Michael and I road tripped through there last year. Did I perhaps have food poisoning at the time? Oh perhaps. But I did manage to do a city guide for Essentialist - because sometimes a service piece is very useful and they asked me very nicely. So since you may have missed it, here it is again. Let’s hope this city is on your radar to explore. Not only do they deserve your tourism dollars, it’s far more interesting that all the same same same places that just about everyone is exploring…

48 Hours in Buffalo

Why Go:

Located on the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River on the Canadian border, Buffalo’s is the “Gateway to the West.” The city may be known for being the birthplace of Buffalo wings, its overly passionate sports teams, plus the very nearby Niagara Falls, but it is also a hub of art and culture. Spend any time here and you will notice how friendly locals are, hence the Buffalo’s nickname “the city of good neighbors.” Plus bars only have to shout “last call” at 4am, so the townsfolk are out late, ready to make friends.

Stay:

For fantastical Gothic style historic architecture: The Richardson Hotel

The luxury hotel, with just 88 rooms, is a National Historic Landmark set on more than 40 acres of historic green space designed by famed landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. And yes you can do a guided tour of the entire estate. Since it was a former asylum, the rooms have giant windows, high ceilings and are a little quirky when it comes to shape and size. The Richardson bar is where to hang out to meet locals, and have a proper cocktail, or two. In terms of location, you’re right by Buffalo State University and within close proximity to the Buffalo Zoo, Shea’s Performing Arts Center, AKG Art Museum and Niagara Convention Center.

For something intimate and personal: The Mansion on Delaware

With just 28 rooms, the Mansion feels profoundly welcoming. In fact, they have superbly trained butlers to take care of your needs (the only ones in the city). The property itself is 19th century historic and a supreme illustration of Second Empire architecture. Many of the rooms have fantastical details from 15 foot ceilings, gorgeous three-sided bay windows, fun dormers and even eyebrow window heads. Sit in the lounge with its honor bar, and daydream about the heyday of Nickel City. In terms of location, you are right on Millionaires’ Row where wealthy industrialists and financiers built their fancy mansions during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Oh, you can of course rent the whole shebang, for 180 guests and call it a day.

Day 1: Start your day outside, then find some history

For that quintessential American diner breakfast, start your morning at Swan Street Diner for French toast and pancakes. To work off your hearty breakfast, Buffalo RiverWorks, an urban waterfront playground nestled within historic grain silos, is where you can zipline, rock climb, and kayak. Close by is also The Buffalo History Museum with many exhibitions including a walking tour of the Pan-American Exposition that took place over 100 years ago and a showcase on the impact of the historic Erie Canal. You can also board The Seneca Chief, a newly built replica of the 1825 packet boat that made the canal’s inaugural voyage. If you are craving some more knowledge, you can spend the afternoon getting your fill at the Buffalo Museum of Science. They have everything from bubbles, to biodiversity to dinosaurs to keep you occupied. The West Side Bazaar is where you want to end your day - bringing the world to your plate. It is the city’s first world marketplace featuring a food hall with a rotating mix of immigrant- and refugee-owned incubator kitchens serving authentic dishes from Burma, Ethiopia, Somalia, Peru, and beyond. And if you need ice cream after all that, pop in at Lake Effect, the small batch artisanal spot with interesting flavors like the rum-infused butterbeer.

Day 2: Another day outside, followed by art

Buffalo’s Outer Harbor, which includes the Wilkeson Pointe park with where to find scenic hiking trails, bicycle rentals, plus a public beach. You can pick up a coffee and a tuna melt en route at one of Public Espresso’s locations. A great way to leisure around in the afternoon, is a stop in the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor, where the Historic Colored Musicians Club & Jazz Museum offers live jazz and interactive exhibits celebrating its history, marked by the likes of Billie Holiday. Also visit the Michigan Street Baptist Church which was once a stop on the Underground Railroad and host to luminary speakers like Frederick Douglass. Lastly, don’t miss the Buffalo AKG Art Museum where they have for 150 years collected everything from Frida Kahlo to Claude Monet. If you’re peckish, they have a fast casual lunch spot Cornelia inside the Knox Building. But you could save yourself for dinner at Southern Junction, a James Beard Award finalist, with soulful dishes inspired by the American South and South Asia; think smoky brisket and fried chicken. And if you still have gas in your tank, try Waxlight Bar à Vin, a haven for serious wine lovers and cocktail enthusiasts alike.

