Welcome to the Caravaner’s Companion, a series of down-to-earth (and around the earth) travel guides full of recommendations, cautionary tales, and vibe checks from your over-caffeinated, donut-obsessed sherpa. Today we’re off to Slovenia and Croatia. Check out the archive for paid subscriber guides to Egypt, Norway, Italy, Mexico City, and more.

If you are reading this guide as an email, it may be truncated. You can click the “view in browser” link in the top right to see the rest. Na zdrave! 🍻

The curse of wanderlust is wanting to see absolutely everything and knowing it isn’t possible. This happens to me every time I plan a trip. Oh, but Naples is only a couple hours from Rome! And what about a short little stop in Capri? Maybe we can squeeze Pompeii in, too?

I felt this longing even more acutely than usual as Nick and I planned the road trip that would follow my friend’s wedding in Bulgaria. I had never been to the Balkans before, and I wanted to see as much of the region as possible. In my mind, we would drive all the way from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, watching the land bleed slowly from east into west, harsh mountains and plains smoothing into gentle coastline.

But the Balkans are expansive, and that plan turned out to be too ambitious (unless we were willing to spend most of our time driving, and what would be the sense in that?). Putting on our horse blinders, we settled on seeing Bulgaria—more on that part of the itinerary in a future guide—before flying to Vienna and driving south through Slovenia to Croatia’s Istrian Peninsula.

With coffee and cookies stuffed in the drink holders of our rental car, we saw everything from the snow-capped Julian Alps to the cerulean waters of Croatia, listening to podcasts and chatting along the way. Much as we would have loved to have seen more, it was a delicious taste of what the Balkans have to offer.

A couple logistical notes on this trip: we spread it over nine days in early October. Fall was a great time to see Slovenia, but if I were to go back to Croatia, I’d do it when it’s warmer and spend more time at the beach. Perhaps due to the season, I found Croatia to be a tad overrated, while I thought Slovenia was underrated. If I were to do this trip over, I wouldn’t go further south than Motovun, Croatia. I would add a stop in Trieste, Italy and spend more time in central Slovenia.

Because this was a road trip with lots of stops, I’ve organized this guide by place, giving you my impressions and recommendations for each. I put the stops in the order we visited them, starting and ending in Slovenia with Croatia in the middle. This is a part of the world I definitely recommend seeing by car; much of it would be inaccessible otherwise, and plus, it’s easy, scenic driving.

One day, we’ll return to the Balkans to cover what we missed. But for now, this little trip was a wonderful introduction. So with that: idemo (that’s “let’s go” in Croatian)!

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Hi friends,

I’ll just come out and say it: I suck at gift-giving. This is mostly because I’m a terrible procrastinator. When I lived in the U.S., I was that person running to the mall to find a very specific present on December 22nd, or panic-scrolling to see which retailers could still ship fast enough to make it under the tree by Christmas morning. Gifts, it seems, are not my love language.

But as we start rolling into the 2024 holiday season, I’ve had presents on the brain. Because Nick and I can’t be with family for the holidays this year, I want to send loved ones things that have an extra something to make up for our separation (and maybe for some of my past sins in the gift-giving department).

So, what to give them? I can’t think of anything that would be more unique and fun than little slices of our favorite destinations. I’m also a big believer in using your disposable income to spread wealth by purchasing from craftsman and local businesses who need the money, something I wrote about in one of my earliest Substack posts. Over the past few years, I’ve racked up a list of global retailers that fit these requirements—from Jordan, Egypt, Portugal, Norway, and more—and given this is a community of internationally minded, adventurous people, I thought it could be useful to you.

So, my friends, I give you the globally conscious holiday gift guide for 2024. I’ve organized it by category, with brief descriptions of each retailer and links to what I’d purchase embedded in the text.

Keep reading for my best sources of meaningful gifts from all over the world. And tell me in the comments: what’s your gifting strategy? Do you have a go-to source?

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a couple notes & disclaimers

I’ve focused this guide on retailers that stock artisanal goods made in the country where the store is based. All offer international shipping, generally to the U.S., Canada, and Europe at minimum. I’ve visited and bought from most of them in person, but I have not tried ordering online from the majority and can’t personally vouch for their delivery services.

Note that you may be responsible for customs fees, and that shipping can get expensive. I looked into shipping costs for each retailer and eliminated places whose international delivery fees were bananas, such as Rome’s Sant’Eustachio Il Caffè, which would charge 72€ to ship a moka pot to the U.S. (but if you’re cool with that, their moka pots are extremely stylish, and I’m not judging).

With that all said, on to the guide!

clothing & accessories

Susan Fosse (Norway). Susan Fosse designs the most beautiful knits for men, women, and children. I bought this cardigan while visiting Bergen, and my mom was so envious that I had the exact same one shipped to her in California for Mother’s Day. The garments are all made in Norway, and while they are not cheap, the quality is excellent. My sweater has held up very well after two winters of regular wear so far—one that included being clawed by a puppy—and I intend to keep it for many years to come. These scarves printed with images of Norway would also make a great gift.

Kotn (Egypt). Kotn makes basic t-shirts, suiting, knitwear, and accessories for men and women, plus some nice-looking home linens. This certified B Corp is technically a North American brand, but their entire supply chain is in Egypt (with the exception of a couple facilities in Portugal), and they make an effort to work directly with local cotton farmers. For the spouse/parent/sibling who wears socks long after they get holes in them—I think we all know at least one person like this—I’d pick this wool-cashmere pair or a couple of these crew socks.

Proyecto Rufina (Mexico). When I walked into this Mexico City boutique, I felt like I had found my mothership. The racks are full of gorgeous, hefty linen clothes that are almost all in the under-$100 range. I grabbed a dress and two tops when I was there this spring, and I wear all three regularly. Note that not all of their goods are made in Mexico (interestingly, the tops I bought were made in Italy) but their shipping prices are really reasonable and they do limited runs, which they claim reduces fabric waste. These natural dye napkins would be a good for a friend who loves hosting, and this dress would be perfect for a gal who loves the cottagecore aesthetic.

homewares & gourmet gifts

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Welcome to the Caravaner’s Companion, a series of down-to-earth (and around the earth) travel guides full of recommendations, cautionary tales, and vibe checks from your over-caffeinated, donut-obsessed sherpa. Today we’re off to Mexico City. Check out the paid subscriber archive for guides to Egypt, Cyprus, Norway, Guatemala, Portugal, and Italy.

If you are reading this guide as an email, it may be truncated. You can click the “view in browser” link in the top right to see the rest. ¡Salud! 🍻

Despite having grown up in California—where Mexican culture is in the air we breathe—I didn’t make it to Mexico until this past May, and it was a bachelorette party that first took me there. (I suppose I’m more of a Millennial cliché than I like to admit.)

I hadn’t planned the trip myself, and being merely along for the ride, I didn’t know what to expect from Mexico City other than a third-world megalopolis. This made me apprehensive. I found myself filling in the blanks in my mind’s eye with memories from Cairo: incessant honking, smog, the smell of petrol and burning rubber. But what I found couldn’t have been more different, or more pleasantly surprising.

Mexico City was a kaleidoscope of color. The low-lying buildings were as brightly painted as stained glass, and the sky above was the most piercing blue.

Yet green was the shade that dominated the streets. The windowsills of Roma, Condesa, and Polanco—the Epcot version of Mexico City, where you’d have no idea the government was waging war with el narcotráfico—were all lined with potted plants, and the medians were full of trees that scattered the ground with dappled light, as though the city were a giant hothouse. It seemed on every corner there was a planter box or a grassy square, and then there was Chapultepec Forest, an oasis twice as large as Central Park.

These plants and colors and the warm weather combined to melt away my tension—the city was nothing like the madhouse I’d pictured. Instead, it exuded an unhurried ease that made me want to ditch my sightseeing haste. My time in Mexico City was not for museums or excursions, but for floating aimlessly in a trajinera down the tree-lined waterways of Xochimilco; for dancing in public; for long, heartfelt conversations over coffee in the early morning while the sidewalks were still empty. It was for standing in line for a cheap torta from a street vendor, knowing the flavors and textures would be well worth the wait.

I see now what Carlos Monsiváis meant when he said that Mexico is a state of mind: it’s the freeing feeling that while there is much you could do, there is nowhere you truly need to be. So let’s get into it—¡vamos!

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I’ve never seen the cosmos so clearly as I did in Wadi Rum. Except for the occasional headlights of pickup trucks crossing the pink sand, there was no light pollution out in the wadi—Arabic for valleys cut by ancient rivers, which now remain dry except in the rainy season and feel similar to the arroyos of the American southwest. As my husband, Nick, and I sat around the fire pit in our desert camp, looking up at the sparkling galaxies whose distances we could hardly fathom, it felt like we were the last people on earth. 

The camp owner, Hassan, a generational resident of Wadi Rum, noticed that we were his only dinner guests for the evening and invited us to sit with him on cushions of Bedouin weave to smoke shisha. We happily accepted, and we made small talk as we passed the pipe and some Ramadan katayef. 

“What countries do most of your guests come from?” I asked Hassan. He took a long, deep pull from the pipe before answering.

“Italy, Germany, France, the U.S.,” he said. “But hardly anyone is coming now. It’s been difficult for us since the start of the war.”

