Italian Lakes and Greek Islands (12 Days)

Prices starting from $1, 999

Your tour begins in Milan, Italy, and moves on to the pretty Italian Lake District and the attractive resort (胜地) of Stresa, your home for two nights. Collette Vacations has carefully chosen the Costa Victoria as your home away from home for your 7-night journey along the waterways of the Mediterranean. The cruise ship is filled with the warmth and culture of Italy and is richly designed with entertainment areas and very good living conditions. It will take you to the places of your dreams.

You'll spend 4 days touring Greek cities you've always heard about. In Katakolon, you will have the only unguided tour to nearby Olympia on the whole journey. Then with a local guide you will visit the Greek islands of Santorini, which is often related to the story of the lost city of Atlantis, and Mykonos, a wonderful island with beautiful beaches.

Your journey ends in Verona, home of the love story Romeo and Juliet, with a fun-filled farewell dinner—a perfect ending to a pleasant journey.

12 Days, 25 Meals, 10 Breakfasts, 6 Lunches, 9 Dinners

Day 1    Overnight flight to Italy

Days 2—3    Regina Palace, Stresa, Italy

Days 4—10    Costa Victoria ( Costa cruises)

Day 11    Hotel Leopardi, Verona, Italy

Day 12    Leave for home

Please Note:

Maybe ten-year-old Elizabeth put it best when she said to her father, "But, Dad, you can't be healthy if you're dead."

Dad, in a hurry to get home before dark so he could go for a run, had forgotten to wear his safety belt—a mistake 75% of US population make every day. The big question is why.

There have been many myths about safety belt ever since their first appearance in cars some forty years ago. The following are three of the most common.

Myth the Number One: It's best to be "thrown clear" of a serious accident.

Truth: Sorry, but any accident serious enough to "throw you clear" is able going to be serious enough to give you a very bad landing. And chances are you'll have traveled through a windshield (挡风玻璃) or door to do it. Studies show that chances of dying after a car accident are twenty-five times in cases where people are "thrown clear".

Myth Number Two: Safety-bets "trap" people in cars that are burning or sinking in water.

Truth: Sorry again, but studies show that people knocked unconscious (昏迷的) due to not wearing safety belts have a greater chance of dying in these accidents. People wearing safety belts are usually protected to the point of having a clear head to free themselves from such dangerous situation, not to be trapped in them.

Myth Number Three: Safety belts aren't needed at speeds of less than 30 miles per hour (mph).

Truth: When two cars traveling at 30 mph hit each other, an unbelted driver would meet the windshield with a force equal to diving headfirst into the ground from a height of 10 metres.

Owning a smartphone may not be as smart as you think. They may let you surf the Internet, listen to music and snap photos wherever you are…but they also turn you into workaholic (工作狂), it seems.

A study suggests that, by giving you access to emails at all times, the smartphone adds as much as two hours to your working day. Researchers found that Britons work an additional 460 hours a year on average as they are able to respond to emails on their mobiles. The study shows the average UK working day is between 9 and 10 hours, but a further 2 hours is spent responding to or sending work emails, or making work calls.

Almost one in ten admits spending up to three hours outside their normal working day checking work emails. Some workers confess they are on call almost 24 hours a day. Nearly two-thirds say they often check work emails just before they go to bed and as soon as they wake up, while over a third have replied to one in the middle of the night. The average time for first checking emails is between 6 am and 7 am, with more than a third checking their first email in this period, and a quarter checking them between 11pm and midnight.

Ghadi Hobeika, marketing director of Pixmania, said: "The ability to access millions of apps has made smartphones invaluable for many people. However, there are disadvantages. Many companies expect their employees to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and smartphones mean that people cannot get away from work. The more constantly in contact we become, the more is expected of us in a work capacity."

The African elephant, the largest land animal remaining on earth, is of great importance to African ecosystem (生态系统). Unlike other animals, the African elephant is to a great extent the builder of its environment. As a big plant-eater, it largely shapes the forest-and-savanna (大草原) surroundings in which it lives, therefore setting the terms of existence for millions of other animals that live in its habitat (栖息地).

It is the elephant's great desire for food that makes it a disturber of the environment and an important builder of its habitat. In its continuous search for the 300 pounds of plants it must have every day, it kills small trees and underbushes, and pulls branches off big trees. This results in numerous open spaces in both deep tropical forests and in the woodlands that cover part of the African savannas. In these open spaces are numerous plants in various stages of growth that attract a variety of other plant-eaters.

Take the rain forests for example. In their natural state, the spreading branches overhead shut out sunlight and prevent the growth of plants on the forest floor. By pulling down trees and eating plants, elephants make open spaces, allowing new plants to grow on the forest floor. In such situations, the forests become suitable for large hoofed plant-eaters to move around and for small plant-eaters to get their food as well.

