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Camel rider at the Pyramids of Giza with the ancient monuments rising behind
December 15, 2021
culturephotography

Egypt Doesn't Let You Stay Neutral

I thought I knew what to expect. The pyramids, the heat, the chaos. None of it prepared me for what it actually feels like to stand at the edge of Cairo and watch the ancient world begin.

Cairo, Egypt
Seated double statue of pharaoh and consort in golden afternoon light, Luxor Temple
culturephotography

Luxor Temple at the End of the Day

Luxor Temple sits in the middle of the city, open to the air, lit gold after dark. You walk past it on the corniche and it's just there — sphinxes and obelisks and colossal statues, three thousand years old, surrounded by the city.

January 7, 2022
Marrakesh medina
foodculture

Eating Through the Medina

Forget the fancy rooftop restaurants. The best food in Marrakech costs almost nothing and is eaten standing up at a cart in the medina.

October 22, 2021
White sand beach with wooden pier and thatched umbrellas on the Red Sea
adventureoff the beaten path

Hurghada Doesn't Pretend

After two weeks of pyramids and temples I arrived in Hurghada needing to stop. The town doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is: hotels, seafront, reef. That turned out to be exactly right.

January 10, 2022
Ramesses II statue inside the Grand Egyptian Museum atrium
culturephotography

The Grand Egyptian Museum Is Not What I Expected

The GEM is enormous, overwhelming, and unlike any museum I've been to. Then you walk out and the pyramids are right there. It takes some adjusting.

December 20, 2021
Anubis tomb painting in the Valley of the Kings, vivid colours on ancient stone
culturephotography

Inside the Valley of the Kings

The Valley of the Kings isn't what I thought it would be. I expected ruins. What I found was colour — vivid, detailed, and completely intact.

December 31, 2021
Karnak Hypostyle Hall columns with carved hieroglyphs towering overhead
culturephotography

Karnak Is the Size of a Small Town

Karnak Temple complex covers two square kilometres. That's a fact I had read. It didn't mean anything until I was inside it.

January 5, 2022
Dean Village along the Water of Leith at golden hour, Edinburgh
culturephotography

Edinburgh Before It Rains Again

Edinburgh stacks three centuries into one frame. The tram, the Scott Monument, the castle — all visible from the same spot on Princes Street. Then you find Dean Village five minutes from the Royal Mile and the whole city resets.

February 11, 2022
Fisherman on the Bosphorus shore with the bridge spanning two continents behind him, Istanbul
culturephotography

Istanbul Doesn't Wait for You

I thought I knew Istanbul from the photographs. The Blue Mosque, the Bosphorus, the Grand Bazaar. None of it prepared me for the specific confidence of a city that has been doing this for two thousand years.

April 18, 2022
Twilight aerial of Ordu city cascading to coast with gold promenade lights
off the beaten pathphotography

Ordu, Before the Season Ends

Ordu is not on the itinerary. No one recommended it, no travel piece pushed it, no Instagram algorithm landed it in my feed. I went because the bus went there, and it turned out to be one of the better decisions of the trip.

May 20, 2022
Hierapolis Roman theater, ornate carved stone facade at Pamukkale
culturephotography

The White Mountain

I had seen photographs of Pamukkale my entire life and assumed I understood what it was. Snow-white calcium terraces with turquoise pools, like a poster on a travel agent's wall. The photograph does not explain the scale.

June 21, 2022
Sümela Monastery carved into a sheer cliff face above a forested gorge, Trabzon
culturephotography

Trabzon: The City at the Edge of the Black Sea

Trabzon doesn't ask you to like it. It just gets on with being itself — a Black Sea port city with a monastery built into a cliff face, a lake that looks like it was placed by hand, and food that tastes of anchovy and sea mist.

July 7, 2022
Mardin old city limestone facades descending to the Mesopotamian plain at dusk
culturephotography

Mardin: Honey Stone Above Mesopotamia

Mardin is built from honey-coloured limestone on a ridge above the Mesopotamian plain, and at night the lights of the old city reflect off the stone so the whole hillside glows. Below is the flattest, most ancient-feeling land in Turkey.

July 23, 2022
Lake Van at sunrise, vast alkaline water turning turquoise against the distant mountains
culturephotography

Van: The Inland Sea

Lake Van is 100 kilometres wide and soda-alkaline and sits at 1,650 metres above sea level, and when you stand on the shore and look out at it you understand the phrase 'end of the world' in a geographical rather than apocalyptic sense.

