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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
