Travel

Inspired by popular historical drama series and social media, a growing travel trend encourages travelers heading to Europe to enjoy a different accommodation style than a hotel or private cottage: castles. Castles, especially in the United Kingdom and Ireland, increasingly turn to the travel industry for historic preservation. They’re being restored and refashioned into luxury hotels and ...

“Follow me,” Nando said. “I know where it lives.”

PALMWAY, Namibia — Fresh dung. Tracks in the sand of the Namib Desert. The black rhinoceros can't be far away. Wildlife rangers Stefanus Ganuseb, 42, and Fritz Hoeb, 45, are patrolling on foot, equipped with binoculars and a camera. And accompanied by an armed policeman. Then they discover the young male rhino named Arthur on a distant crest. The team checks the direction of the wind so that ...

LOS ANGELES — The stalactites and stalagmites of Sequoia National Park’s Crystal Cave, a sprawling subterranean wonder that’s been closed for four years, will be accessible again this summer. But to get in during the open season of May 23 through Sept. 7, you’ll need tickets, which are available now. Visitors will walk through the cave on 50-minute guided group tours, inspecting mineral ...

Travel expert Rick Steves doesn’t want you to have a safe trip, he wants you to have a “bon voyage.”

As a young backpacker, I first fell in love with the picturesque village of Rothenburg, in Germany’s Franconian heartland. At that time, the town still fed a few farm animals within its medieval walls. Today its barns are hotels, its livestock are tourists, and Rothenburg is well on its way to becoming a medieval theme park.

Oh, Canada! Our neighbor to the north offers families a wide range of vacation opportunities. You’ll find history, culture and extraordinary natural beauty. Plus, polar bears.

The steep trail near the top of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway was covered in inches of spongy fallen needles and peppered with ankle-twisting pine cones. It was also shady, which felt remarkable after the first seven miles of the grueling Cactus to Clouds hike offered little more than a brittlebush leaf’s worth of relief.

“As long as there are cows and horses around, you’ll need someone like me,” our wrangler said when I asked if someone could earn a living cowboying these days.

LONDON – Beneath the gift shop of the original Hard Rock Cafe, staff members lead daily tours of the Vault, a space the size of a walk-in closet that guards some of the chain’s most vaunted treasures. Inside, there’s the harpsichord played by the Beatles, Bo Diddley’s cigar box guitar, a bustier from Madonna’s era of traffic cone tops. At the restaurant across the street, diners eat cheeseburgers alongside Jimi Hendrix’s maracas, Keith Richards’ pink Fender Stratocaster, and a pair of glittery sunglasses immortalized on the cover of Elton John’s chart-topping album “Caribou.”

Chaos surrounded us. Informal porters rolling luggage carts zigzagged between cars. Commuters spilled from the bus terminal onto the sidewalk, where they sat on suitcases and duffel bags. Minibus taxis zoomed through the congestion, pedestrians be damned.

Spokane is one of “the hottest destinations” for spring travel, as beloved weathercaster Al Roker put it on the “Today” show earlier this week.

Amid light snow, I skied out of the town of Ste.-Adèle, in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec, and headed to Prévost, 8 miles away. Only a few minutes earlier, I had walked out of Au Clos Rolland, a historic inn where I’d spent the previous night dining on a decadent three-course meal and resting up from a day of cross-country skiing.

After packed-to-the-brim days in Philadelphia and New York City, the final stop of our East Coast train trip was here. Ashley, my twin sister, and I had been to Boston before separately but we both had things we wanted to see for the first time, or again, so it was an easy choice to add the city to the itinerary.

“Pachamama,” said our guide, Orlando Condori. He tilted his glass, pouring some blush-colored wine onto the parched sand.

No matter how much time you plan to spend in New York City, it never seems like quite long enough. It’s truly a “so much to do, so little time” situation.

Let’s buck the trend, a local marine biologist suggested.

Despite living in Pennsylvania for about two and a half years while in high school, I visited Philadelphia only once or twice. Wanting to make up for lost time, when my sister Ashley and I decided to take a train trip from Spokane to the East Coast, we chose the City of Brotherly Love as our first stop.

Turns out that whale scene in Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams’ hilarious 2020 movie, “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga,” may not have been so overblown, after all. We chalked up the scene of two massive humpbacks breaching in breathtaking unison to cinematic magic. But the little town of Husavik is considered not only the whale-watching capital of Iceland, Lonely Planet calls it ...