August 8, 2022
Tea terraces in the mist above Rize, intensely green hillsides vanishing into low cloud
foodphotography

Rize: Green All the Way Down

Rize receives more rainfall than almost anywhere in Turkey, and it shows. The hillsides are so intensely green — tea terraces stacked one above another in the mist — that the colour seems saturated beyond what is normal for plant matter.

August 26, 2022
Çifte Minareli Medrese twin minarets rising above the Erzurum plateau at dawn
culturefood

Erzurum: High and Cold and Completely Itself

Erzurum sits at 1,860 metres above sea level on a plateau so wide and flat that the sky above it feels larger than normal. The winters are severe. The Seljuks built their finest buildings here. The city does not pretend to be anything other than what it is.

September 12, 2022
Ottoman timber-frame mansions lining a lane in Kastamonu old city, the citadel above
culturephotography

Kastamonu: Ottoman Wood and Mountain Quiet

Kastamonu has more Ottoman-era timber-frame mansions than almost anywhere in Turkey, a Byzantine castle on the hill above, and the particular silence of a city that has opted out of the twenty-first century's urgency.

September 28, 2022
Artvin valley with the Çoruh gorge and forested ridges descending to the river below
adventurephotography

Artvin: The River That Runs Through the End of the World

The Çoruh River is one of the fastest rivers in Turkey, dropping 2,000 metres in its journey to the Black Sea through gorges so deep and steep that some of the valley floors see sunlight for only a few hours a day. Artvin sits above one of them.

October 14, 2022
Diyarbakır black basalt city walls stretching along the plateau above the Tigris
culturephotography

Diyarbakır: The Basalt City on the Tigris

Diyarbakır's walls are black — not grey, not dark, but genuinely black — because they are built from the basalt that underlies the whole region. Inside them is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the Middle East.

October 30, 2022
Vienna coffeehouse interior with marble tables, bentwood chairs, and afternoon light
culturefood

Vienna Between the Coffeehouses

Vienna is a city that has spent three centuries practising the art of sitting down slowly. The coffeehouses are the architecture — marble tables, hat stands, newspapers on rods — and they haven't changed because they don't need to.

November 17, 2022
Prague Old Town rooftops with church spires and the Vltava visible in the distance
culturephotography

Prague Before the Crowds Find You

Prague is the city everyone warned me would be overrun with tourists. They were right and also wrong. The trick is timing — not the season, but the hour. Before nine in the morning, the city is yours.

December 3, 2022
Nyhavn canal in Copenhagen with colourful merchant houses reflected in the still water
foodculture

Copenhagen: Cycling Through Noma Country

Copenhagen is a city that seems to have quietly solved several problems other cities are still arguing about — urban cycling, food culture, quality of public space. Visiting it feels slightly instructive even when you don't mean it to.

December 19, 2022
Tower Bridge over the Thames at dusk with the London skyline in the background
culturefood

London Between the Landmarks

London resists summary. Every time you think you have a handle on it, you turn a corner and it's different — different architecture, different food, different economic register. The city is essentially several cities wearing the same name.

January 4, 2023
Chain Bridge and Buda Castle reflected in the Danube on a clear morning
culturefood

Budapest: Two Cities, One River

Budapest was two separate cities until 1873. You can still feel the seam. Buda sits on limestone hills, quiet and residential. Pest stretches flat to the east, dense and noisy. The bridges across the Danube connect them but don't make them the same.

January 20, 2023
Milan Duomo cathedral facade with its white marble spires against a blue sky
culturefood

Milan Past the Duomo

Milan has a reputation problem outside Italy. People call it cold, transactional, not really Italian. They are wrong about all of it, but only if you know where to go.

February 5, 2023
Roman Forum ruins at sunrise with the Colosseum visible in the background
culturephotography

Roma: The City That Keeps Going

Rome is not a museum. It is a city that happens to contain the most extraordinary density of history in the world, and it manages this the way all functioning cities manage inconvenient circumstances — by ignoring it and getting on with things.

February 21, 2023
Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca rising above the Atlantic Ocean at sunset
culturephotography

Casablanca: Not the Film

Casablanca is the city visitors pass through on the way to Marrakech or Fès, and the city that Moroccans go to to find work. It is not trying to be charming. That is one of its charms.

March 9, 2023
Amsterdam canal with narrow gabled houses reflected in still water and bicycles on the bridge
culturephotography

Amsterdam on the Water

Amsterdam should not exist. It is built on reclaimed peat bog, below sea level, on a system of wooden piles sunk into the mud by hand in the seventeenth century. It exists anyway, and it is extraordinary.

