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May 2006 issue

Lessons from an apartment stay in Italy

For a trip to Italy a few years ago, for 17 days we rented an apartment in Ronciglione, an hour’s drive north of Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. There were advantages and disadvantages to having a base and making day trips.

• Advantages — Had we not been stationary, we never would have seen the nearby, tiny, off-the-beaten-track towns, let alone linger in them over coffee watching local life go by, or peered into hardware shops at vegetable seeds and pottery plant holders (which we purchased at a fraction of what a gift shop would have charged). We also wouldn’t have gotten to know a few...

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...

October 2005 issue

On the other hand. . .

I would like to offer one more suggestion to those of the great letter titled “Tips for Driving in Britain” (Aug. ’05, pg. 73).

During the summer of 1996, my husband and I hired a car at Heathrow, and after an “adventure trip” out of the airport complex we headed north into Scotland, taking in castles and museums along the way to the “Whiskey Trail.”

On this trip we frequently found ourselves on one-lane country roads where we were confronted with oncoming trafic. This was always a source of confusion on our part and we frequently turned to the right instead of the left....

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...

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...

September 2005 issue

Chile & Uruguay meals

During our month-long travel in several South American countries in March ’05, we enjoyed a lot of good food, but two meals we had in Chile and Uruguay were a pleasant change from meat-loaded meals such as parrillada in Argentina and churrascaria in Brazil.

• In Santiago, Chile, half the fun was getting to the restaurant El Camino Real in Parque Metropolitano. We first had a funicular ride and then a ride in a 2-person cable car.

With the restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows, the view over the city would have been great except for the smog. It is said to be spectacular at...