By John Poimiroo Sardines circle in a never-ending silver stream above the entrance to the Open Sea exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The spectacle of being beneath the swirling center of a school of sardines is so entrancing that some aquarium visitors are said to lie on their backs on the floor to fully…
There are over 40,000 airports worldwide where passengers are likely to spend multiple hours before their departures. That assumes that the flight is on time, which it’s often not. Not many travelers enjoy sitting around a packed airport waiting anxiously. Fortunately, a growing number of airports today are taking steps to provide a more pleasing experience, attracting in the process many people who aren’t even ticketed passengers.
By MaryKate Keevins Sunset Boulevard, a 22-mile winding stretch of road, traverses a dozen neighborhoods of Los Angeles and two independent cities. It runs from just north of downtown in urban Chinatown to the ocean bluffs of Pacific Palisades. Los Angeles can’t truly be defined by its busy freeways. You have to take an offramp…
By Teresa Bergen Jason Spoolstra stands with his back to a mural of Jesus welcoming Stanley Rother into heaven. He is introducing a tour group to more than 20 martyrs depicted on the mural. “We’re going to start on the right,” says Spoolstra, the Rother shrine’s director of pilgrimage. “The gentleman closest to Jesus, he’s…
By Casey Fahrer Premium economy seating is one of many options airlines offer passengers to improve the experience of their flight. Airline traffic has nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels, meaning that many flights are now almost fully booked. So, who wants to be shoehorned into a coach seat when premium economy seating beckons? Premium…
By Toby Saltzman What sounded like a pickup line turned out to be friendly banter from a local who enjoys meeting visitors in his quiet Mississippi River town. Seated on the step of a yellow clapboard house, smile lines wrinkling around blue eyes, he called out, “How y’all doin,’ lovely lady? Are ya off the…
By David DeVoss For the better part of three years Macau slumbered, its public squares subdued, its major shopping streets shuttered. On two occasions the entire city locked down on orders from Beijing. For a city of 713,000 that makes all its money selling the luck of the draw, the consequences of reduced tourism were…
By Nancy Wigston East of the wine-making capital of Bordeaux and north of the Canal de Garonne lies the River Lot, the seventh longest in France. Every day vacationers fresh off the fast train from Paris hop aboard boats on the Lot bound for a romantically medieval landscape that once belonged to English kings. Legendary…
When gold was discovered in a frigid creek running through the Sierra Nevada foothills in January of 1848, a headlong Gold Rush began that soon would change the American West. By the following year, hardscrabble prospectors called “49ers” were discovering gold, silver, copper, lead and other valuable metals in isolated canyons bypassed by earlier pioneers. Today, many 19th-century mining communities are eerie ghost towns whose storied pasts consist of crumbling foundations, swirling dust and dangerous fissures. And yet, over the course of time, as decades become eras before turning into centuries, a few towns have survived the sun, storms and inattention.
Drinking beer is woven into the social fabric of Vietnam. At family affairs and business lunches, impromptu meetings and private karaoke parties, beer flows like water. Cartons of beer — Saigon Special and Bia Hanoi, 333 and Larue, 24 cans to a box — balance in towering store displays and on the backs of motorbikes that careen through swarming traffic en route to their final destinations. A 2022 survey reported that Vietnam’s annual per capita beer consumption is 41.6 liters (over 11 gallons), or about 125 standard-sized cans per person.