There are a variety of ways of orienting yourself in a new, major city. We’ve found that free city tours, now proliferating around the globe for out-of-towners, can be the best way. You can do…
For a traveler, there is never enough time. Sure, you can see "the highlights" of a city in a few days, of a country in a week or so. But, in most places, the longer…
To turn a phrase, tourist money corrupts; overwhelming tourist interest corrupts overwhelmingly. In some environments, like the rain forests of Borneo, that turns a safari into a show. In the wild, orangutans are very difficult…
We thought we had figured out a legitimate way to stay in Europe for six months, when a normal visa lasts just 90 days. We just discovered we were wrong...and so far wrong we could…
I first visited castles along the Rhine with my sons in the late 80s. At a restaurant, I tried to order food with the little German I knew at the time. When the waiter left,…
Planning a recent trip of 3800 kilometers - from Darwin in the Northern Territory to Geikie Gorge in Western Australia and back - we realized that would mean a lot of one night stops. Mostly…
We had just about finished the booking of a flight to Brisbane, and Qantas was selling us options: better seating, a car to rent, hot lunch, more baggage, and a carbon offset for our trip.…
In January, we uprooted ourselves from Wellington (see The Move, Part 1); here’s what it took to replant ourselves in Australia. We had become quite familiar with Wellington and how things work in New Zealand.…
Tree specialists know that uprooting and replanting a tree can put great stress on it, endangering its viability. We like to think of ourselves as more resilient than that, but the stresses are there when…
Many of you have had the experience of coming from the United States or continental Europe to England, New Zealand, Australia (and astonishingly around 75 other countries), and finding yourself driving on the other side…