Author Archives: The Wife of Bath
Pack light, don’t forget the emergency lipstick
I’m on the way to the airport tonight with an 18 pound backpack. Packing light is a non-negotiable necessity for a budget traveler. If you want to be independent and highly-mobile traveler, pack light. If you want to be tied down by your luggage, be dependent on elevators and porters, and have your airline lose […]
Goslar: all fairytale, no twee
Easter Sunday in Goslar, at the foot of the Harz mountains in Germany, with a carillon in the town square at noon and a snowfall I never knew existed outside of musical theater: a fairytale village, but real. Realness is what sets Goslar apart. We’ve visited charming half-timber villages before, and enjoyed them, but they often […]
Does this moneybelt make me look fat? How to foil pickpockets and avoid scams while traveling.
Crossing a crowded street in Madrid, I happened to glance at HOB and saw a teen girl unzipping his backpack. The second she saw me notice her, the girl melted into the crowd and disappeared. At a café in Istanbul, a toddler suddenly appeared, and just as I warned “look out!” he had his hands […]
In which we visit the caves of Matera
We got on the bus in Naples and departed six hours later in another millennium. Matera, in the Basilicata region of Southern Italy, has been continually occupied by humans since Paleolithic times. We were there to see the Sassi di Matera, cave dwellings and churches that people have been living in for over 9000 years.When […]
How to get the best customer service from tourist information and visitor services employees: an insider view
One of your most valuable resources as a budget traveler are tourist information centers and the visitor services staff at museums and cultural centers. The employees of these organizations are passionate about where they live and work and they are experts on what tourists need to know. They can reliably provide you with brochures and […]
No one told me there would be cats in the Hagia Sofia
The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul is overwhelmingly grand, which I expected. What I didn’t expect were the cats. The cats of Istanbul are apparently unimpressed by this famous Byzantine church-turned mosque-turned museum, and they’re just hanging out or snoozing just as nonchalantly as can be. Actually all of Istanbul was full of stray cats and […]
Bramante’s Tempietto gets a visit from the Infamous Blue Traveling Poncho
This modestly-scaled building in Rome, the Tempietto, is the monument of Italian High Renaissance. Donato Bramante created his “little temple” in 1502 after a lifetime of studying Roman ruins and the architectural writings of the classical author Vitruvius. Bramante followed a strict classical ratio of proportions, where height equals width in the lower and upper sections. The Tempietto feels rather […]
The origin story, or how I became a raging travel-craving maniac
I was sixteen, living in a tiny Midwestern town and determined to go to Europe. I didn’t have money and in that rural environment, received no encouragement from my friends or teachers. Nonetheless, I researched relentlessly until I learned about the Rotary Club International’s Rotary Youth Exchange program, which funds and facilitates international student travel. […]
Bach’s St. John Passion in Leipzig: celestial voices, unbearable beauty
Listening to Bach’s St. John Passion at St. Thomas church in Leipzig, Germany, was an ethereal and indescribably moving experience. It was Good Friday and we were in Leipzig to hear the Thomanerchor, the boy’s choir that has been performing sacred music in Leipzig for over 800 years (they board and study in the town). Johann […]
Picnic at the cathedral: how to picnic in Europe
If you’ve traveled across the ocean to see a great work of architecture, a wonderful way to enhance your visit is to picnic in front of it. Beautiful view? Check. Chance to observe and interact with locals? Check. Cheap? Check, check check. While picnicking is fun for it’s own sake, it’s also practical. You have […]
Picnic at the Cathedral 