We are back together again. This time we did a video call, from America to Europe. Because let’s be clear, I've been in love with Dominique since the moment we met, because not only did I think that she was witty and very smart, she also had this deep wisdom… and a little twinkle in her eye…so I offer you Michelin-star chef Dominique Crenn for the latest episode of Wayfinder: Life-Changing Travel — and it’s less an interview about food than a chat about geography, identity and how a life gets assembled one place at a time…

Dominique’s story runs from Brittany, France, to her long adopted home of San Francisco, and every stop along the way ends up on a plate at Atelier Crenn. Some of the stops are unexpected and tap into identity and place in a way that will make you sit up in your seat (if you’re adopted, like Dom and myself, you might find some kindred spirits right here). So listen and extend the time you think about her words and thoughts…

This one’s a conversation between old friends as much as an interview — we’ve known each other a while, and it shows in how far the conversation wanders.

🎧 Listen to the full episode here: The Road to Michelin Stars: Stories Behind Every Plate (ft. Dominique Crenn)

Oh an BY the By, of course go visit Atelier Crenn if you’re in San Francisco. But if you’re in LA and feeling like a lady who lunches, then this is the spot for you:

Monsieur Dior by Dominique Crenn located at 323 N Rodeo Dr, Beverly Hills, CA 90210, United States

Wayfinder is a podcast for people who think travel should change you a little. New episodes drop often.

The first travel writer was not a journalist. He was not a blogger with a round-the-world ticket and a good camera. He was not a Victorian gentleman with a pith helmet and a mild case of colonial entitlement. He was a Roman emperor who spent more than half his reign on the road, who built a wall across Britain not because he wanted more territory but because he’d looked at the map and decided enough, who rebuilt the Pantheon and wrote poetry and had the beard of a philosopher before beards were fashionable (I know it’s mustache now, but whatever) — and who loved a young man from Bithynia so completely, so catastrophically, so without apology, that when that young man drowned in the Nile, he tore a hole in the known world trying to fill it.

His name was Publius Aelius Hadrianus. We call him Hadrian.

And he was, …

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I stumbled across Eryn Gordon’s TEDx talk on a quiet afternoon and couldn’t stop thinking about it afterward. Not because it confirmed something I already believed, but because it didn’t. She made me reconsider something I thought I understood — travel — and that’s rarer than it sounds.

We don’t do enough of that. We don’t pause long enough to ask whether the things we love might also be causing harm, or whether loving something means we have a responsibility to it. Eryn does ask that. I think more of us should.

I reached out, and she was kind enough to share this essay. I hope it stays with you the way her talk stayed with me.

The One Thing Every Traveler Gets Wrong

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When British journalist Joanna Lillis arrived in Tashkent in 2001 for the tenth-anniversary celebration of Uzbekistan’s independence, she thought she understood authoritarianism. She’d lived through post-Soviet Moscow in the 1990s, watched a state relearn the language of control. But walking through rings of empty buses and trams forming crash barriers around Independence Square—gun-toting officers standing guard while silk-clad dancers twirled under flashing lights—she realized she’d entered different territory entirely.

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That sentence still catches me a little off guard, because Menorca is not the kind of place you expect to go back to for a reason. You go back because you want the light, the quiet, the feeling that time has agreed to slow down. You go back for the swimming spots with the metal ladders and the abuelas bobbing in the sea like they’ve been there since the Bronze Age. You don’t necessarily go back because something is happening.

But something is happening this May. And if you’re even remotely interested in photography, in history, or just in finding a corner of the Mediterranean that hasn’t fully been discovered yet — I’d genuinely tell you to book a flight.

