What happens when a tiny group of villages gets into the Rick Steves guide and suddenly millions show up? I set to Cinque Terre, Italy to find out.
How strong is the Rick Steves effect on destinations, places that were once sleepy, undiscovered back door destinations, and suddenly this guidebook writer plays them up? I am about to find out in a dramatic way, as I’m headed to an area of Italy known as the Cinque Terre, a place that Rick nearly single-handedly…
Nearly every article about staying safe while traveling (and there are many) will tell you to “use common sense”, lazy advice. Yet what does that mean and do you truly need to avoid dark alleys?
It’s been 20 years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the way we travel has radically altered. A look back on travel right before that day, and the times after.
What is the future of travel in the age of an ongoing pandemic, masks, and social distancing? A year ago, I took a look. Time to look again.
Too many cities have been called the “Paris of the East” or the “Pearl of wherever” to make these nicknames relevant, so can we stop using them? Let’s investigate how this happens.
What is the future of travel in the age of pandemics, social distancing, and closed borders? Let’s take a look at how travel will likely change, for better and for worse.
A few days on the island of Santorini, Greece gave me the tourist experience of a lifetime. Are the wonderful views worth the crush of humanity? Is the absence of local culture made up for by the stunning photos you’ll bring back? Let’s break it down.
Some travelers are lucky enough to have seen the popular places and now choose the second-tier sights, but why do we wait? Why not sometimes start with the less-knowns? I offer Kanazawa, Japan as a prime example.
An accompanying Instagram account is a must for a travel blog, yet getting people to follow you is a challenge and a game. Here’s the tale of my frustration with the ‘gram.
Tachinomi are a Japanese institution – standing bars and restaurants, where by design there are no seats; you stand throughout the experience. See why you need to make your stand in Japan.
Tokyo’s Piss Alley and Golden Gai areas used to be very Japanese, and thus very exclusive, but a revisit five years later shows them to be now astonishingly touristy. What to think when a place changes?
Sometimes when traveling, the town you choose for your home base isn’t all that whippy, such as Nazare, Portugal. Nothing to do but hang in low-rate places.
It’s tempting to stay at your hotel for an easy breakfast when traveling, but please let me tell you why it’s so much more rewarding to venture out.
Kyoto has a massive number of sights, and you need more than a listing; you need a solid strategy to tackle them. Here, let me lay out a way to think about tackling a visit to Kyoto.
Pan amb oli (panamboli) or Pan con tomate is a canonical, beloved dish of Spain’s Mallorca island and of Catalonia, but gosh it’s simple. Can bread with tomato and olive oil really be considered a composed dish? An outsider contemplates what makes a dish a dish.
One form of fine dining in Osaka Japan is called Kappo, where everyone sits together at a counter in front of the open kitchen. Here’s my experience in one place.
You want to see Switzerland. We all do. The mountains, the lakes, the cheese and chocolate, yes yes. Plus there are watches and army knives involved. But the country is prohibitively expensive, and you don’t have a secret Swiss bank account to cover it. How does one travel to Switzerland cheaply?
Have you ever seen animals killed in front of you? The Toraja region of Sulawesi, Indonesia is obsessed with death. In my visit to their villages, I saw ritual sacrifice in a funeral, cliff graves, skulls, and lots of blood.
The bar is one of humankind’s greatest inventions, but Western and Eastern traditions are different. Let me run down a Western perspective of the characteristics of an Asian bar, what makes bars in East Asia different and interesting.
What to do on a rainy day in Osaka? This city, not known for its must-see sights, is woven with covered arcade market streets called shotengai. Some are like any shopping streets, others dedicated to a niche such as kitchenware, and one brilliant one holds a food market made for snacking. Here is how to explore these, whether it’s raining or not.
What to do in Paris on a Sunday? Yes, many things are closed, but let me provide you with several ideas and plans for making the most of a Sunday, without leaving town.
You need to see some ruins when you’re in Sicily, because they have much, and some are brilliant. Once easy site is Solunto, in the northwest, for the ruins, the view, the setting, the very easy day-trip, and the sense of place.
Macau has only a few top sights, one every other blog will list. But you need more, because the former colony is awfully charming if you know where to schlep. Let me tell you several spots in which to hang, to get a feel for the city and to discover its many charms. Macau is great, if you know where to go.
