Travelers' Intercom

Hotel Stadt Melk in Melk, Austria. Photo by Dorothy Botnick

My husband and I were in Austria the last week of September 2017 and visited Salzburg, Hallstatt, Melk and Vienna. We liked each place we visited, but Melk was special. About an hour west of Vienna, it’s a lovely town in the Wachau Valley, a wine-producing region. 

While in Melk, we stayed at Hotel Stadt Melk (Hauptplatz 1, Melk; phone +43 2752 52475, www.hotel stadtmelk.at [in German only]), located in the town center, just beneath the spectacular Baroque abbey. There was...

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A whale shark vertically feeding. Photo by Susan Dailey

In 2016, my wife, Susan, and I received a brochure from a highly regarded travel company advertising snorkeling with whale sharks off the Yucatán Peninsula. The cost was over $4,300 per person for six days, not including airfare. The accommodations shown were excellent, and there were two days of swimming with the whale sharks and one day of snorkeling on a reef.

The previous November, we had visited the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta and were impressed with the size and beauty of the...

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My husband, George, and I returned on Sept. 20, 2017, from a 26-day trip exploring the beautiful country of Brazil. We think this wonderful place is seriously underrated by many travelers.

Not to diminish the roaring wonders of Iguaçu Falls, the wilds of the Amazon and the Pantanal or the white-sand beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema, but there is so much more to this huge, rich, remarkable country to explore and see!

We are especially interested in photography, with an emphasis...

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The king protea <i>(Protea cynaroides)</i> flowers at Kirstenbosch during winter and spring, from May through November. Photo by Alice Notten for Kirstenbosch NBG

A longtime resident of Cape Town, South Africa, I have the following suggestions for anyone planning a visit.

Getting up and down Table Mountain by cable car is a wonderful experience, but if you are fit, try walking up from Kirstenbosch, the botanical garden, open 365 days a year. This is a steep walk with a few stretches of ladders, and it’s easier done going up than coming down.

There are a number of access points to the mountain, not just through Kirstenbosch, and all...

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Travel documents were checked at the Latvia/Estonia border crossing. Photo by Bonnie Carpenter

After taking a Holland America Line cruise, my wife, Bonnie, and I toured the Baltic states in June 2017 with ElderTreks (Toronto, Canada; 800/741-7956, www.eldertreks.com).

In Latvia, our group traveled north on Route E67, along the Riga Gulf, toward Ainaži and the border with Estonia. Just before crossing the border, on June 19, our bus was pulled over at a police checkpoint and a police officer came aboard asking to see everyone’s travel documents (passports)....

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While heading to India in October 2017, my travel buddy, Bob, and I had a stopover in Dubai, and we US citizens decided to try the visa-free trip to Kish Island in Iran. Details were scarce, so we went to Terminal 2 at Dubai International (DXB) and started asking questions.

While the office of Kish Airlines (en.kishairlines.ir) was not easy to find (ask around at desk 59 or 60 and someone will point out the door where you can begin the search), persistence paid off. A round...

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At the start of a solo trip to Europe, May 12-24, 2017, I arrived in late morning at Amsterdam’s Schiphol International Airport. For private-car transfer service between Schiphol and Amsterdam’s Centraal Station, my travel agent had made arrangements with Lindbergh Tour & Travel and Marcus Executive Car Services.

At the airport, though there were many people holding up signs for groups, I found no one waiting for me in the arrivals area. I kept walking about, looking,...

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My wife and I decided to take our first river cruise ever, the 15-day “Great Rivers of Europe” cruise from Amsterdam to Vienna, with Grand Circle Travel (Boston, MA; 800/221-2610, www.gct.com). 

We chose Grand Circle Travel (GCT) because of friends’ recommendations, and we loved our two previous trips with their sister company Overseas Adventure Travel, or OAT (Boston, MA; 800/955-1925, www.oattravel.com).

The price of our...

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