My husband, Tom, and I were in London the second week of September ’08 and stayed in the southern suburb of Penge in an old home turned B&B: Melrose House (89 Lennard Rd., London, SE20 7LY, U.K.; phone 0208 776 8884, e-mail melrosehouse@supanet.com or visit www.

melrosehouse.com).

It is located in a very quiet neighborhood a 10-minute walk from the local train station (with frequent day and night trains), which is 15 minutes’ ride from London’s Victoria Station. It was 10...

I’d seen all the usual Christian sites of Jerusalem: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Garden Tomb and the Via Dolorosa, but until I visited the Israel Museum, on Ruppin Road, not far from the Knesset, I still had no concept of what Jerusalem actually looked like in the time of Jesus Christ.

Most visitors to the Israel Museum concentrate on the Shrine of the Book, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are exhibited, without realizing that nearby is a scale model of...

Adding to readers’ comments about making flight arrangements for tours (Dec. ’08, pg. 41 & June ’09, pg. 41), my wife and I usually make our flight arrangements independently from the cruise or tour company we are traveling with. We do this because of the following:

• We like to arrive at least one day early and sometimes stay a day or two after the end of the cruise or tour, something that often is not allowed by the company unless you purchase an optional extension or an...