“Yallah, yallah, yallah! Woooo!” I was visiting the pyramids of Giza, Egypt, in the company of Mark Lehner, a renowned Egyptologist, when suddenly a series of voices erupted and echoed throughout the site. Our small group turned to face the commotion, wondering what had happened — and if anything was wrong. Instead, we saw the…
Delays and cancellations have plagued air travel, and the Fourth of July weekend may be the biggest test yet for the airline industry, which has faced scrutiny from customers, regulators and investors. The industry has not fully recovered from the depths of the pandemic. Airlines, eager to cut costs and uncertain about the future of…
PARIS — For 18 years, Marie Marivel has worked as a security agent at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, screening throngs of passengers and thousands of bags each day. It has always been a taxing job, she says, but conditions have lately made it downright impossible, as staffing shortages nearly double her workload and…
More people flew out of airports in the United States on Sunday — 2.46 million according to the Transportation Security Administration — than on any other day so far this year. Thursday and Friday going into this Fourth of July holiday are expected to be even busier, with Hopper, a travel booking app, predicting that…
One common knock against the Chicago area is that “real” nature seems far away. Apart from Lake Michigan — arguably the region’s best natural attribute — it’s sprawling suburbs and monotone fields of corn in every direction. I have subscribed to this idea for years. But it’s not actually true. If you’re looking for nature…
A Four-Bedroom Contemporary Home in Ecuador $550,000 Perched at the eastern edge of El Cajas National Park, a UNESCO-designated biosphere reserve, this contemporary home sits on four undulating acres outside of Cuenca, Ecuador’s third-largest city. With the 110-square-mile park as its backdrop, the four-bedroom, three-bath house “is isolated and surrounded by nature,” said Ashley Rogers,…
There was also a shock for me on Tangier Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, with James “Ooker” Eskridge, the mayor of the community. On paper, me and this guy don’t have that much to say to each other. He was in the Trump-iest voting district in America by some measures, and he’s very, very, very…
Some years ago, while exploring Bhuj, a small city in Gujarat, India’s westernmost state, I stumbled upon a beautiful and initially enigmatic structure: a column that supported an enclosure adorned with hundreds of holes. It seemed to me to be a geometric abstraction of a giant tree — until a pigeon peeped out from one…
When newly married Marissa, 28, and Sean Cavenagh, 31, of Chicago decided to spend their honeymoon in Southeast Asia this summer, they planned to stay in Airbnbs and modest hotels while wending their way through Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. But when they discovered the astounding bargains to be had at some of the most…
Last December, Charles F. Sams III made history when he became the first Native American to be appointed director of the National Park Service. He had his work cut out for him. The number of visitors to the biggest parks in the United States is at an all-time high, road repairs and other infrastructure upgrades…