Playa del Carmen might be the best day-trip base on the whole Riviera Maya. Cancun has the airport and the mega-resorts, but Playa sits in the middle of everything: Tulum is 45 minutes south, Cozumel is a ferry ride from the dock in town, the cenotes are scattered through the jungle on every side, and … Read more
The northern lights are back. Aurora season in Iceland runs from late August to mid-April, and October sits right in the sweet spot: the nights are already long and dark, the summer crowds have gone, and the Ring Road is still — weather permitting — a realistic drive. If Iceland has been sitting on your … Read more
Playa del Carmen is the Riviera Maya’s sweet spot: smaller and more walkable than Cancun, livelier than Tulum, and sitting right in the middle of the coast with the Cozumel ferry at its feet. But “Playa” is really three trips in one. Sleep in Centro and Fifth Avenue’s restaurants are your dining room. Sleep in … Read more
Tulum looks simple on a map — one beach, one town, one set of ruins — but where you sleep quietly decides what kind of trip you have. Stay on the beach road and you will fall asleep to the surf and pay for the privilege. Stay in town and you will eat better for … Read more
Tulum stacks a clifftop Maya city, swimmable jungle sinkholes, a vast wild biosphere reserve and a turtle-filled bay into one small town — and three days is exactly enough to do it justice without rushing. This itinerary sequences it the way I would for a good friend: ruins and beach first, a full cenote day … Read more
Cancun’s Hotel Zone beach is a fine home base — but the days people talk about for years are the ones spent outside it. A Wonder of the World is three hours away. So are clifftop Maya ruins above a turquoise cove, sinkholes of crystal-clear water hidden in the jungle, and an island where the … Read more
Mexico City doesn’t do anything small. Twenty-two million people in the metro area, a historic center built on an Aztec capital, and neighborhoods that each feel like their own small city — leafy and art-deco here, colonial and quiet there, all-glass corporate towers a few minutes away. Where you stay in CDMX shapes the trip … Read more
Mexico City is not a place you “cover” in three days — it is one of the largest, oldest cities in the Americas, built on top of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. But three days is enough to understand it. Done in the right order, a first trip gives you the ancient city, the imperial … Read more
Mexico City could fill a month on its own — but some of the best days of a trip start with leaving it. Within two hours of the capital you can stand on top of one of the largest pyramids on Earth, float through canals the Aztecs dug, eat the most famous mole in Mexico … Read more
Iceland is one of the easiest countries in the world to fall in love with — and one of the trickiest to figure out how to actually get around. Distances are long, the weather changes its mind every twenty minutes, and some of the best places sit at the end of roads that barely qualify … Read more