A bit of background first: About a year ago, I was in Dubai for a workshop, and decided to go see the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world (830 meters). (Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means if you click on them and buy tickets, I will receive a small commission. This…
“Sixteen miles all around Zippori is a land flowing with milk and honey.” This sentence from the Jerusalem Talmud (Bichurim 71d) opens the text given to visitors to Zippori National Park, north of Nazareth. On the spring day when I visited, I could believe it: carpets of wildflowers covered the rolling hills in all directions….
The following is a guest post by my husband, Albert Smith, about his experiences on the roads in Nepal last fall. [Beneden is de oorspronkelijke Nederlandse versie] My son and I are on our way back from a football [soccer] match between FC Groningen and AZ. We’re in a good mood: Groningen has won a…
My son has decided he wants to go to university in Scotland. After investigating the possibilities on line, he applied to five universities that offered the sort of program he was looking for. It didn’t really occur to him that perhaps he should consider other factors in his choice. Would he prefer an urban or a…
The premise, or perhaps I should say the Unique Selling Point, of the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem is to illustrate each and every civilization mentioned in the Bible. Unlike some Bible museums, this one is not dogmatic: it shows the actual history of each civilization. Here, the Bible isn’t just a religious document: the stories…
In biblical Nazareth, a man, dressed like an extra from The Ten Commandments, wanders slowly by between the gnarled olive trees, leading a donkey by a rope. He lingers for a while near our assembled group. The camera-toting tourists, dressed in shorts and tank tops, crowd around. The effect of being in biblical Nazareth is…
While visiting Bethlehem is mostly about seeing the birthplace of Jesus, it’s been in the news recently for a much more modern reason: the opening of the Walled Off Hotel. On a recent day trip to Bethlehem with a group of fellow bloggers, this hotel, designed by the mysterious graffiti artist, Banksy, was our first…
Are you considering a trip to Israel? Certainly you should visit Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and perhaps Masada and Bethlehem. While I’m not a Christian, all religions are interesting to me in terms of their cultural and historical importance. In Israel, I’ve visited Muslim sites, of which the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is…
Cabin crew members have an important role and show remarkable patience. Here’s a story about my experiment with bringing gifts for flight attendants.
If you ever take a Bitemojo tour, make sure you start with an empty stomach, good walking shoes and plenty of time. You’ll need all three. Disclosure: I took a Bitemojo tour in Jerusalem because I could do it for free as a participant in a TBEX conference for travel bloggers. It’s not something that…
Two separate people in 2 separate parts of Israel advised me to “go see Akko old city; it’s Jerusalem without the politics.” They were right.
I haven’t stayed in a hostel in years. In a post I wrote back in 2007, I blamed it on the shared shower, and described how awful they can be. It’s not just that, though. As I get older, I have more trouble sleeping. I wake up easily, and then I’m grumpy the next day…
I never would have visited Susita if it hadn’t been for Sara Zafrir, owner of Genghis Khan in the Golan. When I asked her what to see in the Golan Heights, she insisted that this was a “must-see.” I’m so glad I took her advice. Disclosure: Sara sponsored me to stay in one of her…
As one of the first things visitors see on entering the Old City of Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate, the Tower of David makes an imposing impression, with its massive stone walls and towers topped with crenellations. The first thing your tour guide will say is that this citadel has nothing to do with King David from the…
Those of us who are not religious often see the Bible as nothing more than a collection of myths. Yet archeologists have confirmed many elements of Bible stories. Visiting the City of David reintroduced me to the overwhelmingly long history of Jerusalem. There’s something awe-inspiring about its sheer length, covering thousands of years of human history….
