Felix My driver, Felix, tells me he’s from Hopkins as I get into the front seat of his car. He’s just picked me up at the Sleeping Giant Lodge in Belize’s Cayo District, the lush western part of the country bordering Guatemala where one of many mountains is in fact […]
Even before I spent 10 amazing days in Peru, I knew it would have everything I look for in a travel experience. Which is absolutely breathtaking natural beauty, kind welcoming people, insanely good food, uniquely atmospheric hotels, and many opportunities for adventure and cultural immersion. At the time I was […]
The below Istanbul tips and city guide are for first time visitors who want to see the main sites and also get off the beaten path a bit. You’ll find tips on where (and what) to eat, where to drink, wander, shop, learn, and immerse yourself in Turkish culture in […]
To this day, Kahvalti – the word for a traditional breakfast in Turkey – is by far the most fabulous, most delicious, most diverse in flavors and foods of breakfast in any destination I’ve visited. And somehow, thankfully, the recipes that make up a Turkish breakfast are relatively easy to […]
I spent a year living as an English teacher in Istanbul, fumbling my way through the challenges and culture shock that come with being a foreigner in a country you’ve never visited. Before remote work and digital nomadism became so prevalent, finding community, accommodation, and professional opportunities was a different experience.
Gorilla trekking in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park is the number one experience that draws travelers to plan a Uganda safari, with chimpanzee trekking in second place. I highly recommend doing both and, if you have time, spending a few more days exploring more of the country to really soak […]
To get from Naples train station to a tiny town called San Lazzaro in a region called Agerola, it’s a 30 minute ride on the Circumvesuviana and then an hour-long bus ride that winds up the steep precipices of the mountains behind the better-known towns of the Amalfi coast – […]
Reader, I’ve pulled this from the archives. I wrote about my trip to Sofia around the same time I started my original blog, in 2011. Around the corner from my old apartment in New York City’s East Village, where I loved in my 20s, there was an establishment called the […]
Cappadocia has become wildly popular in the decade since I visited. Nestled in and around the Nevsehir province in central Turkey, Cappadocia looks like a moonscape or the other side of a portal to another planet. With its strange rock formations, a history of hermit cave dwellers, places with names […]
On a whirlwind trip to Southeast Asia, after a few days where it seemed like the travel gods were really out to get me, with 30 hours of food poisoning in Thailand followed by four flights in three countries over the course of one day, I was really ready for […]