want to travel for long periods (at least four to six weeks) and to faraway places.

I started my adventures by taking tours, but I discovered that most tours were for less than a month and each included so many places on their itineraries that often I had only one night or, at most, two nights in each place. Most of my trip was spent...

May 2006 issue

On ATMs

I agree in general with many of the readers’ “Money Matters” comments in the December ’05 and January ’06 (pg. 92) issues.

I’ve found that American Express cards are essentially useless outside of the USA as well as at a number of places within the USA. The most universal card to use is Visa, although a number of places outside the USA will accept MasterCard.

We have found that airports and train stations now almost universally have ATMs, thus you can get the local currency immediately upon arrival. My wife and I traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, in June ’05. Before we left...

February 2006 issue

Sentiments of hope

My wife, Mary, and I were in Cairo in January ’05 when we learned that our daughter Julie, back in Arizona, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. We became frequent customers in the Cairo Marriott gift shop, where they sold phone cards. The problem with the phone cards was that they each lasted only three minutes on calls to the States.

When we tried to buy cards with “more minutes,” the young man working there sensed our concern and offered to let us use his cell phone for the same cost as the phone cards — we would be able to talk for about 20 minutes. We took him up on his offer...

October 2005 issue

Travel problems compounded in PNG

I traveled to Papua New Guinea (PNG), Aug. 12-29, ’04, using the services of a locally based company called Budget Tours. I paid them to make all my tour arrangements, including transportation within PNG, accommodations, guide services, etc.

I prepaid the land package, and my in-country PNG airline tickets were given to me on arrival. However, on several occasions lodgings and transfers had not been paid for by the tour operator by the time I arrived at particular locations on my itinerary, thus leaving me stranded. I even had to hitchhike to town more than once when the promised...

August 2006 issue

Turkey with FLO USA

The ad in ITN for FLO USA, Inc. (4044 W. Lake Mary Blvd., Unit 104-339, Lake Mary, FL 32746; 888/435-6872), caught our eye. My husband and I had been in Turkey in 1994 as part of an independent ’round-the-world trip and had often talked of returning. FLO USA’s 15-day tour that included the 2006 solar eclipse sounded almost too good to be true. When we checked their website and learned it also included several days in Cappadocia, we called and made our reservations for the March 19-April 2 trip.

This was our first trip as part of a tour group, and we couldn’t have...

November 2005 issue

Malta festival a highlight

We took a 2-week trip to Malta plus an add-on week in Sicily, April 16-May 6, ’05, with Grand Circle Travel (Boston, MA; 800/221-2610 or www.gct.com). For my wife and me, the cost was approximately $6,254 from Los Angeles. The experience became a once-in-a-lifetime highlight.

All the credit goes to our Malta program director, Stephen Micallef-Grogan, who led our Grand Circle group of 27 experienced travelers. Stephen, a native of Malta, is fluent in English, Maltese, French and Italian and has been a registered tour director for 12 years.

The flights from California to Malta...

March 2006 issue

Amazon jungle cruise

A small ad in ITN caught my eye and my imagination. Who hasn’t dreamed of taking a small boat cruise on the Amazon?

Two friends and I contacted Explorations, Inc., agreed to the $2,295 cost and signed on to what would be one of our favorite adventure trips — and that’s saying something, since we have traveled far and wide, together and individually. We went for a week in March ’05.

After a quick overnight in Lima, we were whisked away for an early morning flight to Iquitos, where we boarded the Rio Amazones, a charming small ship, along with two dozen others. The ship had a...