David Perry 
At the Hacienda del Mar, they give you no compelling reason to leave. You want a pool? They have five. What about restaurants? They have six. Bars? Check. Kids Club? Check. Cafe? Check. And then there is the Cactus Spa … Checkmate! In Cabo San Lucas, “good hotels” are literally … Read more
Dresden is Baroque on steroids. Easily recognizable by the presence of a “putto,” a cherubic baby, the Baroque style dominated in the late 1600s, just as King Augustus II the Strong, took the throne of Saxony and decided his capital city needed a makeover to rise from his perceived “wallflower … Read more
To start, combining French chocolate with Scottish high tea seems contradictory; after all, the former is about taking taste up to 11, while the latter has for several centuries tried to convince the world that haggis counts as “food.” Could this end badly? I wondered that when I took my … Read more
Editor’s Note: Currently, Abu Dhabi is open to tourists, but COVID-19 necessitates the following: International travelers are required to be under self-quarantine for 14 days; tourists with negative COVID-19 test results are required to remain under self-quarantine for 14 days and to undergo a second test on day 12. For … Read more
I’ve been living in Manhattan across the Hudson River from it for 19 years, but like most New Yorkers, I never visited Jersey City, not even once. And then I finally did. Boy, was I missing out. Jersey Gloire Poor JC. It has the history, food, architecture, culture, art and … Read more
There’s a Christmas tree made out of moss, one made out of roses and another made out of CANDY! If there was a reason to visit Longwood Gardens, that last one should be at the top. Conceived as a Gilded Age estate by industrial magnate Pierre Samuel du Pont, Longwood … Read more
If Savannah were a woman — and she definitely is — her clothing would be designer, her accessories would be designer, and her black lace panties underneath it all would be designer. I was in one of the most genteel cities in the South, but Savannah has a way of … Read more
Teal waters, leaping dolphins, breaching whales, a dramatic Dothraki terrain, and all with a Spanish flavor — why, it’s Cabo San Lucas. Not exactly … in twenty, thirty years maybe! For those looking for a Mexican getaway but loathing the thought of a McMexico experience, Loreto beckons with minimum fuss, … Read more
If Loreto doesn’t ring any bells, don’t worry — most people have no idea where this dot of a town is in Baja California Sur. However, with the jade expanse of the Gulf of California stretching out before it and the Conan-the-Barbarian landscape of the Sierra de la Giganta coming … Read more
I needed a place to really get away. Not necessarily some far corner of the Earth, and not a place where I’d have to punch a wolf in the face for dinner either. Just a place to close the computer, shut off the phone and just … unwind. Like … Read more
The Doomstone. That’s its name, and it’s the best relic I’ve ever seen. Aside from sounding like something Indiana Jones might off a few Nazis for, it depicts a typical day in Hell: fiends, demons and a cauldron full of the damned — Bon Appetit! A picture is worth 1000 … Read more
“How many stills are there in Haywood County?” I ask, sipping another shot of peach pie moonshine. Dave Angel, proprietor of Elevated Distilling, leans over the bar and replies, “Just three distilleries, but (pausing for dramatic effect) … many more stills.” It was a wink-wink moment letting me know that … Read more
What did I know about Quebec in winter? Not much. I knew it would be cold and there’d be snow. Combined, that made running the obstacle course at La Forêt de Maître Corbeau that much harder. I sweated through three layers of clothing, I strained, I swore. But I finished! … Read more
“Is this real life?” Gina, my companion wondered aloud. “Or is it fantasy?” I chimed in reply. We were standing, gobsmacked, in the courtyard between our rooms of the Riad Maison Bleue hotel. The equivalent of a manor, “riad” means “garden” in Arabic, and allusions to an oasis aren’t that … Read more
Croatia proves that cartographers have a sense of humor. Boomeranging up the Adriatic Sea into the Balkan Peninsula, the chevron-shaped nation, long a part of this empire or that coalesced out of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and it did not prevail without a monumental fight. But good things are worth … Read more