March 25, 2023
Al-Masjid an-Nabawi green dome and minarets in Madinah at sunrise
culturephotography

Madinah: The City of the Prophet (peace be upon him)

Madinah is a city with a centre of absolute gravity. Everything orients toward the Prophet's Mosque — the city's layout, its economy, the attention and movement of everyone in it. I have not been in a place that focused before.

April 10, 2023
Masjid al-Haram at night with the Kaaba at its centre surrounded by pilgrims performing tawaf
culture

Makkah: The Centre of Everything

Makkah is not a destination in the way other cities are destinations. It is the direction that 1.8 billion people turn toward five times every day. Arriving there — to the real place, not the idea — is one of the most singular experiences of my life.

April 26, 2023
The forest of columns and striped arches inside the Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba
culturephotography

Córdoba: The Mosque-Cathedral

The Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba is one of the strangest buildings on earth. A forest of striped arches — built by the Umayyad Caliphate in the eighth century — with a Catholic cathedral inserted into its centre in the sixteenth. It shouldn't work. It is magnificent.

May 12, 2023
The Alhambra palace complex on its hill with the Sierra Nevada snow-capped in the background
culturephotography

Granada: The Alhambra at First Light

The Alhambra is the most visited monument in Spain and still one of the most astonishing buildings I have ever entered. The morning slot — first entry at eight-thirty — is the one to get. The light is right. The crowds are not yet there.

May 28, 2023
Plaza Mayor in Madrid at dusk with the surrounding arcaded buildings lit in warm light
culturefood

Madrid: The Long Afternoon

Madrid runs on a different clock from the rest of the world. Lunch at three, dinner at ten, the city at its most alive at midnight on a Tuesday. Once you synchronise to it, nothing else feels right.

June 13, 2023
Málaga port and Alcazaba fortress on the hill with the Mediterranean in the foreground
culturefood

Málaga: The Coast and the Picasso

Málaga has spent thirty years being the airport through which people pass to reach Marbella or Torremolinos. It is now becoming the destination. The change is visible and still in progress.

June 29, 2023
Seville Cathedral and Giralda tower rising above the old town rooftops at dusk
culturefood

Seville: The Heat and the Cathedral

Seville in July is genuinely hot — forty degrees, the kind of heat that rearranges your day into morning activity and evening activity with a long still period in between. The city has been managing this for millennia. It is good at it.

July 15, 2023
Toledo hilltop cityscape with the cathedral tower and medieval walls above the Tajo River gorge
culturephotography

Toledo: Three Faiths, One Hill

Toledo sits on a granite hill almost entirely encircled by the Tajo River, and the city on top of it has been there in some form since at least the first century BC. The three-hour day trip from Madrid does it disservice. It requires a night.

July 31, 2023
Ankara cityscape with the ancient citadel on the hill above the modern capital
cultureoff the beaten path

Ankara: The Capital That Means Business

Every first-time visitor to Ankara carries the same expectation: that it will be a boring administrative capital, a functional city that exists only because someone had to pick one. They're wrong, but it takes a few hours to understand why.

August 16, 2023
Antalya old city harbour with the Yivli Minaret and Taurus Mountains in the background
photographyculture

Antalya: The Riviera That Earns It

Antalya is one of those cities where the parts add up to something more than the sum. The old harbour, the Roman gate, the Taurus Mountains above, the Mediterranean below. You understand it all at once from the right rooftop at dusk.

September 1, 2023
Bodrum harbour with the Castle of St Peter rising from the headland and gulet boats below
photographyculture

Bodrum: Aegean Light, Ottoman Castle

Bodrum has two speeds: the marina at 2am and the castle at 9am before anyone else arrives. Both are worth experiencing. The city in between makes the most sense when you've seen both.

September 17, 2023
Fethiye harbour and bay with Lycian rock tombs carved into the cliff face above the city
photographyadventure

Fethiye: Between the Tombs and the Lagoon

The Lycian rock tombs above Fethiye are carved directly into the cliff face above the city, and you can see them from anywhere on the waterfront. They've been there for 2,400 years and show no sign of being anything other than permanent.

October 3, 2023
Giresun Black Sea coastline with the island castle visible in the bay
off the beaten pathadventure

Giresun: The City That Gave the World Cherries

The cherry is named after this city. Cerasus, the ancient Greek colony here, gave the Roman general Lucullus his first taste of the fruit in 74 BC, and he brought it back to Rome. Most people in Giresun have no idea about this. They're too busy growing hazelnuts.

