Travelers' Intercom

My husband, Bernie, and I visited eastern Germany, Sept. 16-26, 2010, to attend his class get-together. After the reunion, we went to Dresden.

We had been to Dresden in 1991, two years after the Berlin Wall fell. At that time, the famous Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) as well as the Zwinger Palace were simply piles of rubble. Now they are completely restored, using some of the original pieces of stone. We could see the difference between the new and old stones.

The restoration team used old photos and a computer to meticulously re-create the church as it once was. The...

Waiting for our cruise-tour aboard the Norwegian Sun to begin with Vantage Deluxe World Travel (Boston, MA), we spent three days in Buenos Aires in late March ’10. Luckily, on one of our city tours the local Vantage guide filled us in on a tourist scam.

The perpetrators spray you with brown mustard, then rush up with tissue to help clean off the offensive stuff, pointing up into the trees and blaming the birds for the mess. In the process, they pick your pocket or steal belongings.

The next morning, on a walk in Plaza San Martin, that very thing happened to us. We passed two...

I took the 16-day “Italian Masterpiece” tour with Cosmos, Sept. 29-Oct. 14, 2007. The trip began with two days in Venice, then the itinerary led us south to Rome, which we reached on Oct. 3. From there we continued back to Venice.

The first leg of the flight over was on United Airlines and the last on Lufthansa. When we arrived in the Venice area from Zürich, my suitcase was missing. I waited for the next flight, but it was not on that one, either. The others were visiting Venice while I spent the afternoon waiting for my luggage and filling out forms at the lost-and-found. I then...