The Short Version

Raw Photo Fest is a new photography festival on the island, created by Christelle Enquist and Jorge Delgado-Ureña, the couple behind The Raw Society. It’s set in Alaior — not Mahón, not Ciutadella, but the quiet town in the middle that, as Christelle puts it, “didn’t get the memo about showing off.” It runs for four da…

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Melanie Maerz Fotografie

I have spent the better part of my adult life sitting in European cafés — in Paris and Prague, in Vienna and Lisbon, in Madrid where I now live — nursing a coffee I’ve already finished, watching people walk past, and feeling, in a way I could never entirely explain, that I belonged somewhere. That the world was, briefly, correctly arranged.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to look down.

The chair. The chair was doing something. Not just holding me up — that’s the minimum ask of any chair, a low bar it clears without fanfare — but actively participating in the experience. The slight give of steam-bent beech. The curve of the back that doesn’t so much support your spine as enter into a quiet negotiation with it. The way the whole structure is light enough that you can hook one ankle around a leg and lean slightly forward over y…

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I’m at the Ritz-Carlton Masai Mara as I write this, which has me reflecting on all the other places I’ve been on safari. And I don’t mean the drive-thru version (which I have in fact never done). I mean real safari. Wilderness safari. Where animals set the rules and humans show up when they allow.

Safari almost always equals Africa. Lions on the Serengeti, elephants moving in slow waves across the plains, endless golden light that feels like someone staged it. But wildness exists elsewhere. There are corners of the world where predators and herds run on their own terms, where humans are secondary, mostly tolerated. Imagine telling the current power grabbers this little nugget.

I’ve been to these places.

Each has its own logic, its own story shaped by landscape, history and species that existed long before we arrived. And each one left me slightly off balance, slightly in awe.

India — Tigers in the Shadows

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The Fire Horse comes once every sixty years.

I feel it under my skin like a current running through every nerve. A hum in my bones. A pull I can’t name but can’t resist.

As a Wood Rat, I am usually clever, watchful, patient (well, mostly) — someone who observes a lot, plans enough, calculates a little. The Fire Horse doesn’t wait. It doesn’t hesitate. It refuses rules. It insists. It flares. It gallops.

All the quiet “rules” I’ve relied on suddenly feel too small, too slow, too safe.

Last year was Snake — quiet, strategic, patient. Months of observing, cataloguing, noticing every pattern, every rhythm. I shed old habits, routines, assumptions that no longer fit. I practiced careful steps, long reflections, deliberate patience. I learned to pause, to weigh, to measure.

“Measure twice, cut once,” my mother’s voice echoes in my memory.

But patience left me restless. My hands fidget. My mind races. I’m itching for motion, for risk, for audacity. The Fire Horse doesn’t …

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Travel, when it works the way it’s meant to, lives in those moments.

Not the checklist version. Not the “I’ve been there” version. But the kind of travel that costs you something — certainty, comfort, ego — and gives you something harder to name in return.

This is the space where Wayfinder exists.

And it’s why this episode, with Huda Alvi, has stayed with me long after the microphones were switched off.

Huda is an entrepreneur, a traveller, and the co‑founder of The Girls Trip, a company built around the idea that travel can be a form of collective transformation — not escape, not consumption, but connection. Her story takes us to Peru, to Cusco, to the high-altitude spaces where b…

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Look, I will be honest. Earth is exhausting. Airports? Don’t get me started. Mars, on the other hand, is basically the ultimate “Do Not Disturb” sign. And that sounds so great right now at the beginning of yet another spin around the sun…

Sure, it’s cold, dusty plus slightly terrifying. But it’s also dramatic in all the right ways. Those red rocks, oooooh and canyons that could swallow a cruise ship, volcanoes that make Everest look like a teensy speed bump—Mars is everything Earth pretends to be on le socials.

Whether you’re fleeing your coworkers, your city, or just life in general, Mars has exactly what you need: no lines, no Wi-Fi, and bragging rights that make Earth vacations look so silly sad.

Oh we need key words right - so here you go: “Mars travel guide,” “how to visit Mars,” “Mars tourism tips,” “Red Planet adventure,” “travel to Mars.” Now you’re reading this, correct?