Hong Kong is not known for hiking, but it should be. One can do many urban hikes there, where less than an hour’s public transportation gets you out of the urban jungle into the incredible dramatic countryside. Here, one of the outer islands named Cheung Chau offers an easy trail with beaches, scenery, and seafood restaurants at the end.
Hong Kong is not known for hiking, but it should be. One can do many urban hikes there, as less than an hour’s public transport gets you out of the urban jungle into the incredible dramatic countryside. Here, one outer island named Lamma offers an easy trail with a beach, scenery, and seafood restaurants at the end.
We travel, we make plans. But our goals don’t always happen. This is Part II about the sights we miss – how the plan to see that famous village becomes derailed when a tempting market conveniently and gratefully gets in the way.
A man named Andrea Borderi in Sicily’s Siracusa Ortigia market is simply the best sandwich-maker in the world. He demonstrates his craft-making performance art outside his shop called Caseificio Borderi daily, making the best sandwiches ever. He charms his customers and the crowd, and you’re happy to wait for him.
Listening to Fado music in Lisbon, Portugal is an entry into the country’s raw emotions, the melancholy, wistful singing taking you on its own journey that explores the concept of fate. You need to see Fado live, and here is where and how to do it.
Tbilisi, Georgia, is known as the heartland of wine, and thus is a brilliant place in which to drink it. Here’s how to go about doing so, with panache and polish.
Why Batumi, Georgia, on the Black Sea, is the next playground/resort to check out. It’s contrived, as they are all, but with great food and drink and a seaside playground to enjoy.
Is visiting Bratislava worth it? It’s a city that doesn’t quicken hearts, but deserves more than a normal day trip. It has a charming old city center, a castle on a hill, and it’s right on the Danube. Stay the night at least, but then move on.
Not everyone likes L.A., but there’s one section where the people-watching makes it worth it: Venice Beach. The freak show on the pedestrian strip is worth the trip; you don’t need another reason to go. It’s where everyone loose in L.A. winds up.
Bangkok’s Metal Castle (Loha Prasat) is a unique (yes, really) sight in a city otherwise full of similar temples & few must-sees. You’ve never seen anything like it, and you might have the place to yourself.
Visiting Malta is like ordering a small, unknown appetizer and lucking out with an amazing dish. Their wine helps, and here I explain exactly why Malta is a good dish.
The resort town of Taormina is Sicily’s most popular destination. Worthy of a visit? Even though it’s a resort town? I hit the town and the beach, spending way too much money, to find out.
In Palermo, Sicily, the Taverna Azzurra dive bar has a split personality. Go in the day and then in the evening and you’ll find very different places, both utterly worth it.
The internet is lousy full of really bad advice for travelers about dining etiquette around the world. They will tell you the most irreverent dictums. Let’s debunk some things that no, you’re not doing wrong.
Snapping travel photos is how many people are introduced to photography. Here are several things I learned about this field the hard way, from traveling.
Wasn’t your idea, but you’re on a cruise and you find it’s not your thing. How to cope? Check out how to survive a cruise ship when you don’t like cruising.
A photo essay of Mongkok, Hong Kong’s seriously intense district, where the food, the markets, the socializing, and the dancing happen on the streets.
A walk in Mongkok, Hong Kong’s seriously intense district, will show you all sides of an urban experience. Markets, malls, food, and street life-all there for the taking.
Find out why Ljubljana is a pleasant, pretty city, a great place to hang, for a day or two. And that’s about it. Its appeals are architecture and atmosphere, food and wine, not sights.
Toronto, Canada is not a city known for its sights, or for much of anything. Its appeal comes from the varied multicultural neighborhoods. Let’s explore a few.
After United Airlines forcibly removed a passenger, we need to know the rights, and lack thereof, included with an airline ticket, and how it’s skewed heavily in the airline’s favor.
Mexico City usually doesn’t make people’s bucket lists, but it’s a vibrant city with devastating food. Discover some neighborhoods here for some serious hanging out.
How much is a cultural experience worth? A 2,000 yen cover charge challenged me to enjoy Tokyo’s Golden Gai, an area packed with tiny tiny bars, some exclusive, but all with atmosphere.
Trend alert! Paris is the best city for trying biodynamic and natural wines. Read an intro to this style and why they may shake up your perspectives.
