Help! My Hotel Doesn’t Exist

Dear Tripped Up, On a recent family vacation to Cartagena, Colombia, we showed up for a one-night stay at a hotel that exists only on the internet. My son had a dislocated shoulder from a mountain-biking accident earlier in the day, his pain meds were wearing off and it was New Year’s Eve. I booked…

36 Hours in Geneva

It’s easy to forget that Geneva, a city that’s practically synonymous with international diplomacy, has an identity quite apart from its status as a global hub. But Geneva’s historic heart was already a couple of thousand years old when the United Nations came to town, and the city’s residents — newcomers and natives alike —…

Help! There’s a Bear in My Airbnb

Ann Bryant’s phone rings all season long. She has four phones, actually, in her Homewood, Calif., home office, and they ring 24 hours a day. “Sometimes all at once,” says the executive director of the Bear League, a community-based nonprofit that aims to educate the human public about their animal neighbors. Its tagline: “People living…

36 Hours in Syracuse, Sicily

Founded by Greeks around 734 B.C., the southeastern Sicilian city that Cicero called “the greatest and most beautiful of all Grecian cities” achieved a size and status in the ancient world that made it a rival of major powers like Athens and Carthage. Takeovers and makeovers by Romans, Byzantines, North Africans, Normans and others left…