On a trip from San Francisco to Bologna, Italy, on May 23, 2007, I changed planes at Heathrow airport. It was a Wednesday morning.

After getting off the airport bus at the terminal, l had to wait in a narrow hall before going through a security checkpoint. Then l had to wait again before going up an escalator because the waiting area at the top of the escalator was too small to hold the crowd waiting to go through another security checkpoint. After walking what seemed like a mile to...

For the first part of our trip to Ireland (Nov. ’07, pg. 65), Aug. 27-Sept. 1, 2007, we used the “Emerald Package” from Dooley Vacations (Lynbrook, NY; 877/331-9301, www.dooleyvacations.com).

The package, at $899 per person, included round-trip air from New York to Dublin, a hotel for the first night, five nights’ vouchers for B&Bs and rental of an economy-class car (manual transmission).

Upgrading the car from manual to automatic (we would suggest that for U.S. drivers)...

A bustling port and the economic leader of Southeast Asia, Singapore is a city, state, capital and country all in one. My 4-day visit to Singapore, part of a 2-country group tour, began with an orientation tour at the top of Mt. Farber; the views were spectacular.

The city was glistening-clean, with purple bougainvillea bushes lining the highways. All cars there are equipped with alarms to sound if one exceeds the speed limit. No graffiti and no gangs will be found in this tightly...