During the pandemic, when Miriam Leitko couldn’t swim because pools were closed, the lifelong swimmer built a lap pool at her home in Willis, Texas. As soon as travel restrictions were lifted in 2021, she signed up for a weeklong trip to Hawaii with SwimVacation, a Maine-based tour operator that specializes in open-water swimming. “Open-water…
Post-adventure, go for the summer version of après-ski at a trio of spots around Mountain Village. On the ground floor of the Franz Klammer Lodge complex, Telluride Distilling Company serves up $5 mules, made with housemade ginger beer and vodka, and other reasonably priced whiskey, gin and agave cocktails. Next door, the Communion Wine Bar,…
At my boutique hotel high in the Swiss Alps, I returned from dinner, jet lagged and a tad tipsy, to discover that a television set inside a bathroom mirror had been turned on during turndown service. I pressed all of the buttons on the wall panel and then tried the switches on a control box…
All we wanted after a magnificent snorkeling session off the coast of Western Australia was for the stupid motor home to start, to stop grinding away with that almost-but-not-today sound that made our hearts race faster than the engine. Bertie, as we called the 21-foot recreational vehicle we had rented, sounded like she wanted to…
The Pile and Ploce Gates, the two entrances into Dubrovnik’s Old Town, once had drawbridges that lifted during the overnight hours, forcing visitors wanting to enter to wait outside its stone walls until morning. The bridges no longer lift, yet the bottlenecks of morning visitors remain. This compact, seaside city in Croatia has drawn millions…
The museum has a collection of more than 10,000 pieces, dating from 1816. Many are by Swiss artists, including the Giacomettis, father and son. When I visited, one floor featured a large, temporary exhibition of more than 100 paintings by the Swiss painter Gustav Buchet, an important figure in the avant-garde movements in early-20th-century Switzerland.…
Last month, a video went viral showing a man etching his name (and that of his girlfriend) into the wall of the Colosseum in Rome. We’ve all seen them: bad travelers. The internet is cyclically gripped by stories like these. In recent years, New Zealand was captivated by the unruly antics of a British family…
Many of the 63 national parks across the United States have seen an explosion of visitor numbers both during and after the pandemic, which often has led to booked campsites, clogged trails and timed entry requirements in an attempt to limit crowds. The big-name national parks however are just one category of public lands under…
Fatimah Al Zimam likes to walk around in black leggings and casual tops, and she wears her curly hair loose and uncovered. She owns a silver GMC pickup truck, which she loves to take on solo drives across the Saudi desert. And she is passionate about her work: As a tour guide, she has introduced…
Paris has recovered its scents, and the city is suddenly ravenous. The whiffs of shallots sautéing in butter, bread baking, meat roasting and bouillon simmering that invisibly punctuate any stroll in this food-loving city are back. In fact, the French capital is in the midst of a restaurant boom. “I think it’s a carpe diem…