In Strasbourg, France, throughout the holiday season, Santa-capped teddy bears festoon a restaurant’s facade. Stuffed polar bears adorn another. In a Yuletide arms race, buildings are affixed with giant, gift-wrapped packages, glittering white deer and oversize gingerbread men. Turning the central medieval quarter into a Christmas maze, curtains of lights glow above cobblestone lanes lined…
By Alexander Lobrano Outside the tiny town of Simon in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains, an NGO called Foundation Conservation Carpathia is creating a 66,000-acre national park. It’s against that backdrop that the hotelier Bogdan Calulanu opened Matca, a 16-room hotel with 10 private villas. Matca is the Romanian word for “queen bee,” the name a reference…
Three hours into my latest visit to Key West, Fla., I listened as a mermaid explained why islanders are called “Conchs.” “We had a tradition a long time ago where, when a baby was born — because, back then, your baby was born at home — you would put a stick in the yard and…
Since my first trip to Waikiki Beach in 1977, I have traveled all around the Hawaiian Islands. And I’ve loved each one. But I love Waikiki, too. Not the hordes of tourists, of course, or the high-end shopping malls that have taken over Kalākaua Avenue and earned it the nickname, Vegas on the Beach. What…
As winter sets in, cruise lines are offering a variety of warm weather escapes to the Caribbean, Mexico and far-flung destinations in the South Pacific and the Persian Gulf. This winter will see the launches of new ships and itineraries aimed at attracting a broad demographic of cruisers, particularly young first-timers. Here are some of…
Last April, Chris Kotchick, a Scranton, Pa., oral surgeon, and his family spent a week on a chartered catamaran in the calm, clear waters off the British Virgin Islands. A crew of two — part of the deal — ran the show. Until then, Dr. Kotchick said, the sum total of his nautical experience had…
On the northern coast of Puerto Rico — about an hour’s drive west of San Juan, off a wisp of a road threaded through dense green foliage — there exists a long, empty beach that has haunted my dreams for years. On Google Maps, it appears as Punta Caracoles Beach, but I have always thought…
The Louvre Museum said it would raise its basic ticket price to 22 euros from 17 euros beginning next month in the latest sign that visitors may face higher costs ahead of next year’s Summer Olympics in Paris. The Louvre, which expects to have welcomed nearly 9 million visitors by the end of the year,…
She is a prodigious and skeptical reader, posing the queen of Sheba in contrast to Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With a Thousand Faces,” for example, or noting the marginalized characters in the colonialist-tinged detective novels of Agatha Christie and wondering about their stories. She analyzes guidebooks, from Baedeker to Lonely Planet. “Every time I pick…
The season of mittens and hot chocolate is upon us and if you’d rather spend a tranquil afternoon beside a fire than brave the crowds at a big ski resort, these snowy getaways are for you. Picture yourself in a luxury treehouse in the woodlands of Vermont, or a quiet cottage in the Catskills, or…