Late on Saturday, the day before my scheduled Jan. 19, 2014, departure for a long-anticipated solo vacation in New Zealand, a defective ATM in San Francisco ate my debit card. That left me with $123 in cash at the start of a 2-month trip.

How do you stretch $123 for two months? Don’t ask me; I didn’t do it.

What I did do was use Skype on my iPad mini to contact my credit union as soon as they were open. (The iPad mini, a retirement gift from former office mates in San Francisco...

Dublin is a city with a fascinating history dating back to the Vikings, yet modern Dublin is a city of culture and literary greats.

George Bernard Shaw was born in its Portobello neighborhood. Oscar Wilde lived there and loved it. William Butler Yeats was born there and is still celebrated, and James Joyce followed his most famous character, Leopold Bloom, through a day in Dublin.

My husband and I decided that in May 2014, after touring Ireland for two weeks with Grand Circle...

My husband and I took four flights on Copa Airlines (Panama City, Panama; 800/359-2672) in February and March 2014.

For the first flight, from Bogotá to Cartagena, Colombia, we arrived 1½ hours early at the airport, got boarding passes and flew on a half-empty plane.

Flying from Cartagena to San Andrés Island on Feb. 27 was a very different story. Upon our arrival two hours early, the Copa counter agents, without even opening the computer, told us our flight was full. They said...