Besides, better wait until big bad old fidel is no longer with us

I am looking for the cheapest way of transport – please advice.

Secondly, we have a party fo 6 adults and 1 child. Is there any apartment sort of accomodation which works cheaper than hotels in these countries – Italy and Switzerland?

Any other travel advice on Italy travel will be appreciated. Thanks.

Actually, train travel here in Italy is stillì relatively cheap compared to many other places. However, it does add up for a large group. There are a couple of things you might want to consider. One is to rent a car to drive – that won’t have a per person charge and you could rent the car just for the specific trip. Driving times and directions: http://www.viamichelin.com/

The night train from Rome to Venice is a good option for you: http://www.ferroviedellostato.it/Homepage_en.html . The train leaves from the Tiburtina station in Rome at 10:36 pm and arrives in Venice at 5:26 the next morning. Seats are cheaper than the high speed train and right now there’s a special promotion for 19 euro (limited number of seats). Rather than sitting, I would recommend getting berths which make it easier to sleep. The standard fare is 60.90 euro per person which is still a little less than the day train. However, if you buy tickets in advance, you can get the same berth for as low as 42.60 euro at the discounted rate for early purchase and the Autumn special promotion has some tickets for 29 euro. Note that with this train, you also do not have to pay for a hotel for the night.

From Venice to Switzerland, you can change trains in Milan to get to various points or there is one train that you can take to Geneva without changes.

But the underlying issue is that the agent never alerted him about the use of her personal miles.

"If you mean the air miles used to purchase your friend’s plane ticket originally belong to the Travel agent, yes it is allowed. For many airlines, the dirt cheap air tickets do not earn air miles too, not every ticket is entitled to air miles. For travel agents, using their own air miles to book a ticket for a customer at a low price is one of their ways to make a profit and there is nothing wrong with it."

This is completely wrong. By taking money and then using his or her miles to book the ticket, the travel agent is selling awards, which is explicitly in violation of the terms and conditions of nearly every single frequent flier program operating throughout the world today. Not only is this practice bad for the seller — the airline may choose a number of penalties for the account holder, including the forfeiture of miles or the closure of the account altogether — but the buyer of the ticket can be penalized as well.

The airline, under the terms of the frequent flier program, usually has the right to terminate the award ticket if they determine that it has been sold in violation of the program’s rules. This means that your friend, if it’s discovered that he purchased an award ticket, may either not get to go on his trip at all, or if they discover it when he’s trying to come home, he may be forced to buy a walkup one-way ticket back home, which could be extremely expensive.

(If either of these things occur, then your friend will only have recourse against the travel agent in trying to get his money back — the airline’s terms are clear that the ticket can be unilaterally cancelled.)

It doesn’t matter whether the ticket would or would not have earned miles based on the fare code — when a person buys a ticket from a travel agent, I venture that they’d have a reasonable expectation that they were buying a revenue ticket, and not just buying an award that runs a risk of being cancelled from under them if the airline questions where the award came from. For that reason, I’d highly suggest that your friend speak to this agent and ask for a refund — barring that, I’d personally consider filing a chargeback with the credit card company, if a card was used, based on misrepresenation of the item purchased.

Amount of dampening depends on the medium it is traveling through.

The dampening will continue until all energy is dissipated – long after you can still hear it. So, the sound will still propagate, or move, through the medium long after you are unable to hear it.

The length of time you will still be able to hear the sound will depend on how much energy the original sound had, and the medium it traveling in.

For climatic reasons tourists prefer the inter-season (April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December)

FOR YOUR INFO

last year during Nov there were 28,511 international tourists in Madagascar compared to 16,089 in Feb,
During October 32,364
October seems to be the favorite.

But Nov is in the very first part of "winter" season.

ENJOY