For those who have followed The Royal Tour for a while, and who are familiar with my preferred style of travel, it might come as a shock to them that I have enjoyed going on cruises. I have, in fact, been on thirteen of them, although none since I began writing. Cruises would seem to…
Welcome to the first of what will be a probably-irregular feature here on The Royal Tour. While I’ve written reasonably frequently about how I personally travel, I’ve given some push back to writing about my process of writing. I’ve thought it was less relevant, less interesting. But I’ve now given in, so this is for…
For me, one of the best parts of travel is cultural immersion. I want to experience something different than my normal day-to-day, and I prefer to do that as wholly as possible, within the basic limitations I have as a visitor. So while I may not know all the customs, speak the language, or have…
As I write this, I’m getting ready to leave for a Morocco and Tunisia trip. (It will not be published until well after that trip.) A friend - and frequent traveler - asked me if I feel safe going to Tunisia. She said she wouldn’t, especially not as a Jewish woman. This conversation coincided with…
As I’ve frequently talked about here on The Royal Tour, my preferred travel style is slow-moving, flexible, and self-planned. I like to go to just a few cities, and to spend weeks or longer in each, immersing with the locals and feeling like I live there. But there is no one right or wrong way…
In December of 2019, I officially became a German citizen, reclaiming the rights denied to my family by the Nazis. I received my passport in early 2020, just in time for the world to shut down. But once it reopened and international travel resumed, I found myself in new territory. I now possessed two passports,…
Welp, that happened. My scheduled direct flight on United from Los Angeles to Toronto, a new route on the US carrier set to launch in May 2025, was canceled. With demand for Canadians traveling to the United States plummeting due to current politics, United deemed this newly scheduled daily flight as unlikely to be profitable,…
When I first started The Royal Tour, solo travel was something that scared me. What if I got somewhere and had nobody to talk to? What if it wasn’t safe? What if restaurants wouldn’t take a party of one? Worst, what if I was just bored without a companion? Shortly into that first year, a…
I am a product of the American public school system. That system is notorious for being lousy at teaching foreign languages. Ours is a program of rote vocabulary memorization, rather than comprehension or immersion. As a result, shockingly few Americans speak foreign languages at all, let alone fluently. I am one of those Americans who…
In 2007, a new actor burst onto the scene of travel lodging. Airbnb was originally designed to allow people to rent out a spare room in their homes, functioning as a makeshift bed and breakfast. Since then, it has grown to be a major and direct competition to the hotel industry, with both rooms and…