by Henry Linden, Torrance, CA

I love to travel. Since I have visited about 75 countries, I am constantly on the lookout for new and unusual experiences.

About a year ago I was thinking about going to the island of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago, located between Greenland and Norway, to get an idea of what it is like to live in an Arctic region. I contacted travel agencies in the town of Longyearbyen in Spitsbergen, and they sent me brochures on what they had to offer...

A couple mailed to ITN a copy of their letter to Grand Circle Travel, as follows.

My wife and I were on your “Great Rivers of Europe” riverboat cruise from Vienna to Amsterdam, embarking July 2, 2004. We are “Inner Circle” members.

While we were extremely pleased with the river cruise, the accommodations, the program and the personnel, we feel it necessary to complain about the return flight arrangements from Frankfurt, Germany, to Washington, D.C., on July 17.

This was...

by Gloria Grant, Chevy Chase, MD

As a docent at Washington, D.C.’s, Hillwood Museum, featuring fabulous Russian treasures, I have been fascinated with a trip Catherine the Great made down the Dnieper River in 1787. Accompanied by the Austrian emperor and other diplomatic guests, she led a tour of her expanding empire from Kiev to the Crimea, sailing in a fleet of 80 red-and-gold Roman-style galleys, each with its own orchestra.

So when I learned of a tour in Catherine’s wake,...