There have been a lot of castles built in Britain over the centuries. They range from the more famous and better preserved castles such as Windsor Castle and the Tower of London, to those less famous and a little less well looked after, such as a personal favourite of mine Peveril Castle, that can be found in the village of Castleton in Derbyshire.

Although the Romans brought stone working skills with them to Britain when they invaded (入侵) and built stone forts(堡垒) across the country, the Anglo-Saxon people, who settled in what is now England after the Romans left, largely dismissed their style of building in favour of wooden structures. It is not until the Norman conquest of 1066 that castles in the truest sense of the word began to appear in Britain, when they were built as places of refuge（避难所）for what was an invading force, a strategy used again in later centuries during England’s invasions of Wales and Scotland.

Some of the best castles to visit in Britain are built on the borderlands where England meets with Wales or Scotland, a memento (纪念品) of the English——Norman expansionist policy of the middle age. These are some of the most remarkable looking castles to be found in the country, dominating the landscapes they inhabit（栖息）.

Entry to most of the castles run by English Heritage, Historic Scotland and Cadw is reasonably priced, but if you are intending to visit lots of castles it might be worth your while joining one of the heritage groups, which one would depend on which area you will be in. It is worth bearing in mind that if you join any of these three groups you will be able to get half priced entry into any of the properties run by the other two. Needless to say not all castles are run by heritage (遗产) trusts, some of the better preserved are still in use and are either owned privately or by the State, many of these are still open to visitors, but they may be a bit more expensive.

Further information on the heritage trusts mentioned earlier, including the properties they run, you can click the following websites:

www. cadw. wales. gov. uk           www. historic-scotland. gov. uk

www engLish-heritage. org. uk        www. nationaltrust. org. uk

  The Isle of Wight is a small island off the south coast of England. It is one of the most popular holiday destinations (预定地点；目的地) in Britain；in 1980 about 8, 000, 000 people stayed there and another    6, 000, 000 went thereon“daytrips”.

      Not many foreign tourists know about the island. Most of the visitors are British people who go there for their summer holidays. The Isle of Wight is only 23 miles long and 13 miles from north to south, but the towns and villages are all very different, and they offer a good many holidays. It is also one of the hottest places in Britain.

      It is very simple to get to the island from London. Trains leave London every hour during the summer. Two and a half hours later, you arrive at Portsmouth, where you walk 50 meters to the ferry (渡口). Half an hour after that, you are standing on the island. A return fare from London to the Isle of Wight will cost about￡10.

  The Disney theme park, its first on the Chinese mainland and the second in Greater China,after Hong Kong Disneyland, will open in Shanghai on June 16,a Thursday Tickets on sale willbegin on March 28, 2016.

   A standard single day ticket for the Shanghai Disney Resort costs 370 yuan ($56 2),while 8peak-day ticket for festival and holiday periods will be sold for 499 yuan , the resort announcedon February 3rd.

   Children between l and l.4 meters tall and seniors aged over 65 years old can enjoy a 25%discount on the ticket price. A two-day ticket will be available at a 5 percent discount.

  Tickets can be booked on the official website or throughthe hotline 400-180-0000.

     In comparison with the other five Disney parks around the world, a one-day ticket for theHong Kong Disney costs 539Hong Kongdollars ($69.2) for adults aged 16 t0 64 years old,while that for the theme park in Tokyo is being sold at 6,900 yen ($58).

     Disney says the park will also reflect Chinese culture. The combination of Disney andChinese cultures will be seen in many classic Chinese designs, such as a teahouse-WanderingMoon. Celebrations of seasonal festivals and stage shows will also include Chinese language,performers, theatrics and acrobatics (杂技) .

  The resort is expected to bring 5 million new passengers annually to the Pudong

International Airport after it opens. It is also expected to attract 10 million visits a year.

Choose Your One-Day Tours

Tour A-Bath & Stonchengeincluding entrance fees to the ancient Roman bathrooms and Stonehenge-￡37until 26 March and￡39thereafter.

Visit the city with over 2,000 years of history and Bath Abbey,the Royal Crescent and the Costute Mtsan.Stonehenge is one of the world’s most famous prehistoric monuments dating back over 5,000 years.