Don’t expect fish from the Dead Sea, but do expect remarkable landscape and a unique experience taking the waters, unlike nowhere else.
Though known for gambling, and a bit for food, Macau is a former colony that has atmosphere, and its charms are evident in its back alleys. A photo essay.
A look at why Las Vegas, despite its amazing collection of celebrity restaurants, pales in comparison to Macau’s native fusion food culture.
The best-laid plans often go awry, but perhaps they’re not the best plans anway. A planned afternoon visit to a castle turns philosophical about the real importance of travel sights.
Tromso, Norway, 400k north of the Arctic Circle, a great place to see the Northern Lights. Learn about that experience and about photographing the lights.
Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, has medieval atmosphere and a gorgeous old town while being a party destination for the more expensive countries around it.
Visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem will let you experience old Christian traditions with modern orangized religious differences.
Tomar, Portugal is a small town with a massive attraction–the complex of the Knights Templar. Beyond this looming draw, the town itself is a delight.
UPDATE – The Robot Restaurant in Tokyo has been a victim of the pandemic and of changing times. The former version of it closed in 2023, and it sort of made a comeback as a daytime show, but not run by its former owners, and perhaps does not resemble its former self. If I make…
One can see the Eiffel Tower from points all over Paris, and this is a good thing, as it adds to the background and helps your wonderful photos. And yet, ask anyone who travels a bit about actually going up the tower, including me, and you’ll probably receive a shudder, as one of the first…
Few institutions are as iconic, and perhaps overly romanticized, as Paris cafés. This B&W photo essay explores their atmosphere and their variety.
I was walking on water. We all were, following our guide. We put our trust in her, that she would keep us safe and that no one would disappear downwards into the blue depths, though she was carrying twenty meters of rope in case we did. I didn’t expect the water to be so blue and so beautiful, though it wasn’t that way everywhere. At one point, our striking blonde guide caught me looking around with a smile.
“Like it?” she asked me knowingly.
I couldn’t stop smiling. “This is really cool.”
These types of cafés and watering holes get into the guidebooks and blog posts and visitors flock there, for reasons that we shall explore. So very often, I’ve seen a place described as hangout for intellectuals, the literati, or perhaps the counterculture, usually based on the famous people who used to hang out there. I always wonder why people go there now.
This is a hard post to write, like telling an old lover that yes yes you’ll always be my first love, but you simply lack the power to thrill anymore. It’s about Paris, that wonderful city that used to be the capital of Western cuisine but where nowadays it is rather hard to find a great meal.
Some days, at some places, and for some elements, travelers simply find themselves saying, “Damn, this is irritating.” In the Petra area of Jordan, an ancient complex of stone structures which is the major attraction of the country, I found myself saying this repeatedly.
Photo essay of Piran, Slovenia and Rovinj, Croatia. Venice isn’t the only city the Venetians built. Along the coast of the Adriatic Sea, Venice spread its influence for 500 years, leaving many towns in the area marked with the lion of St. Mark. These towns often look like a mini-Venice, with narrow alleys, red roofs, and bell towers. They’re on the sea and they are part of the sea, inseparable.
The Venetians built a central square and a striking bell tower over their town of stone buildings and snaking, maze-like alleyways there on the Adriatic Sea. They just didn’t always do it in there in Venice. If you’re within striking distance of Venice and you’re on the water, you might run across an old Venetian-built…
Bankgok shopping malls are the opposite of those in the West: fun, hip, up-to-date, and full of good food. Read more reasons you should hang out there.
There’s a secret behind one of the most photographed and accessible waterfalls in Iceland, a secret that made the afternoon I visited it the most pleasant of my trip there, a secret that I’m going to tell you. It left me befuddled and open-mouthed and delighted with the surprises that this beautiful island can deliver. You should know this secret and that’s why you should keep reading.
