Dispatches
Dispatches · August 19, 2025
A guided tour through Roosevelt Island and Central Park revealed New York at its most layered—aerial tram, smallpox ruins, asylum history, Nellie Bly’s legacy, banana pudding, Bethesda Terrace, model boats, the Ramble, and Belvedere Castle…a not-quite-full-day tour with full-day density.
Dispatches · July 04, 2025
The Aljafería in Zaragoza is often framed as a monument to cultural coexistence. The truth is much more interesting. Across a thousand years of conquest, reuse, and reinvention, the palace survived not because it was virtuous, but because it worked. Power recognized competence—and kept it.
Dispatches · May 12, 2025
Montserrat rises like a pink cathedral of stone—half geology, half faith. I took a group tour up there to see the Black Madonna and the monastery that grew up around her. I didn’t leave enlightened, but I left impressed.
Dispatches · May 08, 2025
Three visits, three versions of Gaudí’s unfinished Sagrada Família. The first was chaos. The second was slower, with Krista on crutches. The third was just right—quiet and solo. 140 years on, the Sagrada, less building and more living prayer, still isn’t finished. Maybe it never will be.
Dispatches · April 11, 2025
Ponce de León’s house in San Juan is a study in contradictions. It was never technically his but built by his family after he died. In Cuba. He did way more than fail to find the Fountain of Youth, though he did spectacularly. And Ponce wasn’t even his first name! Yeesh.
Dispatches · March 24, 2025
We skipped Chichén Itzá in favor of Uxmal—a less crowded, more intact Maya site—and then hurled ourselves into two Yucatán cenotes, natural underground swimming holes. It was a day of sky, stone, water, and one polite panic attack.
Dispatches · July 31, 2024
We spent a day touring the waterfalls of the Atherton Tablelands in northern Queensland—complete with crater lakes, rainforest giants, wildlife stories, and more than a few reminders that all of Australian nature wants you dead.
Dispatches · July 16, 2024
The Cairns Show isn’t just a fair—it’s a chaotic, sweaty rite of passage where livestock meets questionable food under the relentless Queensland sun. We braved the heat, the crowds, and one truly tragic eggplant—along with some determined piglets—just to bring you the story.
Dispatches · July 10, 2024
The conclusion to our ill-fated quest to visit a new beach town every week along Queensland’s coast. Spoiler alert: We survived. Barely.
Dispatches · July 04, 2024
The continuing saga of our ill-fated quest to visit a new beach town every week along Queensland’s coast. It didn't go quite as planned.