I have a confession that might surprise you, given what I do for a living. Some of the trips I think about most often weren’t to Portugal or Japan or the Amalfi Coast. They were within the United States. A long weekend somewhere I could drive to. A flight so short I still had my […]
Stories That Inspire the Way You Travel
I've been traveling since before I could walk. Literally. So when I write about a place, it's not from a brochure. It's from a terrace, a back road, a kitchen table, or a train I took because the timing was right. Some pieces are practical — the timing that matters, the question to ask before you book. Some are just stories I couldn't stop thinking about long enough to keep to myself. Pour yourself a coffee. Or wine. Probably wine.
Pull up a chair. This is where the stories live.
I’m home. Ten days in Portugal with Collette, twenty new acquaintances, and absolutely nothing on my to-do list. No restaurant reservations to confirm. No driving routes to second-guess. No backup hotels bookmarked in case something didn’t feel right. For the first time in longer than I can remember, my only job was to show up. […]
“We’re thinking about a group tour.” It’s one of the more common ways a conversation with me begins, and it’s always a good starting point. Just not quite a complete one. Because group tour covers an enormous amount of ground — from a fifty-person motorcoach rolling through five countries in eight days to twenty travelers […]
Portugal looks small on a map. It is not small. That’s the first thing worth knowing before you start planning. The country is roughly the size of Indiana, which sounds manageable until you realize that the drive from the southern coast to the northern wine regions takes the better part of a day, and that’s […]
Portugal and I have history. Not the tourist kind. Not the “took a river cruise and loved the pastéis de nata” kind. I mean I just keep coming back, the way you return to a place that keeps showing you something new. Slow mornings in Lisbon cafés where nobody is in a hurry because the […]
August has a reputation problem. Ask most seasoned travelers what they think about August travel and you’ll hear some version of the same answer: too crowded, too expensive, too hot, too much. The airports are full of families in matching t-shirts. The hotels charge what they like because they can. Every good restaurant in every […]
Most cruise content falls into two categories: glossy brochure copy that tells you everything is extraordinary, or exhaustive comparison sites that leave you more confused than when you started. Neither one answers the questions that actually matter. How do I pick a cabin? Is the balcony worth the upgrade? What’s actually included in that price? […]
If you’ve ever looked at a photo of Dubrovnik or Hvar and thought “I need to go there,” you’re right. You do. But here’s what I want you to know before you start planning: the Dalmatian Coast is one of those places where how you travel matters almost as much as where you go. You […]
If you’ve been thinking about a cruise, you probably have a picture in your mind. For some people, that picture is a massive ship with a water park, nightly shows, and the kind of energy you’d expect from a floating city. For others, it’s the opposite—a smaller ship, fewer people, time to actually think. And […]
If you’ve written off cruising based on a high school graduation trip, a casino boat, or the buffet-and-matching-lanyards version you’ve heard about, I get it. I was right there with you. But here’s what changed my mind: there are actually several completely different versions of cruising. And one of them might be exactly the trip […]
