Diving into southern English life for a weekend is like being tossed from white water into a lagoon. Unhurried locals stroll down mossy lanes, gliding through an all-consuming marine layer with relaxed expressions and friendly eyes. Smiles, chimneys, cobblestones and roads embrace their…
I flicked myself again on the neck, just under the chin. Thumb and forefinger, like I’d seen the locals do daily — still unsure of what it meant. An attempt to scratch an itch, signal profanities or mimic a…
“Here’s where they train the stupid police,” our taxi driver informed us in angry, broken English. It was 3am and still dark. We were tired but curiosity and good manners won out over sleep. Arriving in the middle of…
Stretching between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains are in a blurry category of their own, with complex ties to Europe, Asia and the Middle East, but fully reflecting none of the above. Driven by the heat, we first headed…
When choosing between a vacation in August and no vacation at all, the latter can sometimes feel like the lesser of two evils. It’s monsoon season in India and Southeast Asia, the (accessible) Middle East and North Africa are debilitatingly…
Croatia: home of lazy, fish-fed cats, orange roofs and game-of-thrones-worthy coastlines. All of which we experienced on a mid-June boat trip from Split to Dubrovnik.…
Journey to a place where music is a daily given, where sheep strike a pose and where green rules. Guinness flows like water, and conversation does too. Here, books are older than time, surpassed only by overgrown, forgotten roads.…
At the age of 12, my best friend and I had a serious conversation on the school playground that led to a decision: we would go on a trip, someplace far away. So we started saving, quarters and pennies…
The sound of waves breaking, children chatting in Gaelic and our ferry motoring away faded out quickly under the thick layer of mist tasked with keeping the island hidden from outsiders. We, and a handful of other visitors, had arrived nonetheless. A windy, thirty-minute…
A cafe with a resident cat is simply better than a cafe without one – a fact one learns in Amsterdam. Some questions are impossible to answer, like what is your favorite band or favorite food. Favorite city should be one…
One of my favorite cities of all time is also one of the easiest to overlook. Is it a must-see? Probably not. Is it beautiful? Not particularly. Is it packed with sites? Eh, maybe a few. It’s kind of…
Angela Carter once said that “Cities have sexes. London is a man, Paris is a woman, and New York is a well-adjusted transsexual.” There’s no doubt about it — Paris is svelte, sophisticated, captivating, provocative and drop-dead gorgeous…and she…
The summer light in Norway is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s different. It’s a half awake, dreamy kind of light — soft, with a lazy hue. Blue at midnight, yellow at midday, but always fuzzy and indecisive. It…
I’ve never heard of a sweepstakes offering plane tickets to Belgium as the grand prize. No one is anti-Belgian of course — what’s there to hate? But Spain, Greece, France, Austria, Italy and a number of other countries fall…
I can hear the scraping of a broom but can’t see anyone, just blue, glittery static, unsure if my eyes are open or closed. I sit, enjoying the cool surface beneath me. The static grows lighter and fades away. I’m…