These screeching Tasmanian devils, once a scourge to farmers but now an endangered species, live at the private Trowunna Wildlife Park in Tasmania.         Photo by Gene Korte

Tassie, as the locals call it, is Australia’s smallest state. Blessed with four seasons, unlike the mainland, it also has hundreds of miles of dramatic coastline. This island is home to wombats and koalas, among other unusual creatures. Perhaps the most unusual of all is the small-dog-sized Tasmanian devils, because of the screaming meemies shriek they make.

Tasmania is also the last bit of land, if you’re heading south, before you reach Antarctica, 1,500 miles away.

Cradle Mountain is one of the most popular tourist destinations here, especially for what the Tasmanians call bushwalking and Northern Hemisphere residents might label hiking or a walk in the woods. As fully one-third of the island is protected temperate rainforest, there’s lots of bushwalking to go around. Perhaps Tassie’s most famous trail is the 50-mile Overland Track near Cradle Mountain.

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This winter scene includes an open-air iceskating rink in Union Square, a park in the heart of San Francisco’s downtown shopping district.         Photo by Gene Korte

It’s walkable and loveable (people do leave their hearts here) and according to many travelers, this city boasts some of the best food and wines anywhere.

If you’re yearning for a big-city vacation and have a weekend to spare, why not come to San Francisco, the city on the bay.

Dine, wine, shop and get around on cable cars and buses when it’s too far to walk.

Wear flowers in your hair, especially in the charming Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of Victorian homes, and enjoy the many bargains from hotel discounts to meal deals at fine restaurants all over the city. You can always put your feet up when you get back home.

With only three nights and two days in the city, we chose bustling Union Square as our home base.

Chinatown is only six blocks away, flower stands are on every corner, and the Powell Street cable cars are right here.

It’s a park in the heart of the downtown shopping district and a neighborhood where new and renovated hotels bloom like daisies. In the winter, the ice-skating rink was open, too, and it was full of skaters well into the night.

Here are three hotels each a stone’s throw from the Square — Kensington Park Hotel, Villa Florence and the Westin St. Francis.  They vary in accouterments and price, but they all offer great beds and service.

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Hope Korte stands at the Stone Hut overlooking the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, one of the most visited sites in South America. Photo by Gene Korte.

Back when our granddaughter, Hope, was 13 we traveled with her to Peru. It was Hope’s first international trip and also her first time traveling alone with us. We found seeing Peru, especially through her eyes, was a great way to get better acquainted and also a wonderful opportunity to introduce her to South America.

Hope wanted to see Machu Picchu, the Inca site built in the 1400’s. To get there we flew to Lima, the capital of Peru and the gateway city for most travelers from the US. It’s about eight hours nonstop from New York and in the same time zone half the year. Planning our trip was easy with Peru Experiences, a division of Orient-Express. They specialize in private or family travel and offer one-stop shopping for everything we wanted to see and do.

Gene and I had traveled in Peru several years earlier with a group tour, but this time we saw more of the local people and the countryside and enjoyed a wider range of Peruvian cuisine. We also saw remnants of and heard more about the heritage of the powerful Inca warriors who ruled this part of the world for 300 years before the Spanish arrived in the 1530s.

EATING LIKE AN INCA

The Inca rulers didn’t just eat lunch. They feasted at their midday meal. We did, too, at our barbecue at the Libertador Valle Sagrado Lodge in the Sacred Valley outside Cusco. After a giant salad of fresh greens, we were each given a platter of vegetables cooked in a pachamanca, an underground oven. One of the delights was an eight-inch-long bean pod. When our guide, Miguel, told us the big, oval-shaped beans inside were lima beans, Hope said, “I get it — lima like the city in Peru.”

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This young male lion, one of southern Africa’s Big 5 animals, gave us a big yawn for the camera. Photo by Gene Korte.

Lions, leopards, elephants, cape buffaloes and rhinos are the Big Five in this part of the world, but reports suggest one can safari for days here and not see all of them. We got lucky and spotted a young elephant playing in the mud nine minutes into our first game drive. Fate aside, the real credit goes to Singita Game Reserve guides for knowing where to look.

Over five days we viewed wildly splashing mating hippos (a first for a fellow traveler who was a veteran of more than 400 game drives), shy kangaroos, running zebras, even a few reptiles like the 8-foot crocodile and her baby catching fish in a water spillway. And every day complex termite nests as tall as people dotted the road sides. …

The Silver Wind, moored here in Copenhagen, is part of the Silversea fleet that is often ranked first among small cruise ships by sea travelers. Photo by Gene Korte.

The Silver Wind is pizzazz on the high seas. The vitality of its staff, layout and offerings made us feel like we were guests, not customers, on a floating five-star hotel. On our 10-day northern European voyage, we saw touches of the Vikings and glimpses of the czars amidst the graciousness of our floating home.

In Copenhagen the changing of the Danish Royal Guard is as old as the city subway is new. Helsinki’s bustling flower market near the harbor is only a few blocks from the Orthodox Uspenski Cathedral, a reminder of the centuries when Russia ruled Finland. In high-tech Estonia, one of northern Europe’s oldest intact medieval cities is the core of this tiny nation’s capital, Tallinn.

And St. Petersburg in western Russia still has the glory of the past with palaces, churches and its enormous display of priceless art in the Hermitage, while Sunday afternoon bridal parties filled nearby parks, http://www.silversea.com.

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