Best Places to Visit on Mars

Olympus Mons – The Ego-Crushing Volcano

The tall…

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I hate that the industry spends months, sometimes years, debating what’s “in” this season—silent retreats, regenerative tourism, cold-water plunges, off-grid luxury camps. It all reads like a glossy menu where someone else decides what you’re craving. And often, it’s just rebranded human desire: boredom called wellness, awe called luxury, curiosity called a trend. Sigh.

And yet… there is one gravitational pull I cannot shake. One constant, quiet demand I can’t ignore. Call…

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The year will eventually be given a clean narrative.

It always is.

A handful of themes, a dominant mood, a few overstated turning points. Someone will call it a reset, or a reckoning, or a return. Someone else will call it chaotic. Both will be wrong in the same way.

What will be misremembered is not what happened, but how it felt to be inside it.

I don’t remember the year by its events. I remember it by rooms—by light slanting differently through unfamiliar windows, by voices sounding sharper or softer depending on the hour and the distance traveled to get there.

I remember one early morning, standing still on a moving walkway, watching the terminal slide past while everything else waited.

All over the world I heard conversations that often began with a pause, as if everyone were quietly translating themselves before speaking. Perhaps waiting to see what kind of honesty the moment would permit.

From the outside, the year will look loud: saturated, over-documented, endlessly explained. I…

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I met up with Pangina Heals the morning after a night out in Bangkok — the kind of night that reminds you why cities matter. We were sitting quietly at Aman Bangkok, the city humming back to life outside, when the contrast struck me: hours earlier, Pangina had been holding court under lights and lashes, bodies pressed close, music vibrating through bone. Now she was soft-spoken, reflective, fully herself.

Pangina Heals — born Pan Pan Narkprasert — is one of Asia’s most influential drag artists, but television only captures a fraction of her impact. International audiences first met her as the impeccably polished host of Drag Race Thailand, and later as a competitor on RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs the World. Yet Pangina is less a performer than a builder: a club owner, mentor and cultural engine shaping Bangkok’s queer nightlife from the inside out.

She grew …

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Even when you arrive with intention, the city sits quietly in the fold of the map, as Jan Morris writes in Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere — also they call it “the capital of nowhere” — thus resisting being fully grasped. It is not quite Italian in the way Florence performs Italy, not fully Central European in the way Vienna claims its heritage, not entirely Balkan despite the sharpness in its edges. Trieste occupies the space where definitions soften. It is a city that has learned to live with not belonging at all.

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We all carry something. A bag, a pack, a case, an attitude — a constant companion that follows us through airports, hotel lobbies, stations, summit halls, and the occasional baggage carousel that seems personally offended by our existence. Spit. Some bags are precise; some are overstuffed. Some announce confidence; some mutter chaos. Each bag tells a story, and every story comes with baggage — the invisible kind: low-level panic, tiny triumphs, quiet regrets, and the subtle reminder that nothing ever fits perfectly in life or in luggage. We get it, we’re all flawed.

Every zipper, strap, and clasp reflects a bit of who we are. Some whisper confidence. Some scream chaos. Some mutter, “Good luck, you’re on your own here.” And that is why the world is just so fascinating to behold.

First off, I was inspired by the New  Prime Minister of Japan’s tote
Sanae Takaichi’s Grace Delight Tote from Hamano is more than a bag; it’s a political instrument, a visua…

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Travel, in theory, is supposed to free you: shed clothes, shed routine, shed pretense. Love it.

But travel, in practice, often just reveals who the world still thinks you are. I’ve learned this standing beside my friend at Heathrow immigration—same flight, same passports, same jet‑lagged delirium. I’m waved through: a shrug, a stamp, done. He? Pulled aside. Politely. Professionally. With a kind of cautious smile that says: We’re watching. We’re going to keep watching.

Growing up in South Africa, I thought I understood borders. I saw laws draped over people to decide who moved freely—and who didn’t. I saw privilege codified in paperwork. I marveled at how an entire system could demand proof of belonging—only to deny it with the same breath. It taught me early what it meant to pass, and what it meant to be stopped. Add in my queerness here for an extra delight!