October 19, 2023
İzmir waterfront kordon at dusk with the Aegean bay and city lights reflected in the water
culturefood

İzmir: The City That Faces the Sea

İzmir is the Turkiye that doesn't make it onto most itineraries, which is the Turkiye that Turks actually live in. Outdoor cafés on the waterfront, a liberal political culture, good wine from nearby Urla, and the ruins of Ephesus an hour south.

November 4, 2023
Kayseri cityscape with the Döner Kümbet Seljuk mausoleum and Mount Erciyes volcanic peak in the background
culturefood

Kayseri: At the Foot of Erciyes

Kayseri is serious about several things: its Seljuk heritage, its cured meat, its volcanic mountain, and its role as the commercial capital of central Anatolia. It is not serious about being a tourist city, which is part of what makes it interesting.

November 20, 2023
Hot-air balloons floating above the Cappadocia fairy chimney landscape at sunrise
adventurephotography

Nevşehir: Cappadocia From Above and Below

You can see the Cappadocia landscape from photographs. You cannot quite prepare for what it does to your sense of scale when you're standing in it — the fairy chimneys, the carved valleys, the whole improbable tuffscape stretching in every direction.

December 6, 2023
Sivas Çifte Minare Medrese twin minarets and ornate Seljuk portal in the city centre
cultureoff the beaten path

Sivas: Where the Seljuks Built in Stone

Sivas has three of the finest examples of Seljuk stone architecture in the world. It is not on most tourist itineraries. These two facts are related, and the second one is your advantage.

December 22, 2023
Maui tropical coastline with rainforest and volcanic cliffs dropping to the Pacific Ocean
adventurephotography

Maui: Road to Hana and Haleakalā

The Road to Hana is 52 miles and somewhere between 600 and 900 curves, depending on which sign you believe. It takes most of a day to drive it properly. The point is not arriving in Hana — the point is what happens along the way.

January 7, 2024
O'ahu coastline from the Pali lookout with the Ko'olau mountains and Pacific Ocean below
photographyculture

O'ahu: Beyond Waikiki

Waikiki is fine. The beach is beautiful, the surfing is real, and Diamond Head in the background makes every sunset photograph automatically good. But O'ahu is much larger and more varied than Waikiki suggests, and the parts that most visitors skip are the best parts.

January 23, 2024
Grand Canyon South Rim panorama at sunrise with the Colorado River visible in the depth below
adventurephotography

Arizona: Grand Canyon and the Red Rock Country

The Grand Canyon is one of those places where the photographs genuinely do not work. The scale requires presence. Standing at the South Rim for the first time, your brain refuses to process what it's seeing — the width, the depth, the layers of time visible in the rock.

February 8, 2024
Boston waterfront with the financial district skyline and historic harbour at dusk
culturefood

Boston: Freedom Trail and the Harbour

Boston is compact enough to walk almost entirely, old enough to feel European in the best neighbourhoods, and serious enough about history to have painted a red line on the pavement connecting sixteen Revolutionary War sites. The line works. Follow it.

February 24, 2024
Las Vegas Strip panorama with resort hotel towers and neon signs against the Nevada desert sky
adventureculture

Las Vegas: The Desert Fever Dream

Las Vegas doesn't ask you to believe in it. It just presents itself and lets you decide. The decision is easier than you'd expect: you walk out of the airport into the desert air, see the signs on the horizon, and the city starts working on you immediately.

March 12, 2024
Miami South Beach pastel Art Deco hotel facades along Ocean Drive with palm trees
photographyculture

Miami: Art Deco and the Atlantic

Miami operates at a specific frequency that takes a day to calibrate. The heat, the colour, the Cuban influence, the Art Deco pastels, the Atlantic visible at the end of every east-west street. Once you're tuned in, it's hard to leave.

March 28, 2024
Newport Beach harbour with sailboats and residential houses along the waterfront at golden hour
photographyadventure

Newport Beach: Harbour Light and Slow Afternoons

Newport Beach is where Southern California's outdoor culture is practiced at its most refined — sailing, paddleboarding, walking the pier at dusk, eating fish tacos on the peninsula. It is not trying to be anything other than what it is.

April 13, 2024
New York City Manhattan skyline with Central Park and the midtown towers at dusk
culturefood

New York: The Density Argument

The thing about New York is that it never gets smaller. You go back after years away and there's always a neighbourhood you haven't understood yet, a restaurant that opened while you weren't looking, a bridge view you somehow missed. It's inexhaustible.

