In Matsuyama in 1994, Dōgo Onsen Honkan, one of the oldest public bathhouses in Japan, celebrated its 100th anniversary. In commemoration, the Botchan Karakuri Clock (the subject of our June 2018 mystery photo) was built near the hot springs, steps away from the Dōgo Onsen tram station.
Dear Globetrotter:
Welcome to the 510th issue of your monthly foreign-travel magazine. Yes, in this day and age, an actual magazine! And we have a lot of longtime supporters, Barb Hartwell of St. Petersburg, Florida, among them.
Barb wrote, “International Travel News was responsible for propelling my husband and me toward one of the most wonderful trips we ever took and for leading me to a very special friendship.
“The very first sample copy I received (and I don’t know who was kind enough to have it sent to me) prompted my husband and me to call the company Travel Downunder (Bellevue, WA; 866/258-1629, www.travel-downunder.com) and tell the agent, Wendy Schatz, that we wanted to take the identical trip to Tonga that was put together for Penny and Dan Strohl of Oakland, California, and that was described in such beautiful detail by Penny in the article ‘Tonga — a South Pacific Paradise’ in the August 2005 issue of ITN.
“In the ensuing preparations for that trip, we were put in contact with the Strohls, who became very good friends of ours, although we lived in Florida, far from their home. Since my first email contact with Penny, she and I have emailed each other two or three times a week. (Yes, that’s for the last 13 years!) My husband and I visited twice with the Strohls in Oakland, and I took a little trip to New England with the Strohls after my husband died in 2009.
On my seventh trip to Paris with friends in April 2018, I realized that I seldom ventured outside the central core of the city, always sticking close to the Seine. In fact, I can recall only one time, on my last trip to Paris, 10 years ago, when I made a worthwhile journey to Père-Lachaise Cemetery in the 20th Arrondissement, aided by the self-tour itinerary in Rick Steves’ Paris guidebook.
City layout
Paris is divided into 20 districts, or arrondissements, numbered in a clockwise spiral. Most visitors are familiar with the 1st through 7th arrondissements. The first four, on the Right Bank, encompass the Marais, Centre Pompidou and the Louvre, while the next three, on the Left Bank, include the Latin Quarter and the Eiffel Tower.
To help wean myself from the central neighborhoods, I convinced my travel companions to take an apartment on Rue du Caire, on the outskirts of the 2nd Arrondissement, the wholesale clothing center of Paris. A 15-minute walk from the Seine, this area had few tourists wandering around, but within blocks was the very lively Rue Montorgueil and Faubourg St. Denis. (Streets beginning with Faubourg indicate that they were outside the 14th-century walls of Paris.)
At the corner of Rue St. Denis and Boulevard St. Denis, one block from our apartment, sat a triumphal arch, marking the spot of the 14th-century entry through that part of the city wall.
On the other side of the gate was the entrance to the 10th Arrondissement, whose personality changes by the hour. I excitedly returned from my first trip up the street to tell my roommates that Nigeria could be found just a block away, but by the time we made our way there a few hours later, it had turned into hipster Paris, and the French Africans had gone home or moved on to other streets. (A warning to the timid — the last few blocks of Rue St. Denis, before the Boulevard, feature older streetwalkers at almost all times of day.)
I have been fortunate to travel to many areas of the world that are renowned for their ancient cultures or scenic beauty and are designated as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization). Somehow, however, the offerings of the island nation of Sri Lanka, situated off the southern coast of India, managed to escape my attention until recently, when two of my travel forum correspondents infused me with their enthusiasm as they planned their own tours there.
Sri Lanka is endowed with eight UNESCO sites — an amazing number for a country of this size — and I was privileged to visit five of them during my private tour in January 2018.
Planning a visit
Sri Lanka, until fairly recently, has not been an easy place for travelers to visit. Plagued by a brutal, 26-year-long civil war, Sri Lanka began to reappear on tour providers’ itineraries following the end of the conflict in 2009, when the country’s remarkable sites were once again available to travelers.
I decided to book a private tour in order to allow the most flexibility and the inclusion of sites that were of special interest to me. Go Tours Lanka (www.gotourslanka.com), based in Kandy, Sri Lanka, created an amazing itinerary for me that was customized according to my specific desires.