I frowned, but it matched my broader experience in Jordan. At the time, Nick and I had been living there for just two months, and since arriving we’d had the country’s unique tourist attractions—like Petra, the ruins of an ancient metropolis carved into cliff sides, as amazing as anything I’ve seen anywhere—almost entirely to ourselves. While other foreigners had been scared off by the Israel-Hamas conflict, we’d never felt unsafe. I couldn’t help but feel that potential tourists had been spooked by misconceptions about my host country. The war poses little threat here, and while I note that although things got a bit hairy for a while, there has still been little if any spillover of the Israel-Hamas conflict into Jordan. People constantly ask me if it’s safe here, and my answer is always unequivocally yes.

While destinations like Jordan are often erroneously viewed as dangerous, there are a handful of destinations that Westerners (and to an extent, non-Westerners) view not only as safe, but as prestigious. I’m thinking along the lines of London, Paris, Rome, Florence—all nerve centers of former colonial powers, which are still held up as global culture hubs. These places impart a certain social cachet, and as a result, people flock to them while the colonized world is devalued in comparison. (Case in point: how many influencer glamor shots have you seen taken at the Louvre, which houses an untold number of Egyptian artifacts, and how many have done the same at the Egyptian Museum in Egypt, where the Louvre’s artifacts were taken from?) 

These assumptions—that certain destinations are safe and worthwhile while others aren’t—are Eurocentrism in action, and they limit our ability to see and experience the wider world. I’m arguing that we should re-examine those assumptions and replace them with facts and openness.

This could bring several benefits. On an individual level, being clear-eyed about our own biases and how they might warp our worldview could open up possibilities for travel to places we had thought were unsafe, or difficult, or uninteresting. And on a systemic level, if we didn’t overvalue certain places and undervalue others, overtourism might be less of a problem, because we’d be less likely to all descend upon and consume the same places every summer.

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To be crystal clear, I’m not here to shame anybody over choosing destinations that are too popular or not adventurous enough. Quite the opposite. My goal is to show you that the places that seem scary might not be so scary after all—and when the world no longer seems as scary, you might find yourself wanting to branch out.

Here are a couple questions I like to ask myself before traveling. I’d encourage you to think through them as you plan your next adventure. I hope they leave you feeling empowered to explore more corners of the world.

is the place in question actually hard to get to, or does it just feel hard to get to?

While some places are objectively more difficult to access, a lot of these barriers are mental. Kareem Rahma pointed this out in a recent piece on why we should normalize spending long weekends in Africa:

For some reason, people have no problem visiting cities like Paris, London, or Berlin for a long weekend, but they hesitate at the idea of going to Beirut, Marrakesh, or Cairo. The flight to Cairo is 10 hours direct from JFK on EgyptAir, while flights to Berlin are 8 hours direct. Just two extra hours to see the pyramids—why the hell not? 

The difference between flying to Egypt instead of Berlin isn’t a matter of increased effort; it’s literally just sitting still for a couple hours longer. Those two hours could allow you to see the Pyramids, a church carved out of a cave, centuries-old Islamic architecture, and my favorite neighborhood, Zamalek. And while seeing the Bust of Nefertiti in Berlin’s Neues Museum is incredible, you could also see many, many more Egyptian artifacts and ancient sites in their country of origin, rather than in one of the countries that plundered them. 

Of course, your mileage may vary depending on where you’re based (there are plenty of cities that have direct flights to Germany and not to Egypt) but if you do a little research into where you can easily travel from home, you might be surprised.

are your beliefs about how safe (or unsafe) places are based in fact, or are they assumptions?

I didn’t know much about the Middle East before I moved here. The only pictures in my head were those that tend to be circulated online: bombed-out buildings, men shooting AK-47s in the air, injured children crying. This is a very human thing—in the absence of more complete information, we tend to fill in the blanks with the images we know, and as the region’s natural beauty and ultra-modern shopping malls aren’t shown on the evening news, the assumption becomes that the Middle East is unsafe for travel.

Let’s do a little experiment. If I were to ask you whether you think France or Jordan is a safer country for travelers, what would you say?

If you said France, here’s some data that might challenge your view. 

The Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index (GTI) ranks countries annually based on the quantity and impact of terrorist incidents within their borders, with the #1 ranked country being the worst impacted by terrorism (you can read more about the methodology and download GTI reports here). In 2024, France was #38 on the list, where Jordan was #75. For context, the U.S. was #30. 

Obviously terrorism isn’t the only factor when considering traveler safety. There is also the threat of crime, traffic accidents, and any number of disasters. So let’s check France and Jordan’s respective State Department’s country pages, which take a more holistic look at safety and security (and which I recommend you always, always check before going abroad, per my travel manifesto).

The warning levels are exactly the same. The France page also highlights the risk of petty crime, where Jordan’s doesn’t…and from personal experience, I would say you’re a heck of a lot less likely to get pickpocketed on the streets of Amman than you are in Paris.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I am not telling you to ignore your gut completely, especially not when you’re in a situation that makes you feel unsafe—I’m asking you to question your knee-jerk reactions, seek out facts, and make informed decisions. And of course, some places you probably don’t know much about really are that bad (please, please don’t go to Burkina Faso anytime soon). 

It’s also worth noting that making informed decisions about which destinations are safe for you requires self-knowledge. Your ability to notice and get out of bad situations in a given country will vary by your level of familiarity with the language and culture, as well as by your degree of street smarts. It’s important to be honest with yourself about this.

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are you dreaming of a particular place simply because it’s what you’ve been exposed to?

I was obsessed with the Madeline books as a little girl. I used to dress up as Madeline for Halloween, I would put on a fake French accent, and I thought the French exchange student we hosted for a week when I was six was the chicest, worldliest person I’d ever met. France, in my mind, was the absolute height of glamor and culture. Nevermind that I was far less exposed to the languages and cultures of other regions—and when I was exposed to them, they weren’t portrayed with the same reverence. I ended up choosing French as my college major and studying abroad there.

I still love France, but looking back, I wonder if I would have made the same choices if I’d come in contact with more of the world at an earlier age, and I think the same principle applies to travel and tourism. We tend to want to go places we already know and think positively about. But there’s a whole world out there that isn’t on our radar and could be just as awesome.

For example, are you dreaming of Rome because you learned about the Roman empire in school and love Italian food? What if I told you that you can see Roman history in Jordan—not to mention much of the rest of Europe and the Middle East—while also visiting the ruins of other ancient empires that are just as interesting but that you’ve probably heard much less about? Or what if I told you that people here think Italian olive oil is basically just yellow water (fighting words, I know) because the oil from this region is so incredible? 

Maybe the answer is that you’d still choose Rome. If so, that’s okay! I’m just prompting you to critically examine your desires and ask yourself if they are truly what your heart wants, or if you’re fixating on something because it’s what you’ve been told is cool (or because you are being led around by social media, per Emiko Davies’ post on how overtourism is killing Florence’s dining scene).

are you interested in photo ops, or broadening your worldview?

Much of the West has started to feel same-y, which is a symptom of globalization and foreign investment causing a regression to the mean that Chris Arnade describes as “McEurope”:

a chain of big cities where chunks of each are the same. The branding of the franchises might be a tad different, the scenery a little altered, but these chunks serve up the same bland and drab experience.

You can bet your bottom dollar that in any large city in North America or Europe, you’ll see a lot of the same global corporations you already know. By traveling to places that are less globalized and less touched by foreign investment, you can have an experience that’s further from what you find at home.

Egypt and Jordan, while not untouched by globalization (you can absolutely find Starbucks and Zara in both), feel less homogenous in comparison to what Westerners are used to. That might make your tourist experience appear less glamorous for the ‘gram, but it will do more to broaden your worldview, which has far more enduring value.

Perhaps that last point is the most salient one here: where glamor—a night in a fancy hotel, a flashy social media post—is ephemeral, an expanded mind is forever, and traveling in service of the former comes at the expense of the latter. 

I wish I could say that to my younger self. Before moving to the Middle East, I genuinely believed that the “must-see” destinations I’d been fed by glossy magazines were the only ones worth visiting, and that everywhere else was somehow less interesting or less important for a well-rounded person to experience. But the more time I spent overseas outside of those glossy magazine destinations, the clearer it became that my values were out of whack—just because a place isn’t on any “top 10” lists doesn’t mean its history is less rich, or its landscape less dramatic, or its people less engaging.

That’s why I’m now itching to go places like Oman, Namibia, and Georgia, and it’s why I’m so pumped to go on a road trip through Bulgaria later this month. I don’t think anyone I tell about journeying through the Bulgarian countryside will imagine it’s the height of culture or cosmopolitan luxury, but I feel incredibly fortunate to be going somewhere few people visit, where I’ll be exposed to fresh images and ideas, and to new tastes and smells. 

There is so much adventure to be had out there, if you’re willing to go look for it. You just might end up smoking shisha under the stars, with a whole expanse of desert and sky all to yourself.

Thanks for reading Caravanserai—I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Next Tuesday, paid subscribers will get updates on the start of autumn in Jordan (we just had elections here!), reflections on the first few weeks of my sabbatical, and thoughts about how I curate a reading list in preparation for deep travel. Please upgrade here if you’d like to follow along.

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See you for our next adventure,
Sam

Welcome to the Caravaner’s Companion, a series of down-to-earth (and around the earth) travel guides full of recommendations, cautionary tales, and vibe checks from your over-caffeinated, donut-obsessed sherpa. Upgrade to a paid subscription for access to my full archive, including guides to Egypt, Cyprus, Norway, Guatemala, and Portugal.

