Travel

Hawaii’s Oahu island is the kind of place where it seems you never meet a visitor who’s been there just once. People visit, then they visit again. Pretty soon Oahu has baked itself into your travel routines.

“I hope you have an epic experience,” my Lyft driver said with a bit of an ironically cheerful tone as he dropped me off at Universal’s Epic Universe in Orlando, Florida. No worries. I was already primed to do just that. I had been reading about the park for the past couple of years, looking over designs, watching construction videos, imagining the worlds and anticipating the works. Now, I was on a mission. I booked two days at the park in June, only two weeks after its official May 22 opening, to experience each of its 11 rides and see if they lived up to what my imagination was conjuring.

Eat oysters only in months whose names contain the letter R. That old rule of thumb lingers, seemingly as fundamental as “30 days hath September.”

Why are many drawn to old mining towns?

Less than an hour from Cork Airport, but tucked away off the main tourist trails, Ireland’s Blackwater Valley is steeped in natural splendor and Old World romance. The area gets its name from the Munster Blackwater – a deep, fast-flowing river that wends through the verdant landscape before joining the Atlantic Ocean at the medieval town of Youghal.

After a motorbike ride down an empty road, my daughter and I found ourselves jumping off a high wooden platform into a deep lagoon with salt-white sand, healthy coral – and no one else around.

In the fall of 1922, a 26-year-old F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, moved into a Mediterranean-style house on Long Island, New York.

Earlier this month, I competed in the national championship of a trading card game. Despite learning how to play the game less than a year ago, I got 99th place out of the more than 500 players who qualified for the contest.

About two years ago I was talking with Mike, a friend of mine I’ve known since Ronald Reagan was still in the White House, and he asked me a question out of left field: What if we went on a tour of World War II European battlefields?

Having grown up with a parent in the military, I have a difficult time answering the question “Where are you from?”

If someone told you they were visiting Spokane, where would you suggest they visit? Maybe you have a favorite restaurant in mind, a shop they should browse or an experience they should try.

More than 450 years ago, King Philip II of Spain decreed Madrid – a somewhat sleepy mountain town in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula – the capital of his empire. Many historians consider it an odd decision for a ruler whose maritime empire extended across three oceans and five continents and was connected by the largest navy the world had ever seen. Not only is Madrid 220 miles from the nearest Spanish port in Valencia on the Mediterranean, but it’s also 2,000 feet above sea level. A bustling seafaring city like Cádiz would have been a more obvious choice.

Paul Cézanne’s artistic muse had sweeping shoulders, an enigmatic face and majestic beauty that loomed over his life’s work. But that obsession was a mountain, not a woman. Seduced by the sun’s chameleon-like effect on its limestone ridges, Cézanne painted more than 80 versions of Montagne Ste.-Victoire, a granite massif near his hometown, the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence.

Crashing waves struck the prow, the cold water of Lake Huron splashing those of us braving the top deck of the small ferry. My lifelong friend, Arielle, shielded her face with her hat until the vessel eased into calmer waters on its approximately 20-minute voyage to Mackinac Island. Miles of blue stretched toward the late-morning horizon, the green Mackinac Bridge prominently featured as its 5-mile span connected Michigan’s peninsulas.

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – Of all the creatures associated with Florida – alligators, flamingos, manatees – possibly the most consequential doesn’t show up in tourism ads or on travel websites.

Instead of soaking in the sun poolside or lounging around a luxurious hotel, more travelers are spending their vacations creating trails in the Faeroe Islands, digging into the earth of Patagonia or maintaining rugged paths in the mountains of Eastern Europe. They are trading relaxation for a sense of purpose.

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 ...