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October 2005 issue

Concern from carabinieri

My wife and I booked a transatlantic cruise on Celebrity’s Galaxy, sailing from Galveston to Civitavecchia (for Rome) in May ’05. The crossing was uneventful, we found it even boring, during the five consecutive days at sea. Except for a complete breakdown in our dining arrangements and a final billing error, the food and service on board were very good, although not up to the standards we had experienced in two previous cruises aboard their sister ship Mercury.

One reason for booking this cruise was to return to Rome and once again visit the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel plus see...

June 2005 issue

Rude awakenings on cruise

ITN was mailed a copy of the following letter, sent by a reader to Holland America Line.

I am writing in reference to our cruise on the MS Noordam, May 9-19, ’04, out of and returning to Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy.

This was a cruise we chose to celebrate our golden anniversary on May 16. For this special occasion we picked a cabin in one of the best categories (B) and were very disappointed. The cabin, number 68, was large and very nice, but of the nine days at sea, we were able to sleep past 7 a.m. on only two days, and often we were unable to take a nap in the afternoon....

November 2005 issue

Mont-St-Michel sans crowds

When we visit Mont-St-Michel, France, we prefer to stay on the island rather than the mainland because of the change in the atmosphere when the last of the day-trippers leave by about 5 p.m. It goes from a noisy, crowded, carnival atmosphere to one of magic, romance and solitude. You can walk the ramparts without running into anyone else, and looking up in the dark at the beautifully lit abbey is an unforgettable sight. We’ve made four visits to Mont-St-Michel.

The magical experience of staying on Mont-Saint-Michel in northwestern France begins, unfortunately, with fighting for a...

March 2006 issue

Easter Island guide

My wife, Mary, and I took a 35-day cruise on Holland America Line’s Statendam, embarking Nov. 17, ’05. This was a wonderful experience for us, even though we had traveled on many shorter cruises. The stops in Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Easter Island, Tahiti, Bora Bora, American Samoa and New Zealand all were excellent, but I want to provide information to ITN readers about one special guide we had on Easter Island.

ITN contributed to our finding this guide, Patricio Rojas (e-mail patricio@aotour.cl or visit www.aotour.cl); in the October ’05 issue, page 83, Margo Wilson recommended him...

September 2005 issue

Science museums in Italy

We would like to add some ideas to the readers’ “less-well-known museum” suggestions printed back in the June ’04 issue.

We spent nine days in Tuscany in May ’05. In Florence, the plethora of art museums may obscure the existence of the small, stunning Museo di Storia della Scienza (Museum of the History of Science). It is located just behind the Uffizi in the Palazzo Castellani, a building that dates to the 12th century. The Renaissance was an awakening of the sciences as well as the arts, and this small museum brings it all together.

In 21 rooms of exhibits, the Museo di...

December 2006 issue

Attn: bird lovers

Lake Nakuru, Kenya, is a bird lover’s paradise. It is very shallow and can fluctuate up to 12 feet each day. When the water is low, you can see a white band of crystallized soda along the shoreline.

On the lake are up to two million greater and lesser flamingos. There is pink as far as you can see — and when they take off from the lake and fly into the air you see pink, white and black (the wingtips). Beautiful!

On our July-August ’05 trip we also saw marabou storks (famous for their feathers), pink-backed pelicans (much prettier than their drab brown cousins that we usually...

April 2006 issue

Guide in Turkey

Being loyal ITN subscribers, and packrats, we scanned several years of back issues as we researched our October-November ’05 trip to Turkey. We found a reader’s referral (May ’99, pg. 117) for a guide/tour operator, so we followed up and made contact with Mehmet Ozbalci of Turfantastik Tours & Travel (Millet cad. Inan Is Hani No: 5 / 610, Aksaray, Istanbul, Turkey; phone [90] [212] 589 33 25, fax [90] [212] 586 32 56, e-mail turfantastik@tnn.net or mehmetozbalci@tnn.net).

Mehmet is the owner/operator of his small company and personally plans and leads custom small-group trips...

October 2006 issue

Expected better in BA business class

British Airways had an ad in the Oct. 24, 2005, copy of the New York Times heralding its “business class like no other.” Prior to that, on July 22, 2005, I flew business class from Rome to London (Heathrow). My plane was a 767 that was entirely coach configured. The business class was simply partitioned off, but none of the coach seats were changed. The seats, the width, the pitch and the legroom all were coach. The only thing British Air did was to place some ugly contraption to block off the center seat of the three seats in the middle section, and that was supposed to fool the customers...