Want a freebie? Check out my guide to Greece, which is open to all. Salute! 🍻

As Mark Twain found on his grand tour of Europe in the 1860s, it’s hard to know where to start—or perhaps, where to stop—in the Eternal City. Rome has so much to offer that decision paralysis can set in. With this guide, I’ll help you avoid that indecision and steer you toward great, delicious things.

Our trip to Rome was one of the best that Nick and I have ever taken, to the point that getting stuck there for a few extra days was an absolute pleasure. I don’t normally gush about places quite to the extent I gush about Rome, but I really believe it has something for everyone. An unbeatable art scene. Decadent eats. Millennia worth of history. Good bars and coffee culture. Great shopping. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Because I love Rome so much and we were there for quite a while, I have a ton of recommendations and this guide is LONG…if you are reading it as an email, it may be truncated. You can click the “view in browser” link in the top right to see the rest. Andiamo!

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Welcome to the Summer ‘24 batch of Caravaner’s Companion, featuring Norway, Greece, and Cyprus. Released in batches of three each season, upgrade to get these novice-friendly, down-to-earth (and around-the-earth) travel companions chock full of travel recs, cautionary tales, & vibe checks. From your chronically-traveling, donut-obsessed, over-caffeinated bestie. Skål!🍻

Want a freebie? Check out my guide to Greece!

… And don’t miss the last batch:
Cairo, Egypt | Lisbon and the Algarve, Portugal | Antigua Guatemala, Lake Atitlán, and Petén

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I’ve always found the idea of roots tourism—the practice of visiting a country your ancestors emigrated from—the tiniest bit silly. It makes me think of that episode of The Sopranos where the gang goes to Italy and Paulie fumbles his attempts to connect to Italians and ultimately realizes he, an Italian American, doesn’t know the first thing about Italy’s culture.

My mother’s family is of Norwegian descent, and when Nick and I visited Norway last year, I was determined not to think of the trip as a homecoming. I had never been to the country before, I don’t speak the language, and I can’t even claim to have all that much knowledge of modern Norwegian culture. Yet I couldn’t deny that I felt at home the moment Nick and I landed. The people felt impossibly familiar. It was something in the way their eyes disappeared when they smiled, in the color and texture of their hair, in their tall, sturdy stature.

“Every single person here looks like one of your relatives,” Nick said before we’d even made it to central Oslo from the airport. I suppose Viking genes are strong, because he was right. As I told you in this essay about finding my grandmother in a plate of lutefisk, this familiarity meant Norway quickly earned a place in heart. I’m always talking about feeling kinship with new cultures, and friends, this was it in the most literal sense. To be there was to be a child surrounded by family. I felt loved, held, and known.

As comfortable as I was in Norway, it isn’t somewhere you go for pampering or flashy, glitzy experiences. If anything, Norway is a place for simplifying and getting out in the elements: for shivering on the deck of a ship and watching it cut through the glasslike water of a fjord, or taking a brisk, calf-aching hike in a forest carpeted with moss. It’s for stepping away from screens, connecting with the natural beauty around you—the trees, the plants, the sharp cliffs and the sweeping coastal plains—and feeling human.

Maybe it’s a place for finding our roots after all.

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Welcome to the Summer ‘24 batch of Caravaner’s Companion, featuring Norway, Greece, and Cyprus. Released in batches of three each season, upgrade to get these novice-friendly, down-to-earth (and around-the-earth) travel companions chock full of travel recs, cautionary tales, & vibe checks. From your chronically-traveling, donut-obsessed, over-caffeinated bestie. Yamas!🍻

Want a freebie? Check out my guide to Greece!

… And don’t miss the last batch:
Cairo, Egypt | Lisbon and the Algarve, Portugal | Antigua Guatemala, Lake Atitlán, and Petén

Upgrade for All Guides

If you love the idea of a Mediterranean vacation but are looking for a place less traveled, Cyprus is the answer. It’s a slow traveler’s paradise. No one attraction here has serious star power, but I’d argue that that’s the beauty of it. Cyprus is not the sort of place where you shuffle around in crowds, fanning yourself with a brochure while trying to edge people out of your photos. It’s the kind of place to spend days at wineries and olive farms and rocky beaches, climbing to the tops of lighthouses and driving dramatic coastlines.

As I alluded to in this essay, Nick and I arrived with few expectations and even fewer plans; all we wanted was to bum around a balmy, sun-kissed island, drifting about however felt right. And on that score, Cyprus delivered. It’s the perfect place for a leisurely road trip. In fact, you can’t really get around without a car, but the driving is easy, and the island is so small that you can get from any one point to any other and back again in a single day.

Cyprus also full of world-class archaeological sites you’ve never heard of—the island boasts some of the most beautiful and colorful ancient mosaics I’ve seen, to rival anything you’d find elsewhere in the ancient world. And it all comes at a lower price tag (and with fewer throngs) than Greece or Italy. So rent a car, pack a lunch, and explore Cyprus’ wild coastline at your own pace, unhurried and unscheduled.

A few notes: because Cyprus is sleepy, this guide will be a little different than the usual Caravaner’s Companion format. I’ll give you the scoop on hotels, food, and shopping, but I’m adding a section about the best places for road trippers to stop, and I’ve linked to their Google Maps locations. Also, Cyprus is technically divided into two countries: the Republic of Cyprus, or the “Greek side,” and the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, or the “Turkish side.” This guide is for the Greek side, except for a couple spots on the Turkish side of the capital, Nicosia. (We would have loved to drive across the border, but that’s difficult to do in a rental car.)

Off we go!

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Welcome to the summer 2024 edition of the Caravaner’s Companion, a series of travel guides brimming with tales & recs from your chronically-traveling, donut-obsessed, slightly over-caffeinated sherpa. This season, I’m taking you to Norway, Greece, and Cyprus.

In the post-pandemic tourism boom, the phrase “slow travel” has become a bit of cliché, a catchall that’s assigned all sorts of meanings. To some, slow travel is about staying in one destination for longer and connecting deeply with the local culture, rather than bouncing around from place to place. To others, it’s about sustainability, consuming less, and supporting local economies.

These are all great things, a much-needed rebalance in how we wanderers approach tourism and our place in the world. But to me, the idea of slow travel is even simpler. It’s exactly what it sounds like: it’s about going somewhere without packing your to-do list or feeling obligated to visit all the sites. It’s about doing whatever moves you, and not worrying about reservations or checking your watch. It’s about being rather than seeing.

This summer’s batch of Caravaner’s Companion guides focuses on destinations that are perfect for slowing down. For quiet enjoyment of natural beauty. For sea breezes and wildflowers over crowded museums and bustling shopping districts.

I’m taking you to Athens, where you can ferry around the Mediterranean as you please, and the car-free Saronic island of Hydra; to Cyprus, an unconventional choice that makes for a perfect free-wheeling roadtrip; and Norway, where the biggest attractions are the forest hikes and the breathtaking fjords.

As with all Caravaner’s Companions, these three posts include my best spots to stay (digs!), eat (nosh!), and shop (retail therapy!). They are a good mix of bargains and splurges, of hidden gems and well-loved local haunts, of the traditional and the offbeat.

This season, I have a special gift for free subscribers. My guide to Athens and Hydra is open to all! Click the link below to check it out:

The Cyprus and Norway guides will be paywalled as usual, and will be rolled out over the next couple days. If you enjoy my guide to Athens and Hydra, upgrade here for forever access to these and all future travel guides. (And to earn complimentary access to these paid guides, refer a friend and get a free month’s subscription!)

A paid subscription also gets you access to my full library of travel guides, including:

Have a blissfully slow summer, my friends, and I’ll see you next week for the most charming interview with of !

Hi friends, and welcome to a special free edition of the Caravaner’s Companion—novice-friendly, down-to-earth (and around-the-earth) travel companions chock full of travel recs, cautionary tales, & vibe checks from your chronically-traveling, donut-obsessed, over-caffeinated bestie. The rest of my travel guides are paywalled. If you like what you see, upgrade your subscription for forever access to all Caravaner’s Companion guides, including Cyprus, Norway, Portugal, Guatemala, and Egypt, plus more coming in the fall. Yamas!🍻

Every once in awhile, on days where the air feels steamy and stagnant, I find myself browsing real estate listings on tiny Greek islands. I close my eyes and picture myself in a whitewashed villa with blue shutters that I could throw open, letting a salty breeze sweep over the tile floors and ruffle the legs of my white linen pants. I consider myself a city girl, yet the coastal Mediterranean feels like home to me—there is nothing quite like stretching out on a beach with rough, pebbly sand between your toes, squinting in the bright morning sun, cold water lapping your ankles.

I’m lucky to be just a short plane ride away from Athens, where ferries carry locals and vacationers all over the Aegean. If I could pick just one place to go for the warm months for the rest of my life, I think this is where it would be. It’s the stuff my retirement dreams are made of: a pied à terre in the city, close to the ferry dock, so I can spend summers island hopping—there are so many to explore, each with their own character—and lazing in my whitewashed house on the sea.

I no longer care to battle the crowds of Santorini or Mykonos; I want calm and quiet, where I can while away the afternoons with no agenda other than reading a book and drinking freddo espresso while the wind whips and tangles my hair. Hydra is just the ticket. Activities are limited—that’s part of the attraction—but the island still offers enough to fill several languid days. It has no cars, secluded beaches, and a small mountain monastery that welcomes hikers.

I hope to go back forever one day. Until then, I’ll have to keep nibbling Greece in small bites. Trips like this help me get my fill.

