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 ...

Editor’s Note: There is nothing that bridges personal distance as much as a shared language. I recently read an article on hyperpolyglots and the ease with which they can navigate new places because of their languages. I can barely manage two languages, but I’m working on it. Bilingualism has been shown to expand the mind in exciting ways, and I think it expands your world. By Angela Grant Over the past few years, you might have noticed a surfeit of articles ...

By Ingrid Anders A canal dredged from Cape May’s harbor to the Delaware Bay separates the old seaside resort from the rest of New Jersey. This is the kind of island Brooke wants to be—man made and cut off, so separated from the mainland she can forget she was ever part of it. The open laptop on the kitchen table glows at Brooke, silhouetting the mug about to deliver its third cup of black coffee to her empty stomach. The ...

Editor’s Note: Space tourism is on the horizon, but while SpaceX and Blue Origin contemplate our new space home, Robert Hazen tells us a little bit about what makes our current home unique. By Robert Hazen Few topics in science command as much attention as the discovery of extrasolar planets – those as-yet-unseen worlds, light years beyond our own Sun. In the quest to learn whether we are alone in the cosmos, astronomers are teasing out subtle wobbles and periodic dimmings of ...

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, ...

By Sammantha Bennett Paris was chaos. Ten days after suicide bombers and gunmen attacked a concert hall, a stadium, restaurants, and bars, I stepped off a train from Munich into a swarm of armed military and local law enforcement at Gare de l’Est. I had 40 liters on my back and a bit of panic in my mind. Munich had been so perfectly Bavarian: neat, clean, peaceful, expected. Everyone had been polite and no one crossed the street unless the ...