Lake Orta is the smallest of the major northern Italian lakes and the only one west of the Ticino river, which is roughly why nobody goes. It’s 40 minutes from Lake Maggiore, 90 minutes from Milan, and it has one village, one island and almost no tour coaches. If Como has become a queue and […]
Lake Orta: The Italian Lake Nobody Has Ruined Yet Read More »
Salt Lake City has an international airport, four world-class ski resorts within an hour, five national parks within a day’s drive, and hotel prices well below Denver or Jackson. As a base for the American West it’s arguably the best-positioned city in the country. It’s also a genuinely odd place, and the odd bits are
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Extremadura sits on the Portuguese border between Madrid and Seville, and its main claim to fame is that almost nobody stops. It’s the least visited region in mainland Spain, it has the best-preserved Roman city in the country, and you can eat extraordinarily well for very little. The name means “the land beyond the Duero”,
Extremadura: Spain’s Least Visited Region, and Its Best Roman Ruins Read More »
Millions of people fly into Bergamo every year and immediately get on a bus to Milan. The airport is even marketed as “Milan Bergamo”, which does the city no favours at all. Bergamo is a walled medieval town on a hill, 50 minutes from Milan, and it’s genuinely one of the loveliest small cities in
Bergamo: The City Everyone Flies Into and Nobody Visits Read More »
Ninety-five percent of the world’s bourbon is made in Kentucky, and there are more barrels ageing in the state than there are people living in it — roughly 14 million barrels to 4.5 million residents. The Bourbon Trail is the tourism programme built around that, and it’s genuinely well organised. It’s also easy to do
The Kentucky Bourbon Trail: How to Plan It Without Driving All Day Read More »
You’re in a beautiful place, you’ve paid to be there, and you cannot make yourself care about another old town. The cathedral is fine. The view is fine. You’d quite like to lie down. This is travel burnout, it’s extremely common on trips longer than about three weeks, and almost nobody admits to it because
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Portland has about 68,000 people and a restaurant scene that regularly gets compared to cities ten times its size. It’s a working fishing port that turned into a food destination without turning into a theme park, which is a harder trick than it sounds. It’s also the right base for the Maine coast, which is
Portland, Maine: A Fishing Port With a Serious Food Scene Read More »
Eight islands, off the coast of Africa, that happen to be Spain. They’re closer to Morocco than to Madrid, they have subtropical weather year-round, and they are not interchangeable — picking the wrong one is the main way people have a disappointing Canaries holiday. Here’s the honest breakdown. Tenerife — the biggest, and the most
Which Canary Island Should You Actually Pick? Read More »
Trieste doesn’t feel Italian, and that’s because for most of its modern history it wasn’t. It was the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s only major seaport for five and a half centuries, and it only became permanently Italian in 1954. So you get Viennese coffee houses, Habsburg architecture, a Slovene-speaking hinterland and a Serbian Orthodox church on the
Trieste: The Italian City That Doesn’t Feel Italian Read More »
Alaska is a fifth the size of the rest of the United States combined and has about 730,000 people in it. There are more coastline miles than every other state put together, and roughly 80% of the place has no road access at all. Which means the first decision isn’t where to go. It’s how
Alaska: Denali, the Kenai and Which Trip to Actually Book Read More »
