Rotterdam is famous for its post-war architecture, mostly because a World War II bombing in 1940 destroyed much of the city. Yet it didn’t just rebuild and settle in; it is still constantly changing, expanding…
Krakow’s Old Town is centered around a lovely main square called Rynek Główny, which means main market. It dates to 1257, when it was rebuilt after the Mongol-Tatar invasions. Krakow Main Square Krakow Main Market…
“We go to camel market?” Nishad asked, glancing over at me. I had, contrary to custom in Dubai, chosen to sit in the front seat of the taxi, explaining that I could see the scenery…
The last time I tried to visit Turkey was more than 30 years ago, and my attempt failed. I’ll tell that story at the end of this article. I will tell you, though, that I…
The Elie Wiesel Memorial in Sighet, Romania, where Wiesel lived, is a small museum with a big, important message.
The taxi ride promised little excitement. It was mid-afternoon and the traffic flowed smoothly past the shiny tall buildings. Impossibly green grass and brilliant pink flowers edged the wide highway, and beyond that we saw sandy…
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…
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…
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…
It’s funny: most countries in Europe have Christmas markets of some sort. Yet Europeans travel to visit the ones in Germany.
Baix Empordà, part of the province of Girona in Catalonia, is one of those hidden gems, to use the cliché, that no one seems to know about. Many tourists visit Girona, and many of them…
Öster Malma Castle and Wildlife Park, which I visited as part of a familiarization tour organized by Visit Sörmland and Visit Sweden, includes a beautiful estate house and a large wildlife park. It is more modest…
As you’ve probably guessed from my posts about Sweden, my trip was a great success. I took part in two familiarization tours: one before and one after the TBEX conference. The first was an introduction to the Stockholm archipelago…
The very impressive Nynäs manor house (pronounced new-nahs) is about a 30 minute drive from Nyköping. What makes this manor house special is that it was occupied continuously from when it was completed in the…
Budget airlines seek out secondary airports because the landing fees are lower. Skavsta airport, an hour outside of Stockholm, is one of these: both Ryanair and Wizz Air fly to Skavsta. Most visitors get on…
Back in the 1970s, the Swedish Parliament planned to build a garage underground next to the Parliament building in Stockholm. As often happens in European cities, the construction stopped when excavation uncovered the remains of what turned…
Benidorm is one of those places everyone has an opinion about, and it usually isn’t good. When I asked my husband what he thought of the place, he described it as “an overgrown beach town…
In my post about Arolithos “Traditional Cretan Village”, I described how I reserved my hotel room through Hotwire, and how Hotwire is a bit of a gamble. (Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you…
Exploring the Nordic Museum in Stockholm reminded me of some of the small-town museums I’ve visited before. Often a seemingly random collection of objects donated by residents or local companies, they offer insight into the…
I did a lot of driving on my recent visit to Lagos, Nigeria. Or rather, I did a lot of being driven. Lagos isn’t your usual tourist destination and, indeed, I didn’t go there as…
Seoul is home to six different royal palaces, each built by or for a different king. Beautifully crafted and opulent, some are more intact and authentic than others. Authentic? The five older ones all include…
I’m not particularly into gardens. I enjoy them, but don’t enjoy gardening. I visited a few gardens in Tokyo partly because I was curious about Japanese gardens in particular, and also curious as to how…
More than 30 Hida traditional houses have been moved to form this open-air museum in Takayama: Takayama Hida Folk Village.
While the main attraction is the 16th-century Matsumoto Castle, there are other things to see as well on a day trip to Matsumoto.
Kanazawa hit the travel sections in March 2015 with the opening of a new shinkansen (bullet train) line going there from Tokyo. It cut the travel time to less than two and half hours, which makes…
When I took a group of Dutch students to the US a few years ago, I insisted that we attend a professional baseball game, something they were distinctly unenthusiastic about. They said it was a…
Nikko, Japan, nestled in the mountains north of Tokyo, is a small town, but is home to an incomparable assemblage of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Sprinkled around a national park forest above Nikko town is a collection…
Much of the time that I was in Japan I felt like a bumbling fool, and shoes were a big part of it. The Japanese have a lot of rules regarding footwear. Basically, you are…
(Nederlands versie beneden!) When I told people I was going to Lloret de Mar for the last week of my one-month solo trip (Guadeloupe, Martinique, New York, Lloret de Mar), the usual reaction was something…
Pier 39, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory, views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz: these are typical tourist destinations in San Francisco. Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you click on one…
My first awareness of the existence of Petra was seeing it in the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. When I learned that it was a real place and not just a movie set,…
[:en]Let’s look at a particular type of graffiti: the kind that names the person writing it, often accompanied by a date. [:]
