Metro tips

Did you just remember you need to book a hotel for the Paris Olympics? If so, now might be a good time to settle your lodging.

I was born and raised in Athens, so I've seen a lot of tourists.

Thanks to its compact size, Copenhagen is fairly simple and convenient to get around, and travelers have a multitude of options for exploring the city, from hopping on a bike to jumping on the metro or a Harbor Bus boat. 

For sports fans, Paris will be the center of the universe this summer — and with 15 million Olympic and Paralympic visitors expected, it will feel like it, with crowds and high prices. But Paris isn’t the only Olympic site in France: Nine destinations outside the metro region are also hosting events, giving travelers a way to catch some action without getting caught up in the crush.

The stone arches looped solemnly over their shadows, some teetering above the grass, some sinking into it. It was a dazzling January morning, and I was standing in the Park of the Aqueducts, about 20 minutes by metro from central Rome. Here, the ruined arcades of six of the 11 aqueducts that once supplied the Eternal City with an astonishing volume of water — by some counts double the per capita water allotment of a typical 21st-century American city — have been preserved.

With just over 100 days to go before the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris, the city is readying itself to receive millions of extra people. For anyone wondering about best way to get around Paris, here's a handy guide.

Washington, DC combines the best of all worlds – a highly walkable grid system expertly designed by the French and a manageable Metro that connects travelers across the District and beyond.

The city of Washington, DC, is my favorite juxtaposition – an incredibly expensive city with a myriad of free things to do.

Panama's capital is a cosmopolitan cityscape with a skyline dominated by gleaming skyscrapers and streets full of culture, incredible food and enticing attractions.

Most cities are known for something. In Los Angeles, it’s movies. In Paris, it’s fashion. And in Zurich, Switzerland’s gleaming metro set along a lake dotted with white swans and shiny bikes, it’s money. To be more specific, it’s “serious money,” as a Swiss colleague insisted during our afternoon tea. In Zurich, the serious money of the world is deployed, managed, and grown for generations to come. Accordingly, the people that hold the serious money of the world need somewhere to stay when a trip to Zurich is called for. As another Swiss businessman told me: “There’s only one place you stay when you come to visit your money in Switzerland. It’s the Baur au Lac.”

Before it was developed into a seaport and garrison, the area now known as Chennai comprised a cluster of small villages on India’s Coromandel Coast. The largest of these, Madrasapattinam, inspired the city’s original name of Madras before being renamed Chennai in 1996. This history has resulted in a sprawling metropolitan area with no clearly defined downtown core although the region between the Cooum and Adyar rivers generally defines the tourist zone.

For a city that knows how to surprise, come to Prague.

London’s underground rail system is arguably one of the most iconic in Europe, if not the world - and now there’s a significant change to the well-known map.

A confluence of multicultural neighbourhoods, belle époque avenues and functional high-rises, Bucharest wears its past on its sleeve. While the Ceauşescu regime sought to erase all traces of the city’s history in the early 1980s, today, the Romanian capital overflows with character — its gritty exterior concealing a wealth of cosy bars, galleries and bookshops. 

Home to the country’s first capital, many of Japan’s most sacred Shinto shrines and a hinterland adorned with holy mountains, the region of Kansai not only marks the geographical centre of Japan but also stands as a cultural and historical heartland for the nation. Among its greatest treasures is Kyoto, which served as the imperial capital of Japan from the eighth to the 19th century, and is now renowned for its temples, geishas and gardens. Today, Kyoto remains as enchanting as ever, with ancient alleyways still evoking a picture-book Japan reminiscent of samurai and shoguns. 

Public transit systems are rarely top of the list when considering attractions to include in your travel itinerary. But that’s the case in Stockholm, where stations on the city’s metro system double as an art gallery.

The fabled Trans-Siberian Express is arguably the world’s greatest journey. The legendary railway tackles the vastness of Russia in such a way that it becomes something to be appreciated, with the locomotive making its way across the landscape, unhurried and untroubled.