Brunfels

Wilkommen in Texas Hill Country!

America, Culture, History, Travel

Hill Country settlements between Austin and San Antonio, 80 miles apart in south-central Texas, now form one of the most attractive and historic regions in the entire state. Young families yearn to move there for the good schools and a breezy lifestyle. Chocolate shops, cast-iron-pan factories, and gourmet-salsa-makers thrive. Nouveau-Italian restaurants, hat-and-boot boutiques, and yuppified “saloons” do a land-office business. And tourists are thicker than fleas on a lazy possum. You’ll find scads of them (tourists, not fleas) in Fredericksburg, which bills itself as the most German city in Texas. “On the town’s city limits signs, the population is given as 11,257,” says David Schafer, an author, historian, and driver of the Fredericksburg Trolley tour bus. “We get about 1.5 million visitors annually. Around 25,000 of them show up each year to the town’s Oktoberfest celebration. Fredericksburg has a Texas heart and a German soul.”

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Penang Festivals, Food, and Fun

Asia, Culture, History, Travel

By Nancy Wigston The view from our windows at Penang’s Eastern & Oriental Hotel stretches across the pale blue Strait of Malacca all the way to the horizon. It’s early morning and still tolerably cool. Yellow-beaked mynah birds squawk, coconut palms whisper in the gentle breeze and waves break rhythmically below the longest hotel sea…

Antarctica

Whales, Penguins, Oceans and Ice. Welcome to the Seventh Continent

Central & South America, Travel

Tours to Antarctica appeal to curious minds, nature lovers and adventurous spirits. They began in the late 1950s when a few scientific research ships began allowing some paying passengers. Today, as many as 100,000 tourists will visit the world’s seventh continent during the austral summer. There are many options from massive vessels that serve canapés while cruising past the continent to smaller ships staffed by marine biologists and ornithologists who prepare passengers to meet seals, penguins and whales on zodiac excursions after crossing the Drake Passage.