Solo travel advice online is weirdly obsessed with Southeast Asia and Portugal. Which is fine, but if you’re American, or already in America, flying twelve hours to prove you can eat dinner alone seems like a lot. The US is genuinely good for a first solo trip. Everyone speaks your language, or at least a
The Best Solo Trips in the USA for a First-Timer Read More »
Bologna sits an hour from Florence and two from Venice, and most people go straight past it on the train. Their loss, genuinely. It has the oldest university in the world, 38 kilometres of covered walkways, a tower you can climb, and the best food in a country that takes food more seriously than almost
The Best Things to Do in Bologna (Italy’s Most Underrated Food City) Read More »
Olympic is three parks in one and that’s not marketing, it’s the actual problem you have to plan around. There’s a glaciated mountain range in the middle, a temperate rainforest on the west side, and 70 miles of wild Pacific coast. They’re hours apart and there is no road through the middle of the park.
Olympic National Park in 3 Days: The Only Itinerary You Need Read More »
Portland spent about a decade being the punchline of a sketch show and another few years in the news for reasons the city would rather forget. Both of those are now out of date. What’s actually here: no sales tax, the best bookshop on earth, more food carts than anywhere in America, and a volcano
Portland for First-Timers: What to See, Eat, and Skip Read More »
Colorado has 58 peaks over 14,000 feet, more than any other state, and a summer that lasts about ten weeks. Which makes the timing of this trip fairly important. The loop below runs Denver to the northern Rockies, down through the ski towns to the San Juans in the south west, and back via the
Colorado in Summer: A 7-Day Rocky Mountain Road Trip Read More »
Madrid has gone up. Anyone who tells you it’s still the cheap European capital hasn’t rented here recently. It’s still considerably cheaper than London, Paris, Amsterdam or Dublin. It is no longer cheaper than Lisbon or Porto, and the gap with Valencia has widened a lot. Here’s what it actually costs, with real numbers rather
The Real Cost of Living in Madrid in 2026 Read More »
Italy is one of the easiest countries in the world to travel alone, and almost nobody says that out loud. The trains work. The cities are walkable. Eating alone is unremarkable because Italians eat at bar counters all day. And there is always, always something to look at, which matters more when you don’t have
Solo Travel in Italy: The Best Cities to Start With Read More »
Here’s the thing nobody tells you before booking the Amalfi Coast: hiring a car is often the worst possible decision. The coast road is a single lane each way, cut into a cliff, with blind hairpins and buses coming the other way. Parking, where it exists, costs more per day than a decent lunch. In
The Amalfi Coast Without a Car: How the Buses and Ferries Really Work Read More »
Capri gets 2 to 3 million visitors a year onto an island of four square miles with about 12,000 residents. In August it’s genuinely difficult to walk down the main street. It’s also one of the most beautiful places in the Mediterranean, which is why the Romans built villas here and why everyone’s been arguing
Is Capri Worth It? What to Do and What to Skip Read More »
The Dolomites don’t look like the rest of the Alps. They’re pale grey limestone that goes pink at dusk, they stand up in vertical slabs and towers rather than snowy cones, and they were a coral reef about 250 million years ago. They’re also in Italy, though large parts of them speak German and a
The Dolomites in 5 Days: The Only Itinerary You Need Read More »
