Most visitors to Hawaii fly straight to Oahu and spend their entire trip within five miles of Waikiki. Kona sits on the opposite end of that experience 330 sunny days a year, warm water you can snorkel in without a wetsuit and a coastline that rewards people who actually show up. The Big Island’s western … Read more
Most tourists fly into Kona, rent a car and never make it to the other side. They miss the wettest, greenest, most geologically alive town in all of Hawaii. Hilo sits on the edge of an active volcanic island, 28 miles from Kilauea, one of the most continuously erupting volcanoes on Earth. Things to do … Read more
Most people who visit Oahu spend their time on crowded beaches or at Manoa Falls, a maintained, paved trail with restrooms and a snack shop. Lulumahu Falls is the opposite: an unsanctioned trail with no restrooms, no water fountains and no other amenities and that is exactly what makes it worth hiking. Lulumahu Falls is … Read more
Most people picture white sand when they think of Maui’s beaches. Red Sand Beach Maui defies every expectation this is a crimson cove carved into a volcanic cinder cone, where rust-red cliffs drop straight into water so blue it looks digitally enhanced. The sand is not beige or black it is a deep iron-red, ground … Read more
Maui is the second-largest island in Hawaii, but it punches well above its size when it comes to variety. You can stand on a 10,023-foot volcanic summit at dawn, snorkel above a submerged crater by mid-morning and watch humpback whales breach from a beach chair by afternoon all on the same island, all within the … Read more
Most travelers assume the journey between Portugal’s two biggest cities takes most of a day. It doesn’t. The Lisbon to Porto route runs through rolling vineyards and quiet river towns and on the fastest train you can step off in central Porto with enough afternoon left to walk along the Douro before dinner. This guide … Read more
Most tourists assume Sintra is just another castle town, a quick photo stop before heading back to Lisbon. The moment you step off the train and look up at Pena Palace perched above the forest, that assumption disappears completely. Sintra is a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering an entire cultural landscape, not just a single … Read more
Sintra sits 25 km northwest of Lisbon and the things to do in Sintra stretch far beyond the postcard image of one colorful palace. Most visitors arrive at 10 AM, queue for Pena Palace and leave by 3 PM having covered less than a third of what this UNESCO World Heritage town actually holds. The … Read more
Most travelers book a hotel in Lisbon and spend the next three days realizing they picked the wrong neighborhood. The city looks compact on a map and it is but staying in Alfama feels nothing like staying in Chiado and neither feels like Príncipe Real. Lisbon is built on seven hills and which hill you … Read more
Most people who plan the trip from Lisbon to Cascais think they are going to spend a day on a beach. They come back having walked clifftops above crashing Atlantic waves, eaten grilled dourada in a family restaurant where the menu is handwritten in Portuguese and discovered a town that once housed Portuguese royalty every … Read more