My 8-day program cost $700, not including hotels, meals or entrance fees. I opted to book my accommodations on my own in order to ensure the quality and location that I wanted at each stop. The tour cost did include transportation and full guide services in (excellent) English at all of the places on the agreed-upon itinerary.
Ruwan Wijerathne, the founder of Go Tours Lanka, personally escorted me. His services as a guide were enhanced by his professionalism, extensive knowledge, friendly support and interesting conversation.
We traveled in a comfortable, air-conditioned Toyota sedan on a program that included the Golden Temple of Dambulla, the ancient cities of Sigiriya and Polonnaruwa, the Sacred City of Kandy and the Old Town of Galle. All five of these places are UNESCO sites, and deservedly so.
Pat Ove of Aurora, California, wrote, “Reading Stanley Mui’s article about his 10-day trip to Guadalajara, Mexico, for less than $1,000 (June ’17, pg. 44) brought back many happy memories of the $100-a-day trips my husband and I took for 20 years.
There must be many budget travelers reading ITN who are having exciting adventures discovering the world on $100 a day. I would love to read about their journeys. (For purposes of this information request, and considering inflation, perhaps the total of $100 per day should not include overseas airfare.)”
Regarding traveling outside of the US on $100 a day (excluding international airfare), ITN subscribers were asked to tell us how they did it and where and when they traveled, specifying modes of transport, types of accommodations used and how those were found plus any other budget-travel tricks. The tips rolled in, and we’re presenting the responses over a few months.
* * *
My sister and I left our husbands home to take care of our pets and gardens and went to explore ITALY on our own for two weeks in July 2014. The idea was to stay close to local life, use public transportation and try to speak the local language.
Subscribers were invited to write in about places, outside of the US, where they’ve had rewarding sightings of birds. (We cannot accept more submissions.)
In addition to the types of birds they saw, we asked travelers to each tell us where they were and the year/month/time their visit took place. We also wanted to know how difficult it was to reach an area, what equipment would be recommended and what the weather was like.
The most responses were about birds in Latin America, and we’re printing the last of those this month, with letters about other areas to follow.
* * *
My husband, Knox, and I traveled to BRAZIL in July and August of 2012 to study wildlife, with an emphasis on birds. Because Brazil is a very large country, we concentrated on only two areas: the Pantanal of the Central-West Region and also a UNESCO reserve in the Atlantic rainforest, northeast of Rio de Janeiro.
For years, Marvin dreamed of attending the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo in Scotland. As we were to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary in August 2017, we saw a trip to Scotland and, in particular, the opportunity to attend a performance during the annual, 3-week Tattoo as a fine excuse for going there.
Although we live in Florida, a summer family gathering would take us to Los Angeles, so it was easy for us to head directly to Scotland from there. From LA, we flew on Aer Lingus to Edinburgh via Dublin. It was quite a jolt to our bodies, heading from the summer heat of LA to chilly, windy and often rainy Scotland, but, equipped with warm coats and beanies, we soldiered on.
Edinburgh
The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo exceeded our expectations. For nearly two hours, we watched hundreds of bagpipers, drummers, international military bands and brightly dressed dancers and singers perform the most stirring show we have seen in our lives! It was a dazzling, breathtaking spectacle that thrilled us from beginning to end. This was a fabulous introduction to our Scotland visit.
Not surprisingly, Edinburgh was packed with thousands of tourists, many of whom (like us) came for the Tattoo. But there was so much else going on, including the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with dozens of offerings on the streets and in various venues.
Kathmandu has been on my “wanna visit” list for years. The perfect opportunity arose in March 2017 when my husband, John, and I were in Kuala Lumpur (better known as KL), Malaysia. AirAsia (airasia.com), an excellent budget airline, was flying from KL to Kathmandu, Nepal, for $169. Perfect!
For $83, we booked a room at Hotel Shanker (Lazimpat, Kathmandu 44600, Nepal; phone +977 1 4410151, www.shankerhotel.com.np) because it was a family-owned heritage hotel. The location was excellent, and they had a pool and Internet access.
Hashima, an island off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan, is shaped like a battleship and is nicknamed Battleship Island.
