International Travel News

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March 2013 issue | Appears on page 32

Public transport in rural China

By Joyce Bruck

This man was selling birds (probably canaries), cages, food and other items at a

After the local travel company I was using canceled the last six days of my prepaid tour of China in October ’11, I had no choice but to get myself from Guiyang, in rural Guizhou province, to the international airport in Guangzhou for my flight home. This was no easy task, since very few people in China speak English and almost all of the signs are in Chinese.

Fortunately, my hotels (which I had booked, myself) were 4- and 5-star establishments, so desk staff were able to assist me...

March 2013 issue | Appears on page 33

Bruges delights

By Nancy Norberg

Harpist Luc Vanlaere, with a hang in his lap, in Bruges, Belgium.

During a trip to Europe’s Low Countries in spring 2012, my husband, Ed, and I spent May 2-4 in Bruges. Our lodging was the 37-room Hotel Jan Brito (Freren Fonteinstraat 1, B-8000 Bruges, Belgium; phone +32 50 33 06 01, fax 33 06 52), at €95 (near $129) per night, which we found on the Internet. The hotel is a 16th-century mansion extensively renovated in the mid 1980s.

The Jan Brito is in a good location, with an underground public parking garage two blocks away; parking there cost...

March 2013 issue | Appears on page 53

Loyalty transferred

By Thomas P. McKenna

The editor’s piece on frequent-flyer-mile programs raised some thoughts (Jan. ’13, pg. 2).

As I recall, when frequent-flyer programs first started, only 12,500 miles were required for a round-trip flight anywhere in the US. That requirement soon changed to 25,000 miles, which remained the standard for decades, during which frequent-flyer miles were generally considered to be worth about seven cents each.

A few years ago I tried to book a flight using my United Airlines miles...

March 2013 issue | Appears on page 53

Used non-chip cards in Netherlands

By Lester Neidell

A subscriber described the difficulty of using non-chip credit cards at Schiphol Airport and in Lelystad in the Netherlands (Dec. ’12, pg. 4). My wife and I were in the Netherlands, Dec. 18, 2012-Jan. 1, 2013, always within 50 miles of Amsterdam, and we found no difficulty using our standard, non-chip Visa or MasterCards anywhere, with one exception.

That was in the Den Haag central train station when we tried to reload our OV-chipkaart* at the ticket office. The ticket office could...

March 2013 issue | Appears on page 54

Oyster Card in London

By Vaughan Parker

For my trip to London, Nov. 15-20, 2012, I used an Oyster Card purchased by my daughter on a trip earlier in the year to get discounts on public transit.

The Oyster Card can be purchased at any train station, including at Heathrow Airport’s, at Travel Information Centres or (using a credit card) from a vending machine. You put down a refundable deposit of £5 (near $8) when you acquire the card and then load it with any amount you choose. I “topped it up” at both a window and a machine...

March 2013 issue | Appears on page 54

Septime in Paris

By Stan Osur

In Paris, I ate dinner on consecutive nights at Septime (80, rue de Charonne, Paris, 11, France; phone +33 01 43 67 38 29), Oct. 2-3, 2012.

There’s no menu. The fixed-price meal, different every night, costs €55 (near $75), with drinks extra. The waiter explains each dish in English. They serve a meat dish, a fish dish, two appetizers and a dessert — just the right amount of food. My total bill the first night was €89 and the second, €94.

There are two sittings nightly,...

March 2013 issue | Appears on page 55

Albanian oppression

By Alla Campbell

In the article “Enjoying Albania without the Cost and Crowds” (Dec. ’12, pg. 36), there was no mention of Enver Hoxha, the dictator who ruled Albania from 1941 to 1985 using brutal Stalinist methods. He became more Communist than Stalin.

One interesting thing to note — during (and after) Hoxha’s regime, over 700,000 bunkers were built, from 1967 to 1986, to isolate and keep complete control over the population. When my husband, Charles, and I were in Albania on a private tour in...

March 2013 issue | Appears on page 55

Independent Albania

By Kathy Wilhelm

I was pleased to see Carol Probst’s piece “Albania — Enjoying Europe without the Costs and Crowds” (Dec. ’12, pg. 36). I visited Albania in the fall of 2011 and found it an interesting destination, although one not ready for mainstream tourism. I was able to travel independently despite speaking no Albanian.

I entered via Macedonia, another country less visited by Americans and well worth seeing. In Ohrid, Macedonia, I ran into a tour group led by a woman who had been my guide in...