A quick housekeeping note: I find many places in Greece don’t have an online presence. Wherever that’s the case, I’ve linked to Google Maps locations so there’s no confusion. Off we go!

digs

On Hydra, I highly recommend Hotel Hydroussa, about a five-minute walk from the ferry landing. The rooms were comfortable but breezy with tile floors and carved wooden furniture, and the bath products were locally made and smelled delicious. They served an excellent continental breakfast on their terrace (complete with a cute cat that hopped into my lap).

For our time in Athens, we stayed at PLAY Theatrou (which was then called SOUL and has since rebranded) in Psirri. It was new when we stayed there and had a few small kinks to work out, but the staff were lovely and the location was tough to beat. It had a rooftop bar with a totally unobstructed view of the Acropolis, which was lit up after dark—it was a magical place to have a nightcap. My only complaint was that the walls were thin, which is par for the course in any European city.

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nosh

Hydra

While Hydra has plenty of restaurants, options are somewhat limited in that many place have similar menus with typical Greek fare. We had solid meals at Lulu’s Taverna (the Google reviews are middling, partially because the service is very…well, Greek, but we thought the gyros and chicken souvlaki were really tasty) and Annita. The real standout, though, was Hydronetta, a cocktail bar set into the cliffs with a beautiful view of the sea. It’s the sort of place that could skate by on location alone, yet the food was surprisingly delicious, especially the feta rolls with honey. I still dream of leisurely lunches at this place.

We enjoyed sipping freddo espresso—my obsession—and lemonade at Papagalos, where you can sit and watch the boats bob in the marina. For dessert, we liked the ice cream at The Cool Mule. Anemone confectionary was an even better place to round off a meal—we stopped in once for gelato (a tough call after drooling over their pastries), then again for a box of rose loukoumi (essentially Turkish delight, but don’t you dare say that in Greece) to take home.

Athens

Athens is full of great places to eat. The best are concentrated in Psirri and Monastiraki, but there are yummy meals to be had all over.

For an early breakfast before heading to the Acropolis, Nick and I hit up Ipanema Espresso Bar and Bakery, one of the few coffee shops in Athens open before 8:00 a.m. This dive has limited seating, but the baked goods are cheap and excellent. We had a slice of the ham and cheese pie and a cinnamon roll—a very filling meal for just €4.50. For really great espresso and light breakfast options, try Picky Coffee, Dope Roasting Co., or Myller Coffeeshop.

The Brunchers serves up hearty breakfasts and lunch, including egg dishes, pancakes, sandwiches, and pizza. Split is a trendy Asian fusion restaurant and cocktail bar with the tastiest teriyaki bowls, a great choice if you’re getting tired of gyros and souvlaki (also, the waiter was the most interesting person I met in Greece…more on that at the end of this post).

If you’re craving craft beer, head to Barley Cargo. It has plenty of outdoor seating and one of the longest beer lists I’ve ever seen. Their inventory is incredibly varied and includes local brews—Nick had a Greek saison that he really enjoyed. For superb cocktails, head to The Clumsies, which has been listed as one of the 50 best bars in the world for the past several years; the drinks absolutely live up to expectations, and the atmosphere is relaxed. Next time, we will make a point of visiting Baba au Rum—it’s just around the corner from The Clumsies, and also consistently makes the list of 50 best bars.

For dinner, our hotel bartender recommended Avli, where we found delicious classic meze like chicken skewers and fried halloumi. But go early, at least by Greek standards! The later it gets, the more it fills up. We went around 8:00 p.m. and snagged the last open table. SENSE Rooftop Restaurant, which is more of a fine dining experience at a relatively reasonable price, also gets an honorable mention…it was recommended by a friend who said the view of the Acropolis is unbeatable, and Nick and I had planned to go but had to skip it because I got sick.

When it’s time for ice cream, Gelato di Nonna is the answer. I would do unspeakable things for a scoop of their lemon cheesecake gelato in a waffle cone. L’Arte del Gelato, which has several locations around Athens, will also do the trick.

Bonus: somewhat surprisingly, the Acropolis Museum café had a lovely vibe and good coffee, so don’t hesitate to stop in while visiting. It offers both indoor and outdoor seating, and some tables have a view of the Acropolis. Prices are relatively high for Athens, but not out of the ordinary for a museum restaurant.

retail therapy

Hydra

For such a small island, Hydra offers great shopping, and the stores on the main strip are surprisingly well-priced. I bought a couple dresses and a pair of handmade sandals at a random clothing store right on the marina (whose name and location I can no longer find, sadly) and still wear all three regularly.

Koutsikou Hydra is an artsy home goods store full of colorful ceramics and printed textiles. I took a small nautical mirror home with me to hang in my bedroom. Rafalia Pharmacy (“Farmakio” on Google Maps) is around 130 years old, and sells a variety of European skincare products alongside essentials like toothpaste and razors. We stopped in because I forgot to pack deodorant, and the walls lined with pine shelves and jars of old herbal medicines were an unexpected treat.

If you plan to hike to the Prophet Ilias Monastery while on Hydra—and I’d recommend you do—make sure to stop into the honesty shop. It’s well stocked with drinks, soaps, and other trinkets made by the monks. We picked up a bright red liqueur whose flavor we were unsure of because it was written in Greek, but whatever it was, it was tasty. But the best part was a glass dish of free loukoumi, a perfect post-hike treat.

Athens

We didn’t go out of our way to shop in Athens because we’d stocked up on souvenirs on Hydra, but if I’d felt more inclined to browse, I would have stopped at the Monastiraki flea market. We walked past plenty of stalls that looked like they were offering antique gems. Next time we go to Athens (and there will most definitely be a next time), I’ll be on the hunt for handmade leather sandals, and Mater Terra will be my first stop.

lightning round!

Overall vibe: friendly; leisurely; a place for sandals and linen shorts and freddo cappuccinos every afternoon.

Complaints to file: The ferry to Hydra made me queasy, but so do literally all ferries. Story of my life. Also, the Acropolis was unreasonably crowded—even though we went on the early side—and the Acropolis museum had these weird see-through floors that gave people on the lower levels a peep under the skirts of women on the upper levels, which was creepy and gross.

Most interesting person I met: The server at Split, the aforementioned Asian fusion place in Athens. If I remember correctly, he wore all black, had no eyebrows but also eyebrow piercings, and was tattooed from his forehead to his knuckes, yet he somehow seemed neither haughty nor intimidating? He was not just the most interesting person I crossed paths with in Athens, he was literally the coolest person I’ve ever seen—both Nick and I kept saying so. I think we had a sort of platonic friend crush on this person because we are both nerds and have never felt what it’s like to be that stylish and nonchalant!

Is this a donut destination? YES! Loukoumades are a puffed, fried ball or ring drizzled with honey, sometimes with pistachio crumbles on top. They’re less sweet than an American donut, and very yummy.

Where do I find the best fridge magnets? Nick and I picked one out at one of the anonymous tourist shops on the main strip of Hydra’s marina. It’s made of a smooth pebble and shell found on the island. It’s absolutely beautiful and hands down my most treasured magnet.

questions about Athens and Hydra??

Are you planning a trip to Greece this summer? Have you been to Athens or Hydra, and if so, what did I miss?

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… and don’t miss the last batch of Caravaner’s Companion travel guides:
Cairo, Egypt | Lisbon, Portugal | Antigua, Guatemala

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Hi, friends! I’m on the road this week, so I’m sharing one of my greatest hits. I first published this essay in April 2023, when I had a tiny email list of just over 300 people; it feels just as relevant now. I’m also featured in this week, with a recording of me reading my essay Chin Up, Moschino. You can listen to the reading here. Enjoy!

A couple weeks ago, Nick and I went to a supper club in our neighborhood for an iftar—the sundown meal in which Muslims break their daily fast during the month Ramadan. The supper club is hosted by a chef, Kareem, in his own apartment. He sets his table for 12 and serves up an incredible 9-course meal with a backdrop of soft music and candlelight.

Kareem’s supper club is the sort of thing you have to be in the know to find; while it isn’t a secret, news of it spreads mostly by Instagram and word of mouth among wealthy thirty-something Egyptians, as well as expats who are plugged in to Cairo’s social scene. Tickets tend to sell out within hours. As I walked into Kareem’s kitchen—which was stacked with sheets of hand-shaped tortellini and cone-shaped konafa for dessert—he handed me a wine glass full of sweet hibiscus juice, and I felt completely at ease, like I had finally “arrived.” This wasn’t the sort of thing any visitor to the city would find. This was an activity for—dare I say it?—locals.

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As the night went on, I got to know my dining companions. The man sitting in the corner turned out to be my dentist, and the woman to my left was just as big a fan of The Crown as I am. We laughed together about how the only way to fall in love with Cairo is to surrender to the chaos. It felt neighborly and convivial. For once, I felt like a true Cairene.

The woman sitting across from me—who was half American, half Iranian, and had grown up in Cairo—had recently moved back to Egypt after spending a few years in the States. As we passed around platters of sambousek and lamb pastilla, she started to joke about applying for her Egyptian residency card.

“I had to go to Abbasiya1 six times last week,” she said. “One person would look at my paperwork and send me to another window, then that person would look at my paperwork and send me to a third window, then that person would just send me back to the first!”

“I swear, the staff there like to mess with you,” the women sitting to her left—who was Egyptian, but had studied in the U.S.—said, laughing.

