Editor’s note: a visit to Austin is always a treat, even when Murphy’s law hits you hard, as it did on Reina’s recent trip. I hope you enjoy the humor she approaches the situation with as much as I did! (For more on Austin, click here to read our full guide.) For more of Reina’s…
In April of 2019, just a couple days after returning to Los Angeles from my three month trip to France, I drove about an hour north from LA to the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, just outside the city of Lancaster. This was my first time seeing the phenomenon known as the superbloom, where after a…
This place is nostalgic, and for a couple reasons. First, it reminds me of my childhood; although I didn’t come often, I was filled with awe when I did. Second, it harkens back to an earlier time, one before large theme parks, the days of soda fountains and Ferris wheels. So while it is overly…
Life here in Santo Domingo is good. No, it is great. A and I begin our day with coffee, a blend from here on the island. Every afternoon, we have rum o’clock as we watch the sun set. And while we choose not to partake, evenings often include the smell of high quality cigars floating…
Editor’s note: like Sam, I tried to squeeze as much of Beijing as possible into just a couple days for the sake of the visa-free entry (which requires you to spend the whole time in a single city). You can read about my two days here. While I wouldn’t go to China now, part of…
I am always on the lookout for cool things to do, see, and write about. It is probably the best side effect to my life change in becoming a travel writer, the ability - the need - to notice such things to have enough content to keep The Royal Tour going between trips. So when,…
Some places just stick with you. They are so unexpectedly wonderful that they become a part of you, a part of your soul. Such is the case for me with Calaveras County in Northern California. After making my first trip to this small rural county that stretches from the foothills to the Sierra Nevada mountains,…
Editor’s note: shockingly, given how many articles I’ve written about wine tastings in California, I’ve never been to Napa. Now, thanks to Reina’s beautiful story, I have another reason to make that trip. For more of Reina’s writing, click here to visit her index page. When people think Napa Valley, they obviously think of wine.…
While most of the country is under snow from the recent cold snap, it is a beautiful day in the low 60s here in Los Angeles, sandwiched between a couple of (unfortunately rare) late season rain storms. In other words, it is a perfect day to find a neighborhood to explore, getting to know my…
It is a beautiful fall afternoon in Munich’s English Garden, and the city has come out to enjoy it. An area larger than New York’s Central Park, the English Garden is a vast urban green space of wide lawns, man-made streams created by diverted water from the Isar River, monuments, tall trees, and beer gardens.…