What worries scientists now is that the African elephant has become an endangered species. If the elephant disappears, scientists say, many other animals will also disappear from vast areas of forest and savanna, greatly changing and worsening the whole ecosystem.

Gaiman is an English author of lots of science fiction and fantasy works. His argument is that children shouldn't be discouraged from reading what adults may think of as bad books. He is dead right.

A child in a library is an explorer venturing into a land where he has no map to guide him. This is part of the excitement. Everything is new. His taste is yet unformed, and it cannot be formed until he has tried a variety of things.

Not knowing what books are good or bad, an eager child will try very different things. At the age of eleven or twelve, I still read Enid Blyton
Stevenson's Kidnapped, was happily terrified by ghost stories and desperately wanted to be Rupert of Hentzau, a most attractive evil character in literature.

A child reads for enjoyment from all sorts of books. I can't remember when I stopped reading comics like the Wizard and Hotspur, but I'm pretty sure that my reading of them continued even while I was delighted in Sherlock Holmes or in the short stories of HG Wells.

 Never say "Don't read that rubbish" or "You're too young for that". If he is really too young and the book is beyond him, he'll put it aside. If he doesn't, then he's not too young, even if he misses much that an adult reader would find in it.

The only useful thing an adult can do is to give a child a book and say, "I think you might enjoy this." Don't complain if he doesn't like it and turns to something that you think is bad.

A. Anything he reads may be attractive, too.

B. Everybody has a secret world inside of themselves.

C. For the young reader even a bad book has its own value.

D. Adults should be careful in what they say to a child about his reading.

E. Almost everyone who reads widely as an adult has read wildly as a child.

F. The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.

G. He is also a productive blogger and the point he gave in one of his blogs surely makes sense.

It's always been a dream for Alex to take a trip with her mother, but it was a death in the family that1made them both realize how precious life really is.

"After losing my grandma, I2that neither I nor my mum will3be here, and that I can't4the right time to come," the 27-year-old girl told The Huffington Post.

"After a week of5, my amazing mum and I are off to travel around the United States. We will be travelling from New York to Los Angeles interviewing6who are changing the world for the better and7the dream I had for a very long time: to travel together with my mother. I have taken a month off work and we are on our way.8are waiting!" Alex said.

So in August, Alex and her 63-year-old retired mother, Halina, traveled to the United States for a three-week9that took them from coast to coast.

Alex is the10of Looking For Heroes, a social media project, in which she photographs many of the interesting people she meets with,11unique tidbits (花边新闻) of their life stories at the same time. The12mother and daughter traveled across the nation, visiting cities13Knoxville, Tennessee, New York City, Los Angeles and Washington. Along the way they took photos14famous backdrops (背景) in each city, making some15memories.

Meanwhile, Alex16much from her mother. Her mother often said "My17to young people would be to learn new things, and what you have learned will be your biggest18in life. With age you stop19about things that don't matter. With your priorities (优先) changing,20and health become the most important."

For those who want to keep themselves slim, (get) more sleep could help. A group of scientists from the University of Leeds in the UK found that not having enough sleep could add your waistline (腰围). They studied 1, 615 adults, who were asked (report) how long they slept and their food intake for four days. Their weight, blood (press), and waistline were recorded. turned out that people who get an average of six hours' sleep a night have a 3-centimeter (thick) waist than those who have nine hours. The researchers didn't explain how a lack of sleep could cause weight gain. , past studies suggest not sleeping enough could cause an increased release of hormones (荷尔蒙), which (be) linked to appetite. Laura Hardie, lead author of the study, believes the findings show the (important) of getting enough sleep. "How much sleep we need (differ) between people, but the current consensus (共识) is that seven to nine hours is best for most adults," she told The Telegraph.

增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧)，并在其下面写出该加的词。

删除：把多余的词用斜线(\)划掉。

修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。

注意：1．每处错误及其修改均仅限一词;

2．只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起)不计分。

After shopping, Mother and I went to restaurant for lunch. I notice Mother looking at a nearby table occupy by an elderly woman and a young couple. They ate silently, and it was clearly that things were not going well. As we left, Mother stopped on their table. "Excuse me," she said, put her arm around the unhappy old woman. "You remind me so many of my mother. May I hug (拥抱) you? " The woman smiled happily as she accepted to it. After we left, I said, "That was very nice of you, Mother. So I didn't think she looked like Grandma." "Neither did me," said Mother cheerfully.

注意：可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。

参考词汇：普及急救知识popularize first aid knowledge，紧急情况emergency