As I listened to the exchange, it hit me that I would never really understand that experience, because my diplomatic status insulates me from so many interactions with the Egyptian government. I suddenly felt worlds removed from my dining companions, when just moments before I’d found plenty in common with them. We may live in the same city, but our experiences are inherently different, because I am not a participant in the political and social systems that dictate their lives.

This feeling stayed with me for days, and it lead me to the next obvious question I should be asking a travel writer: If I can live here for a year and a half and still not really consider myself a local, can anyone ever truly travel like one? In the time since, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is, in a sense, impossible—and that the philosophy of traveling like a local is more insidious than it seems.

Before I go any further, let me specify what I mean when I talk about “traveling like a local.” I’ve generally heard it described as seeking out hidden gems and facets of daily life in the place you’re visiting—things like home stays, eating in restaurants that serve local specialties, and taking public transportation.

I view this trend as a backlash to the “ugly American” stereotype,2 and in some ways, this backlash is a good thing. It shows that we have a desire to be decent guests, that we want to represent ourselves and our country of origin positively, and that we have a genuine desire to learn. There is also a performative element to it that is a little more cynical—it’s about demonstrating that you’re not one of those travelers with the white sneakers and the fanny pack, shouting phrases in English at anyone who will listen. You’re one of the classy, worldly ones. It’s about showing that you get it, and the sense of superiority you derive from that.

But even if the idea of “traveling like a local” is not entirely altruistic, isn’t it relatively harmless? Well…yes and no. Fodor’s recently published a piece on how attempting to travel like a local can do more harm than good by prompting tourists to swarm—and eventually overrun—local havens, crowding out the people they were established for. Moreover, this piece in Bon Appétit discusses how “traveling like a local” is a contradiction in terms:

locals are not spending leisurely days strolling on stunning promenades or gawking at the crank-your-neck-tall Art Deco buildings or sparkly turquoise waters lapping on fine white-sand beaches. They are making to-do lists in their heads on cramped morning commutes or scurrying between the grocery store, the dry cleaner, and the pharmacy, trying to complete enough tasks before falling into bed. The whole point of travel is to get away from the humdrum of everyday life. It is to very much not be a local.

There are a few other things I personally find grating about the idea of traveling like a local: it implies a) that there is something wrong with being a tourist (there isn’t) and b) that there is one type of “local” you can emulate, when in reality, locals have incredibly varied experiences.

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But I think there is yet another, more damaging angle to this. By striving too hard for authenticity and ignoring the broader context, we could end up reducing entire cultures and political systems to their clothing and food choices—and in doing so, we might ultimately come home more ignorant that we were when we left.

Take Laura Ramoso’s comedy sketch, which pokes fun at that one girl who just got back from Greece and who’s dying to show you how much she’s assimilated into Greek culture (click the image to watch in a new window):

@lau_ramosoReplying to @m wish granted! 🏺🏺🏺 #greece #greek #mykonos #santorini #tourist #americantourist #satire #fyp

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This is, of course, a straw man for the sake of comedy. Not all people who want to travel like locals behave so outlandishly. But funny things are funny because there’s an element of truth to them, and many of us know someone like this—she just came back from abroad with an air of smugness and is dying to talk about how things there are just so much better. She thinks 24 hours of eating kalamata olives next to clear blue water means she had an authentic “local” experience, and that that makes her better than some dumb tourist. She has reduced an entire country to a few basic tropes, and thinks that calling herself Galatea means she understands Greek culture.

What this allows her to conveniently ignore is the tougher, more mundane reality of daily life in Greece—like the financial hardship that comes from a recent default on foreign debt combined with a global recession—and to mistake her experience of passing a few pleasurable days there for a real understanding of the place.

This sort of reductive thinking is the antithesis of what travel should be. Traveling is about expanding your mind, seeing more nuance, and appreciating the world for all its complexities. Doing that requires you to know what you don’t know. It requires you to check your ego at the door.

It also requires you to understand exactly who you are in the context of the place you’re visiting—i.e., your own privilege.

This is especially critical when traveling to places with oppressive political or social systems—depending on where you’re traveling, perhaps you will be exempt from those systems, while locals most certainly aren’t. For example: though Egypt is a police state, I, as a foreigner, am more or less exempt from dealing with the police. In fact, police go out of their way to treat me nicely. Being hassled by the authorities is a part of Egyptians’ daily lives that I (fortunately!) cannot experience directly. I try to remember this whenever I slip into thinking that life in Cairo is all about eating koshary and visiting mosques, even if those are typical Egyptian activities.

To be clear, I’m not trying to discourage you from seeking out experiences that inform you about everyday life in the place you’re visiting. Take public transportation! Learn phrases in the local language! I think those things are fantastic, and I try to do them when I travel.

What I am saying is don’t mistake “traveling like a local” for an understanding of what it’s like to actually live in a place. I am saying recognize your privilege, know what you don’t know, and don’t reduce people to their street food.

No doubt, this can be a tough needle to thread. So what should you do instead of approaching “traveling like a local” uncritically? Here are some tips.

DON’T scoff at being a tourist, and don’t be too precious about “authenticity.” Like it or not, you are a tourist, and just because locals don’t do something regularly doesn’t mean it’s not worth seeing or experiencing. Remember that fado restaurant I went to in Lisbon not once, but twice? Some of its reviews on Google are complaints that it’s inauthentic and “where tourists go to listen to fado.” But guess what? Locals probably don’t go out to listen to fado music until midnight on a Wednesday in general, because they have work and family obligations! That isn’t a reason not to go. I wouldn’t call visiting the pyramids a particularly “authentic” Egyptian experience, but it’s 10000% worth doing. You’re traveling to experience something special—seize the opportunity.

DON’T impose on locals. “How to travel like a local”-type posts frequently contain advice like “if you want to know where to go, just ask someone on the train or in a cafe or on the street for a recommendation! Talk to people about their lives and religion and local politics!”3 Maybe I’m just an introverted grouch, but I really disagree with that approach. On one hand, to understand a place, you need to get to know the people who live there; on the other hand, I don’t think it’s very nice to waylay random people who are minding their own business—especially in a country where you have no idea what’s culturally appropriate or what the rules of politeness are, because you run the risk of making someone uncomfortable. Rebecca Holland of makes another excellent point in her post on 17 ways to be a better traveler in 2023:

Getting advice from a “local” doesn’t always guarantee good results. Think about people where you live. Does every random person on the street know the best places to eat and drink? The trick is finding the right locals.

So if you want to meet people while traveling, be smart about it. Seek out activities where social interaction with like-minded folks is expected and encouraged—things like a group hike, an art class at a local studio, or a food tour (perhaps even a supper club!). Another option is to go to bar—pulling up a stool close to the bartender and feeling out whether they seem willing to chat is a tactic that has worked well for me in the past. The bottom line: be socially sensitive. Don’t go to local spaces and bug people.

DON’T forget your privilege. See rant above. Remember that traveling itself is a privilege! It doesn’t always occur to Americans and Europeans that in many places freedom of movement is not a right, and that people in whatever country they’re visiting can’t necessarily leave. As I said when I talked about this in December:

As a tourist, you can limit your contact with and exposure to dictatorial governments. You can freely express your opinion. When you get tired of dirt and disorder, you can retreat…unlike locals, you have an escape route.

DO be a good guest! Think of it like going over to the house of someone you just met. Would you immediately act like you were in your own home, cracking open the fridge and flopping down on the couch? Or would you wait to be offered a drink and invited to make yourself comfortable? Treat people with the same respect and level of curiosity you would in your home country—not like attractions to be gawked at, or like information repositories from whom you can extract local insights. Be nice, tip well, and enjoy your trip!

If you have been reading Caravanserai for awhile, you’ve often heard me say that this newsletter is about inner journeys. Travel, to me, is life distilled, and my primary purpose is to examine how it shapes us people, the ways in which it forces us to grow.

Living abroad full-time and traveling as frequently as I do supplies me with endless material for a newsletter like this one. But I’m sure you’ve also wondered about the practicalities of all this travel. How am I making it happen? What’s my overall philosophy of travel? How do I structure my days when I’m on a trip? How do I find the restaurants and hotels I feature in my travel guides? 

Travel can sometimes feel scary, confusing, or out of reach, even to those of us who are passionate about it. With these tips—gathered across twenty years, thirty countries, and five continents—I hope to ease your way. I want you to leave feeling confident so you can make the most of your next adventure. 

Have an amazing time out there in our big, beautiful world, and ask me anything in the comments!

Some quick words on money

When I travel, I like to mind my budget by splurging on a couple treats that make the trip feel special, then balancing things out with affordable treasures. Depending on what’s on offer at the destination, my splurge might be a nice hotel, a unique experience, or a gorgeous keepsake; on the flip side, I nearly always look for cheap eats (they can be just as delicious as the pricier ones, if not more) and free activities (you can only do so many museums, and ticket prices add up). That mix is what’s right for me personally, but my tips below are agnostic to the size of your budget because it isn’t my business to tell you what to do with your hard-earned cash. 

You don’t have to be wealthy to travel—not by any means—but of course, traveling requires some money. Food and lodging aren’t free and prices are up pretty much everywhere. It’s important to be realistic about the costs of your destination. Still, there are plenty of places where you can have an amazing time on a shoestring. 

