I had a premonition before I even arrived at the airport. Saudi Arabia has never been an easy country to visit. I rechecked the airline’s website just to be sure I had every document I might be asked to produce. Five security checks and one shuttle bus later, I found myself in front of the counter amidst piles of giant plastic wrapped suitcases and robed figures...
Women can be expensive, but $100 for 10 minutes is too much to spend for just about anything. Spas and lawyers don’t even charge that much. Why should a 3000 year old princess get that kind of cash? Nefertari is raking it in. I’m not talking about Nefertiti, the goddess with a similar name and the Grace Jones haircut. Nefertari was Ramses II’s favorite...
I didn’t always love tequila. Like many before me, I’ve knocked back countless shots of the cheapest well brands with enough limes to ensure I’d never get scurvy. Because of that, for years my perception of tequila was linked to hangovers and bad decisions. A few years ago I was traveling in Mexico when I stumbled across a local cooking up a batch of...
Meow Wolf Might Be The Coolest Museum in the Universe It looks like a grocery store at first glance. There’s poster sized ads for the latest products and customers are wandering around with shopping baskets. The employees are wearing their Omega Mart shirts as they restock the merchandise, but something just doesn’t feel right. Avocados with Zippers, Meow...
Get Petra-fied in Jordan “The Treasury” Photo: Bill Wiatrak It’s one of the most impressive archaeological sites I’ve ever seen. After being featured in “Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade” and then being named one of the seven wonders of the world, the ancient Jordanian city of Petra was catapulted into international fame. Mobs of tourists started...
I felt like I was in a scene from the film “National Treasure”. I was looking for a map, but not one printed on paper. I walked down the narrow street past the souvenir shops and asked a local for directions. He didn’t speak English so I mimed what I was looking for to the best of my ability until he suddenly grinned and pointed down the road. A century...
If I was given a choice of staying at any hotel room in the USA, there’s one that’s always intrigued me: the Rockstar suite at the Hotel ZaZa. Ever since I saw a photo of its cheetah print carpet, zebra chairs and guitars on the wall, I’ve been a fan of the brand and hoped to sneak a peek someday at this iconic room. The Rockstar Suite at The Museum District ZaZa...
I’d been waiting for immigration to wave me through, but the police seemed much more interested in praying or looking at their phones for it even to register that I’d been waiting on them for nearly an hour. I was the last one in the airport and my bag was lying 50 feet away on the other side of the stanchions. They joked with each other in Arabic, I tried...
Ask any American to point out Uzbekistan on a map or tell you one random fact about it and you’ll discover most know very little or nothing about this wonderful country. The “Stans” have always been a geographical challenge with their long names and confusing images. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my travels, stereotypes are almost always completely wrong...
Unless you were doing a road trip in the USA or visiting our amigos south of the border, there wasn’t a lot of vacation options for most of 2020. However, now, with hopes of worldwide vaccinations and international traveling slowly re-opening, people are coming out of their root cellars, looking towards the sky and wondering “what next?”. I just...