Where to find the real Spaniards – and other cultural detours you can actually fit in as alternatives to Europe’s tourist-infested cities (someday we will travel again!) By SarahBelle Selig Busy planning your post-pandemic European trip? If you’re anything like me, you’re looking for a place with a lot less people than you’d find in the typical hotspots. Check out these three refreshing alternatives to Europe’s tourist-infested cities, that are just off the beaten path and offer the culture – ...

By Allison Rapp I spent close to five months living in Glasgow, Scotland, and close to five months traveling throughout the UK. With nothing but a few university classes to tie me down, I was almost entirely free to move about the country on my own. At the tail end of summer I was still nursing some wounds from a failed relationship, and though I had been planning this trip for nearly a year, picking up everything and moving across ...

Once upon a time, a congregation’s nuns would bake the communion wafers. They would mix equal parts white flour and pure water until a crepe-like batter formed; then they added yeast and salt. They would ladle the mixture onto a glorified waffle maker, rigged with flat griddle plates occasionally adorned with biblical symbols. They stacked the sheets into towers and they underwent a daylong drying process before cutting them into individual disks with a stamping machine. What began as a ...

By W Goodwin Reza is driving. Ever since we entered Turkey he won’t let me drive, even when he’s dead tired, because “Women shouldn’t drive in Muslim countries.” No arguing with him, so I’m in the front passenger’s seat, half-awake, my thoughts rambling… I’m fine with Reza and his religion, but these old-world Muslims we’ve been meeting seem to get confused when they confront a confident woman (me!). Their reactions are clearly affecting Reza and the further east we go, ...

Editor’s Note: I got to ask travel blogger, writer, conference organizer, and travel guru Matt Kepnes of Nomadic Matt some questions about travel, writing, and books (some of my favorite subjects, and, luckily, his too). *This article contains affiliate link(s). Any affiliate link means that I may earn advertising/referral fees if you make a purchase through my link, without any extra cost to you. It helps to keep this magazine afloat and allows us to compensate our writers. Thank you ...

By Sophie McKeand Photos: Andy Garside & Sophie McKeand Verbier is a renown ski resort for the rich and famous in the Swiss Alps but, visit there out of season and you can still experience intense downhill thrills, on a mountain bike. Visit there in your campervan and stealth park and you can do biking in Verbier for just the cost of your cablecar pass. In November 2017, my partner and I sold 95% of our possessions, gave the keys ...

By Sallie Lewis Longoria It’s coming on Christmas, and up and down my street, twinkle lights glow softly, like summer fireflies. While my own home will soon be decked for the holidays, the house next door remains dark and shuttered, a lingering reminder of what I lost. My grandparents – who I called Honey and Popo – were many things to me. Friends, first and foremost, role models, teachers, travel advisors, and much later in life, next-door neighbors. Together since ...

By Christopher Dill   It was the early 1980’s, the first hip-hop movement was spreading throughout the U.S. and the world, and I was probably one of the few white breakdancers in America.  I was absurdly old (26) do be doing it compared to the black teens who taught me, but breakdancing was my true coming of age ritual.  Before you start rolling your eyes to the point of needing an ophthalmologist to correct your vision, I was the genuine ...

By Jake Thomas Ferguson The nice lady pleaded with me that I should stay in an albergo tonight and not on the streets. Her eyes lit up with a mother’s protective passion. Her little son eyed my travel gear curiously, not used to seeing people like me come through here. She knew I was telling her what she wanted to hear. Standing next to the water fountain in a dingy concrete plaza where folks come from all around to fill ...

By Stephanie Schroeder   I arranged my first home exchange in 2006. The deal was that my partner at the time and I would give up our Jersey City, NJ, apartment for a couple who had a house in Alkmaar, North Holland in The Netherlands. It was all very new to me, this home exchange adventure, but it was the only way I could afford to travel. I had only five days vacation from my job at a corporate PR firm, ...