I went to Morocco in college and spent less than $10 a night on accommodation (it was a shared room and I ended up bunking with some real characters–one was a Polish guy who had apparently never heard of the United States, insisted I must be from Canada, and gave me blank stares no matter how many times I corrected him??–which just added to the fun). That was a decade ago, but per Google Flights, tickets from New York to Marrakesh can still be had for as little as $510, and you can get a very nice hotel with free breakfast for $60-$100 a night; you can find simpler, yet still comfy accommodations for far less.

So even if you have champagne tastes on a beer budget, there is hope. Don’t write off the idea of traveling simply because you don’t have a huge disposable income.

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Be smart, be safe

I’m going to be your mom for a minute. Before you take off on your dream trip, empower yourself to stay safe by researching common health risks, scams to avoid, and potential security threats at your destination. The State Department’s country pages are an excellent resource for this (though I’d recommend looking at a couple, including some for countries you’re familiar with, to give yourself a sense of the scale—for example, Jordan is currently under a level 2 “exercise increased caution” warning, yet so is the UK). These reports are useful even for non-U.S. citizens, but if you’re a citizen of another country, it’s best to check with your own government as well. They may have additional information that’s relevant to you.

Also, know the contact information of the closest Embassy or consulate at your destination. This is the number to have saved in your phone in case the worst happens. If you are injured or need emergency medical care; if you’ve been the victim of a crime or someone is threatening you; if you’re arrested or harassed by local law enforcement; if you otherwise feel unsafe and don’t know what to do, please, please call your Embassy. They are there to help. 

One more tip specifically for American citizens: always enroll in the State Department’s Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) before you go. This lets the State Department know where you are and when so that they can provide critical information and services in case of an emergency. Say you’re on vacation in Fiji and a tsunami occurs; if you’ve enrolled in STEP, the State Department will know that they need to find you and evacuate you from Fiji. If you haven’t enrolled in STEP, they’ll have no way of knowing you’re in Fiji at all. I’m guessing many countries have STEP program equivalents, so if you are not an American citizen, it’s worth looking into with your foreign ministry.

Ok! Now on to the juicy stuff!

Scan for soulfulness

This tip has helped me consistently pick restaurants and lodging that both suit my taste and offer a good product. When looking for somewhere to eat, crash, or shop, ask yourself: does the place have an aesthetic—literally any aesthetic, the particulars aren’t important—that looks as though someone put thought into it? Does it look soulful and inviting? Was any attention given to detail? Or do the goods look mass-produced, the signs and branding generic? 

Businesses that care about character and atmosphere are trying to attract repeat customers, while those that don’t might be targeting one-time tourist dollars spent out of convenience. You want to seek out the former. Reputation matters to these sorts of places. They will care more about providing something of value and ensuring you have a good experience so that you come back and/or tell your friends. 

There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. For some businesses, the less frilly the better (for example, you tend to find the best affordable food from immigrant communities in restaurants that are small and bare-bones), and there are definitely cases where a super unique vibe is a gimmick to mask a shitty product. There is a subtle art to going off vibes—especially in countries where business owners have fewer material resources with which to craft an ambience—but it has brought me good things 99 times out of 100. Also, you can always gather more info on a cool-looking place you’ve spotted by finding it on Google Maps. The reviews will tell you whether your instinct about it is right. (More on that below.)

All that said…

Don’t bother trying to avoid other tourists or tourist-y places

My husband Nick and I were in Rome in April. One night, while I was contentedly inhaling my cacio e pepe, a diner at the table next to us leaned over and said, “oh no, not more Americans.” He clearly meant it in good humor—the subtext of the joke being that he thought he was the only cosmopolitan genius in Rome who had found some local gem, until we (the other Americans) ruined it for him.

I wrote a bit about this in Why You Shouldn’t Try to Travel Like a Local, but somewhere along the line, we collectively decided that we should try to avoid other tourists. “Tourist” became synonymous with “rube” or “dolt,” where real travelers would look for authentic, local spots. (Can you hear my eyes rolling?) I’m here to tell you that “tourist” shouldn’t be a dirty word, nor does the fact that a place caters to tourists make it inherently bad. I’ve been to plenty of restaurants that were lousy with other tourists and had absolutely incredible food, like the one where the above exchange happened (and on the flip side, I’ve been to plenty of “local” spots that were garbage).

Think of it this way: even if you’re going to a place that seems tourist-y, as long as it’s not a huge chain, you are supporting the local economy just as much as you would be by going to a place that caters to locals.

Moreover, tourists are everywhere; we can’t avoid each other, and frankly, I don’t see why we should, because we’re not going to experience life like locals no matter what. You are a tourist and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, so feel free to act like it, as long as you’re doing so with sensitivity and respect. 

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Walk! (or take public transportation)

There are so many advantages to using your feet as your main mode of transportation when you travel. It’s a great way to get your bearings in a new place. You’ll get exercise (which helps with everything from settling traveler’s tummy to recovering from jet lag to making room for—my favorite activity of all—eating), you’ll get to do some prime people watching (like that Italian dude who gave us a light striptease while housing an entire pizza by himself, yowza!), and you’ll stumble upon cool places you wouldn’t have noticed if you had sped by in an Uber. Plus, it’s free. 

Obviously walking isn’t possible in every circumstance. Maybe you’re visiting a place that just isn’t walkable, or the weather is bad, or you aren’t up to it physically. Those are all valid reasons to seek other ways to get from point A to point B. But if you can walk, do. 

I’m also a huge fan of taking public transportation whenever it’s safe and practical to do so. It’s cheap, environmentally friendly, and it will make you feel a bit more connected to the energy of daily life in the city.

Be smart about recommendations

The key to getting great recommendations is not taking them from just anyone. You need to know where to look and who to trust. Your best bets are people (be they bloggers, friends, whoever) that actually live in the place you’re visiting, and travel writers or publications that have similar taste to yours. If you can find these sources, it will pay dividends for many trips to come—for example, CN Traveler has basically never steered me wrong. 

Social media can be a good source as well, but be aware that if you’ve found the cutest little corner bistro in Paris on Instagram, likely so have a million other people…and as a consequence, it may be swarmed. Also, per my above comment on gimmicky aesthetics: these places may be resting on their laurels of “instagrammability”—i.e., they may be so gorgeous that they don’t have to bother serving edible food to attract hordes of customers.

My best, no-fail tip? Use good old fashioned Google Maps to see what’s rated highly in the area. I home in on places that have 4.5 stars or higher from a solid number of reviewers. Twenty should be enough for the rating to average out and solidly reflect reality, but the more the better. does this too, and any travel tip that’s good enough for her is good enough for me.

This brings me to my next point…

Take recommendations from several sources

Pulling travel intel from various sources makes your trip unique to you rather than a rip-off of someone else’s. There's nothing wrong with stealing someone else’s itinerary wholesale if you truly think you’ll love it…but it’s risky. Say you’re planning your restaurant reservations for an upcoming getaway. If you take some recommendations from a friend, some from Rick Steves, and some from TimeOut, you’re more likely to get a good variety of spots at a range of price points than if you were to take one person’s word as gospel. When you only take recommendations from one source, everything you do will be tailored to your source’s palette—and you might get an unpleasant surprise at your destination when you realize their taste, standards, or expectations are vastly different from yours.

Curating recommendations can also help you construct an itinerary that prioritizes whatever is important and nourishing to you, whether that’s finding a quiet corner to decompress with a book or having a spot close to your hotel where you can retreat for a nightcap. This helps keep mid-trip burnout at bay. For example, no matter where I’m going, the first places I research are coffee shops. I like to know that I’ll at least have my morning cappuccino ritual, which makes me feel calm and ready for the day. I take tips from local coffee obsessives, fellow travel writers, and—you guessed it—Google maps. I nearly always find gems this way, and even if it only yields one good spot, I’ll have somewhere to which I can return throughout the trip.

If you’re in the market for some trustworthy recommendations, I’ve collated a big list of sources at the end of this post. Peruse them to your heart’s delight!

Carry-ons only

Okay, sometimes you really can’t avoid it, but I have never, ever wished I’d checked a bag. I’ve gone carry-on only for trips as long as three weeks. It saves me time at the airport. It means fewer decisions to make when it’s time to get dressed in the morning. And most crucially, there is practically no way for an airline to lose your carry-on. 

As an example, here is what I would put in a carry-on for a week-long trip to a European city: one pair of dark jeans, four or five tops, a sweater, two dresses (at least one should be nice enough for an upscale restaurant) and two pairs of shoes (one comfy sneaker, one loafer that can go from walking around town to cocktails and dinner). I would wear the bulkiest items on the plane. And that’s it. I don’t worry about things getting too dirty or stained to rewear—you can wash things in your bathroom sink or scrub with a Tide pen in a pinch, and if you get really, really desperate, you can always buy something at your destination. 

So instead of blindly throwing items in a bag the night before, take a few extra minutes to mentally run through the activities you have planned. Carefully consider how you’ll need to dress and what you’ll want to have with you each day. Pack accordingly, then edit ruthlessly. I’ve never regretted not bringing that third pair of shoes. 

Squeeze every last minute of goodness out of your trip 

Before I dive into this, I feel I need to give you some context. Nick and I averaged about 20,000 steps a day in Rome, with 24,600 being our record. We were out and about as much as humanly possible. This is typical for us; we usually visit multiple attractions each day. That pace may not work for everyone, and that is perfectly alright. The point here isn’t to exhaust yourself—it’s to make the most of the time you have in a way that works for you.

