Check to make sure that your very expensive digital camera with numerous delicate moving parts is not in your day-bag before you go to the beach. [See the full “What I’ve Learned” list here. Start at the bottom and read up.]

[The last in the “Don’t Go There” series (so far), is my physically sickening October 2003 visit to the capital city of the tiny nation of Andorra.] Being the typical uninformed American, I hadn’t known that the country of Andorra even existed until I got my hands on a large,…

I’ve just finished reading and reviewing a new travel book for Gadling by first time author Eric Weiner called “The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World” (see the review here). Great read, but more importantly, it made me reflect on my own Bliss…

Just as an FYI to my groupies and stalkers, I’m going to be without internet access starting the morning of November 30th, through (at least) the evening of December 9th while I’m traveling to and then bobbing around on a smallish (45.7 m / 150 ft long) ‘adventure cruise’ ship…

Even if you have a co-conspirator, even if you spill some, even if you’re celebrating something really awesome, three bottles of wine on a Tuesday night is too much wine. [See the full “What I’ve Learned” list here. Start at the bottom and read up.]

F*cking Italy!!! OK, OK… Let’s just calm down and try to discuss this like rational, levelheaded F*CKING ITALY!!!!! Here’s Italy’s latest piss me off endeavor: Last April, I rented a car from a so-called “car rental agency” in Florence through a broker web site called Nova Car Hire, to use…

It’s looking like this space hotel thing is going to be a reality. And thank Buddha for that. Never mind universal healthcare, we’ve gotta be able to blast a handful of recreational tourists into space a couple times a year. On a completely unrelated, but bitterly sarcastic note, I wonder…

This is just a link alert for a topical post that I just put up over at Gadling, entitled “Independently produced travel guides – pipe dream or way of the future?” The post is in honor of Robert Reid’s recently completed free online guide to Vietnam, though I take the…

We Americans have a lot of pent up anger. The reasons why this is the case could fill a Michael Moore trilogy, so I’m officially handing that task off to him. Meanwhile, how’s an ordinary guy supposed to vent this tidal wave of boundless fury, aside from demolishing the occasional…

[Continuing the shameless recycling of my “Don’t Go There” series while I drink wine and sleep late, the Monaco installment was written after an October 2003 visit where we were made to feel like lepers, criminals and gypsies. If you enjoy this, don’t miss my “Don’t Go There” reports on…