Now at Travel Dynamics International, for remarkably discounted rates, you can:

Voyage into the classical world with antiquities experts from Antiques Roadshow. Enjoy an epic cruise down the entire Pacific coast of South America, from the Panama Canal to Ushuaia. Explore the lives of famous women of antiquity. Take a once-in-a-lifetime repositioning cruise from Morocco to Patagonia, following the route of Magellan. Continue in the footsteps of Sir Ernest Shackleton with Peter Hillary, son of the first man to ascend Everest. Cruise the Falklands and South Georgia in the far southern Atlantic en route to Cape Town, South Africa. Discover South America from the Amazon to Uruguay. Take an astounding voyage along the entire Atlantic coast of Africa. Sail from coastal Brazil into the depths of the Peruvian Amazon. Or perhaps the Orinoco and Amazon, with the beaches of Trinidad? Delve into the rich cultures of the Western Mediterranean from Seville to Venice. Circumnavigate Newfoundland. Or cruise up the entire Atlantic coast of North America, from Palm Beach to the Canadian maritimes? Listen to exquisite music, and enjoy top-chef Mediterranean cuisine, from Seville to Naples.

The epic journeys you’ve been waiting for, available now for less.

One of the greatest young sopranos in the world today, Nicole Cabell, will be joining us for an opera cruise of the Mediterranean from September 29-October 9, 2009.

Here’s Nicole Cabell in La Boheme. Simply exquisite.

Oh, here she is in a Donzinetti. Such sweet gusto.

She’s transcendent. I could listen to her for a week straight. On an elegant small ship. Cruising to Santorini.

Nicole Cabell, soprano – One of the most sought-after young sopranos int the world today, Nicole Cabell studied vocal performance at the Eastman School of Music. She has won critical acclaim for her performances at New York’s Metropolitan Opera as Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Adina in Donzinetti’s Elixir d’Amore. She has sung at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and with the Orchestra of St. Luke at Carnegie Hall. In 2005 Ms. Cabell won the BBC Singer of the World competition in Cardiff, Wales. Her debut solo album, Soprano, was named an “Editor’s Choice” by Gramophone magazine and received the 2007 George Solti Orphée d’Or from France’s Académie du Disque Lyrique.

Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano, who will be joining us on Travel Dynamics International’s opera cruise of the Mediterranean September 29-October 9, 2009, had the role of Kitty Oppenheimer in the Met’s recent production of John Williams’ Dr. Atomic. Her performance won high praise from the New Yorker:

She was able to create a fresh, vital portrayal, bringing a luminous tone, a generously supported musical line, a keen sense of verbal nuance, and a flair for seduction.

You can see her below, in the Metropolitan Opera’s promo for Dr. Atomic (Sasha Cooke comes on at 1:13) –

Sasha has upcoming recitals at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts in California; in 2008 she sang the role of Olga in Tchaikovsky’s Evgeny Onegin with the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv; and in 2009 she will appear in orchestral concerts with the Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and the Denver Symphony.

Joe Sharkey, over at The New York Times‘ travel segment “On the Road,” reports on Expedia.com’s new TripAdvisor, which – he says – performs some flight-booking magic:

a search function that quickly sort[s] out flights and variables, including fees, connections and even the layout of the plane, from data pulled from a vast range of online booking agencies, including airlines’ own sites and sites like Travelocity, Hotwire and Expedia.

I’ve been fiddling with it, and I’m impressed. Besides basic fare, my priorities in booking an airplane ticket are seating (I’d sooner walk than sit in the middle seat), connections and the time it takes to get from here to there. I tried a sample Houston-to-Seattle round trip and got 1,100 price and schedule options (variable connections account for the big number of choices). Most fares ranged from about $320 to $420, but a few were near $1,200.

Clicking on the “fees estimator” tab, I could then pick and choose among a range of options like headphones, snacks and checked bags. Depending on what I chose, the selections narrowed, each with a specific price. Clicking through to a specific flight, I could then see which seats were available. The system was quick and easy to use.

As published in the latest edition of Forbes Magazine, Travel Dynamics International is offering substantial discounts on many of its 2009 itineraries. We are waiving the single supplement on many of our cruises – a $1,000 value – so single travelers can enjoy our journeys of discovery and insight without penalty. We believe that a transcendent travel experience is not just in the journey, nor in the destination, but who you travel with. Our elegant yacht-like ships, and our creative itineraries, are designed to foster a small, convivial discovery party of interesting, diverse, like-minded travelers: well-educated, cultured, and fascinating. We make a special effort to draw all the members of our tour groups together for a delightful, shared, enlightening experience. This is an ideal time to voyage and explore with confidence and in friendship.

Single travelers are not alone in the Special Offers category, either – TDI is offering 50% off the couples rate for several of our cruises, a savings of $3,000-$6,000 – and inviting you for a free night at a 5-star hotel at the destination port. Please click TravelDynamicsInternational.com for more details.

And your arsenal, ballot, casino, contraband and gazette; your ghetto, imbroglio, gondola, lagoon, lido, lotto, marzipan, pantaloon, pistachio, quarantine, regatta, scampi, sequin and zany.

Oh, those zany Venetians! Those are some of the words that, originally Venetian, are now common currency in English. The Venetian language is actually older than Italian, an artificially created language based on Tuscan and Tuscan writers like Boccaccio, Dante and Petrarch. Venetian, on the other hand, can still be understood in Burano and some of the outlying islands in the lagoon. Ronnie Ferguson, head of the linguistics department at St. Andrews University, has compiled A Linguistic History of Venice, and a review in the Times of London makes for fascinating reading.

Antarctica, a 40-minute feature film on the continent, animals and the scientists who work there, is available on streaming video from Hulu.com.

The Onassis Cultural Foundation in midtown Manhattan has just opened an interesting exhibition on the role of women in ancient Greece, as illuminated in art of the time. The New York Times writes,

The main misconception is the notion that women had a universally mute and passive role in Athenian society. It is true that they lived with restrictions modern Westerners would find intolerable. Technically they were not citizens. In terms of civil rights, their status differed little from that of slaves. Marriages were arranged; girls were expected to have children in their midteens. Yet, the show argues, the assumption that women lived in a state of purdah, completely removed from public life, is contradicted by the depictions of them in art.

Much of that art is religious, which is no surprise considering the commanding female deities in the Greek pantheon. Like most gods in most cultures they are moody, contradictory personalities, above-it-all in knowledge but quick to play personal politics and intervene in human fate. Four of them make in-depth appearances here.

Read more of this excellent review.

We’re still trying to work out how to embed a player inside this here blog, but in the meantime, you can check out the sounds of Travel Dynamics International’s world on Blip.fm! You’ll find ancient Malian songs, traditional sea shanties, Greek folk songs, South African choral works, and a great deal more. It’s the soundtrack to your voyages.