Here’s how I maximize my time: During my planning, I pay very close attention to where attractions are located in relation to each other. I make a full list of the places I want to visit, then I group them together by proximity and plan my days within those groupings. I also pick out coffee shops and restaurants I can easily stop at while moving from site to site. I may end up spending a whole day visiting attractions in a single neighborhood. This saves time (and aggravation!) on transportation and allows for deep dives into smaller areas. I then leave my evenings free to either do whatever feels good in the moment or try a recommendation I’ve come across during the day—maybe that’s seeing a cool monument by night, maybe it’s going to a bar, maybe it’s heading back to my hotel room and crashing so I can do it all over again the next day.

If that sounds like too much to you, there are gentler ways to do this. I recommend trying to squeeze some fun into your travel days. If Nick and I land somewhere at 6pm, you can bet we’re running off that plane and having dinner out (one of many reasons I advocate for carry-ons only, and will continue to do so until I shuffle off this mortal coil, per above). Or, say you leave in the afternoon; be sure to pack the night before, and leave your final morning free to do something fun as a last hurrah instead of sleeping in and going straight to the airport. In my experience, this makes trips feel longer. 

Do it now

If there is a place you want to see and you can afford it, just go. Don’t wait. You don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, or next month, or next year. Your circumstances could change and travel might not be an option anymore, or shifts in security and economic situations could suddenly make your dream destination off-limits. I’ve been wanting to go to Israel for years, and I didn’t do it from Egypt because I knew we’d soon be moving to Jordan and it would be easier to get there from Amman than from Cairo…I’m obviously regretting that now. Don’t be me.

Sources!! 

For destination guides and general travel tips: YOURS TRULY (new Caravaner’s Companion guides out on June 13, check out the archives here!!); Yolo Intel;; ; ; ; CN Traveler; AFAR; Travel + Leisure; TimeOut

For a focus on art and design: In Hand; Architectural Digest; pocket guides

For a focus on food: Eater; David Lebovitz

For all things Italy: ; Elizabeth’s Newsletter from Italy;

For all things France: Paris By Mouth; The New Paris Dispatch

Reader, I’m curious…

What are your best travel tips? Do you disagree with any of mine? Where do you get recommendations—did I miss any essential sources? Tell me in the comments!

Leave a comment

In case you missed it…

On Tuesday, I posted a call for readers’ worst travel blunders and shared my own. The comment section is hilarious and relatable. I also wrote a mini guide to Cairo for Kiss me on Tulips.

Up next…

Next Thursday, paid subscribers will get an in-depth research essay about the ongoing marginalization of women and spouses in the American diplomatic corps. Upgrade your subscription to come along for the ride. (Huge thanks to recent subscribers Jim, Brenna, Janice, Meg, and Stephanie for your support!)

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Sometimes trips just don’t go our way. Crucial information gets lost in translation despite many aggressive gesticulations, or the bus drivers happen to go on strike the week you’re in town, or a bird poops on your last clean shirt. Other times, it’s operator error—like when I booked my flight home from South Africa for a month later than I’d intended and had to call my boss to tell her I wouldn’t make it back to New York by Monday (that day/month format will get us Americans every time).

But where would the fun be if everything always went right? As a mid-week bonus post, I’m asking other writers about their most legendary travel snafus, as well as sharing some of my biggest goofs.

Because Caravanserai is a community for the curious and adventuresome, I know you all have entertaining stories from your own terrible, horrible, no good, very bad travel days…and I want to hear all about them in the comments. Don’t hold out on me, friends! 

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I’ll be back on Thursday with a big post on my philosophy of travel. It’ll be full of tips for how to avoid these sorts of bloopers and plan your best adventure yet.

is the author of Kiss Me On Tulips, a newsletter about starting over and living an authentic, creative, and mindful life. She writes from Napoli, Italy, where she uses travel to stay inspired.   

My biggest travel mishap occurred when I was twenty-two years old and living in rural Verdun, France in 2011. I was working as a teacher and scraping by to travel locally on the weekends. My friend and I planned to visit Strasbourg, France to see the Christmas markets. Our mutual friend recommended we Couchsurf with three male French teachers who we heard were great hosts, although their place was “a little messy”.

When we arrived at the apartment, I stepped back in horror. Boxes, dirt, and books covered the entire floor, including three Christmas trees from the year before. With each foot I cautiously stepped further into the home, the stronger my sense of urgency was to bolt out the door. What was wrong with these people? It was already late and we didn’t have a backup plan. I convened with my friend briefly in the hallway: what should we do? We agreed that if anything got weird, we would bolt together. 

The hosts served us raclette, a local specialty, and we had great conversation and lots of wine, as I decided the only way I could sleep on this floor was if I was inebriated. I woke up, hungover but alive, my head lodged on a pillow tucked in between piles of crap.

is the author of , a travel diary consisting mostly of awkward urinal encounters and disappointing celebrity sightings. He lives in London, England, but is usually out of town.

When I was 18 some friends and I visited Italy on a two-week interrail pass. Our last stop was Rome, sort of. Sort of because we were cheap and so stayed in a camping resort on the very outskirts of the city. It was so far out you needed to take a bus and then the metro to get to the centre.

One night on our way home, we, of course, got on the wrong bus. Smarter people than us would, after a few stops and having realised their mistake, get off the bus. We didn’t. For some reason we decided the only option was to sit on the bus for its entire route, right until it reached the stop where we got on. This took over two hours, during which we had time to make friends with the other resort guests who had followed us onto the bus, seeing our wristbands and assuming we knew the way better than they did.

This included a German man who was travelling with two much younger women who didn’t talk much to us or to him, and instead just shrugged every time we made eye contact.

Our dreams of a lovely Italian meal back at the resort were dashed when we finally arrived back there at 11pm. Dinner had stopped being served, and our only option was to walk down the hard shoulder of a dual carriageway to a McDonald’s, where we sheepishly ate cheeseburgers and vowed never to take the bus in Italy ever again.

Lastly, here’s one from yours truly: My mom came to visit me in France at the end of my study abroad semester. I had been living in Lyon, but we decided to spend a few days in Paris, so she booked a random hotel on Expedia. It seemed OK at first, if perhaps not the absolute cleanest.

On day 3 of our trip, my mom woke me up at 6am, saying, “Sam, I need you to get out of bed, put everything in your suitcase, and zip it up. Quickly.” She used her gentlest, most soothing voice—a dead giveaway that something was horribly wrong. I did as I was told, shuffling bleary-eyed to the bathroom to gather up my toiletries. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something small and dark and fast dart under the door. A cockroach, my biggest phobia, was skittering around at my feet. If I hadn’t been fully awake before, I sure as hell was now. The only thing I could think of in my blind panic was to get to the high ground. Smash cut to me standing on top of the toilet, screaming bloody murder and waking up the entire neighborhood as my mom runs Charlie Chaplin-style circles around the room, arms flailing. I have no memory of how we got out of that jam—I must have blacked out while my mom smashed the little demon?—but we eventually marched downstairs to tell the concierge, who scoffed and said “well, it won’t kill you, you know.” Yeah, we got the hell out of that place. 

Yet somehow our Parisian misadventures weren’t over. When it came time to head to the airport, the express bus simply never showed up. Just as we started to worry about missing our flight, a taxi driver appeared, asking if we needed a ride. We thought it was divine providence…but we apparently hadn’t noticed there was a massive cab line across the street, right outside our hotel. One of the cabbies in that line had seen our driver jump the queue, and he was pissed.

He marched up to our driver’s window, shouting that there was a line and what the hell did he think he was doing. In an act of rage, he threw the back passenger door open, jumped onto my lap, and said, “fine, I’m coming with you!” (During this whole wretched exchange, my poor mother, who does not speak French, is yelling what are they saying? WHAT ARE THEY SAYING?? directly in my ear.) After a momentary standoff, the second cabbie got out of the car, and our driver saw his chance—he peeled out, the back passenger door still open and me hanging halfway out of it. Suddenly we were flying up the Champs Elysées and the driver was yelling at me to shut the damn door, but I couldn’t get it to close due to the acceleration of the car. So our driver stopped in the middle of traffic, got out, and slammed it in my face. We showed up to the airport incredibly frazzled. But hey, we made our flight—and on the freeway we passed the bus we’d been waiting for, still stuck in hellacious traffic on its way back into Paris!

Reader, I’m curious…

What travel fumbles do you look back and laugh about?

Leave a comment

In case you missed it…

I wrote a mini guide to Cairo for , where I spill about the best cultural experiences and adventures in the city—but more importantly, the tastiest coffee and pastries. I also wrote an autofiction essay about life as a “trailing spouse” for paid subscribers, and interviewed and —the men, the myths, the legends behind . They told me all about Thailand, and were an absolute delight to chat with.

Up next…

This upcoming Thursday, I’m sending out a big, juicy post on my approach to travel and how to make the most of it, which will be free for all. The following week, paid subscribers will get an in-depth research essay about the ongoing marginalization of women and spouses in the American diplomatic corps. Upgrade your subscription to come along for the ride!

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Welcome to Caravaner’s Companion, a column of travel tales & recs from your chronically-traveling, donut-obsessed, over-caffeinated bestie. You’ll find digs, nosh, and retail therapy recs, the all-important vibe check, and the question on every traveler’s mind: “Is this a donut destination?” Released in batches of three each season, upgrade to get these novice-friendly, down-to-earth (and around-the-earth) travel companions.

