Crystal Cruises celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2015, and to mark the occasion it scheduled a world cruise — not an ordinary world cruise like the ones it and other cruise lines schedule every year but a true world cruise, a circumnavigation of the globe, from Miami to Miami, for 108 days. 

This cruise was divided into six segments ranging from 15 to 21 days each. Passengers could sign up for all or some of the segments. I was told that Crystal had never had more than...

Paging through travel brochures in search of my next adventure, I discovered various gorilla treks, and the idea that you could actually get close to them and watch them in their natural habitat piqued my interest. But how do you choose where to see these African mountain gorillas: Uganda or Rwanda? 

Luckily, I didn’t have to choose one over the other because I found a trip that went to both countries. I would be able to compare the treks and would be lucky enough to have...

When my wife, Carolyn, and I reflect on our April 2015 trip to France, we inevitably focus on our love of Saint-Émilion, the Dordogne region, the castle within a castle of Carcassonne, the wines of Burgundy and all the expressways, country roads and medieval streets undertaken in our little white Peugeot. 

We had little in the way to guide us: a foldout map provided by the rental-car company and the small city illustrations in our Rick Steves guidebook. Carolyn imposed a ban on...