Alghero has cobblestone charm in spades.
I’d always thought of Italy as a mecca for tourists and travellers alike, a place where crowds were never far away—whether posing for photos in front of the Tower of Pisa, lining up for gondola rides in Venice, or fighting for beach space on the Amalfi Coast.
Famously appearing in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Claude Bell’s dinosaur, Dinney. “I love finding the bizarre and unexpected that many people pass up because they don’t want to be ‘taken in’ by a tourist trap. I want to see!” So says Erika Nelson, founder and creative mind behind the wandering World’s Largest Collection of World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things. Tourist traps are Nelson’s stock-in-trade, having navigated the country’s backroads and highways in search of the monuments to eccentricity, creativity and good-ole Americana.
Ladurée macrons in its Paris shop window. Photo by Kristin Conard. I think most Americans, or at least most Americans I know, think of macarons as coconut macaroons – the chewy cookie that shows up at bake sales or in plastic sleeves at grocery stores. But in France, they are macarons, perfectly round shells with frosting in the middle. These are French cookies, Parisian cookies. They’re elegant and refined, sweet without being overwhelming and come in flavors like blackcurrant, violet, licorice, spice, orange blossom and mint.
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“There’s a lot to us. We love dancing, we love clothes, we love everything!” Belmonte cheers, her bright eyes and smile embodying the fun-loving outlook of cariocas.
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Everything’s a little bigger in Texas. At least, that’s the way the old saying goes. Is it true? Well, I will say that everything is a little bit different in Texas. As soon as I stepped off the plane, I realized that things are a little slower, a little more glamorous and definitely a little bit nicer.
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As I sat on on a cushion with my legs tucked beside me, I was struck by my unique privilege. I had joined Hind at the mosque and also the hammam, where we had lain naked on marble slabs as the bath attendant sloughed dead skin from our bodies. I had sat chatting with her grandmother about her tattoos and taken the groom’s 12-year-old sister to the market to buy sweets. Yet as a Western woman, I was not expected to follow the rules of my Muslim counterparts.
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The greatest mystery of all may be how its residents have forged a culture where more than 50 ethnic groups live together in peace and harmony. The secret may be in how they describe themselves in Papiamento: “yiu di Korsow,” literally, “I am a child of Curaçao.” Islanders claim that Curaçao is the only country in the world where residents refer to themselves as children of a nation.
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As our new Kazakh friend noticed that a male (the apartment owner and host) was so kindly pouring everyone tea from a dainty silver teapot, he asked in a bewildered yet serious tone, “Wait, there’s a girl here. Why are you pouring the tea?” His comment very clearly relayed the idea that I automatically had a role to play because of my gender, and I was having none of that. I started walking down the streets of Bishkek thinking, “Watch out, Kyrgyz boys! You’re not snatching this one!
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The Big Island of Hawaii isn’t the first place you expect to come across cowboy culture, but paniolos (Hawaiian cowboys) have been roping and riding on the island for over 200 years. It all started in 1793, when British Captain George Vancouver gave Hawaii’s King Kamehameha five longhorn cattle as a gift.
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Aside from the many shore excursions at each port, the Galavanting Gals got to take a trip through the ship itself during a sea voyage we recently took. It turned out to be a fun highlight.
The Ultimate Ship Tour aboard the Crown Princess is normally a three-hour tour for which a limited number of Princess Cruises passengers can pay $150 for a behind-
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