WESTERN EUROPE
TRAVELERS WITH CHILDREN
Needless to say, family vacations often require a slower pace and more planning; not all establishments are built for children. If you pick a B&B or a small hotel, call ahead and verify that it’s child-friendly. If you rent a car, make sure the rental com pany provides a car seat for younger children. Always have your child carry some sort of ID in case of an emergency, or in case he or she gets lost.
Museums, tourist attractions, accommodations, and restaurants often offer dis counts for children. Children under two generally fly for 10% of the adult airfare on international flights (this does not necessarily include a seat). International fares are usually discounted 25% for children from two to 11. Check with your airline, though, to confirm their specific child policy.
The Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz, in his magnum study Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, hypothesizes that the smoking of tobacco was a later development among the Amerindians than chewing it or inhaling its powder. Netherlands Map Keeping the fire away from the smoker’s mouth requires more advanced technology than a hollow reed. Mayans may have been the first to develop the cigar, for the earliest archaeological record we have of smoking is a Mayan vessel from 6001000 c.e. that was discovered in Uazactun, Guatemala. It depicts a roll of tobacco leaves tied with string and the word the Mayans used for smoking was sik’ar. First Europeans to Use Tobacco The first European to smoke a cigar was Rodrigo de J©rez, who was sent by Columbus, along with Luis de Torres, on November 2, 1492, to explore inland Cuba.
It is said that J©rez enjoyed smoking so much that he took some cigars home with him to Spain. The smoke coming from his mouth and nostrils made him appear so demonic that his neighbors denounced him to the Inquisition, and he spent some three to seven years in a dungeon (accounts vary). By the time he came out, other sailors had spread the habit of chewing, inhaling, and smoking tobacco across the Iberian Peninsula. It was the medicinal value of tobacco, however, that really spread its use across the Old World. In 1571, a Spanish physician named Nicols Monardes wrote Joyfull News out of the New Founde Worlde. The book was a compilation of Amerindian cures, including tobacco as a curative for thirty-six different ailments, ranging from wounds and open ulcers to toothaches, lockjaw, rheumatism, worms, bad breath, insomnia, and all manner of colds and respiratory problems. (In the following century, it would also be hailed as a protection against plague.) Medicinal tobacco was used as a poultice, ingested as a tea, or inhaled as snuff.
