W. Bradford Gary spent 10 days trapped inside a cruise ship cabin off the coast of Brazil in March while health authorities in several countries scrambled to figure out what to do with a vessel full of older people who had potentially been exposed to the coronavirus. But when faced with the question of whether…
LOS ANGELES — So long, Splash Mountain. Disney said on Thursday that it would remake one of its most popular theme park rides, Splash Mountain, which depicts characters and songs from “Song of the South,” the racist 1946 musical. The 31-year-old flume ride will instead be modeled on “The Princess and the Frog,” the 2009…
With travel restrictions in place worldwide, we’ve launched a new series, The World Through a Lens, in which photojournalists help transport you, virtually, to some of our planet’s most beautiful and intriguing places. This week, Mónica R. Goya shares a series of photographs taken on an extended hike through the Dolomites. Last August, long before…
From taking cooking classes in the home of a local to learning traditional crafts from Indigenous people, much of travel — up until March 2020 — was all about connecting with others. Now, in the Covid-19 era, travel is fraught with the demands of social distancing and hygiene. As people start thinking about taking trips,…
Planning to escape to the great outdoors for a socially distant summer? There are a few apps you may want to download before you go. After all, the tools below won’t just help you travel from here to there, they’ll help you get off the beaten paths in national parks, learn about road and trail…
In a normal summer, having friends over for a swim is one of the easy joys for people fortunate enough to have a backyard pool. Now, it can feel fraught, even as water-lovers everywhere are desperate for aquatic relief with the closure of many public pools. But experts say it is possible to share your…
No book can provide a full understanding of the complex pain and enduring injustice that is the recent wave of countrywide protests. But books can provide context and texture, and memoirs and sociology texts by black writers have been flying off the shelves. So have history books. And history is important here: While the protests…
After three months of travel at a near-standstill, restrictions are slowly lifting and travelers are venturing out again. On Sunday, the Transportation Security Administration screened more than 544,000 people, a daily record since traveler numbers plummeted in late March. However, disruptions caused by the pandemic go beyond just airports and travel bans. Nearly two million…
ROME — For centuries, in a picturesque Tuscan town near the Mediterranean coast, legions of pilgrims came to venerate one of Christendom’s most treasured relics — an eight-foot-tall wooden crucifix known as the “Volto Santo de Lucca.” According to the legend, “The Holy Face of Lucca” had been sculpted by a divine hand and remained…
The vast Stone Age tomb mounds in the valley of the River Boyne, about 25 miles north of Dublin, are so impressive that the area has been called the Irish Valley of the Kings. And a new analysis of ancient human DNA from Newgrange, the most famous of the mounds in Ireland, suggests that the…