I first visited Egypt 22 years ago. On my fourth trip to the country, in November 2004, I traveled with my 25-year-old daughter, Katie. I wanted to see her eyes light up at the sights that make Egypt one of this world’s greatest tourist destinations. I wanted her to say, 40 years from now, “Way back in ’04, I saw the pyramids for the first time with my MOM.”

Katie could only take one week off from her job. Friends and relatives questioned, “Only one week? What can you do in just one...

The Great Wall. There’s little doubt that it is China’s most famous sight. Stretching almost four thousand miles across China, it meanders snake-like over mountains and valleys and over vast steppes and arid deserts. Some sections of the wall are in ruins; others are barely visible, all but obliterated by time. Still other sections have been restored.

There is more than one Great Wall, built over a period of almost 2,000 years. The earliest parts were constructed between 453 and 221 B...

by Julie Skurdenis

I first made the acquaintance of Erik the Red in the fourth grade. I was intrigued by this 10th-century Viking who left the country of his birth (Norway), settled in another (Iceland), then was exiled and resettled in yet a third country (Greenland).

Of course, as nine-year-olds in a far gentler time — or so it seems many years down the line — we were not told that Erik the Red was not the most savory of characters, that he was exiled from Iceland for murder...