Relive the golden age of steam!

Here's how to enjoy a mainline steam train day tour next time you're in Britain. 

If you're not careful, it is possible to spend more on airport parking than on your airfare!

Here's a convenient new service that helps you make the best choice of parking lot, and offers you great discounted rates for your airport parking.

Very different to a coach tour, and very different to a regular large ship ocean cruise; click here to read about European river cruising.

We view river cruising as one of the very best ways to sightsee through Europe.  It is good value and the ultimate in comfortable convenient ways to travel and sightsee.

One of David's favorite experiences, we're again offering a Christmas Markets River Cruise in 2008, this time from Budapest to Nuremberg and optionally on to Prague.

You'll stop at major cities and small towns, and enjoy a wide range of touring and attractions, including a special side trip to Salzburg, all from the comfort of your luxury floating hotel/cruise ship.

A four part photo journal that captures in pictures the sights and experiences featured in a Danube Christmas Markets cruise.

A one week lovely cruise through the beautiful south of France, escorted by David.

Options to Barcelona or the French Riviera to start, and to Paris after the cruise, too.

A comprehensive fourteen day tour around China, including a six day cruise along the Yangtze River.

Take the optional two night extension to Guilin for the ultimate Chinese experience.

Here's a very special deal!

No single supplement, and discounted rates if traveling with a friend, on this lovely one week cruise from Amsterdam to Trier (and optionally on to Paris).

Wow - here's a very special way to celebrate the end of 2007 and the start of 2008.

Join us on our New Year's in Vienna Danube River Cruise, and celebrate the changing of the year in special style.  Special extra discounts for groups, starting with as few as 3 people for extra group discount.

This was a great success in 2006, and with some tweaks to the itinerary and inclusions, 2007 promises to be even better still.

Our cruise starts in Moscow, then travels through the canals, rivers and lakes connecting Moscow to St Petersburg, with stops in fascinating towns around the historic  'Golden Ring' and further afield.

As a Travel Insider exclusive treat, you then have the option at the end of the cruise to return back to Moscow via overnight sleeper train.

New for 2007 is our Black Sea Discovery Cruise.  This takes you through six less common countries of Eastern Europe, starting from Budapest in Hungary and ending in Istanbul in Turkey.

Along the way you'll see places that few other westerners have visited, in countries such as Serbia, Croatia, and Bulgaria.  This promises to be a fascinating cruise for both the experienced world traveler as well as people venturing internationally for the first time.

A tour arranged and lead by David Rowell, the Travel Insider, in October and November of 2008.

You'll visit a glorious combination of NZ's best known tourist attractions and some of its less well known secrets, too.

A tour arranged and lead by David Rowell, the Travel Insider, in May 2005.

You'll visit seven different islands in the Inner and Outer Hebrides on this lovely tour of largely undiscovered and definitely unspoiled Scotland.

A tour arranged and lead by David Rowell, the Travel Insider, in May 2005.

Enjoy a tour (the 2004 tour was highly reviewed in USA Today) of the Scottish Highlands all the way up to John O'Groats and back.

New Zealand is easier to get to, and easier to enjoy, than most people expect.

Use the information in this series of six articles to help you plan your own travels to my beautiful home country.

A charming Bavarian style alpine village, set in the mountains some two miles east of Seattle.  Lovely to visit all year round.

Read more in our three part article.

This lovely city, nestled on the sides of a beautiful harbor, is an ideal place for a relaxing vacation visit.

Read more in our three part article.

Over 35 miniature countries make up the diversity that is the Caribbean.  With so many to choose from, there's bound to be one (or more) that suit you perfectly. 

Land of the Pharoahs and home to the mighty pyramids, Egypt is a fascinating collection of ancient marvels and mysteries as well as modern beach resorts. 

Wherever you're traveling, however you're getting there, and whatever you're doing upon arrival, the information in this series will help make your travels simpler and better. 

The mysteries of how best to get a refund on Canada's 7% GST is explained to you.

In particular, note that Canada uniquely allows this rebate on hotel accommodation, making it valuable to almost all visitors.

Few people know how easy and how idyllic it is to quietly cruise around Britain's 200+ year old historic canal network.

This article tells you all you need to know.

Good hotels for about $100/night, car (BMW) and driver hire for $5/hr, and Big Macs for $1.25. Moscow is truly affordable, and full of interest and opportunity for both tourists and business travelers.

I report on a recent stay in Moscow.

If you are planning a trip to Russia, you should probably learn at least some very basic 'survival Russian' phrases and be able to sound out words written in their cyrillic alphabet.

This article helps you.

Salisbury town is full of lovely historic shops and buildings.  There's a beautiful cathedral, and plenty of other interesting architecture.  It is easy to get there from London and there are lots of things to see if touring around the Salisbury area, too.

In this multi part series, find out why we rate it as the number four tourist destination in Britain.

Seattle is known by some as the home of grunge, and by others as the home of Bill Gates and Microsoft. But ask about Seattle's dining opportunities, and most people will give you a blank stare, and mutter something about Seattle also being the home of Starbucks.