Tour B-Oxford & Stratfordincluding entrance fees to the University St Mary’s Church Tower and Anne Hathaway's house一￡32 until 12 March and￡36 thereafter.

Oxford:Includes a guided of England’s oldest university city and colleges. Look over the “city of dreaming spires(尖顶)”form St Mary’s Church Tower.Stratford:Includes a guided tour exploring much of the Shakespeare wonder.

Tour C—Windsor Castle & Hampton Courtincluding entrance fees to Hampton Court Palace--£34 until March and£37 thereafter.

Includes a guided tour of Windsor and Hampton Court, Henry Mill’s favourite palace. Free time to visit Windsor Castle（entrace fees not included）. With 500 years of history, Hampton Court was once the home of four Kings and one Queen. Now this former royal palace is open to the public as a major tourist attraction. Visit the palace and its various historic gardens, which include the famous maze(迷宫)where it is easy to get lost!

Tour D-Cambridge including entrance fees to the Tower of Saint Mary the Great-£33 .until 18 March and

Great Yarmouth is an English seaside town situated at the mouth of the River Yare, about 120 miles to the northeast of London. Around 5 million people visit Great Yarmouth every year, making it one of Britain’s most popular seaside resorts.

Formerly the home of one of the most profitable fishing industries, Great Yarmouth is a busy and very popular seaside resort. Undoubtedly, one of the most popular attractions is Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach, a historic free entry pleasure park, which draws annually 1.5 million visitors. The two piers(突堤码头), Britannia Pier and Wellington Pier, both contain family-orientated entertainment. As well as the usual thrills one would expect on a classic British seafront, Great Yarmouth also has a quieter side, with a fascinating heritage quarter to explore. Not many people know that Great Yarmouth has the most complete city walls after York, with heritage walks to help you discover this medieval (中世纪的)attraction along with several museums and houses dating back to many centuries. If ghost walks are more your cup of tea, Eerie Tales and Yarmouth Yarns is the tour for you.

Great Yarmouth is also a centre for the North Sea oil and gas industry and increasingly for offshore wind power. The Great Yarmouth Outer Harbour is a huge development currently taking place which can see larger ships coming to the town. The Great Yarmouth Maritime(海上的) Festival in September each year celebrates Great Yarmouth’s maritime heritage.

Over the past few years, Great Yarmouth has seen significant construction spending to improve and modernise the popular seafront area and to ensure it is linked to the town centre. Regent Road has a brilliant ceiling of light which is lit up in the evenings and is now a lovely street leading from the town centre to the seafront area.

C

Ecotourism：A Different Way to Travel

Are you attracted to obscure places？Do you prefer to vacation away from other tourists？Are you careful to take only memories and to leave only footprints？If you answered yes to more than one of these questions, you just might be an ecotourist.

Ecotourists are people who want to experience the unspoiled natural world—and leave it that way when they return home.This trend started in the 1990s，and ecotourism is now growing three times faster than the tourism industry at large.The Kapawi Ecolodge in Ecuador’s remote Amazon Basin is contributing to that expansion, and it gives a snapshot of what ecotourism looks like.

At the Ecolodge, a small group of cabins sits in the middle of the Achuar people’s reserve and is only accessible by air. From here, visitors can explore parts of the Amazon rainforest seen by few outsiders. As they do, local Achuar guides explain how the forest is like their supermarket, where they find food, clothing, medicine and tools. As a result, tourists learn to appreciate the local culture as well as the natural environment.

The owners of Kapawi pay monthly rent to the Achuar people, but they also train the community to run and manage the lodge. They have agreed on a plan to turn the operation over to the Achuar completely by 2011. The owners are working to make ecotourism benefit and empower the local people.

You probably won’t start your own ecolodge, but you can be an ecotourist if you follow these guidelines：Protect the environment；Support local businesses；Respect the local customs and traditions.

The world is full of fascinating places to visit. As an ecotourist, you can enjoy them yourself and make sure that they remain beautiful for future generations as well.

