While the internet has made it easier to plan a trip yourself — and see how much you’re saving — it also demands you slog through hundreds of pages of destination research, hotel and home rental options, and myriad flight-routing alternatives, becoming an amateur travel agent along the way. But this summer, a few travel…
My son Japhy, 5, still spontaneously falls off his chair from time to time, and is shaky on his pedal bike, but at Diggerland USA, a construction-themed amusement park in southern New Jersey, we have given him control of a 7,092-pound JCB excavator. He is sitting high in the cab on his father’s lap, moving…
In early April, when my flight landed at Ferenc Liszt International Airport, László Borsos was waiting for me at the arrivals gate. I hadn’t seen the man in 28 years. I scanned the crowd and found him standing there with a wild grin on his face, his glasses dangling elegantly over a white collared shirt.…
When John De Fries’s mother was in high school in the 1940s, she was forbidden from dancing the hula and speaking Hawaiian, the language of her ancestors. The school she attended was for children of Hawaiian descent, but instead of encouraging students to embrace that heritage, it tried to erase it. “That whole generation was…
The couple is not rich. They live in Upland, Calif., a city about 40 miles inland from Los Angeles, and admit that their new reality — where they can head to an airport and casually wait for standby tickets to any city in the world — continues to make them want to pinch themselves. Exploring…
ASHLAND, Ore. — Smoke from a raging wildfire in California prompted the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to cancel a recent performance of “The Tempest” at its open-air theater. Record flooding in St. Louis forced the cancellation of an outdoor performance of “Legally Blonde.” And after heat and smoke at an outdoor Pearl Jam concert in France…
A Five-Bedroom Beneath Table Mountain in Cape Town $4.7 MILLION (79.995 MILLION RAND) This five-bedroom home backs onto the slopes of Table Mountain in Oranjezicht, a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. Set on about three quarters of an acre, the home is designed to mimic the landscape of the mountain, a prominent landmark, with…
As a Paris resident, I scarcely paid attention to the city’s tree-scape until a few years ago, when I stumbled upon an arresting scene of a young man stretched out in the elbow of a low-lying branch of a Japanese pagoda tree, its leaves skimming the pond at Buttes-Chaumont Park in the 19th arrondissement. From…
For many travelers, cancellations and other snags have made this summer especially frustrating. To help you understand how we got here and how to make the most of your own trips, two Times travel experts — Niraj Chokshi, who covers transportation, and Heather Murphy, who reports on how people travel — answered reader questions. Why…
It was the middle of July, peak summer travel season, and the news from Europe wasn’t looking good: A heat-induced “surface defect” briefly closed the runway at London’s Luton Airport. Trains were delayed or canceled across Britain because of overheated tracks. More than two dozen weather stations in France recorded their highest-ever temperatures. And wildfires…