Category: Destinations

This Summer, Visit Rochester’s Underrated Museums

Rochester is one of the country’s most underrated cities. The city (population about 206,000) is in western New York on Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes. New York City is at least six hours away by car. Rochester, like other Rust Belt cities, has seen its share of challenges in recent decades since…


Going for a Jungle Swim

On the second night we were at the Tambopata Jungle Resort in Peru, our guide, Juan, took us for a boat ride to spot caimans. He used his big flashlight to spot the beady eyes watching us from just above the water level. Suddenly he reached over and pulled a 4-foot young caiman into the…


‘Resort’ Doesn’t Always Mean Luxury

After a week in Lima, Peru, we boarded a small jet to fly over the Andes. When we landed in the jungle town of Puerto Maldonado, our guide met us and threw our luggage into the back basket of a sort of motorcycle with places for two passengers behind him. We zoomed away toward what…


History Takes Flight at the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach

I stood outside the Military Aviation Museum in the cool breeze, holding my daughter in my arms as the Spitfire and Hurricane engines roared. “Airplane! Look!” My daughter squealed over the noise of the propellers of the World War II military aircraft. Because the weather was so windy, the working military planes were not going…


Reintroducing an Icon: The Ritz-Carlton, South Beach

There’s no doubt that South Beach is hot, but today’s buzzy iteration of the picture-perfect slice of South Florida is not its first or only heyday. The barrier island was mere farmland through the early 1900s, when two Miami businessmen and visionaries had the idea to develop the island by building single-family homes; construction of…


Following the Paths of D-Day in Normandy

Today, it’s a sleepy town not far from the sea, but in the wee pre-dawn hours of the morning on June 6, 1944, Sainte-Mère-Eglise was wide awake. Fires and the repeating gunshots from automatic weapons lit up the skies. Allied paratroopers dropped from above, many paying a heavy price, descending into this burning hell to…


In Search of the Olympics, in Greece and Around the World

Once, say the ancients, Zeus tossed a thunderbolt on this place. Seated in his home atop Mount Olympus, the greatest Greek god apparently signaled with this fiery gesture that he would take up residence in Olympia, a placid place covered in olive groves on the Peloponnese Peninsula. According to the official record, the first Olympics…


Trip of a Lifetime: How to Visit the Galápagos

If the Galápagos Islands have long been on your bucket list, stop waiting for someday and start checking off boxes. There’s no time like the present, and that’s especially true when it comes to this mind-blowing volcanic archipelago that’s unlike anywhere else in the world. A Great Time to Visit If you’re interested in visiting…


Fjords, Waterfalls and Viking History: Sailing North in Norway

While it’s literally an everyday occurrence, the departure felt momentous, like a shipload of explorers launching north, searching for unknown worlds—with terra incognita, guaranteed. Having spent a few days knocking around the seaside city of Bergen, riding its funicular up a verdant mountainside believed to be inhabited by trolls, and browsing at the storybook waterfront…


Discover Windsor Before the Tourists Return

Out for a late Sunday afternoon walk without another person in sight, I turned around when a voice called out, “Move to the left.” That voice, in one of those so English of accents, came from a policeman wearing the stereotypical bobby’s uniform. Out of seemingly nowhere, a green Range Rover quickly approached me on…