D

Disneyland calls itself the happiest place in the world. In order to keep visitors happy in its locations across the globe, every theme park in the world is changed slightly to satisfy local cultures and tastes.

   Opened in 1983 and larger than the original California Disneyland, Tokyo Disneyland is the third most visited of any theme park in the world after the two Disney parks in the US. Like Walt Disney World in Florida, Cinderella’s Castle is located at the centre of the park.

   But like karaoke, which originated in Japan and is a country-wide obsession (痴迷), Disneyland gives the often-reserved (矜持) Japanese people a place to show their noisy side. In Tokyo Disneyland, even adult visitors will sing, clap and dance along to the internationally themed live shows, which is a rare sight in the US.

   After excitedly entering Disneyland Paris, which opened in 1992, visitors can see an arcade  that features a small copy of the Statue of Liberty – a gift from France to American in 1886, making it a perfect introduction to this Europe’s only Disneyland theme park.

   Unfortunately, the French stereotype of a smoking wine drinker is supported in Disneyland Paris. Many visitors complain (抱怨) that although the theme park is equipped with special smoking areas, most smokers seem to puff away (吹气) in all the open areas, including in queues for rides. Besides this, it is also the only Disneyland in the world where you can enjoy an alcoholic drink with your meal; a French meal without a glass of wine would make for the unhappiest place in the world.

C

     When you visit America, you will see the word Motel on signs and notice boards. It is made up of “motor” and “hotel” and it is really a hotel for people who arrive by car (however, you don’t need a car to stay at one). You have to pay when you arrive for your room, which usually has a bath. Meals are not provided, but there will certainly be a cafeteria (自助餐馆). Americans eat a lot of salads and sandwiches. Along the main roads there are a lot of motels. Each tries to offer more than next. Some provide television in every bedroom; others have swimming pools; and so on. Motels are especially useful when you are in the country, far from a town or city. You will also find them in the big National Parks.

     In these great National Parks, you may meet guests you don’t expect to see. An American friend told me a little story. In the middle of a moonless night she heard strange noises outside her motel window in the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Thinking it might be a thief, she jumped out of bed, opened the door and crept towards a dark shadow. As she got close, she saw the thief. She was dreadfully frightened: it wasn’t a human thief — it was a big black bear. The bear was turning over some empty tins with its paw, looking for tasty bits of food. My friend decided to leave that particular thief alone!

    There are also, of course, places called “rooming houses”,  where they receive lodgers (房客). You will see such signs as Tourists or Rooms Rent, and you could try one of these. A word of warning — looking for a room in New York during the tourist season is like looking for gold on the moon!　

D

For six hours we shot through the landscape of the Karoo desert in South Africa . Just rocks and sand and the baking sun. Knowing our journey was ending ,Daniel and I just wanted to remember all we had seen and done. He used a camera, I used words. I had already finished three notebooks and was into the fourth, a beautiful leather notebook I’d bought in a market in Mozambique.

Southern Africa was full of stories and visions. We were almost drunk on sensations. The roaring of the water at Victoria Falls, the impossible silence of the Okavango Delta in Botswana  .And then the other things :dogs in the streets, whole families in Soweto living in one room, a kilometer from clean water.

As we drove towards the setting sun ,a quietness fell over us. The road was empty—we hadn’t seen another car for hours. And as I drove, something caught my eye, something moving next to me. I glanced in the mirror of the car; I glanced sideways to the right ,and that was when I saw them .Next to us, by the side of the road ,thirty, forty wild horses were racing the car, a cloud of dust rising behind them—brown, muscular horses almost close enough to touch them ,to smell their hot breath. I didn’t know how long they had been there next to us.

I shouted to Daniel: “Look!” ,but he was in a deep sleep, his camera lying useless by his feet.

They raced the car for a few seconds ,then disappeared far behind us, a memory of heroic forms in the red landscape. When Daniel woke up an hour later I told him what had happened.

“Wild horses?” he said .“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I tried .But they were gone after a few seconds.”

“Are you sure you didn’t dream it?”

“You were the one who was sleeping!”

“Typical,” he said. “The best photos are the ones we never take.”

We checked into a dusty hotel and slept the sleep of the dead.