Where Borders Become Personal

So when I see my …

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Think of it this way — you are a cluster of atoms working together to make a unique human being with a particular life. You, alive right now, carry a singular set of thoughts, emotions, and stories moving across this great spinning globe among the rest of us.

For now, this planet is our only home, and it’s through travel that we get to witness all its beauty, culture, and complexity. Travel expands our sense of what’s possible — and, if we’re lucky, helps us uncover the hidden landscapes within ourselves.

That’s the spirit behind my new podcast, Wayfinder — a show that goes beyond the guidebooks and into the heart and soul of real travelers as they journey through the world.

I’ve spent my life traveling — writing, listening, and staying curious about the ways we human beings experience the world. Whether it’s a meeting place, a shared meal, or a single conversation, I’ve seen firsthand how stories connect us and inspire us. And that’s what Wayfinder is all about.

Inspired by the ancient P…

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Mozambique is poised to shine in 2026, offering travelers a mix of pristine beaches, wildlife, luxury, and vibrant culture. Along its Indian Ocean coast, new resorts are raising the country’s profile: Kisawa Sanctuary on Benguerra Island, a 300-hectare eco-luxury retreat blending forest, dunes, and beach while supporting local communities and marine conservation; Banyan Tree Ilha Caldeira, with 40 private pool villas opening in winter; AVANI Pemba Beach Hotel & Spa, newly rebranded with a 500-square-meter sanctuary spa; and Singita’s Bazaruto Archipelago lodges (opening soon), which combine ultra-luxury safari with coastal immersion. Offshore, the Bazaruto and Quirimbas archipelagos reward divers and snorkelers with whale sharks, manta rays, nesting turtles, and rare dugongs — some of the Indian Ocean’s richest marine life.

Inland, Gorongosa National Park has become one of Africa’s great restoration success stories. Once silenced by war…

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A Place from Stories

Ever heard of Tristan da Cunha?

Tristan, is a remote group of volcanic islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, and an arduous journey from South Africa (or anywhere really)…

When I was growing up in South Africa, Tristan da Cunha wasn’t some legend. It was just one of those names some of the chatty old folks mentioned in passing, tucked into conversations about the sea. They’d talk about the Skeleton Coast, with its rusting shipwrecks. The wild southern tip of Africa, where oceans collided and we have a holiday home. The Cape of Storms, where ships went down if you didn’t respect it. And then, further out, in the South Atlantic, there was Tristan. A cluster of islands part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension, and so, Tristan da Cunha, with its own little constitution. And always mentioned casually, like, “oh yes, that’s out there too.”

The Sailor and the Stories He Left Behind

My maternal grandfather — a French gentleman who never went anywhere without his chapeau (which he lifted for ladies entering a room) — gave those stories shape. He could have stayed in France with the vineyards, the inheritance, the silver cutlery. But he didn’t want that life. He ran to the oceans, instead becoming a sailor and carried the world in his pockets.

I was so little when he told me those stories that I can’t even say for sure if I remember his voice, or if it’s just my mom later reminding me that he did. He died when I was young. Maybe I remember him telling me, maybe I remember her telling me he told me. Either way, the stories stayed. They stuck somewhere in me — because they were special, because they felt like gifts I didn’t want to forget.

Songs at the End of the World

He’d talk about places with names that sounded like spells: Tristan da Cunha, Inaccessible, Nightingale. Tiny dots you could barely find on a map, but once you knew them, they lingered. He said the seas there were never still, and people sang because what else do you do at the edge of the world? The islanders had fiddles and accordions, and songs weren’t just tunes but inheritances, passed down like family land. Shanties from whalers, ballads from shipwrecked sailors — each one claimed by a voice. He laughed and said you could stand by the water and hear the island itself singing if the wind was right. Grandpapa!

The island has its own lore too. Ratting Day, when men charged into the potato fields to kill rats, turned chore into theatre. Or the “blind date” of the 1800s, when bachelors sent for wives from St. Helena, and women actually came, sailing across the ocean to marry strangers on a volcanic rock. What did the gays do so btw? Then there’s Jonathan Lambert’s treasure, the American who tried to settle in 1810 but drowned, leaving behind whispers of gold. My grandfather told it all like fact — the chest, the danger, the hope — and I loved it.

