Features

November 2016 issue

Food and fun in France: Cruising from Lyon to Avignon
By Beth Habian
A view over the rooftops of Vienne from atop Mount Pipet.

My earliest memory is connected to food. I can still feel the anticipation, waiting for my turn to shake the Mason jar filled with cream that was making its way around my kindergarten class and watching as a pale-yellow form began to emerge through the opaque liquid. Butter on a graham cracker never tasted so good!

So it’s no wonder that my strongest memories of the travels I’ve taken over the years would be of the tastes I’ve experienced, whether extraordinarily enjoyable or please-don’t-make-me-take-another-bite bad. My greatest connection to a culture...

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November 2016 issue

What You Should Know About Using Airbnb
Carole Feldman in her Cartagena, Colombia, Airbnb apartment. Photo by Marvin Feldman

Karen Wells of Traverse City, Michigan, wrote about an apartment that she and her husband rented in Sydney, Australia, through Airbnb.com, saying, “What a nice experience! We shared a young professional’s apartment but had our own bedroom and bath…. And we paid only a little over $100 per night! So it turned out great for us, but we have talked to others who used Airbnb in various countries and encountered funky bathrooms, cleanliness issues, unexpected steps, etc. We would like to read advice from travelers who use Airbnb, especially anyone who likes to do an apartment...

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December 2016 issue

Getting away from winter

Fred Kissell, of chilly Pennsylvania, wrote (July ’16, pg. 62), “I would like to have ITN readers write in about where to spend a month or two in the winter. I live in Pittsburgh, and it would be really nice to go somewhere else in January and February.

“In my mind, the ideal winter getaway would be a warm, pretty, uncrowded, low-cost town with plenty to do in the vicinity. It also would have a low crime rate so I would be comfortable wandering around by myself. Does it exist?”

As for where to get away from winter, ITN asked subscribers for suggestions...

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January 2016 issue

Loving every minute of a 108-day ‘true’ world cruise
By Marvin Silverman

Crystal Cruises celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2015, and to mark the occasion it scheduled a world cruise — not an ordinary world cruise like the ones it and other cruise lines schedule every year but a true world cruise, a circumnavigation of the globe, from Miami to Miami, for 108 days. 

This cruise was divided into six segments ranging from 15 to 21 days each. Passengers could sign up for all or some of the segments. I was told that Crystal had never had more than 400 passengers sign up for one of their “full world” cruises, but in 2015, because of the...

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September 2015 issue

Enjoying village accommodations and spectacular underwater sights on a trip to Indonesia’s Raja Ampat islands
By Ann Cabot

In my extensive travels, my goal is always to find unique cultural experiences. When planning my January 2015 trip to Indonesia, I discovered just such an experience: the opportunity to stay in a traditional Papuan island village. Such a stay would offer accommodations in private bungalows and the chance to interact with locals, view exotic wildlife and swim over the most diverse coral reefs in the world.

Some of my family members, ages 42 to 70, were enthusiastic, so we chose three villages to visit and headed to Raja Ampat, a collection of remote South Pacific islands located in...

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October 2015 issue

There’s always more to see in Paris!
By Margo Wilson

After six visits to Paris over 42 years, the last of which was in 2010, I announced that I was “done” with Paris. But when my husband, Thom, and I were scheduled to begin a river cruise in Paris in April 2015, I couldn’t resist adding on three days at the beginning of our trip. 

Then my research began. What could we do that we hadn’t done before? What was new or different? 

Consulting my bulging file of articles culled from magazines and travel sections of the paper, I read about macarons, about Paris’ best pâtisseries and about some...

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November 2015 issue

Focusing on Guatemala’s ‘living Maya’
By Ken Mallory

The thump of bus tires on cobblestone streets announced our arrival in the city of Antigua, Guatemala. Six miles to the south, Volcán de Agua peered shyly through its cloud cover, reminding visitors that this is a land of volcanoes and welcoming our small photo-tour group to the Highlands of Guatemala, where our leader, Jim Cline of Jim Cline Photo Tours (San Diego, CA; 877/350-1314, jimclinephototours.com), promised to show us its remarkable landscape and share a more intimate view of a Mayan culture he called “the living Maya.”

Antigua

On arrival by chartered...

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October 2014 issue

From wildlife to waterfalls, enjoying a small-group adventure in Southern Africa
By Yvonne Horn

by Yvonne Horn, Contributing Editor

Over the span of a year or so, a number of travel articles about Namibia tickled my travel radar. So when I received an invitation from ElderTreks — with whom I had traveled twice before (Ethiopia, Aug. ’07, pg. 6, and Iran, July ’09, pg. 24) — to participate in an upcoming tour, I jumped at the chance.  

Their “Splendors of Africa” itinerary devoted a full 17 of its 25 days to Namibia before continuing on to Botswana and Zimbabwe, the latter's thundering Victoria Falls providing the grand...

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