Here’s a lost photo essay I somehow rediscovered scans of. Several years ago, in a previous incarnation of the Lonely Planet website, I was asked about my ‘first 24 hours’ in a special place. I immediately picked Mexico City. It’s the trip, as young a wee thing, that gave me the travel bug for life. A place with pyramids, Aztec canals and real … Read on
Lonely Planet teamed up with BookPage, a monthly reader on books, for a column on travel books I get to write. It’s available online, and distributed in print at Books-A-Million stores. Columns are fun.
I’m in the long process of digitizing a couple dozen journals put together on Lonely Planet, and other, research trips over the past decade or so. I really liked this guy, met in Omaha on my first LP assignment: updating the Great Plains chapter of the USA guidebook in the spring of 2001: William Reeves volunteers at Omaha’s Great Plains Black History Museum. … Read on
A few months ago the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – Depot Division (Regina, Saskatchewan) invited me to spend a couple nights and a (full) day training as a “mountie.” It’s a rare opportunity. Apparently only five civilians before me had had the chance — and I was apparently the only one to get a regulation moustache. This Lonely Planet video sums up the … Read on
Tomorrow I head on a three-city visit to Canada: Toronto, Montreal and St John’s in Newfoundland. It’s part of a series of seven videos of seven Canadian cities and how one can ‘experience a place like a local.’ It’s far from my first time there (that would be age nine to Alberta; above). But to prep, I’ve been reading books like mad. Canadian … Read on
Last month I flew with Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden, who’s flying for Iceland Express this summer (amidst a busy Maiden tour — the guy’s got energy). Much more happened than can be packed into a three-minute video — him joking with the Icelandic crew, paying off his co-pilot $1 for a nice comment, whisking me past security, watching TSA agents asking when … Read on
