Most of my long trips begin with a red-eye out of Montreal, and a fair number of those red-eyes put me down at Schiphol with hours to spend before the next leg. …
Hello, fellow adventurers! Some places feel important the moment you arrive. Not because they overwhelm you, but because they carry weight – quietly, steadily, and with purpose. Parliament Hill in Ottawa is …
I came out of the Willem-Alexander Pavilion with a vague piece of information and no map sense whatsoever. Somebody had mentioned an orchid exhibition. I had no idea where it was, so …
Before this trip, every stroopwafel I had eaten came out of a supermarket packet. Sealed, room temperature, perfectly fine. I went to Amsterdam wanting to find out what the thing was supposed …
Amsterdam was full when I was there. Not busy in the ordinary way a capital city is busy, but full, with the whole country apparently in town at once and the canals …
I went to Amsterdam for two things. Tulips, because I had wanted to see them properly for years, and Van Gogh, because a museum devoted to one painter is a rare thing …
Migration is not only a Greek story, or an Italian one. It belongs to everyone, everywhere, and it always has: the leaving, the packing of a whole life into one suitcase, and …
Travel is not only palaces and pastries. Part of why I travel is to understand places, and understanding a place means meeting its history, including the parts that are hard to look …
Three days in London is a highlights reel. Five days is a holiday. I have already written up the tight three-day version for a first visit, the one that races through the …
On my first visit to Tate Modern in London, I came for a giant spider and stayed for the paintings, which I did not see coming. One set of rooms held me …
London is a city that could fill a lifetime and still hold more. And yet some of my favourite days there were the ones I spent leaving it. There is a particular …
I went to Tate Modern for one thing, and it was not a painting. It was a spider. Louise Bourgeois’s giant Maman is one of my favourite sculptures anywhere, and Tate owns …
Three days is not enough for London. I want to say that at the top, because every itinerary that promises otherwise is lying to somebody. What three days is enough for is …
I went to Tate Modern in London to see a spider, and the spider was gone. That is the short version. The longer one is that Louise Bourgeois’s Maman is one of …
