Antarctica. What an adventure! Yes, it’s far away and it’s expensive to get there, but, as the last of the seven continents, for us, Antarctica was calling. So when my husband, Jerry, and I received literature from Galapagos Travel (783 Rio Del Mar Blvd., Ste. 49, Aptos, CA 95003; 800/969-9014 or 831/689-9192) about a trip there in January ’07, we decided to check it out. We had traveled with Galapagos Travel in June ’04 and we trusted them to pick an ecologically...

I was so entranced by Joshua Slocum’s account of going through the Strait of Magellan in 1895, “Sailing Alone Around the World” (multiple publishers), that I had to go. It involved long air trips to get there, but it was worth it. This was several years ago.

The striking thing that stays with me is that the scene was a study in black, grays and white and that the only beauty there was provided by the weather, which could be quite dramatic — dark gray in one direction and, in the other...

In Rome, Italy, Ristorante del Pallaro (Largo del Pallaro 15; phone 06-68801488) is located between Campo de’ Fiori and Largo Argentine, but to find this traditional Roman restaurant I had to ask a lot of folks on the street, “Dové Largo Pallaro?” I finally, along with 20 college students, found Signora Paola Fázi’s dining room.

For €22 (near $32) each, we enjoyed a fixed-price menu of eight courses in May ’07. The antipasti included olives, lentils, fritti (a Roman specialty of a...