Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, August 30, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
29.08.2024 - 15:36 / lonelyplanet.com
Aug 28, 2024 • 7 min read
It's the hills of Edinburgh that strike you first. There are seven of them, from well-trodden Arthur’s Seat and Calton Hill to unsung Braid and Blackford, and they all seem to have been pushed out from the earth as if in a tumultuous struggle for superiority.
By way of explanation, that means it’s a city that demands a comfy pair of shoes, with the Old and New Towns appearing like cresting waves of church steeples, castle turrets and cobblestone streets that rise then dip.
While walking is the default mode of transport in any city of such comparable and compact size, that’s not to say it’s the only means of getting around. Few things in Edinburgh are better than sitting at the top of a maroon-striped double decker, with a front seat view of Princes Street Gardens below you and Edinburgh Castle hovering overhead. Then, there’s its expanding tram system and cycle path network, which are helping the Scottish capital reduce traffic congestion and move towards its ambitious sustainability goals — to reclaim the medieval center for pedestrians.
Here are our top tips for getting around in Edinburgh.
Such a condensed, easily navigable city is a gift for those who love to explore on their own two feet. In Edinburgh, getting from A to B feels natural, never forced, especially when the skies are clear, and this influences many locals’ interactions with the city. Shops are popped into, coffee is ordered from takeaway windows and conversations are started in book stores in ways that’d never happen if they were stuck underground on a metro train.
As a rule of thumb, you can walk across the Old Town in around 30 minutes, or from Stockbridge to Morningside — the two handsomest suburbs — in one hour. The outliers are Leith and Portobello, which both flow towards the Firth of Forth and are better reached by double-decker.
Beyond the free entry at the National Museum of Scotland and the capital’s four knockout art galleries, the best-value deal in Edinburgh is a bus ticket. A day saver for its 50 routes that spider web across the city is a steal at £5/2.50 for an adult/child, or £10.50 for a family (with up to three children). The stroke of genius is many are now all-electric and there’s so much to see in between all the stops.
Number 37 connects Princes St, Bruntsfield and Morningside with the fringes of Pentland Hills Regional Park and Rosslyn Chapel, often described as one of the world’s most beautiful, if mysterious, religious structures. The 49 loops around Arthur’s Seat, rewarding those in the top seats with 340-million-year-old views and a stop at Craigmillar Castle and Portobello Beach. Another worth riding is the 27, from the Meadows and University of Edinburgh to the front gates of the
Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, August 30, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
Aug 29, 2024 • 5 min read
Scotland will be getting its first tourist tax, a levy in Edinburgh, but the local tourism industry is concerned it will make the destination less competitive.
Clarksville, a historic district of Austin, Texas, has lately emerged as a stylish dining and shopping enclave. Among the area’s most compelling new businesses is La Embajada, a design shop housed in a 1923 Craftsman bungalow. Combining the hospitality and interiors expertise of its founder, Raul Cabra — who has designed tableware for some of Mexico City’s most celebrated restaurants, including Rosetta and Pujol — La Embajada presents a refined, regionally diverse selection of Mexico’s artisanal offerings. A series of small rooms display vintage and contemporary furniture, from stately midcentury armchairs and 1970s glass sconces to a minimalist agave fiber rug by the Oaxaca-based textile artist Trine Ellitsgaard. The house is also an actual residence. Cabra often stays in the bedroom up the creaky stairs, and he’s recently made it available for short-term stays (bookings include a daily basket of baked goods from Austin’s Swedish Hill). Guests can purchase the room’s handmade décor, such as a pair of sleek bedside lamps in milky white onyx, a 1960s La Malinche dresser and a bedspread from a Michoacan manufacturer that once supplied Herman Miller. Downstairs, glassware, candles and gifts fill a section modeled after a typical general store in a small Mexican town. But La Embajada’s heart is its inviting kitchen, where visiting chefs cook elaborate meals and staff prepare ice cream and coffee. In another twist, every bespoke detail — including a hammered copper sink, caramel-colored tiles and waxed pine cabinets — can be custom-ordered for one’s own home.
Traveling during hurricane season, which spans from June to November, can be both thrilling and precarious.
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Hostels are my preferred option when I'm traveling alone.
By the time we reached the third waterfall on the Kahunira trail, my wife, Kiki, and I had been walking through the forested backcountry of Kiambu County, Kenya, for nearly three hours. Along the way, we had tasted sweet lady finger bananas in the market town of Githunguri, sipped a sour Kikuyu home brew called muratina proffered by laborers at a rural gravel quarry and made a heart-pounding shortcut across rust-flecked irrigation pipes that traversed a steep gorge fringed with tea plantations.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Scarlett Kiaras-Attari, a marketing executive and education content creator who moved to the UK for her studies. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Aug 23, 2024 • 7 min read
Aug 22, 2024 • 3 min read
I've been invited to more bachelorette parties than I can count.