Most first-time tourists believe there’s not much to do in Granada besides the Alhambra, and that’s exactly where they’re wrong. That single monument on the hill takes care of itself once your tickets are secured, and the rest of the city turns out to be the part people talk about afterwards. The old Muslim quarter,…
Choosing where to stay in Granada isn’t really a question about location. It’s a question about hills. Almost everywhere you’d want to stay is within twenty minutes of everywhere else on a map, and a good number of those twenty minutes go straight up a cobbled slope. That’s the thing that decides whether your trip…
Granada is worth visiting, and I’d put it near the top of any first trip through southern Spain. What I’d add is that it’s worth visiting properly, with at least two nights, rather than squeezed in as a rushed stop between two bigger cities. That second part matters more than people expect. Granada sits inland…
Most food guides to Paris are built around a spine of wine pairings, pork charcuterie, and dishes braised in alcohol. If you’re like us and don’t eat or drink any of that, roughly half of a typical “must-try” list becomes unusable, and the guides written for you tend to be restaurant directories rather than actual…
The area you choose to stay in Paris will shape your trip more than the specific property you book. Get it right and you walk to most of what you came for. Get it wrong and you spend a chunk of every day on the metro, which is exactly what happened to us. If you…
Paris throws a lot at you in a short amount of time, and most guides respond by listing everything the city has instead of telling you what’s actually worth your limited days. In this guide, I’m recommending the things I did on my own first trip to Paris, what genuinely surprised me, and what I’d…
I visited Paris as a 20 year old, with my favorite cousin and my sister. This was also the first time that I was in Europe, and was genuinely excited to fit in as much into my trip as possible. Three days in Paris is enough for the major sights plus a bit of breathing…
Amsterdam is one of the easiest cities in Europe to gamble on during a long layover. Schiphol Airport has a railway station sitting directly underneath the terminal, and trains reach Amsterdam Centraal in around 17 minutes, several times an hour. On paper, that makes leaving the airport look almost effortless. The train ride is only…
When you look at Istanbul on the map, the first thought is, “Hmm, I can easily navigate through this.” You see Sultanahmet, Galata, the Bosphorus, the Asian side, it all looks close enough to fit into one ambitious day if you’re planning from your laptop months in advance. Then you actually get here, and you…
Istanbul is a city split across two continents by open water, and the first time you look at a transit map here, it looks like it should be a nightmare to get around. It isn’t. Once you understand the shape of the system, one card, a handful of lines, and a ferry network that turns…
