November 2004

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True Blue Featured Trips

Enjoy a beautiful and fascinating, yet often unexplored, region of Italy on the Alumni Association’s “Italy’s Apulia—An Undiscovered Gem” trip. Apulia produces one-tenth of the wine consumed in Europe, is renowned for its olive oil and boasts unspoiled Mediterranean beaches. You’ll sample delicious Italian cuisine, view incredible medieval cathedrals and Greek and Roman ruins, and bask in the southern Italian sun—all in an area that’s much less crowded than northern Italy. For details, including dates and prices, on this trip and the rest of our itineraries, visit True Blue Travel online.

Hints and Tips

Any frequent flier knows that, even in coach, all airline seats are not created equal. If you’re about to book a seat or are headed to the airport for a flight, make sure you check with the Seat Guru before you fly. SeatGuru.com was founded by Susan and Matthew Daimler, two frequent fliers who noticed big differences in various airline seats. They compiled a comprehensive Web site that offers descriptions and ranking systems for seats on various planes for 23 airlines. For example, seat 35B on Northwest’s Boeing 747-400 (744) offers “extra legroom due to the exit row and is especially desirable as there is no one sitting on your left,” according to the Seat Guru. The site also details which seats are less than desirable, which ones offer power ports for laptops and more.

True Blue Travel News

With the price of crude oil showing no signs of significant declines any time soon, airlines and cruise lines are passing on the fuel increases to travelers and tour operators alike. Therefore, True Blue Travel tour operators are forced to add a surcharge to any air or cruise ticket you purchase. Currently, these one-way surcharges are in the range of $6 per person to $25 per person. Unfortunately, you may expect these surcharges to rise even more as the price of crude oil rises.

Products and Gadgets

Looking for an inexpensive digital camera that can weather any storm? Check out the tiny, brightly colored Foxz2 digital camera by Che-ez. It’s dubbed the “world’s thinnest digital camera,” and it can slip in any back pocket or a chic all-weather case. And though the camera only weighs 1.77 ounces, it has eight megabytes of built-in flash memory for storing pictures; you can expand that memory with SD memory card. Best of all: It costs only $99.

Travel Trivia

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City has become as much of an American tradition as the holiday itself. Did you know that the parade was suspended for a three-year period during World War II because Macy’s donated the parade balloons for the war effort? Or that the parade floats are designed in a former candy factory in Hoboken, New Jersey? You can catch the parade live on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, from 9 a.m.-noon Eastern time, but check out the parade’s official Web site for more trivia and a behind-the-scenes look at this beloved tradition.

True Blue Traveler Comments

“Indeed, the Alumni College Abroad in Normandy tour was a great success. My father, who participated in the Omaha Beach invasion in 1944, and I couldn’t have been more pleased with the tour.”
—Michael Havercamp, PhD’85

“Alumni College Abroad in Normandy” offers a chance to travel back in time and taste a bit of history while exploring Normandy, France. You’ll see the historic Bayeux Tapestry that tells the tale of the events leading up to and including the Battle of Hastings in 1066, see the home of the renowned Impressionist Claude Monet, and visit Omaha Beach, where nearly 10,000 American soldiers died on D-Day. For details, including dates and prices, about the 2005 “Alumni College Aboard in Normandy” trip, visit our Web site.