Journal

From the road, the desk, and the planning notebook.

Destination guides, trip reports, and the slow accumulation of what makes a trip actually work.

Featured · Trip Planning

What I wish I'd known before our first trip to Iceland

What I remember most clearly is a bearded, tattooed, viking-looking man in a business suit, riding a scooter through downtown Reykjavik. He looked like he could have stepped out of a longboat in 900 AD, and he was checking his watch on h...

Trip Planning

Why Slovenia belongs on your list, even if you've never heard of it

Most Americans I know can't place Slovenia on a map, and that was true for me too, right up until I started researching what was near Croatia. We had loved our small-ship cruise along the Croatian coast so much that I was already thinkin...

Trip Planning

The case for adding days to your cruise

The decision that changed how I plan every trip to Europe was simple. I was on a small yacht-style ship along the Croatian coast, my first cruise, and I started looking at flights. The leg from Croatia to Zurich was about $50. The flight...

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