If I’m honest, Guatemala was never high on my list of places to visit. It was my sister-in-law who drew me there. Years ago, she took out her savings and retired early to a little homestead she and her husband built in the rainforest (read about it here). Nick and I had heard much about Guatemala on FaceTime calls; my sister-in-law was always talking about things like collecting rainwater, tending chickens, and schlepping down the hill from her home to the road so she could shop from a vegetable truck. Her experience was so far outside our own that Nick and I couldn’t really understand the draw…and yet, we were dying to see it for ourselves. So we bit the bullet, got on an arduous three-leg flight from Cairo, and headed to Central America for two and a half weeks.

As soon as we landed, we could see what the attraction was. Guatemala is beautifully green, and it boasts a laid-back, welcoming culture. I can’t even count the number of times Nick and I turned to each other saying, “wow, the people here are just. So. Nice.” Guatemalans may be poor on average, but they are exceptionally honest and giving. I am not just saying this. I have been a lot of places, and of everywhere I’ve been, Guatemala was the friendliest. Nick and I received incredible hospitality from my sister-in-law’s friends, and we were treated with unfailing kindness by everyone whose path we crossed. (And not only are Guatemalans approachable, their Spanish is slow and clear, making it a wonderful place to practice the language. People will be patient with you while you do!)

We covered a lot of ground in Guatemala, splitting our time between Antigua, Lake Atitlán, and the forest of Petén, yet still I feel that we only scratched the surface. While a trip to Guatemala leans more toward adventure than relaxation (the whole point of coming here is to hike active volcanoes, get out in nature, and wander through sprawling Mayan temple complexes), it is the essence of slow travel. This is partially because the infrastructure is poor; rushing is of little use when the one-lane country roads don’t allow you to go more than 30 miles per hour, or when a Catholic festival floods the city streets. Things in Guatemala simply take as long as they take—but there is something freeing about letting go of your to-the-hour itinerary. So take your time to enjoy the cozy cities, the sunsets over tranquil lakes, and the murmur of the rainforest. You’ll be back to the grind soon enough.

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Welcome, friends! This is Caravaner’s Companion, a column of travel tales & recs from your chronically-traveling, donut-obsessed, over-caffeinated bestie. You’ll find digs, nosh, and retail therapy recs, the all-important vibe check, and the question on every traveler's mind: “Is this a donut destination?” Released in batches of three each season, upgrade to get these novice-friendly, down-to-earth (and around-the-earth) travel companions.

There was a cultural moment a couple years back when Portugal was the vacation spot du jour, and it felt like everyone and their brother was going. I tend to scoff at such trendy destinations, because (cards on the table here) I can be a bit of a travel snob. For me, Portugal was a utilitarian choice. Nick and I had shortlisted it as a honeymoon destination before covid brought the travel industry to a standstill, wanting somewhere we could fly direct and get around with minimal fuss post-wedding planning frenzy. We finally made good on our plans last winter, more than two and a half years into our marriage. As we took off for a week in Lisbon and the Algarve, I was quietly skeptical; I worried it would feel played out and lackluster.

Now, I pride myself on my willingness to admit when I’m wrong, and I have to say: shame on me for my pretentiousness, because I ended up loving every second! Portugal is well-traveled for a reason—it is still relatively inexpensive when compared with other European destinations, it has a fantastic food scene, and travel within country is easy. Lisbon’s flair for design rivals that of Paris and Barcelona, a blend of art nouveau architecture, gothic ruins, and azulejo-covered façades (and the rickety yellow cable cars that scale the hills of Alfama add an extra charm). And the Algarve? Some of the most dramatically beautiful coastline I’ve ever seen.

But the most pleasant surprise was the sense of possibility I felt while gazing out at the vastness of the Atlantic and breathing in the salt air. It was easy to imagine myself in the place of the early explorers as they prepared to sail their caravels over the edge of the world and into the unknown, where untold adventures awaited.

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Welcome to Caravaner’s Companion, a column of travel tales & recs from your chronically-traveling, donut-obsessed, over-caffeinated bestie. You’ll find digs, nosh, and retail therapy recs, the all-important vibe check, and the question on every traveler's mind: “Is this a donut destination?” Released in batches of three each season, upgrade to get these novice-friendly, down-to-earth (and around-the-earth) travel companions.

I confess, I miss Cairo more than I ever thought I could. I miss the frenetic energy of the city, the world-class tourist sites, the coffee shops in sprawling villas, the hibiscus juice that was always sweetened just right. But I miss it most of all in spring. The weather is mild in Egypt this time of year, and the blooming flame trees turn entire city blocks a vibrant shade of crimson. That makes it the absolute best time to take a walk around town, and lately I find myself daydreaming about an afternoon stroll in Zamalek, the island neighborhood just across the river from downtown.

Now, in my big guide to Cairo, I said that Cairo isn’t really a walkable city—perhaps with the exception of Zamalek. I stand by that statement, and would go so far as to say that a day spent wandering in Zamalek can be extremely pleasant if you have an idea of where to go. It has some of the absolute best shopping in Egypt, as well as green spaces, great restaurants, grand colonial-era architecture, and pretty Nile views. Driving up to Zamalek to get lost in the boutiques and sip lemon mints by the river was my favorite way to spend a day when we lived in Cairo, and in this post, I am giving you all my best spots.

There are plenty of fantastic guides to touring Egypt already out there, so my goal here is to give you the scoop on the places that are beloved by locals. Some of them are “hidden gems,” some are well-known; they’re all worth checking out. Zamalek isn’t on the typical tourist circuit, but if you want to get a window into what Cairo was like in its heyday—as well as the best of what the modern city has to offer—an afternoon here is a great way to do it.

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Friends! I’m so excited to introduce you to something my travel-addicted heart has always dreamed of doing. Say hello to the Caravaner’s Companion, a new series of travel guides, brimming with tales & recs from your chronically-traveling, donut-obsessed, slightly over-caffeinated sherpa.

Each season, I will publish a handful of Caravaner’s Companions, in which I’ll reveal all my travel stories and secrets from around the world, including the places you’ve read so much about in my essays. Over nearly twenty years of globetrotting, I’ve visited so many excellent eateries, crash pads, boutiques, and watering holes that I think it would be downright selfish not to share them with you. Each post will include my best spots to stay (digs!), eat (nosh!), and shop (retail therapy!). They’ll be a good mix of bargains and splurges, of hidden gems and well-loved local haunts, of the traditional and the offbeat.

I’ll paint you a picture of the overall vibe, tell you about the most interesting people I’ve met there, and address my personal top concerns about any destination: 1) whether there are decent donuts and 2) where to find excellent fridge magnets.

The point of these guides is not to tell you which major tourist attractions to visit or how to arrange your itinerary; any Google search will tell you that. The goal is to give you insight into what it’s really like to inhabit a place.

This season, I’m taking you to…

Portugal…

Guatemala…

and Egypt!

Free to all for one week, these and future guides will be a permanent fixture for my paid subscribers. They’ll live under the “Caravaner’s Companion” tab in the top navigation bar on the Caravanserai homepage, so you can revisit them any time. Of course, as your sherpa, I’ll answer any travel questions in the comment section of each post.

»Upgrade here for forever access to all future travel guides.

(To earn complimentary access to these paid guides, refer a friend and get a free month’s subscription.)

Lastly, a critical point: when there are so many excellent travel resources out there, why listen to me? I’ve been to 30 countries (and counting) across five continents—and four of those countries I’ve lived in!—but I don’t think my resume is the real value proposition. You’ve likely come to Caravanserai because you enjoy the stories I tell, or because you see flashes of yourself and your experiences in them. That tells me that we share a common worldview, a likeness of spirit—that we seek out similar adventures and delights. I think the places in these guides will speak to you just as much as they did to me. 

I hope you love this fun new feature. Away we go!

Hello, gentle reader, and welcome to my giant Cairo data dump!

Just kidding. I’m going to try to keep this organized…which is easier said than done, given the richness of this city’s culture and history. Cairo is not just the Pyramids and Pharaonic stuff—from early Christianity to the Islamic conquests to Egypt’s peculiar relationship with 19th and 20th century colonial powers, there is so much to discover.

There are a LOT of guides out there about Cairo’s specific tourist sites. My goal is not to recreate a bunch of existing information. I’d rather give you a sense of how to approach Cairo overall—how to think through your itinerary, how best to structure your days, and how to get around (though I do talk through details of the best attractions below). I will give you all my tips and recommendations, but I don’t want to tell you exactly what you should do with your time; instead, I want to give you all the information you need to feel confident planning your own trip.

A few quick disclaimers before I dive in: a lot of people visit Egypt as part of a tour group. While that can be a good option for some, I am not a tour group person. This guide is geared toward people who will be touring Cairo independently. I’ll do a separate post on where to stay, eat, and shop in Cairo in the next couple weeks. I’m also planning an overarching Egypt guide, which will include tips on how to pack and dress, general rules of behavior, how best to communicate with individual guides and businesses, etc. As Cairo is very dynamic and changes constantly, I plan to update this list whenever I have more intel to share—so please stay tuned.

Also, do feel free to ask any questions you have in the comment section. I’d be delighted to give you more personalized advice!

what to know about visiting Cairo

You need 2-3 nights to do Cairo right, and you don’t need much more than that. You could absolutely spend five days here if you had time and were so inclined, but there is so much to see in Egypt that for most visitors, it makes sense to spend a couple days in the city and move on. That said, the buffet of activities I’ve laid out below includes rough timing for each stop, so you should be able to get a good sense of how many days you need in Cairo based on your interests.

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