On a recent return to Tuscany, Danielle Pergament of the NYT discovers things are a little different in the region come the dead of winter when the tour buses have gone home and the crowds have receded from the piazzas. And what remains in the off-season when things get back [...]

Ok. Most people don’t really consider the U.K. as part of Europe, but in an effort to keep with “Europe Week,” we’ll make an exception. CNTraveller recently mentioned that you and 49 others can book a night in Winston Churchill’s wartime bunker for the night of May 14, 2010, and [...]

This week the NY Times hailed London, England, as the next city for the coffee craze. Although the major corporations, like Starbucks, are pervasive in this international city, there seems to be a movement towards the smaller, independent shops that see coffee as an art. But, as most people know, [...]

I’ve made a habit before going on a trip to cruise around the online destinations section of newspapers to try to find one or two great articles that I can print out and bring along as a supplement to my guidebook for ideas and tips (which is what I did [...]

Okay, Rick Steves may not be my favorite guy in the world (see my last post), but his writing is everywhere, and since the Travel Show (again, see my last post) is going to be Stevesless this year, I thought we’d check in on him today. This week Rick is [...]

If you stick around Istanbul long enough you’re likely going to run into a Whirling Dervishes performance. But if you want to see the real thing you have to head to Konya, where it all began. By Inka Piegsa-Quischotte I have to admit that until I visited the festival in [...]

Oh man, my dream job: a city tour guide — in Rome no less. Rome Walks, a walking tour company in The Eternal City, put together this handy vid, pointing out some tips for seeing the city, both on and off the beaten path. Highlight: 2:22. “Wander down Vicolo de [...]

Some friends of mine are planning a trip to Italy at the end of the summer, and they recently asked me, “Where should we go?”, which, if you think about it, is quite a loaded question given the scale of the country. It’s kind of like asking, “What should I [...]

Any city can be difficult to navigate or to really get a feel for it. It’s always nice to meet or know locals so that they can take you on a tour of a different nature. Locals are able to see the small things — the trees in the forest [...]

To many it seems as though the bigger the city, the more expensive it is to live there. Rumor has it that cities such as Tokyo, New York City and London are just too expensive to live in. Even as a Toronto-dweller, I always get asked how I can afford [...]