Doug Gregory
Springfield
A couple of flights would allow you to celebrate on one side of the dateline and then fly back to Honolulu to celebrate again on the same day. But it'll cost you a few thousand.
Air New Zealand flies nonstop between Honolulu and Auckland. Its Flight 10 leaves Auckland at 12:55 p.m. and arrives a day earlier in Hawaii at 10:30 p.m., so if the flight is late, you may not satisfy your dream. The price is about $1,340 round trip.
Continental flies nonstop between Honolulu and Guam. The flight departs Guam at 6 a.m., and you'd arrive in Hawaii at 5:05 p.m. a day earlier. The round-trip flight costs about $1,200 per person.
Another idea is to take a cruise that crosses the dateline. The Pacific Princess, for example, offers a 15-day South Pacific islands cruise that starts in Sydney and ends in Tahiti, crossing the dateline on Day 8. But, again, it's not cheap. Expect to pay about $2,000 per person double for an inside cabin, plus airfare. Info: 800-PRINCESS, www.princess.com.
My wife and I and another couple are planning a river barge trip, probably on the Saone and Rhone rivers in France, next summer. I've heard that some of the rivers are low and barge trips cannot be completed. Do you have any information?
Larry Motz
Fairfax
River levels were quite low throughout Europe last year, although the Saone and the Rhone were not impacted as badly as the Danube, the Rhine, the Elbe and the Sava rivers. Water levels on the Rhine, for example, were the lowest since records began being kept in 1880. This summer was dry again, especially in July, but winter rains and heavy snowfall last winter helped ease the problem.
Alexandre Blanc, spokesman for the Voies Navigables de France, the French navigable waterways authority, said recent dry summers have affected smaller canals in France. But the Rhone and the Saone have not been affected, he said, because "both are very large and deep rivers." For more details on the state of France's waterways: www.vnf.fr.
Postscript
George Wead of Bridgewater, Va., has another Web site for
locating concert tickets in Rome (Travel Q&A, Sept. 19). "Readers may be interested in PromArt (
www.promart.it), which I find the best source of information on classical music and opera events across Italy," he said. "The Web site provides a regularly updated calendar, the events (often including performers and works) listed by province and city along with venues, times, sponsoring organizations and even genres." The site's in Italian, but non-Italian speakers can plug the Web site into
www.google.com and click "translate this page."
Send queries by e-mail (travelqa@washpost.com), fax (202-912-3609) or U.S. mail (Travel Q&A, Washington Post Travel Section, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington D.C. 20071).
