All in travel essay

Chasing the Dragon

Richard Collins traveled to the Brecon Beacons, a mountain range in South Wales not far from where he grew up. Despite spending his childhood there, he’d never felt Welsh until he left Wales. But living in different countries had inspired a retroactive yearning to connect with his heritage. So he returned, determined to chase that dragon. It didn’t go easy.


Breathe in, Breathe Out — An Expat Adapts

Acquisition and release are a necessary part of moving. For Elyn Aviva, who, together with her husband Gary, has relocated from Iowa to Colorado. Colorado to New Mexico. New Mexico to Spain. Spain to Arizona. and now from Arizona to Portugal, the process of adaption has become an exercise akin to breathing: Breathe in, expand, acquire. Breathe out, contract, detach, release.

The Opposite of Loneliness: How travel transforms the experience of solitude and staying home.

Thirty-seven days into self-isolation Ellen Barone asked her husband Hank, “Are you lonely?” Like much of the world’s population, they are physical-distancing and staying home to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19. Would this, she worried, lead to loneliness? And, in turn, to biological effects as deadly as the virus itself? Instead, isolation has brought clarity to something they’d innately suspected all along.

Where’s Oprah?

When Holland America announced the “Oprah Experience” as one of the highlights of its cruise ship Nieuw Statendam it wasn’t exactly what passenger Cathy Meils expected when she signed on for the ship’s premier voyage.