On a recent evening in a dimly lit Japanese restaurant, nearly a dozen diners watched rapt from across the bar as a chef blowtorched a sliver of sturgeon until it was kissed with char. He topped the nigiri with crisped fish skin and a spoonful of caviar. The quiet veneration from the customers, the practiced…
“It looks like Canada,” said Nate Disser, our guide, indicating the lofty, snow-cloaked peaks around us. Later that day, when our group of 10 had skied to another high-alpine basin where craggy rock monoliths jutted up from ridgelines, Mr. Disser noted a resemblance to the Italian Dolomites. Yet we were in the San Juan Mountains…
At the end of my recent trip to Japan, I found myself at Haneda Airport in Tokyo with an hour or so to kill. So I went to the onsen. On the 12th floor of the Villa Fontaine Grand, a hotel attached to the departure terminal, I paid 4,800 yen, or about $33, for access…
The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, which erupted in early October, has halted international tourism to Israel and severely blunted travel to neighboring countries in a ripple effect spreading across the entire Middle East. While the slowdown in international visitors is only one of the war’s economic repercussions in the region, it poses a…
With nearly 10 million people expected to throng the streets of Paris during the Olympics this summer, visitors already knew getting around the city would be a challenge. But now it will probably be a lot more expensive, too. The price of a single ride on the Metro between July 20 and Sept. 8, roughly…
You’ve picked a ship, booked an itinerary and chosen your cabin, but even with the hardest part done, figuring out the ship’s layout and how to get a spot on a popular outing can be daunting. Here’s how to prepare for a smooth first sailing. Familiarize yourself with the ship, even before you board Ocean…
A foreign visitor walking through Praça Brasil, a leafy square in the Amazonian port city of Belém, might think that the whirring blenders at a dozen nearby food carts were creating the most authentic açaí bowls on earth. That would make sense, for Belém is the capital of Pará state, the global epicenter for growing,…
If you’re going to organize a three-year round-the-world cruise, a good first step is probably to acquire a ship. For months, Life at Sea Cruises has been signing up travelers, taking their money and marketing this unusual offering, which it announced in March. Its website, which was promoting the cruise as of Monday, described the…
When is walking in circles a good thing? When following a trail through villages, forests and fields using open-access paths that begin and end at the same train station. Britain is known for being a country of walkers, with thousands of miles of footpaths and bridle ways open to the public (Scotland, for example, has…
Dear Tripped Up, This past June, my wife and I, along with two of our children, flew from our home in India to the eastern United States to see family and visit Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla. The trip included three domestic flights over five days on Frontier Airlines: Philadelphia to Orlando, Orlando to Atlanta,…