Ultimate weekend on the Olympic Peninsula: enchanted forests, tide-pooling and Twilight encounters

I took my first river cruise somewhat reluctantly. It was on my mom's bucket list, and I love my mom. So I agreed to a Columbia and Snake River cruise on American Cruise Lines that would take us from Idaho through Washington to Oregon, with stops in sleepy towns ripe with Lewis and Clark history.

“It’s a Dall sheep!” the train tour guide exclaims as we swoop past a jagged cliffside dotted with fuzzy white creatures impressively balanced on their rocky perch.

Exploring new territory can be inspiring and enlightening. But for the approximately 750,000 Americans who have been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis (UC), being away from home—and a familiar bathroom—often feels riskier than flying standby.

Amtrak is launching a new route between Chicago and Miami this fall that will whisk passengers from the Midwest to the Sunshine State in 47 hours.

From #BookTok to celebrity book clubs to high-profile literary film adaptations, it's safe to say that reading hasn't been this cool in years. So it's not a big surprise that our favorite nerdy pastime has also begun to seep into the world of nightlife.

In May 2022, I rode the Rocky Mountaineer — one of the world's most luxurious trains. The Canadian train company operates four routes, and I was on its US route heading to Moab, Utah, from Denver.

There are two types of train trip: The long, slow, and often luxurious train journey that takes you through beautiful scenery that you book specifically to spend time on the rails; and the speedy, no-nonsense, cheap train ride you take to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. In the first category, you’ll find grand trips like Australia’s The Ghan, South Africa’s Blue Train, and Britain’s Caledonian Sleeper. In the second, there are trips from London to Brussels in just two hours, from Rome to Venice in four hours, and from Miami to Orlando in three hours. And if you’re a train traveler who belongs to the second category and likes getting places fast without flying, there are plenty of trains in this world that do just that at speeds previously unimaginable on land, including the fastest train in the world and its closest competitors.

When most Americans think of cruises, they probably think of island-hopping in the Caribbean or cruising by glaciers in Alaska from afar. That may be appealing for some people, but for others, the idea of being lazy on a ship of thousands of people for a week doesn’t sound like much of a vacation.

Southeastern France’s Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes is famous for some big things, from Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps, and the rolling landscapes that unfurl below it to the millennia-spanning architecture that defines the region’s capital city, Lyon, and beyond. Ironically, one of the best ways to experience all that grandeur is to think small — that is, to visit the small towns that reflect the best of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes’ endless outdoor possibilities, robust agriculture and gastronomy, and long history and cultural heritage.

As a citizen of three countries , the United States, Poland, and Portugal, I am acutely aware of cultural differences. These differences extend to different attitudes towards raising children.

Sep 18, 2024 • 4 min read

The shake-up continues at Scandinavian Airlines following its official entrance into the SkyTeam alliance.