Somewhere in the course of cooking a new dish, you have a eureka! experience, a mental bang moment where it all comes together and you realize that you indeed have before you your goal, the dish imagined. During a technical sauce-making class at the cooking school La Cuisine Paris (indeed in Paris), I had six…
A beautiful and pristine alpine lake, a small island in the center capped by a perfect little church, a medieval castle perched dramatically on a cliff face above it, all surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Crimey, I don’t know what’s happened to me. I don’t usually write using such trite, stock phrases, but Slovenia’s Lake Bled…
“Hello!?” the older blonde woman behind one of the many counters in Vienna’s Naschmarkt is saying to me, her voice dripping with sarcasm in that particular manner that means, “You are not acting correctly and thus let me draw attention to your misbehavior.” We had been standing in front of her counter in the market…
Everything seems to be only five or ten kilometers apart in Istria. All day, when I looked at my next destination on the map, it always seemed to be about ten clicks away, as the bird flies. Driving, however, wasn’t much harder. In the northern part of Croatia’s Istria peninsula, one could hop to a…
I drove into the one main turning circle in the tiny town of Svetvinčenat, in the Istria Peninsula in the very northern part of coastal Croatia. The rental car’s GPS was spouting instructions about turning left, right, or perhaps upward, quickly, but I could tell I was as central as one could be here, and…
Tokyo’s Kabuki-cho (or Kabukicho) is often described as a red-light district and I suppose it is, but it resembles famous ones like Amsterdam almost not at all. Kabuki-cho is not people hanging out inviting you in; in fact, you may not get in a place at all, and may not understand the system if you do.
Many travelers gush about Reykjavik, Iceland, but will it truly wow you? A hard look at its attractions, prices, and culture brings it back down to earth.
Ah, Wine….. Almost every place around the Mediterranean has been making wine for eons. We should remember this. European wine tends to bring to mind places like France, Italy, Spain, Germany, but of course places like Bulgaria, Slovenia, Turkey, and Tunisia have been at it as well. Croatia, particularly the Istria peninsula, is a worthy…
These photos are all taken during one particular evening in Bangkers. I started in the backpackers’ district called Khao Sanh Road, where I always used to stay, and ended up late night in Sukhimvit Road, where I stay nowadays. I started just before sunset and finished perhaps 3:00 a.m., and could have gone much later.
The driving rain poured outside and I was wet sitting inside. I had jet lag and was feeling sick, shaken, and not good in the stomach. The two couples on either side of me were eating ungodly amounts of food, entire wheels of cheese, meat plates, steaks, quantities that made my system tremble. If…
Once upon a time, the Hungarians stumbled upon a type of chili pepper that could be dried out and ground, with variations from sweet to fiery. Any culture that does that has something going for it. They of course weren’t alone, since much of the world had discovered chilies by then, and they were also…
There’s no city in the world that will make you feel small like Tokyo does. The city is inconceivably massive, and that could be why the Japanese love their tiny, tiny establishments, snug places that always involve drinking, usually involve some eating, and that make Tokyo so interesting. I have spent several nights haunting a…
After recent terrorist attacks, everyone is asking “Is Europe safe?” Let’s examine how a destination is safe or not and what strange advice experts give.
Segovia, Spain hits all the notes for a good day trip: small town just an hour away from Madrid the big city, feels utterly different, and contains striking sights one can’t find in Madrid. Segovia is hardly undiscovered, but not nearly so crowded as other day-tripper-places such as Toledo, which is so packed with tacky…
En guard. The audacious practice of airlines charging their valuable customers to choose a seat is slowly spreading. The airlines, nomenclature-meisters all, call this trend “unbundling”, charging for things that used to be standard. Once upon a time, in an industry far, far away, the privileged purchaser of an airplane trip could count on the…
For utterly understandable reasons, the main attraction in the oh little town of Bethlehem is the Church of the Nativity, built right over the birthplace of You Know Who. That’s the only reason people visit. You may wonder, as I did, is there any other reason to go there, and thus is it worth the…
You cannot escape forever having a layover in Frankfurt. Either you’ve done it, or it’s coming. If you’ve done it, you’ll eventually do it again. Frankfurt airport is the fourth-busiest in Europe, but it feels like the first. It’s smack in the center of Western Europe and the hub for everyplace you want to be…
Some travel writers have a game they play, going on about which destination is “the next Prague”, the next big thing. Rick Steves thinks it’s Krakow, or Ljubljana, or Budapest. Or perhaps even Dubrovnik, a city that’s been well discovered already. A quick web search reveals others think it’s Phnom Phen or Buenos Aires. One…
Lisbon’s Belem district holds so many of its sights, but for the visitor it’s a difficult place to visit, a tourist abyss that holds overrated sights and few native pleasures. You need to know how to visit this place.
