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While visiting Chile’s Lake District in November 2019, my wife, Arnette, and I stayed at a nice hotel beside a beautiful lake within a mile of the center of the delightful town of Pucón, which is also on the lake.

Hotel Antumalal (Camino Pucón a Villarrica Km.2, Pucón, Novena Region de La Araucanía; phone +56 45 2 441011, www.antumalal.com) has a nice spa. The food was good and the service, very professional.

Our rate for a lake view was about $400 a night, including the...

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My wife and I took a tour of India in November-December 2019, and I thought I would share what I learned about obtaining a tourist visa.

Any US citizen planning to visit India as a tourist must get an e-Visa in advance. Per India’s Immigration and e-Visa portal (an official government website, indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa/tvoa.html), “… you cannot apply for a visa at the airport. You need to have an e-Visa before travelling to India. Then you can get the visa...

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Second floor of the Amelia Boutique Hotel in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Photo by Edna R.S. Alvarez

My daughter (53) and I (80) took a private tour of Uzbekistan in May 2019. Details were arranged by MIR Corporation (Seattle, WA; 800/424-7289, www.mircorp.com). In each city, it was just the two of us plus a guide and a driver; we had three different guides and two drivers. We visited three cities, the last of which was Bukhara (Tashkent and Samarkand being the other two).

In Bukhara, we were fortunate enough (due to last-minute cancellations) to stay at the Amelia Boutique Hotel (1...

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My husband and I were able to access Granada, Nicaragua, for a lovely excursion during a “Portraits of Panama” canal cruise with Oceania Cruises. On the Sirena, the cruise started in Miami and ended in Los Angeles (but did not have an actual stop in Panama), and our excursion was on Nov. 29, 2019.

A private guide, Gerald Duran (+505 896 62487 on WhatsApp, email geraldduran14@gmail.com or visit durantoursnicaragua.com), provided the four of us with a very good tour. Our...

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About to join a cruise-tour in Greece, on Oct. 1, 2019, I had lunch at a taverna on Adrianou Street in the Monastiraki area of Athens. The restaurant was in a row of similar tavernas located nearly opposite the entrance to the Ancient Agora.

When the waiter brought the bill, I gave him my USAA Federal Savings Bank Visa credit card, and he went to the back of the restaurant to process the transaction. He returned a few minutes later with a wireless card reader and tried to process the...

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Joan Anderson and Tom Kilroy at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

After our 3-week home exchange in Nimes, France, in June 2019, Joan Anderson, my companion of many years, and I were reminiscing about how we got into this wonderful way of traveling.

It all started in 2004 when we attended a travel club meeting. A representative from HomeExchange (based in Paris, with an office in Cambridge, MA; www.homeexchange.com) gave us information about the company, its listings and the concept of house swapping.

I heard someone at the meeting say,...

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The article “Travel Tips for the Less Able,” by Paula Prindle (Jan. ’20, pg. 40), was good. I will be 80 this year. I’m blind in one eye, my hearing isn’t perfect, and my knees now balk at stairs. But I still love to travel, even though I’ve lost my travel buddies! Every country has its beautiful parts that are awesome to see and good people who are worth meeting and understanding.

So that travel is more comfortable and doable, there are a number of...

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In his January 2020 “Boarding Pass” column, ITN’s editor described how a subscriber’s Google search had led him to unofficial websites where he would have spent more money than necessary for a New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority pass, or ETA (pgs. 55-57).

The editor’s advice on how to avoid unofficial websites was good. One of the things he mentioned was that when doing a Google search, paid ads are listed at the top of the results.

I did the...

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