Columns

Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 342nd issue of your monthly overseas travel magazine.

A year and a half ago, ITN Contributing Editor Jim Patterson, who wrote the “Focal Point” column, went on hiatus following abdominal surgery. Recently, he informed us he was fit to travel again and we were looking forward to new material from his latest trip.

Sadly, we received this news from his wife, Betty: “Jim died of a heart attack photographing the beautiful flowers in Monet’s Garden at Giverny, France, on May 28. We had spent almost a week in Paris and at Mont-Saint-Michel...

Those of us who have visited the restored Catherine Palace outside of St. Petersburg in Russia have seen the photos of the destruction caused during the World War II “900-day” (actually “only” 872-day) siege of the city then called Leningrad.

German troops occupied the Catherine Palace area during the siege and there was bitter fighting there as the Russians finally prevailed. The palace was in ruins by early 1944. Russians, of course, claimed that the Germans were responsible for the looting and burning of this national treasure — while a German version claims that the Russians...