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Wake Up Somewhere Wonderful

Read travel stories, planning tips, and destination guides curated for your next adventure.

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Travel Tips & Planning

Do Your Kids Look Like You? In China, That’s Very Good News

Travel has a way of teaching you things about your own family that you never expected to learn. I have two children. My daughter looks like me. My son looks like his mother. I’d never given this much thought until I came across a popular Chinese proverb. 女儿像爸爸，儿子像妈妈，都有福气。 Daughter looks like father; son looks like […]

July 15, 2026
Food & Culinary Travel

Over the Bridge

You cross a bridge to get to Noirmoutier. On the mainland side, the marshes and the bourrines, the old, thatched cottages built from mud and reeds. On the island side, white houses with blue doors and terracotta roofs. My 10-year-old daughter wore heels for the occasion. Everyone was in linen and floral dresses. We were […]

July 10, 2026
Experiences & Activities

The Green Line

There is a green line painted through Saintes, and this morning I stood my shoe on it and followed it out of town. 137 kilometers to Bordeaux, on the old pilgrim road. Day one. By mid-afternoon my feet had opinions. Twenty-five kilometers in July heat, through fields and vineyards, a pack on my back. Somewhere […]

July 10, 2026
Experiences & Activities

The Butterflies

You see them all day on the Camino. White ones mostly, sometimes orange, lifting off the path a few steps ahead of you. They never fly straight. A bird has somewhere to be. A butterfly doesn’t. It rises, drops, doubles back, lands on a thistle for two seconds and changes its mind. Most of them […]

July 10, 2026
Staff Recommendations

6 Rules from the Camino

Six days of walking teaches you things. Most of them apply off the path too. You can’t stop. Just keep going. There is no version of the day where you don’t reach the town. Your bed is 24 kilometers away and nobody is coming to get you. So, you walk. Tired doesn’t matter. You keep […]

July 10, 2026
Experiences & Activities

The Wrong Shorts

It was 38 degrees and I was ready. Towel over the shoulder, thongs on, board shorts. The uniform of every Australian who has ever approached a body of water. My mother-in-law had driven us to the local pool, a municipal affair outside a small French town that smelled of chlorine and civic pride. I was […]

July 3, 2026