Five synagogues in Prague and a cemetery are what remains of Prague’s once-thriving Jewish neighborhood. Under the umbrella of the Prague Jewish Museum, they are open to the public, each serving a different function. Tourists can buy a ticket to all or part of a route through all the Prague synagogues. Disclosure: This article contains affiliate…
You’ve probably heard of capsule hotels. First developed in Japan, capsule hotels keep costs down for guests by using the available space efficiently. Often stacked one above the other, the capsules are each the size of a single bed. You can’t even stand up in them, making them, as the comedian Jeanne Robertson (video below)…
Electric Ladyland in Amsterdam is definitely one of the weirdest museums I’ve visited yet. (Okay, the Toilet Museum in Suwon, South Korea, was pretty weird too, but this isn’t a contest. At least not yet … ) The museum claims to be the “first museum of fluorescent art.” It certainly includes a lot of fluorescent paint. Whether…
The founder of the Cat Cabinet, Bob Meijer, named his cat John Pierpont Morgan. Why name him after a 19th century American financier? I don’t know. Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you click on one and make a purchase, I will receive a small percentage of what you spend. Born in 1966, J.P. Morgan received…
If you’ve ever wandered the UNESCO World Heritage-listed canal rings of Amsterdam, you’ve noticed the many houseboats moored along the canals. Have you ever wondered what they’re like on the inside? What’s it like to live in a houseboat? The Houseboat Museum Amsterdam gives a glimpse of that life: a very quick glimpse, given how…
What’s the first word that pops into your head when you hear the word “Orlando”? Unless you’re an Orlando Bloom fan, chances are you thought of Disney World. Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links for accommodations, car rental and tickets. If you click on one and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission….
For this collaborative post, I asked fellow travel bloggers about their idea of a trip of a lifetime: If a person who’s never traveled far from home asked you to name the one place they should visit on their one-and-only trip ever, what would you say? I got so many different answers! I’ll start with the…
The Groninger Museum is best known for the building’s design. Considered a post-modern masterpiece, or a post-modern monstrosity, depending on who you ask, each of the seemingly disconnected parts was designed by a different architect: Alessandro Mendini, Michele de Lucchi, Architectural bureau Coop Himmelb(l)au and Philippe Starck all had a hand in designing different “pavilions”…
Note: I wrote this a couple of years ago, but the argument I make here still applies. Where I mention a terrorist attack from some time ago, just fill in whatever the most recent one was. The attack on a Berlin Christmas market last week got me thinking about how terrorism affects travel and tourism….
It occurred to me recently that, although I don’t even celebrate Christmas, I almost always end up spending the holiday at home. Of course, the term “home” has shifted meaning with each move. I asked several fellow bloggers recently to write a short piece about a place to spend the holiday, besides home. Here’s what they sent:…
Whenever people ask me “How do you like living in Holland?” part of my answer has to do with travel. You see, living in the Netherlands means I can travel to other European countries very easily. In fact, I can drive into Germany in about a half hour. Belgium is about two or three hours…
It’s not the kind of sightseeing I usually do, but touring the Reichstag dome was so highly recommended by a friend that I decided to do it anyway. It was also a bit of a relief after all the grim history I’d been learning about at the DDR Museum, the Stasi Museum, the Berlin Wall…
At both the DDR Museum and the Palace of Tears, I learned about the kind of everyday surveillance that East Germans endured in Cold War Germany. To find out more, I went to the Stasi Museum as well. Disclosure: As at all the museums I visited in Berlin, I received free admission. Nevertheless, all opinions…
After my experience at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, I was apprehensive about visiting the Jewish Museum in Berlin. This, I thought, is something they will have to get right. After all, Berlin was Hitler’s capital city, the place where leaders managed the bureaucratic tasks necessary to carry out the genocide he planned. You…
The meeting place for the street art tour by Alternative Berlin Tour was easy for me to find. I looked for the guide at the base of the Berlin Television Tower in front of the Starbucks. I loved the irony of starting an alternative walking tour in front of a Starbucks. Ben from New Zealand, our tour guide…
Walking into the Palace of Tears is stepping back in time. The floor tiles, the wall clock, the “modern” design of the building: all hearken back to a 1960s aesthetic in interior design. Standing on East German territory since 1962, the Palace of Tears was an addition to the older Friedrichstraße train station. This station…
In my last post, I wrote about the Berlin Wall as a gash across the city. What brought me to the Berlin Wall Memorial was my visit just the day before to the DDR Museum in Berlin. That museum and its hands-on portrayal of life in the former DDR (called the German Democratic Republic or GDR in…