After years of debate, Venice on Thursday began charging day visitors five euros to visit its fragile historic center on peak days, making it the first city in the world to adopt such a measure to counter overtourism. Critics question whether a nominal fee will put people off from visiting one of the world’s most […]
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The Transportation Department on Wednesday announced new rules taking aim at two of the most difficult and annoying issues in air travel: obtaining refunds and encountering surprise fees late in the booking process. “Passengers deserve to know upfront what costs they are facing and should get their money back when an airline owes them — […]
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Sometime in the late 18th century, a sign appeared outside a shambly butcher’s hut in the English town of Stratford-upon-Avon: “The Immortal Shakspeare was born in this house,” it announced, using a then common spelling of his name. Devotees began making pilgrimages — dropping to their knees, weeping, singing odes: “Untouched and sacred be thy […]
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In 2023, the seashores, lakeshores, battlefields, historic sites, monuments and more that make up the National Park Service had 325.5 million visits, an increase of 4 percent from the year before. The National Park Service director, Charles F. Sams III, praised the surge of interest in “learning our shared American story throughout the hidden gems […]
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Each year, thousands of baby green sea turtles clamber across a beautiful, white-sand paradise that is one of the largest hatching sites of this species in the Atlantic, adorably making their way to the sea. There’s one noticeable absence: people. The spectacular hatching events take place between August and December on Poilão Island, a tiny, […]
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I stepped off the platform at the gleaming new Maxcanú train station, eager to see the magnificent Maya archaeological site of Uxmal. All I needed was a taxi to take me there, a trip of about 30 miles away. There are no taxis, said the stationmaster, as we stood on the polished limestone floors of […]
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The 75-foot-long brontosaurus at the newly reopened Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven, Conn., is the same dinosaur that the natural history museum has had on display since 1931. Yet it looks different. A fresh pose. New front ribs. The head is repositioned at a more inquisitive angle. The museum’s four-year renovation not only refreshed […]
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Are you still a little giddy from the magical moments of totality during Monday’s solar eclipse? Or did clouds swoop in to block your view? Maybe you just couldn’t make it to the path of totality this time. No matter what, the question now is “Where and when will it happen again?” “People who have […]
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For centuries, people have been clamoring to glimpse solar eclipses. From astronomers with custom-built photographic equipment to groups huddled together with special glasses, this spectacle has captivated the human imagination. In 1860, Warren de la Rue captured what many sources describe as the first photograph of a total solar eclipse. He took it in Rivabellosa, […]
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A brutish granite ridge soared above us in the moonlight. The snow that should not have been there in July seemed to go on forever. We were already short of breath, and weirdly, there were almost no other hikers. Even though I had trained for this, I felt stupidly out of my depth. We were […]
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On a Sunday in late January, Melinda Buchmann, who lives in Florida and supervises client relations for RevShoppe, a 30-person remote company advising organizations on sales techniques and strategies, arrived in Banff, Alberta, to help set up a four-day company meeting. The last day of the event, her husband, Josh, a director of strategic partnerships […]
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On Monday, the moon will steal between the Earth and the sun, a total solar eclipse in North America. The path of totality, the strip of the continent where the moon will completely obscure the sun, begins in Mazatlán, Mexico, crosses over more than a dozen U.S. states, from Texas to Maine, and ends in […]
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Federal authorities investigating Mayor Eric Adams’s campaign fund-raising have been examining valuable flight upgrades they believe he received from Turkish Airlines that elevated him to its highest class of seats available on international trips, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The scrutiny is part of a broad corruption inquiry that has already led […]
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On its busiest days, Venice swells with tourists who clog the city’s narrow streets, leave behind piles of garbage and often frustrate locals. So the canal-crossed city is fighting back. Starting on April 25, and for another 29 days scattered mostly around national holidays and weekends through mid-July, day trippers to the historic part of […]
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I hate mosquitoes so much that I bring my own bug repellent to parties. But in early March, on a trip with my partner to the idyllic island of Curaçao off the coast of Venezuela, I was caught off guard by insect bites after our bed-and-breakfast hosts said that mosquitoes didn’t usually appear until late […]
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For our last night in La Paz, Mexico, we kept it simple: A couple of cans of cold Pacifico, a bench on the malecón, the city’s waterfront promenade, and the sunset glowing orange over the shimmering silver-blue Sea of Cortez. My husband, Alex, and I had spent nearly a week taking scenic desert drives and […]
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Conscious of the weight of its illustrious history, Rome has managed to preserve an impressive number of archaeological monuments in its city center. The Colosseum, the Circus Maximus and the Roman Forum and Imperial Fora are just a few of the sites clustered in the city’s heart. As Rome, which will celebrate its 2,777th birthday […]
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Michele Heisler, 61, is an avid swimmer, putting in 45 minutes three times a week in a local 25-yard-long pool. But swimming while traveling can be challenging. “Most hotel pools are too tiny or too crowded,” she said. Then, while planning a trip to Chicago, Ms. Heisler, from Ann Arbor, Mich., came across a photo […]
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No sooner had British Airways Flight 9240 roared into the air over Heathrow Airport than the cabin air was pierced by a sharp, scary noise, like an alarm or a siren. The power surged and then seemed to falter, and the plane became worryingly quiet. (Too quiet?) What was it? Images of catastrophic scenarios — […]
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The pandemic lockdown in Japan coincided with a flurry of new hotels, especially in Kyoto, where the Park Hyatt, Aman and Four Seasons were joined by a group of independent properties and the first Ace hotel in the archipelago. When the country finally reopened to foreign visitors in October 2022, tourists came flooding back to […]
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My first conscious memory occurred on the lower landing of a staircase that spiraled up four floors of the 14th-century, moat-encircled Gjorslev castle in Denmark. I was hugging the railing while my tweed-clad grandfather, Edward Tesdorpf, who owned the place, smiled at me as he walked down the hall to take care of his ever-expanding […]
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A portion of Highway 1 in the Big Sur area of California collapsed over the weekend, stranding about 2,000 motorists, most of them tourists, overnight. Officials with the California Department of Transportation said on the X platform that a section of the highway, from Lime Creek to the north and Limekiln to the south, would […]
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