Every country has its own way of doing things, and Italy is no exception. While some mistakes tourists make in Italy are part of the adventure of travel, other errors can be very time-consuming or expensive to resolve. When I travel, I try to be aware of the most common pitfalls I could possibly encounter, and do some research to avoid them. Preparing for a trip to Italy? Here’s what you need to know to make the most of your…
What mental image comes to mind when you think of camping? Struggling to feed the long metal stick through the flaps to support your tent? Waking up with a backache after sleeping on uneven ground? Consuming a half-cold bite of food that was heated up over the fire? Those images certainly conjure some of the camping of my childhood, but I learned over several camping trips with my Perth friends recently that camping Australia-style can actually be quite comfortable with…
Valpolicella and Soave are two of my favorite Italian wine regions, and conveniently both are a short distance outside the inviting Italian town of Verona, not far from Venice. The Valpolicella region to the north of Verona specializes in various red wines with a unique production method, while the Soave region to the east produces some lovely white wines. Most consider the Italian wine regions of Piedmont and Tuscany to be the two areas with the best producers, especially for…
“Oh, but we were going to come visit you.” It’s a refrain I’ve heard again and again since moving back to the US from Milan, coming from many sources, from one of my sisters to friends I didn’t even know were contemplating a trip. Apparently all of these people had the best of intentions of making a trip to Italy for a visit, but never quite got around to it. In Australia, I understood. Living in Perth for just over…
If you’ve never been to Venice, it’s hard to envision what it would mean to have a city built on a series of islands connected by canals and waterways. No motorized vehicles are allowed, which means that some everyday things you take for granted look just a bit different here: Ambulance Building Entrance Construction Site Delivery Vehicle Metro Metro Stops Parking Spot Police Patrol Taxi What other things did you notice were different in Venice? Like this post? ‘Pin it’…
I consider myself an avid and fairly knowledgeable traveler, yet on my first trip to Stockholm last year for a blogging conference, I realized how woefully inadequate my knowledge of Stockholm and Sweden really was. Other than devouring The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo book series that is set there, what did I really know about the city? Scandinavia for me, even when I was living in Europe, was always put off as a travel destination because there were cities…
A friend first sang Oman’s praises around two years ago, talking about this country as being unspoiled Middle East. Then last April my sister had a similarly wonderful experience. After my December road trip there with my other sister, I too came back raving about this lesser-visited corner of the Middle East. So much so that Oman made my list of Top 10 Destinations for 2017, and I keep recommending it when people ask for somewhere ‘off the beaten path’…
The town of Bath, an easy train ride from London, lived up to and far exceeded my mental picture of what it would be like to spend a few days in a quaint British town. Trying to coordinate visiting two different friends in London this past fall (and seeing an NFL game in London in the process!) I ended up with two packed weekends and no plans in between. Which didn’t seem like the worst outcome to me, especially since…
This Saturday marks the 27th anniversary of the largest unsolved art heist, which took place on March 18, 1990 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. I can’t help but be swept up in a great story, and the details behind this art theft smack of any literary thriller that’s ever consumed you. That’s in fact how I first learned about it – from reading one of the many books that has been published in the nearly three…
Singaporeans are all about the food! Many say that eating (and arguing about the best restaurant or hawker stand for a particular food) is a national pastime, making Singapore a great foodie destination or perfect for anyone who just loves to eat. Singaporeans take their food pretty seriously, which you can get a bit of a sense of from one of my top books to inspire travel. Of course you’ll understand much better when you enjoy the delicious result that…