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Cheap flights to Antigua Guatemala: plan the regional return
A side trip from Antigua can look like a new vacation on your calendar. Immigration may see the same trip continuing. Guatemala shares a…
North America
52 stories →
Cheap flights to Antigua Guatemala: plan the regional return
A side trip from Antigua can look like a new vacation on your calendar. Immigration may see the same trip continuing. Guatemala…
Cheap flights to Oaxaca: pay for the ride inside the terminal
The person taking your money at Oaxaca airport will not be the person driving you into town. You pay for the ride…
The Reality of Montreal: The Hill Above the Skyline
A skyscraper in Montreal has to know when to stop. The city measures its towers against the summit of Mount Royal, the…
Cheap flights to Montreal: check the airport code before you pay
A cheap ticket to “Montreal” can look settled right up to the payment screen. I would stop there and read the airport…
The Reality of Guanajuato: The City Poured Into a Ravine
Guanajuato fills a narrow cleft in the hills of central Mexico, on a floor barely wide enough for the stream that cut…
Cheap flights to Guanajuato: the airport on the plain, and the road beneath the town
Travelers planning a journey into Guanajuato arrive through an airfield that belongs to an entire region rather than to an individual municipality.…
South America
21 stories →
The Reality of Lima: A City Built Light Above the Street
In central Lima, a house can change its weight as your eyes travel upwards. At pavement level the walls have the mass…
Cheap flights to Cartagena: the neighborhood matters more than the ride
You can land in Cartagena and already be in Cartagena. The runway belongs to a city neighborhood, not an airport town somewhere…
The Reality of Medellín: The City That Made Cable Cars Public Transport
You queue on a platform above a river, in a station as clean as a hospital, and the thing that arrives to…
Cheap flights to Medellín: the airport over the mountain, the one in the middle of town, and the morning fog that reshuffles both
The most useful thing I can tell you about flying to Medellín is that when you land at Medellín's international airport, you…
Europe
144 stories →The Reality of Paris: The Fountains Still at Work
Paris has quietly made a Londoner's generosity part of its street furniture. Dark-green cast-iron fountains stand beside pavements, their robed figures supporting…
The Reality of Barcelona: The Corners Given Back
At a junction in Barcelona’s Eixample, the street expands when it ought to narrow. The buildings step back on diagonal faces, leaving…
Cheap flights to Tirana: the bus decides what happens next
The bus at Rinas has a question the flight search never asked: where are you actually going? Albania's onward travel starts at…
The Reality of Copenhagen: The Harbour You Can Swim In
The ladder at Islands Brygge ends where a swimming pool ought to have tiles. Beneath it is harbour water, inside a capital…
Cheap flights to Kotor: choose the airport by the month
Move a Kotor trip from July to November and the airport map changes, even though the roads haven't moved. Flights that make…
The Reality of Nice: The Town Built for Winter
A winter coat belongs in the architectural history of Nice. Before the Riviera became shorthand for a summer holiday, families came south…
Asia
82 stories →Cheap flights to Siem Reap: plan the ride from SAI
The old Siem Reap airport used to make the trip from the plane to the hotel a minor decision. SAI has changed…
The Reality of Taipei: The Music That Collects Rubbish
A piano melody comes drifting along a Taipei street, and apartment doors begin to open. The people emerging are carrying rubbish. A…
The Reality of Hanoi: When a Street Was a Shop Sign
A shop can change what it sells. Changing the name of the street above it is a rather bigger undertaking. In Hanoi's…
Cheap flights to Chiang Mai: choose the connection before the booking
A cheap flight to Chiang Mai can be a bad booking with a nice headline. From the States, the plane does not…
Russia
24 stories →
Surgut: Siberia’s Oil Capital, and Why People Actually Go
Surgut is a company town on a continental scale. There has been a settlement on this bend of the Ob river since…
Tyumen: Siberia’s First Town and Its Winter Hot Springs
Tyumen has two claims worth knowing before you arrive. It was the first Russian town founded in Siberia, established in 1586 as…
Chelyabinsk: The Meteor City on the Edge of the Urals
Let us be honest about Chelyabinsk: it is an industrial city, and it does not pretend otherwise. It grew up on iron…
Samara: The Volga, a Secret Bunker and a Rocket in the Street
Samara is a big, easy-going city on the left bank of the Volga, and for most of the Soviet era outsiders were…
Pyatigorsk: Spa Town of the Caucasus and Lermontov’s Last Duel
Pyatigorsk is not a place you pass through on the way to somewhere else; people come here specifically, and usually for their…
Ufa: A Guide to the Capital of Bashkortostan
Capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Ufa spreads across hills between the Belaya and Ufa rivers in the southern Urals — a…
Africa
21 stories →
The Reality of Fez: the city that never let the car in — what a medieval city sounds like when nothing has an engine
Fes el-Bali is widely cited by convention as the largest car-free urban area in the world. The medina's lanes are simply too…
Cheap flights to Marrakesh: the low-cost boom into RAK, the airport six kilometres from the square, and the summer the fares invert
On one of my early trips to North Africa, I booked a cheap flight to Marrakesh, planning to spend my summer exploring…
Cheap flights to Cairo: the two-airport question nobody asks, the visa you sort out before the queue, and the museum that finally moved the calendar
On my first flight to Cairo, I arrived at the terminal assuming that purchasing a visa on arrival would be a simple…
The Reality of Tunis: The Medina and the Ghost of Carthage
Stand in the Tunis medina in the middle of the morning, and the city hits you all at once. The vaulted, stone-roofed…
Oceania
5 stories →
The Reality of Rotorua: Geothermal Power and Living Māori Culture
Walk down a quiet suburban street in Rotorua at dawn, and you might see thick white steam drifting casually from a front…
Cheap flights to Auckland: the long haul, strict biosecurity, and the NZeTA
Here is a quick way to earn an instant, non-negotiable fine: walk off a fifteen-hour flight at Auckland Airport, feel a wet…
Cheap flights to Sydney: the long haul, the Kangaroo Route, and the airport curfew
Here is a quick way to experience pre-flight panic: stand at the check-in desk in Los Angeles, hand over your passport, and…
The Reality of a Holiday in Australia: Visas, Flights and Distances
Australia has a strange place in the imagination: everyone wants to go, and almost everyone assumes they can't. It sits in the…
Sydney Opera House: History, Architecture and How to Visit
Some buildings are famous; a much smaller number have become shorthand for an entire country. The Sydney Opera House belongs to that…