CRUISE: Farewell, free room service

Carnival is doing away with its free 24-hour room service aboard its cruise ships. So what, it’s only one cruise line, right? Don’t bet on it. Sometime this month, Carnival Cruise Lines will, probably quietly, do away with one of the longstanding traditions of the modern cruise industry — free all-hours room service in your […]

Read More

The SEYCHELLES: Where tourism is life

This archipelago of 115 tiny, almost unbearably beautiful islands welcomes visitors as if their nation’s future depends on it. Because it does. You have to look hard to find the Seychelles — 115 microdots of land scattered like dispersed sand grains in the western Indian Ocean. Odds are, your friends and neighbors have never heard […]

Read More

AIRLINES: Who’s safe?

The crash of a brand-new Boeing 737 off an Indonesian island revives doubts about regional air safety in that part of the world. For the traveler, there’s a different question: How to tell which airlines are safer? When it comes to international travel, Indonesia is an uneasy contradiction. It’s one of the most beautiful and […]

Read More

GERMANY: Planes & Trains

Germany’s national airline is teaming up with the country’s national railroad to create and air-rail net across the whole country at a bargain rate. Hopefully, someone on this side of the Atlantic is taking notes. In the seemingly eternal death struggle between airlines and passengers trains, Lufthansa and Deutsche Bahn (DB) are trying something different: […]

Read More