Each one is fascinating, but just try booking a flight there. To fire your children's imagination about the real world—and bring sensational travel destinations vividly to life—check out these rollicking tales aimed squarely at the pre-teen crowd...
Sometime around day three of an apartment stay in Venice, a transformation occurs. The welcoming 'buon giorno' you've been receiving at the neighborhood cheese shops, butchers, and bakeries grows more enthusiastic, with an obvious trace of recognition...
Used to be, when you came home from a vacation with 5 or 10 rolls of film, a quick trip to the Fotomat and a blank wall were all you needed to bore your friends with a living room slide show. These days, you return with memory cards filled with hundreds of digital images to dump onto your hard drive. Before you know it, your computer is crammed with thousands of files, all unhelpfully named something along the lines of DSCN970116b.jpg. Your photos are stored in a maze of subfolders, half of the images are sideways, and for some reason all the shots from the trip to Tuscany are tinted orange. Face it: You need help...
Scrappy no-frills carriers such as Southwest and JetBlue are no longer limited to our side of the Pond. The past five years have seen the creation of dozens of insanely cheap airlines connecting hundreds of European destinations—primarily big cities, tourism hot spots, and Mediterranean beaches—with fares of roughly $40 to $70 each way, taxes and fees included...
In foreign travel, there are few experiences that are more common and banal yet cause so much confusion as the tangled web of taxes, refunds, duties, and exemptions. The vicissitudes of just trying to figure out what you do and do not owe on a couple of souvenirs can get so complicated that most travelers throw their hands in the air, bite the bullet, and pay what all the governments tell them to. I say "governments" because there are actually two government levies involved in shopping in a foreign country-and the good news is that you don't have to pay either one of them...
The ethnic restaurants of Jackson Heights. Superb ethnic eateries litter all five boroughs, but most New Yorkers agree that the finest concentration is in Jackson Heights, Queens. Grab the number 7 subway for a 20-minute ride from Grand Central to the 74th Street/Jackson Heights stop to partake of Indian, Argentinian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Thai, and Colombian cuisines. North of Roosevelt Avenue, 74th Street comprises a thriving Little India of sari stores, Bollywood video shops, and cheap curry restaurants galore. King of the all-you-can-eat buffets is Jackson Diner...
* Coverge of the Chelsea arts scene, Lower East Side, and enthnic dining in Jackson Heights
