Why Cover Saudi Arabia as a Travel Destination?
When my Travel story about Saudi Arabia was published online last week, some readers bristled. Why, they wanted to know, had The New York Times’s Travel team devoted so much time and effort to a country whose authoritarian government has committed grievous human rights abuses? Why did the kingdom deserve our attention? How much had […]
Did You Buy a Disneyland ‘Dream Key’? Disney May Owe You Money.
People who paid nearly $1,400 for an annual pass to Disneyland will begin receiving checks in the mail this month from a $9.5 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit that accused Disney of misleading customers into believing that the program carried “no blockout dates.” More than 100,000 people who bought the Dream Key annual pass […]
Opinion | The Beauty of Embracing Aging
As Evelyn Couch said to Ninny Threadgoode in Fannie Flagg’s “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe”: “I’m too young to be old and too old to be young. I just don’t fit anywhere.” I think about this line often, this feeling of being out of place, particularly in a culture that obsessively glorifies […]
Disney’s Splash Mountain Set to Reopen With Princess Tiana Theme
In the summer of 2020, as a reckoning on racial justice swept the country, Disney said it would rip out Splash Mountain, a wildly popular flume ride with a racist back story. Some people cheered, saying the move was long overdue: After 31 years at Disneyland in California and 28 at Walt Disney World in […]
Dupe Destinations in the Aegean
In April, Princess Cruises told passengers that it was canceling a scheduled stop in Santorini, Greece, citing congestion. Four cruise ships were already anticipated to arrive on the same day in June, and were it to join, the ships would have brought some 17,000 visitors to an island of 15,500 residents. In the Aegean Sea, […]
Japan’s Tourism Surge Leaves Some Residents Frustrated
On two recent occasions, a foreign tourist walked into Shoji Matsumoto’s barbershop, through a front door that grates loudly when opened more than halfway, wanting a haircut. One was Italian, the other British. Mr. Matsumoto, who is 75 and speaks neither of their languages, didn’t know what to tell them. He picked up his scissors […]
Father’s Day Gift Guide: Colorful Watches, Japanese Toolboxes and More
Falling as it does in mid-June, Father’s Day coincides with an upswing in outdoor excursions. Whether your dad is into backpacking, fishing or forest bathing, he could probably use a few upgrades for his campfire cooking. Replace his worn-out plastic cooler with one from Oyster, a Norwegian company that launched its gleaming aluminum, vacuum-insulated version […]
Global Hot Spots Take Aim at Overtourism
A new tourist fee in Bali. Higher hotel taxes in Amsterdam and Paris. Stricter rules on public drinking in Milan and Majorca. Ahead of the summer travel season, leaders in many tourist spots have adopted measures to tame the tourist crowds — or at least earn more revenue from them. All of this may pose […]
A Look at California Today, and Tomorrow
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. When Soumya Karlamangla, who lives in San Francisco, tells someone she works for The New York Times, the reaction is often the same: a look of confusion. “People that I’m interviewing in the field will […]
So Close to Sicily, So Far From the Crowds
For years I had been hearing about the island of Pantelleria, the craggy, hard-to-get-to Eden with middle-of-nowhere tranquillity that sits 89 miles southwest of the island of Sicily and about 50 miles east of Tunisia. Luca Guadagnino’s 2015 film “A Bigger Splash” painted a seductive idyll of mud baths, romantic ruins and secluded swimming coves. […]