By ELIZABETH FEIZKHAH

AUSTRALIA

BOULIA

Paddy McHugh, organizer of the Desert Sands 2000 camel races, thinks it unfair to deprive people of the sport's thrills just because they lack a camel of their own. In the run-up to the July 19-20 races, near the outback town of Boulia in western Queensland, McHugh is offering novices with a will to win five days of tuition in camel riding, handling and grooming. Graduates of the $450 course will be loaned a mount from McHugh's Australian Camel Farm and invited to compete against professional camel jockeys and fellow amateurs for prizes that include $3,600 cash and a motorbike. The weekend meet will also feature boxing exhibitions, fireworks, a concert and a black-tie ball. Call +61 74 746 3333.

EUROPE

PARIS

Egypt's ancient history was not all pharaohs, pyramids and hieroglyphs. After the death of Alexander the Great, who expelled the occupying Persians in 331 B.C., his general Ptolemy seized Egypt and made Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile, his capital. Out of the mingling of Hellenistic, Egyptian and Jewish cultures sprang the greatest city of the age, a center of trade and learning whose cosmopolitan vibrancy long outlasted the defeat of Queen Cleopatra by the Romans in 31 B.C. "The Glory of Alexandria," at the Petit Palais until July 26, reveals the splendors of the city's golden age through recent archaeological finds and items loaned by museums in Egypt, the U.S. and the Vatican. Among the exhibits, which range from sculptures and mosaics to religious art, is a 23-ton statue of one of Ptolemy's successors found near the sunken ruins of the Pharos lighthouse, one of the wonders of the ancient world.

PIANOSA

Nestled in the Tyrrhenian Sea between Corsica, where Napoleon was born, and Elba, where he was exiled in 1814-15, the tiny island of Pianosa was itself a place of exile: for more than 50 years, from the end of World War II, it was a penal colony housing some of Italy's worst criminals. To ensure that inmates like Mafia boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina never escaped, wardens maintained a 1.5-km exclusion zone around the island, firing warning shots to scare off trespassers. Last year the prison was closed, and now the island, part of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park, has been turned over to tourists. Ferries leave from Elba twice a week for two-hour visits to Pianosa--long enough for visitors to take in the island's bird colonies, wildflowers and shuttered prison buildings.

ASIA

YOKOHAMA

Since adopting lo mein, or boiled noodles, from China, the Japanese have turned the dish they call ramen into a national obsession, whose most extravagant shrine is Yokohama's Ramen Museum. Part theme park, part food mall, it traces noodle evolution from the handmade version to the ubiquitous instant variety with a bewildering range of exhibits, including ramen-shop matchbooks, ramen packaging, ramen-themed video games, and streets lined with old-fashioned noodle and sake bars. For ramen lovers seized by late-night cravings, the museum is open until 11 p.m.