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Once upon a time in Greece
A tale of ruins and revelers and Aegean nights -- and the way things fit together in time and space.
By Don George
[10/20/99]

Out of the Blue
Confessions of a onetime ramp rat
Two months as an airport baggage-handler almost cost me my life.
By Elliott Neal Hester
[10/19/99]

Searching for Mr. Watson
Two frat brothers make a healing pilgrimage to a legendary renegade's retreat in the heart of the Everglades.
By Bill Belleville
[10/16/99]

Wanderlust
Love letters in the sand
I was his English teacher, 14 years older. But on the beach in Mazatlan, love is love.
By Susan McKinney de Ortega
[10/15/99]

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Day of the Dead
I want to participate in Oaxaca's festivities, but am worried about the recent floods. Can I still go? Plus: Our expert's tips on touring Big Ben's private gears and finding a teaching job at sea.
By Donald D. Groff
[10/14/99]

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The Apostles are a cluster of islands in Lake Superior at the tip of the Bayfield Peninsula in northernmost Wisconsin. They supposedly got their name from an early French missionary who'd spotted a dozen of them, but actually there are about 21 islands in the group. They are undeveloped and are frequented by boaters and nature lovers. Among the group are half a dozen lighthouses and about a dozen docks.

The biggest of the islands, and the one that gets the most tourists, is Madeline Island. It has fewer than 150 year-round residents at La Pointe and is about 20 minutes by ferry from Bayfield, on the mainland. It has its own airport. Madeline Island offers golfing, camping, hiking, bicycling and a number of historic attractions, including an Indian burial ground and the Madeline Island Museum, commemorating its fur-trading past. The area is designated the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Free national park primitive campsites are provided on 18 of the islands; Madeline Island offers some rentable campsites with hookups, too.

From June through October there are narrated boat excursions of the Apostles that leave from Bayfield.

For further information, contact the Apostle Island National Lakeshore Headquarters, Route 1, Box 4, Bayfield, Wis. 54814; phone (715) 779-3397.

The lakeshore is open all year. The headquarters visitor center is open daily from May through October from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Memorial Day to Labor Day) and Monday to Friday November through April from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.

Revisiting a previous Travel Advisor Q&A:

An earlier column addressed the question of whether London tourists could routinely go up into the Tower of Big Ben (the answer is no). But reader Mike Morley in Toronto once made it into the tower courtesy of a relative who worked for a member of Parliament. Here's his account:

There is no "lift" in the tower, so we ascend a narrow, winding staircase stopping every 20 steps or so for breath and snippets of history from our guide, an entertaining old Cockney fellow who has conducted tours there for years. The inside of the tower is stone, as you might expect, and lighting is provided by small windows cut into the brick and by electric lights.

Toward the start of the climb, you pass through a small cell in which prisoners have been kept from time to time right up into this century. Leaning over to gaze down the center of the tower as you ascend farther, you see only the spiral of iron railings about the stairs you've just climbed, and a rope (used for raising and lowering lunch, according to our guide) disappearing into the darkness.

The clock faces are reached first, about twice the height of a man and made of numerous translucent panes of German glass in an iron framework in a chamber below the clockworks and bells. Behind each face, on the opposite side of the aisle, is a large iron frame and reflectors for the electric bulbs used to illuminate the clock face at night -- four in all. The arms of each clock face are driven by long shafts protruding from the center of the tower and connected to machinery descended from the next level up. The bells (there are five if I recall correctly, including Big Ben) are in a room behind the clockworks, and are accessible by a catwalk. This is where we stood to hear the chimes.

Tours comprise about eight to 10 people at most. We were sternly warned to keep silent for two full minutes at the hour, owing to the BBC microphones positioned about the room, and we were informed, as we stood about the clockworks, of how they had shattered and sprayed the room with shrapnel in the 1970s when a 5-ton counterweight fell unrestrained to the bottom of its shaft and spun the works out of control. It was amusing to see old English coins (threepence and such) being used to "trim" the pendulum so as to keep the clockworks accurate. According to lore, an extra set of old coins is kept on hand as spares. The view of London and the river from the tower is terrific; shooting photos inside the tower is forbidden.

All in all, this was an enjoyable experience. Nevertheless, for those who are interested in time and famous timepieces, there is an even more engaging date to be had (so to speak) at the Greenwich Observatory in east London. (Though I suppose many would disagree merely because the Tower is off-limits, and therefore forbidden fruit.)

At Greenwich, one can view the very clocks engineered and constructed in the 18th century by John Harrison, who solved one of the most vexing and costly scientific problems of past ages: how to keep accurate time at sea to enable the calculation of longitude. (Harrison's life is chronicled in the engaging and easy-reading "Longitude" by Dava Sobel.)

The observatory is situated on top of the Prime Meridian; one can step from the east to the west side of the earth in a trice. The Docklands Light Railway and a quick trip through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, London's oldest foot tunnel under the Thames (an experience in itself), make this a simple outing from anywhere in the city. Greenwich offers as well a lovely park, the Maritime Museum and the Cutty Sark (in dry dock) close by. Engineering and science buffs like me also enjoy the fact that the trip back out of Greenwich on the Docklands line takes you down one of the deepest tunnels of the London Underground.

Sir Isaac Newton labored at the observatory, as did astronomers Flamsteed, Maskelyne and a host of others, and of course the observatory itself was originally designed by Christopher Wren. Having been to both, if I had to take my choice again, I'd take Greenwich over Big Ben -- not least for the odd little wooden chair/bench, still intact and unassuming as ever, upon which Newton himself reclined to observe the heavens.

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