As our hot, stuffy plane approached Bodrum, the seaside resort city on Turkey’s southwest coast, I closed my eyes and imagined a cool plunge into the crystalline turquoise waters of the Aegean. It was late July, and I was going home for vacation, despite warnings about the record heat. Southern Turkey is always hot in…
Amsterdam doesn’t know a low season. There’s the perpetual high season, and then there are two highest seasons: April (tulips!) and July (summer!). Despite the city pulling out all the stops in recent years to limit the number of tourists, the Dutch capital continues to lure visitors by the millions. And understandably so — you’re…
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. Walking a dog during the summer in Phoenix begins with a test: Hold the back of your hand to the sidewalk for a few seconds. If your hand can’t take the heat, neither can your…
Dear Tripped Up, I was one of three adults who led a backpacking trip to the Colorado Rockies this past June with six teenage Boy Scouts from Troop 876 of Savannah, Ga. After seven nights camping, our eighth night — June 26 — was to be aboard a redeye to Kennedy Airport, followed by a…
On the last day of June, American Airlines agents at Gainesville Regional Airport in Florida canceled a North Carolina teenager’s flight after realizing that he had used a booking tactic called “skiplagging” or “hidden-city travel,” forbidden by airlines but used by some travelers to net flight bargains. The teen’s father, Hunter Parsons, said it was…
The back story of Breac House, a tiny hotel in northwest Ireland’s County Donegal, sounds like a cautionary tale: Two city-slickers, accountants from Dublin, who’d never worked at a hotel or served a scone, decide to open a custom-built, designer property on a remote, windswept peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. Cue the…
Mary MacCarthy and her 10-year-old daughter, Moira, had just deplaned at Denver International Airport when two Denver police officers met them at the gate, calling them by name and notifying them that they had been reported for suspicious behavior. The mother and daughter had flown a Southwest Airlines flight to Denver for a funeral. Ms.…
First, avoid the long entrance lines by booking your tickets online (20 euros, or about $22, for a single-entry adult ticket). Another booking option, the Athena’s Combined Ticket (adults, €30), provides access to six more sites in Athens, including the nearby Agora. Start your day here, before 11 a.m., when most tourists are at the…
Over an $8.50 pint of craft beer from Aspen Brewing Company, which is comparable to what I pay at home in Chicago, I realized that Aspen, Colo., is not expensive by big-city standards. It’s expensive by small-town standards. The Economic Research Institute, which compiles financial data for public and private organizations, pegs the cost of…
You can’t escape the orange. That’s what travelers this summer have been reckoning with — swaths of tangerine, traffic cone and burnt sienna on maps indicating record high temperatures around the globe. Four concurrent heat domes from the southern United States to East Asia descended on millions — Phoenix residents enduring 31 days of 110-degree-plus…