August 2026

Foul-tasting hot water with laxative ambitions, rapidly declining sightseeing standards and two detours from Karlovy Vary — on the day Czechia set its all-time temperature record.By the time I finally made it to Karlovy Vary, I had already been to Czechia more times than I could easily count. Prague and Brno were familiar territory, and I had even

I was staying in Fes, but Meknes gave me my first medina — and the first lesson that Morocco is rarely as simple as the guidebook version.My first serious day of sightseeing in Morocco did not begin in Fes, even though that was where I was staying. It began about fifty-five kilometres away, in Meknes.Read "Fes — I Walked Through a Gate and Left the

My driver gave me twenty minutes for Moulay Idriss. Just enough time to enter the medina, trust a boy I had never seen before, climb almost above the town - and somehow see far more than twenty minutes should have allowed.My driver dropped me off near the entrance to the medina of Moulay Idriss and gave me twenty minutes to look around.Twenty minut

Before my first time in China, I worried about cultural differences. Instead, I found QR-code payments, a stubborn firewall, barely any English, robots using lifts — and a system that somehow became completely normal within three days.I had travelled long-haul before, but only once, to New York. So China was not my first encounter with a seriously

Four Istanbul hotels: a spectacular suite, an efficient stopover, exceptional hospitality and a cocktail that became a minor engineering project.Choosing between Istanbul hotels can easily become part of the journey itself. Stay in Etiler and the city feels modern, vertical and distant from the postcard version most visitors come to see. Move to th

I came to Turkey for a business meeting in Ankara. A few days of annual leave turned the journey into a solo detour through İzmir and Pamukkale, one reluctantly abandoned plan for Ephesus, an exceptionally good hotel redemption and, eventually, a bowl of perfectly chilled fruit beside the Aegean.Ankara, eventuallyThe official reason for the journey

Travelling to Fes can easily feel like travelling into the past. Pass through one of the monumental gates of its medina and the first question is almost inevitable: are we really still in the twenty-first century?There are sensible ways to visit Fes for the first time, and hiring a local guide is certainly one of them. Fes el-Bali is not the kind o

My first trip to China had all the technology I expected. The surprise was how comfortable they had made it. Shanghai had already given me a very different kind of speed: 300 kilometres per hour while floating above the track on magnetic levitation, an experience that still feels unlike almost anything else in the railway world. By the time I was

One winter evening, one quiet morning and a ferry waiting at the end Helsinki was never meant to be the main event. The journey had already taken me north to Lapland and then south to Tampere for an Erasmus programme, while Tallinn was waiting across the Gulf of Finland before the final return home. Helsinki entered the itinerary almost as a matt

I arrived knowing almost nothing about Hangzhou. Between water lilies, pagodas, Buddhist temples and old streets, I found the China I had imagined — and discovered that reality was even more captivating than I had expected. I arrived in Hangzhou from Shanghai on the afternoon of 15 May, after less than an hour on the high-speed train from Shangha

I arrived in Hangzhou knowing almost nothing about its most famous craft. By the time I left, silk had followed me from museums and markets all the way into my suitcase. The old man and I had no language in common. My Chinese was nonexistent, his English was no better, and whatever conversation we were having depended on a translation app, a calc

From Castel Gandolfo’s Private Avenues to the Gardens Behind St Peter’s For years, the Vatican existed in my mind as an extension of Rome: St Peter’s Square, the basilica and the long route through the Vatican Museums, culminating in the Sistine Chapel. The Gallery of Maps — spectacular enough to make it easy to forget how little of the Vatican l