My wife, Sandra, and I spent two weeks in Italy with our daughter and 14-year-old grandson in July ’09.

• In ROME we rented an apartment (Vicolo del Bologna 31) in the charming old Trastevere neighborhood. It claimed to have three bedrooms, though one of them was more like a large hall without windows. It also had 1½ baths (one with a washing machine), a large living room and a kitchen.

There were a few problems. It could have used a deep cleaning; the broadband Internet didn’t...

My wife, Mary, and I took a tour of Western Africa, Oct. 8-Nov. 2, 2009, with ElderTreks (Toronto, ON, Canada; 800/741-7956). We visited Niger, Benin, Togo and Ghana.

When we passed into Ghana, Mary began to write down store names. We hadn’t seen anything similar in the other countries (or anything that we recognized, as the official language of the previous three countries was French, not English as in Ghana).

The names below are listed in the order that we saw them. After a...

I would like to address those who avoid renting cars in countries where driving is on the left-hand side of the road. I feel it is not necessary to miss out on the pleasures of independent travel in these places.

My wife, Nancy, and I have rented cars in numerous countries where they drive on the left, and we consider the extra stress to be minimal. In many instances, it is easier to drive in those countries than in some others because signage is usually in English and the roads often...