- Upper-Intermediate
- Reading
Check Your English Level: Travel and Trips
The Window Seat
Every December Gugu and Cici travel with Mom to Joburg. Their best bit? Riding the long-distance train together.
“This year I’m taking the window seat!” says Cici. “Not fair! You had it last year,” Gugu shouts.
“Race!” says Gugu. Off they go, running down the platform. Cici reaches it first.
“Rock, paper, scissors!” says Cici. This time, Gugu wins.
Mom decides, “You’ll share the window. Half the trip is for Gugu, half for Cici.”
They get on the train. No! Every window seat is taken.
The sisters sit in the aisle seats. They peek at the window. They wish they could see the view.
The lady sitting in the window seat drops her handbag. The sisters pick it up and hand it back.
“Thank you, girls. Would you like to sit here by the window?” “Yes!”
Dick Whittington
Dick Whittington was a poor little boy who lived in the country.
His father and mother were both dead.
Poor little Dick was always willing to work, but sometimes there was no work for him to do, so he often had nothing to eat.
Now Dick was a bright boy.
He kept both ears open to hear what was said around him.
He had heard many times about the great city of London.
Men said that in this great city the people were rich.
Dick had even heard that the streets were paved with gold.
"How I should like to visit that great city," thought Dick, "for I could pick up gold from the streets!"
Dick had earned a little money, so one day he set out to walk to London.
He walked and walked and walked, but London was a long way from his home.
At last a man with a wagon came along. He was a kind man, and he gave Dick a ride.
"Where are you going?" asked Dick.
"I'm going to London," said the man.
"You are very good to give me a ride. I am going there, too," said Dick.
It was dark when they reached London.
That night Dick slept in a barn with the horses.
The next morning he looked for the golden stones in the streets.
He looked and looked, but he could find only dust and dirt.
Bulgarians Bike From Alaska to Argentina
Vyacheslav Stoyanov had dreamed of visiting America since he was a young child.
Yana Melamed grew up visiting family in the United States. But she long dreamed of exploring South America.
Together, they are making both of their dreams come true.
On bicycles.
Yana is from Bulgaria. Vyacheslav, who goes by Slav, is originally from Ukraine. He moved to Bulgaria almost 20 years ago.
Last June, Slav and Yana flew on an airplane – with their bicycles – from Sofia, Bulgaria, to Deadhorse, Alaska. The town of 25 people is one of the northernmost communities in North America.
From Deadhorse, they began a 60,000-kilometer bike trip, from Alaska to Argentina. They are biking to the southernmost point in South America.
“The life on two wheels, it’s something very, very exciting, and very fun actually,” Yana said. “Most of the people think it’s very hard, very tough, cycling all day with the luggage. Yes, we have the tough times. But it’s a lot of fun because we are very independent.”
But their journey is not only about having fun and fulfilling their dreams.
Yana and Slav call their mission Cycle4Recycle.
They say the goal of Cycle4Recycle is to make people more aware of how to protect the environment and preserve natural resources.
Boats and Blizzards
Increasing travel by motorized vehicles in the 20th century saw growth in demand for winter travel accommodations. Local groups began calling for the National Park Service to plow Yellowstone’s roads. However, the expense and difficulty of plowing the more than 140 miles of the Grand Loop Road, and the massive, view-obscuring snowbanks created by the plows, prompted the NPS to seek a different strategy for winter access.
In 1949, the NPS began allowing motorized oversnow vehicles inside park boundaries. Some of the first oversnow vehicles in the park were snowplanes, predecessors to snowmobiles. Snowplanes are designed to scoot across the snow on skis while propellers attached to the cab push the vehicle forward. Modern snowmobiles, invented in the 1950s, quickly became more popular than the older, bulky snowplanes. By the 1960s, recreation companies and park concessioners were renting snowmobiles to visitors and running tours in snowcoaches, which have large tires to cross snow and increased seating capacity.
Over the next three decades, winter tourism boomed, as did the controversy over the use of snowmobiles. These vehicles caused noise and air pollution; and their ease of off-road traveling enabled many visitors to approach and harass wildlife and enter delicate thermal areas. After decades of fierce public debate, the NPS restricted snowmobiling in the park in 2003. Administrators set a daily cap for the number of snowmobile vehicles allowed in the park, issued standards for more environmentally friendly engines, and required all snowmobilers to travel in guided groups. Restrictions are still in place today. In the winter, only the road connecting the North and Northeast Entrances is plowed. Weather permitting, cars can travel from Gardiner, Montana, and the park’s headquarters in Mammoth to the communities of Silver Gate and Cooke City.