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When I finally decided to visit my last continent, Australia, I picked Eclipse Traveler (Lake Mary, FL; 800/276-1168) primarily because of their itinerary offering a chance to see a total solar eclipse north of Cairns. 

Including a single supplement, the cost of my trip (Nov. 6-21, 2012) was $8,790, which covered round-trip airfare from Los Angeles, domestic flights in Australia and mostly 5-star hotels.

There were only 14 of us on the tour, and for some this was their fourth or fifth time seeing eclipses with Eclipse Traveler. 

Arriving in Sydney, we found our hotel...

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My wife, Lois, and I traveled in Asia for five weeks, June 24-July 27, 2012. Organizing 35,000 miles of travel on 15 flights was a challenge met by our travel agent, Dorothy Pogge of Lawrence Travel Leaders (785/842-4000), and all flights went smoothly, with acceptable delays.

Service on Korean Airlines, our main overseas carrier, was fabulous, and Seoul’s Incheon Airport provided entertainment, making it a delightful place to enjoy a layover, as were the Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok airports. (Did I just admit to enjoying layovers?) 

During an 11-hour layover, Lois...

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While sailing in French Polynesia on the Paul Gauguin (800/338-4962) in September ’13, I took advantage of one of the ship’s excursions in Bora Bora: the “Aquabike Adventure.” The excursion cost a total of $299 for two people.

A rep from Aquabike Adventure (Tiipoto, 98730, French Polynesia; phone 689 76 60 61) picked up my friend and me at the dock and took us on about a 15-minute boat ride to the floating dock where the Aquabikes were kept.

After a short period of instruction on how to accelerate, stop and steer while following our guide, Mat, the bottom of the deck lowered...

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My wife, Betty, and I paid $6,800 to 2AFRIKA, Inc., for the 13-day tour “Affordable Kenya & Tanzania.” We booked our own airfare.

The tour originally was scheduled for May 2012, but a few weeks before the trip was to begin, 2AFRIKA owner Kenneth Hieber informed us via e-mail about a warning issued by the US Embassy in Nairobi regarding possible terrorist attacks. Other tour members were planning to cancel or had canceled, and our trip was rescheduled for Nov. 5-17, 2012.

2AFRIKA had originally contracted with Liberty Africa to provide local safari services. In October...

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Maurice Black and two sculpted “black mamas” in Restaurante Antigamente.

After a morning walking tour of the historical section of São Luís, Brazil, our guide, Juan Pitacco (jmpitacco@hotmail.com), showed us the central market square, or Praça do Mercado Central.

Juan identified some of the many fruits of Brazil that have no English names simply because they grow only there. One of the most important is the açaí, a deep-purple, vitamin-rich fruit that health food stores in the US are selling at exorbitant prices as a magic elixir to cure all ills.

Cashew nuts, dried seafood and bottled beverages of questionable alcoholic proof (such as the...

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Four of us (two couples) spent a week in Rome, Dec. 26 2012-Jan. 3, 2013. As we have done for the past 20 years of traveling together during this holiday week, we rented a furnished apartment with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a kitchen. We always choose a central location.

We booked our apartment in Rome in March ’12, and we struck “gold.” The apartment (at 45 Via del SS Quattro) was located within a block of the Colosseum, which is impressive to look at from any angle, day and night. And all places of interest, except the Vatican, were within walking distance (...

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In Paris, the RATP (bus/Métro/tram) and RER (commuter rail) continue to make improvements in the ease of purchasing tickets and passes and in recharging passes, as my wife, Roberta, and I found during a visit, Feb. 25-March 4, 2013.

Besides the manned windows, there are multiple automated sales terminals in many larger Métro stations. All the terminals are marked with pictographs and writing as to what they do and sell and what they accept for payment (some now take euro bills). You can select from French, German, English and Spanish at most terminals; some are even more...

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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 not accept our magnetic-strip credit cards, but the machines in the train station concourse would...

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