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.
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.
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…
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.
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…
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.
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.
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…
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…
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…
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.
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.
