In October 2022, I flew from my home in NYC to Berlin for a two-week train trip through Europe.
10.06.2024 - 10:09 / nytimes.com
Attention, bibliophiles: Put Strasbourg, the largest city in eastern France, on your radar. Once home to the godfather of publishing — the 15th-century printing-press pioneer Johannes Gutenberg — the city is the UNESCO World Book Capital for 2024. Through next April, more than 200 events and activities will take place in and around Strasbourg, a polyglot city on the German border whose half-timbered gingerbread houses, gabled roofs, picturesque canals and church spires seem to have sprung from a storybook of their own.
Among the events are exhibitions devoted to Gustave Doré — a Strasbourg native and perhaps the 19th-century’s most celebrated illustrator of literary works — and Julie Doucet, a groundbreaking Quebec graphic novelist and visual artist. The annual Fête des Imprimeurs on June 29 and 30 in Place Gutenberg will showcase all of the trades involved in bookmaking, including through interactive workshops.
But the UNESCO events aren’t the only reasons to visit. Strasbourg has many spots for the literary-minded that are permanent fixtures, from comic shops and indie book emporiums to historical libraries and antiquarian specialists. Here are six favorites.
A native of Mainz, Germany (about 100 miles away), Gutenberg lived in Strasbourg in the 1430s and 1440s, developing the initial plans for his revolutionary moveable-type printing press, which would come to fruition in Mainz in the 1450s.
To honor him, Strasbourg in 1840 erected a statue in a square near the city’s red sandstone cathedral, whose Gothic design another German visitor, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, famously rhapsodized about. (The future literary star studied in Strasbourg in the early 1770s, living nearby at 36 rue du Vieux-Marché-aux-Poissons.)
In October 2022, I flew from my home in NYC to Berlin for a two-week train trip through Europe.
The best part of summer cruising is that there are more cruising options than in any other season. Cruises to destinations like Alaska and Scandinavia are highly seasonal; go in the summer, or you can't cruise there at all. Even the Mediterranean is somewhat seasonal, with most cruise lines leaning heavily into summer and moving ships to warmer destinations during the cooler months.
There's nothing quite like a summer spent hopping around Europe. With millennia of history, some of the best restaurants in the world and top-notch museums, there are plenty of places to explore, whether it's your first visit or your hundredth. Unfortunately, those same wonderful qualities attract masses of tourists, especially during the summer high season.
I boarded a 10-hour Lufthansa flight from Denver to Germany and immediately questioned the decision I made just a day prior.
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- Travel Leaders Network president Roger Block, who will step down from his executive role at the end of this year, is confident he is leaving TLN better than when he found it.
Lie-flat seats. Direct aisle access. Suites with privacy doors. Entire onboard "apartments." It's safe to say business and first class have gone through an evolution.
I recently traveled to Switzerland with my mom, brother, and grandmother to see where my grandmother had immigrated from over 70 years ago.
I've traveled 5,120 miles on trains in the US, Canada, France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and Germany.
A sandy, 15-mile spit that reaches across Arcachon Bay like a protective arm, Lège-Cap Ferret, on France’s western coast, is that country’s answer to New York’s Montauk, albeit dialed back a decade or two. Cap Ferret — not to be confused with Cap Ferrat, the glitzy, southeastern French peninsula with almost the same name — is a 30-minute ferry ride from the seaside town of Arcachon and features a varied, contrary, landscape: oyster farms on the tranquil lagoon, or side, and a broad surf beach on the Atlantic side (“When there are waves, they are gigantic,” says the designer and architect Philippe Starck), which has attracted Parisians since the 1950s.
The UK economy is poised for a significant boost as fans prepare to spend big during the Summer of Sport. According to Experian Economics, the European Championships in Germany and the upcoming Paris Olympics are expected to drive an additional £233 million in spending over the next three months.
To mark the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, visitors from all over the world gathered in Normandy to commemorate the largest military operation in modern history. With the numerous official ceremonies, historical exhibitions and re-enactments, Normandy was in the spotlight throughout an intense week, particularly from 5 to 7 June, when the moving images of the tributes paid to the soldiers and veterans by many heads of state were relayed around the world.
Planning a summer vacation can be tricky, right? Do you stick with the same tried-and-true destinations you've loved in the past, brave the crowds on a European adventure or head somewhere with cooler weather to escape the summer heat?