Libraries are under assault. Ideologues—concerned that libraries might contain material they personally object to—are defunding them to protect people from knowledge. Political opportunists—eager to score points with constituents who aren’t exactly big book readers—are threatening librarians with fines and even jail time for checking out or even showing...
While my photographs are hardly art, it does seem relevant to quote Saramago here as I think about my last trip to Portugal: “Every novel is like this, desperation, a frustrated attempt to save something of the past. Except that it still has not been established whether it is the novel that prevents man from forgetting himself or the impossibility of...
This truly is the most beautiful city in the world.
Six years is a long gap between travel recommendations. After my 2016 stay in Porto, I wrote a post with my recommendations for the city that I’ve probably shared a few hundred times, but time and, I suspect, Covid, have led to some of those great spots closing down. Farewell, Moustache Cafe! But as some places close, others emerge, and while I only had a few...
In the seven years since I first visited Porto, the city has changed. Massive construction projects in the city have blocked dozens of roads, and the traffic is so bad in some areas that police work at every intersection. The abandoned warehouses lining the river that were the setting for some amazing photos have been replaced with new construction and bars. The...
When I first started traveling in earnest, I was skeptical of tours in cities. As much as anything, I love wandering through new places and discovering corners on my own. I worried that these organized trips were the province of tourists, not travelers, that absurdly Manichean distinction that seems to allow many of us to justify our habits while feeling just a bit...
I was in Malta five years ago when I realized the loneliest hours of solo travel almost always occur during the evening in the hours when people head out for outdoor dinners with their friends and families. In The Great Gatsby, Nick describes the feeling of being at a party but not in the party as a feeling of being “simultaneously within and without,” and I think...
Albania, July 202252 photos
Montenegro, July 202254 photos