In this article I suggest eight excellent and distinctive dining experiences in the beautiful city that has been my home for the last 18 years.

A great way to see more of England without leaving your London hotel each night is to take day tours by train.

Fast, regular and comfortable trains quickly take you to many interesting towns and cities around England.

Britain is small and well served by high speed comfortable trains.  Most places are no more than four hours by London, and it is generally quicker, easier, and more convenient to travel by train than by plane.

This article series tells you all you need to know about train travel in Britain.

A two part series that tells you all about Britrail passes - how to choose the best passes, what discounts you may qualify for, whether you need to reserve seats, and so on.  

The Great British Heritage Pass gives you free admission to 580 different places and things throughout Britain.

Most visitors to Britain will find they quickly recoup the modest upfront cost of the Pass and end up saving substantially as they use the pass.

Here's a great way to cut down on the cost of sightseeing around London.  The London Pass gives free admission to 55 of London's best attractions, and has discounts and other perks at a further 42 attractions.

Available in 1,2,3 and 6 day lengths, there's a London Pass to suit most visitors to London.

The London Underground is an enormously convenient way to travel around London, but it can also quickly become enormously expensive.

This guide looks at 12 different types of fares and tells you how to get the most travel for the least cost.

Some people swear by travel insurance. Others swear about it! But there are many different types of travel insurance, some better than others.

We review the different types of travel insurance policies, and the different types of protection they may offer you. After reading this two part article you'll be better informed and can choose exactly the type of insurance that will best protect you on your travels, and at the lowest cost.

A major series of articles discussing what to look for when choosing your next wheeled carry on bag plus specific reviews of over $2000 worth of carry on bags and reader comments.

Essential reading before you next buy a piece of luggage.

Celebrated author of the definitive book on visiting Disney World, Cara Goldsbury has kindly provided us with seven pages containing the essential wisdom and advice from her excellent book (reviewed here).

If you're thinking of visiting the Orlando region and Walt Disney World, then this information is essential.

Seasickness can ruin an otherwise much anticipated cruise.  Other forms of motion sickness, in planes, cars, and buses, can make other travel also a misery.

Here's what you need to do to prevent and cure motion sickness of all kinds.

Jet lag is very real and can have a major (negative) impact on your business judgment and vacation enjoyment, as well as making the 'back home blues' even worse upon your return.

Find out how to plan for and minimize jet lag on your long distance travels in this two part series.

A simple change in travel dates of only a day or two can save you hundreds of dollars. And a change of a week or two can mean you avoid a crush of other tourists.

Here are sixteen tips on how to choose the best time to travel on vacation.

A simple change in travel dates of only a day or two can save you hundreds of dollars. And a change of a week or two can mean you avoid a crush of other tourists.

Here are sixteen tips on how to choose the best time to travel on vacation.

Almost one in three adult Americans is single, one in four of us has taken a vacation alone during the last three years, and, on average, the typical American will spend more of their life between 15-85 single than with a partner. But few of us enjoy traveling alone, or welcome the dreaded 'single supplement' that is often imposed in such cases.

The good news is that specialty travel companies are springing up to provide interesting, affordable, and sometimes even romantic solutions for single travelers.

A combination lock the TSA has now approved for locking suitcases.

They can use a master key to open it themselves.  But if they do this, an indicator changes color from green to red, so you know they've opened your bag.

Inexpensive, and useful.  Recommended.

Some airlines give you more than twice as much free luggage allowance as others. Some airlines refuse to carry over-sized luggage, but others will accept pieces twice the size.

With increasingly enforced luggage policies, if you're going to be traveling with large, heavy, or many suitcases, this information can help you choose the best airline and anticipate airport problems.

Be careful - some suitcases sold as 'carry-on' suitcases are actually illegally sized, and others have wrong measurements so while seeming to fit within airline size restrictions, could also be rejected.

This information tells you what each airline will and won't accept.

For many of us, the most inconvenient part of traveling is managing our baggage, especially with new airline security rules and crackdowns on luggage allowances.

Here are details of a wonderful service that makes your traveling carefree - and luggage free, too.

The new X-ray machines that inspect checked luggage can destroy most normal film.  And that's not all, the new experimental anti-anthrax Post Office irradiation won't just zap your film, but may also kill computer chips and even regular CDs and DVDs.

Plus, the nation's air safety is held hostage in a crude and crass bit of politicking.

The latest (Nov 02) list of what you can and can't take onboard a plane.

After spending 2.5 hours to book two hotels last night, I realized that online hotel booking services are still in their infancy.

Worse than a slow inconvenient interface is the potential danger of booking the wrong hotel. If you're doing your own online hotel bookings, be sure to refer to the checklist included in this article.

Keep right! This instinct is drilled into us from when we first start to drive a car, and must be temporarily unlearned if driving in a country that drives on the other side of the road.

But safely driving on the other side of the road involves a lot more than just keeping left instead of right.

A handy reference to answer your questions like how many engines, what type of seating configuration, what sort of size, how old, etc, different planes are.