Changes in train and sea travel

NEWS from Washington, D.C., and other major metropolitan areas can affect how you spend your travel dollar in 2005. Here is a look at some changes.

* Before adjourning for its Thanksgiving recess, Congress passed an appropriations bill that allocated $1.2 billion for next year’s operation of Amtrak -- $500 million less than Amtrak says it needs for survival. So once more, Amtrak will be unable to spend money on necessary maintenance and other capital needs, despite having carried a record 24 million passengers in 2003.

I might sound like a broken record, but we cannot give up in our efforts to build a viable Amtrak. We must continue to urge our representatives in Congress to reverse their policies on Amtrak.

* Norwegian Cruise Line announced last month that it would join Carnival and Royal Caribbean cruise lines in prohibiting travel agents and cruise brokers from advertising discounts on cruise fares. The only major cruise companies that continue to permit such advertising will be Holland America Cruises and Princess Cruises. However, Norwegian will join Carnival in allowing travel agents and cruise brokers to answer questions about discounts over the phone. Smart cruise passengers will place speculative calls to large cruise brokers and ask: “Got any discounts?”

* A reader has asked me to list the highlights of my travels:

Hiking the Great Wall of China; studying for a week in Oxford, England; attending Carnival in Rio; staying with hill tribes in northeast Thailand; going on a Kenya safari; seeing the pyramids of Egypt; driving through the Peloponnesus of Greece; bathing with locals in a Bali river; sailing into Glacier Bay, Alaska; scuba diving off the Caribbean island of Bonaire; Masada and the Dead Sea of Israel; as well as every trip to Paris; winter in Venice, Italy; a month in a Tuscan villa; and Berlin when the wall came down.