Beautiful treeless islands, cool clean air and sunny days marked our 2-week “Windmills and Waterford” cruise, around the British Isles, Aug. 23-Sept. 6, ’05, on Holland America Line’s ms Prinsendam.
At 9 a.m. on March 3, ’06, the Grigoriy Mikheev sounded her horn and we celebrated crossing the Antarctic Circle with Dutch liqueur. When choosing an Antarctic trip, this had been one of my goals.
I was in Vladivostok, April 1-3, ’06. I booked my trip with Lucky Tours Co., Ltd. (1, Moskovskaya St., Vladivostok 690106, Russia; phone/fax +7 [4232] 44-99-44 or visit www.luckytour.com).
Belleek, Northern Ireland, is a pretty, welcoming town near the Irish border. It has a wide main street, and in the September we visited its lampposts were hung with flowering baskets.
Pleasant Surprises are just that: cities one expects to be dismal, dirty or perhaps dangerous but which leave a different impression. Following are several on my list.
Friends and I stayed three nights at the Gasthof Fraundorfer (Ludwigstrasse 24, D-82467 Garmisch-Partenkirchen, GERMANY; phone 011 49 8821 92 70, fax 8821 92 799 or visit www.gasthof-fraundorfer.de).
On our first visit to France’s Pont du Gard, the famous 2,000-year-old aqueduct near Nîmes, in 1996, we stood in envy as we looked down on the river below dotted with canoes and kayaks, promising ourselves that someday we, too, would be among them.
