Three days in Rome is an exercise in magnificent inadequacy. The city has been accumulating greatness for nearly three thousand years — layer upon layer of republic, empire, medieval commune, Renaissance papacy, Baroque spectacle, and living modern capital, each civilization building on and over and sometimes through the one that… Read more

Five days in Tokyo is both too much and not nearly enough, and this paradox is the starting point for understanding what kind of city you are dealing with. Too much because Tokyo — a city of 37 million people, the largest metropolitan area in the world, a place of… Read more

Paris has a reputation problem — not with the city itself, which is magnificent, but with the version of Paris that most first-time visitors experience. The version of excessive queuing, overpriced café terrasses on the tourist boulevards, the Mona Lisa glimpsed over seventeen rows of raised smartphones, the feeling that… Read more

Three days in Istanbul is not enough. This needs to be stated honestly and immediately, before the itinerary begins, because Istanbul is the kind of city that makes every visitor acutely aware of how much they are not seeing — the neighborhoods not reached, the mosques not entered, the ferry… Read more