Columns | International Travel News

May 2004 issue

Boarding Pass

By David Tykol

Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 339th issue of your monthly overseas travel magazine.

I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that the Transportation Security Administration has made a policy change and, on flights within the U.S., each passenger now can carry aboard an extra carry-on when that bag holds only photographic equipment.

The bad news is that the particular airline you’re flying on or the specific flight you’re taking still may not allow it.

See page 19.

Argonne National Laboratory, operated by the University of Chicago as...

April 2010 issue

Tanto — Stockholm’s allotment garden

By Yvonne Horn

by Yvonne Michie Horn

Had I stepped into a storybook? Cute-as-a-button little cottages painted in shades of red, yellow, white and green nestled behind white picket fences and clipped hedges, each surrounded by an array of flowers, abundant beds of vegetables, and fruit trees summer-heavy with fruit.

The path I followed took me deeper into the collection of little houses and gardens clinging to the hillside that descended to the edge of Sweden’s Årstaviken Bay.

“Yoo-hoo!” Lisbeth Ulfstedt awaited me at a junction in the path ahead, reassuring with a wave of her arm...

January 2004 issue

Kilroy was here » Scoop Lynch, Ace Reporter. . .

by Kevin Keating

Hanging in the home of my friend Joseph Lynch is one of the best travel posters I’ve ever seen. It promotes Air Nepal’s Yeti Service and features a huge, hairy hand holding a tray with an iced martini. When you’re flying over the high Himalayas, wouldn’t you expect your cocktail to be served by a mythical beast? Of course you would.

Joe has retired from Merrill Lynch and travels frequently all over the world. He has sharp eyes and sees things a lot of people miss. So I asked Joe to do a little reporting for me.

He’d signed on for a 25-day cruise from...

February 2004 issue

Paraty — a link to Brazil’s colonial heritage

By Deanna Palić

by Deanna Palic (Part one of two)

Nineteen years ago I was totally captivated by the locale in the film “Gabriela.” The movie starred one of Brazil’s hottest stars, Sonia Braga, and the esteemed Italian film idol Marcello Mastroianni. “Gabriela” was filmed in such an enchanting yet unidentifiable colonial seaside town that I felt compelled to wait until all the credits rolled and the town was identified. Paraty, sometimes spelled Parati, has remained on my “must see” list since 1984.

Good fortune came in the form of an invitation from the Rio Convention and Visitor’s Bureau...

June 2010 issue

Boarding Pass

By David Tykol

Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 412th issue of your monthly overseas travel magazine, the one you help write.

Not to discourage your traveling to any particular place but to better inform you so you can travel more safely, I am sharing here some of the more eye-catching items in the world of travel news.

Honduras, a country of 7.7 million, has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, with over 5,000 murders in 2009 and averaging more than 4,000 per year since 2004.

Factors contributing to the high rate are drug cartels, youth gangs, contract killings...

May 2004 issue

Past & present: Rhodes and Symi, Greece

by Ed Kinney

The first trip Moreen and I took to the Dodecanese Islands area of the Mediterranean was in 1974. Sadly, then, as today, travelers were being advised to be cautious due to the ongoing hostilities between Greece and Turkey re the island of Cyprus.

Its macabre, but we’ve found that the optimum time to travel is during such periods as there are fewer competing tourists.

This trip to Rhodes and Symi began our lifelong interest in the Mediterranean and Middle East, where we’ve been fortunate to experience the area’s diverse cultures and have met now-lifelong...

January 2005 issue

Boarding Pass

By David Tykol

Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 347th issue of your monthly overseas travel magazine.

An ITN reader and her husband, senior travelers who had some difficulty walking, were on a 16-day river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest in September-October ’03. This was a special trip for them, and they had booked the highest-grade cabin on board and upgraded to business class for their overseas flights.

Three days in, they were informed by the cruise-tour operator that the water level was too low to navigate the Rhine, Main and Danube. According to the reader, they were given...

February 2004 issue

The Turkish sport of cirit

During our travels in Middle East countries, my wife, Moreen, and I have seen the horse valued as a treasured necessity for both transportation and animal husbandry. Yet, as in Western countries, we’ve also seen horses used for sports, though most of the games are quite different from the ones we view.

You may have seen on TV scenes of an Afghanistan horseman riding wildly in a cloud of dust chasing another horseman carrying a sheep’s or goat’s head; buzkashee is Afghanistan’s national game. Eastern Turkey also has a sport where men ride horses at breakneck speeds; however, their...