Tag: Romantic Travel

A Honeymoon of One’s Own

Santorini, Greece Abbie Kozolchyk

Abbie Kozolchyk traveled the globe to research a National Geographic book on romantic travel. That's when she discovered her inner stalker.

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A Sort of Happy Ending

David Farley was 15 when his older brother took him to a strip club in Mexico to make him a man

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Interview with Andrew McCarthy: A ‘Strange Second Act’

Jim Benning asks the actor, director and writer about his new book and his second career in travel writing

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Travel Movie Watch: ‘Before Sunrise 3’?

Big news for fans of the “Before Sunrise”/“Before Sunset” movies: Director Richard Linklater and stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are plotting a third installment in the series. Linklater, Hawke and Delpy are co-writers on the films, which, of course, revolve around two young travelers in Europe.

According to Hawke they’re about ready to get started on a new script. Says Hawke: “All three of us have been having similar feelings that we’re ready to revisit those characters. There’s nine years between the first two movies and, if we made the film next summer, it would be nine years again so we’ve really started thinking that would be a good thing to do. We’re going to try write it this year.”

I know, I know. Everybody cringes when a fave flick gets the sequel treatment—and yes, the “Sunrise”/“Sunset” movies are among my all-time favorites. But for me the first sequel, “Before Sunset,” doesn’t just match the original: It betters it. So I’m not about to write off a third movie as overkill. I want to see what happens next—even if Hawke and Co. did leave us, last time, with one of the greatest movie endings of all time.


Interview with Elisabeth Eaves: ‘Wanderlust’

Interview with Elisabeth Eaves: ‘Wanderlust’ Photo by Trevor Butterworth

Eva Holland talks to the author about the intersection of lust and wanderlust in her new book

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Vanished Friends, Love Lost and My Old Address Book

Vanished Friends, Love Lost and My Old Address Book Photo: Jeffrey Tayler

Jeffrey Tayler found a relic from his first trip overseas. It brought back a flood of memories -- and regrets.

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The Sexual Lives of Sri Lankans

The Sexual Lives of Sri Lankans Photo by paularps via Flickr (Creative Commons)

After a month of catcalls and groping, Hannah Tennant-Moore wonders what she's doing alone with a masseur

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Sea Change

Sea Change Sea of Cortez (iStockPhoto)

With her marriage on the rocks, Catha Larkin headed to Baja's Sea of Cortez seeking "a bit of the blue"

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Googling Romeo

Claire Bushey couldn't stop thinking about the handsome actor she met on a trip to England. Then she did something she'll always regret.

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Venezuelans Show Some Love For Love Hotels

Japan’s love hotels get a lot of media love. Now it’s Venezuela’s turn in the spotlight. Rachel Jones writes:

University students such as Daniel Ramirez, 24, often turn to mid-range hotels in central Caracas to be with their significant others. On his first visit to Hotel Roda, Ramirez had the opportunity to be intimate with a month-long girlfriend for the first time.

“There was no place I could go to see her,” said Ramirez, who lives with his family because he can’t afford an apartment. He was reasonably satisfied with his experience—including clean rooms, wall and ceiling mirrors, and a television with pornography—and later returned with another girlfriend. The awkward part, he said, was a lack of privacy in the hallways.

“Couples pass each other like this,” Ramirez said, ducking his head and cupping one hand over his eyes.


What Kiss Cams Say About Cities

I love this idea from a sportswriter I usually can’t stand: The Kiss Cam as a two-minute glimpse into a city’s soul. In this case, Bill Plaschke’s talking about the Kiss Cam at Staples Center in Los Angeles during Lakers’ games.

Nowhere, it seems, are the couples as animated, or the crowd as involved, or the message about the heart of Los Angeles any more clear. In a night filled with supermen, it is a brief, heartwarming reminder that the Lakers have been built upon the hopes and ideals of those who are real.

In a town where everything is supposedly disposable, no Kiss Cam moment is cheered louder than a smooch between an elderly couple. In a town that supposedly doesn’t trumpet family values, the second-loudest cheers occur for the forehead pecks of a parent on a child.

The third-most popular Kiss Cam moment? Hugh Hefner sitting in a luxury suite kissing three or four bunnies. C’mon, this is still Hollywood.


Confessions of a White Woman in India

Sharell Cook lives in Mumbai and is married to an Indian man. She shares the raw details of her life and her travels in India in an essay in Open.

How foreigners are regarded in India is a curious matter. Our white skin, and the belief that we have power and money, unwittingly elevates us to the top of the social hierarchy. Doors will open for me in India, while at the same time remaining closed for many Indians. Shop assistants will beckon for my attention,while ignoring other potential customers. Everyone wants to have a foreigner for a friend. I’ve lost count of how many times my neighbours have knocked on my door, asking me to meet every relative who visits them. They’re not interested in my husband, though.


Coming Soon: Same-Sex Weddings on Everest?

Nepal’s new government has some ambitious plans to rebuild and expand the country’s tourism industry, the Times of London reports. One way to make that happen? By becoming Asia’s biggest gay tourism destination—and, with a same-sex marriage bill also in the works, same-sex weddings on Everest could soon be a major part of that effort.

Said Nepalese MP Sunil Babu Pant: “There are plenty of gays and lesbians who want adventurous, sporty, outdoors kind of tourism. In other Asian countries which offer this, they are either not welcome or considered criminals.”


You and Me, Girlie

Susan Jane Gilman Undress Me Photo by François Bourru

In an excerpt from her book "Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven," Susan Jane Gilman recalls 1986 China -- and a swaggering, lascivious man named Trevor

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Travel Movie Watch: ‘Leap Year’

See, I told you Hollywood never gets tired of this story. “Leap Year” stars Amy Adams as uptight Anna, who decides to take advantage of an old Irish tradition and fly to Dublin on “Leap Day” to propose to her boyfriend. Of course, she gets sidetracked by a series of comic mishaps and a handsome European stranger—the trailer tells you the rest:

It hits theaters in January, alongside When in Rome, making it a good month for fans of the romance-in-Europe flick.


Photo You Must See: Wedding on the Great Wall

Photo You Must See: Wedding on the Great Wall REUTERS/David Gray
REUTERS/David Gray

Actually, we’re not sure there was a wedding—but at the very least, a woman in a bridal gown poses for photos on a section of the Great Wall of China.


Introducing ‘The Adulterer’s Concierge’

From the Daily Beast: “Because when you’re paying top-dollar for a penthouse hotel room or a corner banquette at a luxury restaurant, the establishment’s staff should know enough not to call your wife by your mistresses’ name.”


In Praise of Hot Locals

It comes from Guy Trebay and his essay in the latest Travel+Leisure:

Naturally, we all hope when we are away to find fine hotels and good food and clement weather and merry encounters with charming locals. But we also, secretly, want the strangers in the places we visit to give us something good to look at. If not flat-out beautiful, we want them to be comely or stylish or to have something about them to please that most promiscuous of organs, the eye. At any rate, that’s what my eyes desire.

This approach may seem politically incorrect, at its worst, and baldly superficial, but getting to know inner beauty requires intimacy. And intimacy takes time to develop, and travelers generally have little time to spare.


European Flesh and the American Prude

European Flesh and the American Prude Alexandra Beier/Reuters

Exploring Europe, exploring travel as a political act

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‘While I Was Away’: Lessons in Travel and Romance

One good reason to stay connected while traveling? Because if you don’t, your girlfriend might forget you’ve gone to Europe, wonder why you haven’t called her back, and start sending a sequence of regrettable emails. Here’s the hilarious and cringe-inducing video:

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