For the entirety of my life, Canada and the US have had a close relationship. We have been military allies, trade partners, diplomatic supporters… and we have been each other’s top travel destination. In a brief few months under the current American administration, those things seem to have changed. We hear anecdotes of anger on…
Would I turn my father in? That’s the question going through my head as I listen to Angelo Provenzano talk, part of my Sicilian tour’s commitment to controversial topics, this one being on the mafia. Angelo is the son of Bernardo Provenzano, former boss of the Cosa Nostra, the Corleone-based mafia here in Sicily. Would…
This is a topic I’ve been asked about a lot, and finally gotten around to writing down. No, I’m not a moralist or an expert on human psychology. What I am is someone who meets a lot of people all over the world. I interact with locals and tourists, with singles and couples, with large…
A dumpling place on the corner. A bakery a few doors down. A Jamaican take-out restaurant across the street, flanked by a taco hut and a gourmet cheese shop. Down the street, Chilean empanadas, Portuguese cuisine, a cannabis store, a burger place, and at least two hipster coffee shops. If ever a neighborhood could represent…
In 2018, my life was at a bit of a crossroads, to put it mildly. I had survived a 2016 suicide attempt, thrived in an intensive outpatient program and other subsequent therapy regimens, and flopped at a real endeavor to go back to work. I had been writing here on The Royal Tour since mid-2017,…
Editor’s note: I’ve been to Cambodia, a trip focused solely on the beauty that is Siem Reap and the Angkor complex. Our amazing Dutch writer Hedy took in the entire country, and with it the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge and one of the worst genocides of the modern era. Her story of the trip…
Editor’s note: we think of an expat life as one of constant adventure. And while Mike certainly had a lot of that while living in South Korea as he shares, he also talks about it as the opportunity to disconnect from routine and focus on self-betterment. That is a powerful message. For more of Mike’s…
Editor’s note: On October 7 of this year, Israel was attacked by the terrorist group Hamas, with more Jews slaughtered in a single day than any day since the Holocaust. Since then, Israel has vowed to dismantle Hamas and its networks inside of the Gaza Strip, an area crowded with civilians that the terrorists use…
Some countries are better than others at acknowledging troubling aspects of their pasts. Others pretend those things never happened. Most end up somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, not exactly hiding from their sordid histories, but also not really promoting that those things happened. Italy sits toward the “head in the sand” side of…
Today was a difficult day for me, and not because of the ever-present Northern Irish rain that has insisted on following most of my trip here. I am in Derry (also called Londonderry, but more on that in a few moments), the second largest city in Northern Ireland. It is a beautiful town, the best-preserved…