Life on the World’s Most Isolated Island

Tristan itself is volcanic, crowned by Queen Mary’s Peak, which rises over 2,000 meters. The 1961 eruption forced the entire population to evacuate to England, though most went back after a couple of years. Inaccessible Island, twelve square kilometers of sheer cliffs, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, home to the Inaccessible Island rail — the smallest flightless bird in the world. Nightingale Island and the smaller Nightingale Islands are vital seabird havens. Rockhopper penguins and macaroni penguins make their seasonal return, folding the natural rhythms into the lives of the islanders.

The archipelago is staggeringly isolated — about 2,800 kilometers from South Africa and 3,700 kilometers from South America. Fewer than 300 people live on Tristan da Cunha itself, in the one settlement, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas. There’s no airport. No cruise ship dock. You can only get there by ship from Cape Town, and even then, it’s a matter of timing with the weather. Visits aren’t casual; every visitor must obtain permission from the Island Council, usually organized through expedition vessels. Trips can take a week or more each way, and you need patience, flexibility, and a respect for the sea.

But once you arrive, the isolation makes everything feel alive in a way you can’t get anywhere else. The community is small and welcoming I am told, with homes scattered along the coast, potato fields clinging to hillsides, and dogs running free. Life moves at the pace of the weather and the tides. You might hike to Queen Mary’s Peak, explore seabird colonies, or simply stand by the ocean and listen. The songs my grandfather described aren’t just legend — they’re everywhere, in people’s voices, in the wind, in the surf.

At the Edge of Time and Sea

The history of the islands is as fascinating as the place itself. Tristan da Cunha was first spotted by Portuguese sailors in 1506, though the winds and seas made landing impossible. The first permanent settler was Jonathan Lambert, an American who arrived in 1810 and claimed the islands as his own “Islands of Refreshment.” Lambert died just two years later, and the islands eventually became a British possession in 1816 to prevent Napoleon from being rescued from Saint Helena. Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, visited in 1867, and the settlement of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas was named in his honor. Centuries of isolation and storms shaped a community that is resilient, resourceful, and deeply tied to the land and the sea.

Visiting Tristan da Cunha today is a rare adventure. It’s not about luxury or convenience. It’s about being present in one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth, feeling how the land, sea, and sky shape every part of life there. But as my grand father would say - the effort to get there will pay off.

Sometimes I picture my grandfather — hat tilted just so — leaning in to tell me about the islanders singing to the sea. Even if I don’t remember the exact moment, I remember the feeling. That somewhere out there, at the far edge of the map, people were holding onto their history the only way they knew how: by singing it into being.

And that’s Tristan da Cunha for me. Not just an island. Not just geography. But proof that even the smallest, farthest-away place can carry entire worlds of meaning, passed down in whispers, in family memory, in songs that outlast storms. A reminder that the world is still vast, and that wonder still hides in corners most people will never touch.

We want these stories to travel as far as the seas themselves.

This October, the readers who share Without Maps the most will win a free year of paid subscription — to gift to a friend or extend your own.

Stories are meant for sharing: forward this to a friend, post the link, or send it to that one person who dreams of far-off places. Every share counts.

Exploring the Edges

I do advocate for going off the map. Not because I don’t like maps, but because I want to encourage exploration. And also because the edges — the forgotten corners, the tiny islands no one really talks about — feel magical and aren’t so easily spotted on the map. They’re wild, stubborn, full of history, legend, and stories that refuse to be tamed.

I explore without maps, and these islands are so far off the chart they feel like fable.

Some of them I first heard about in family stories, others I stumbled across in books or films, and a few just called to me from the blank corners of an atlas. Tristan da Cunha has been my obsession the longest, the one my grandparents used to talk about, the one that feels stitched into childhood memory. That’s where this journey begins.

But there are others too.

Become a paid subscriber to unlock the rest of the islands and my personal travel stories that don’t make it anywhere else.

Upgrade To Paid

(P.S. I have been to only one of these places, I’ll let you have a guess which one?)

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