April 29, 2024
Oregon coast at sunset with volcanic sea stacks, Pacific Ocean waves, and dramatic cloud formations
adventurephotography

Oregon: Coast and Cascades

Oregon contains more different landscapes within its borders than most countries: the volcanic Cascades, the Columbia River Gorge, the high desert east of the mountains, and the rugged Pacific coast. Getting through all of it properly requires more time than most visits allow.

May 15, 2024
San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge emerging from morning fog
culturefood

San Francisco: Fog, Hills, and Neighbourhoods

San Francisco is a small city in a large reputation. Forty-seven square miles, 900,000 people, and a density of neighbourhoods each with a specific character that makes the city feel larger than it is. The hills help — elevation changes of perception.

May 31, 2024
Texas Hill Country landscape with limestone bluffs and wide open sky stretching to the horizon
foodculture

Texas: Austin and the Wide Open

Texas is too large to be a single destination, which is both its problem and its point. The distances between things are themselves part of the experience. You drive for hours and the landscape changes slowly and then you arrive somewhere that justifies the drive.

June 16, 2024
Utah Zion National Park canyon walls at sunset with the Virgin River winding below in golden light
adventurephotography

Utah: Five Parks and the Red Rock Light

Utah's national parks are close enough together to visit in sequence and different enough from each other to justify every kilometre between them. Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, Arches: five parks, five completely different landscapes, all within a day's drive of each other.

July 2, 2024
Yellowstone Old Faithful geyser erupting with steam column against blue sky and forested hillside
adventurephotography

Yellowstone: Geysers, Bison, and the Caldera

Yellowstone is the strangest landscape in the United States. The geothermal activity — the geysers, the hot springs, the fumaroles, the mud pots — is the most concentrated on earth outside Iceland, and the scale of it doesn't fully register until you're standing in front of something boiling.

July 18, 2024
Vancouver skyline with the North Shore mountains behind and Burrard Inlet waterfront in the foreground
adventureculture

Vancouver: Mountains and the Pacific

Vancouver is the city where the mountains are not a backdrop but a presence. You see them from the waterfront, from downtown intersections, from Stanley Park. They define the city's western horizon and its entire outdoor culture.

August 3, 2024
Montréal Old Port and skyline from the St Lawrence River with the Biosphère dome visible
culturefood

Montréal: The French City That Isn't France

Montréal is the most distinctive city in Canada, which is a competitive claim in a country full of them. It is French in language and culture but not French in the way that Paris is French — it is something else, something it invented for itself.

August 19, 2024
Toronto skyline with the CN Tower and downtown towers reflected in Lake Ontario at dusk
culturefood

Toronto: The World in One City

Toronto's claim to be the most multicultural city in the world is supported by actual census data: over half of its residents were born outside Canada. What that creates on the ground — the food, the neighbourhoods, the cultural production — is worth the flight.

September 4, 2024
Amsterdam canal belt with historic canal houses reflected in calm water at golden hour
culturephotography

Amsterdam at Canal Speed

Amsterdam is one of those cities that only makes sense once you get on a bicycle. From behind handlebars, the logic of the canals becomes clear, the distances collapse, and the city finally reveals how it works.

September 20, 2024
Berlin blue hour cityscape with illuminated buildings reflected in the River Spree
culturephotography

Berlin Is Still Becoming

Thirty-five years after the Wall came down, Berlin is still a city mid-sentence. The gaps in the urban fabric, the vacant lots turned into art spaces, the memorials beside cafés — this is what a city looks like when it takes its own history seriously.

October 6, 2024
Chicago Loop skyline rising above the city streets with iconic architecture in the foreground
culturefood

Chicago Has Always Been Serious About Itself

Chicago doesn't need your validation. It built the world's first skyscraper, invented its own style of architecture, and put a stainless steel bean in Millennium Park because it felt like it. The confidence is real and it's earned.

October 22, 2024
Düsseldorf Rhine waterfront with historic buildings and the modern Medienhafen in view
culturefood

Düsseldorf, Quietly

Düsseldorf is what happens when a city decides to be excellent at the things it cares about and not worry about the rest. It has one of the best art scenes in Germany, the world's longest bar, and a Japanese quarter that materialised from nowhere.

November 7, 2024
Cologne Cathedral twin spires rising above the city rooftops against a blue sky
culturephotography

Köln and the Weight of the Cathedral

The Cologne Cathedral took 632 years to complete. When you stand underneath the twin spires, that number stops being abstract. The scale of the ambition — and the scale of the patience required to see it through — is genuinely overwhelming.

November 23, 2024
Arc de Triomphe at the end of the Champs-Élysées at dusk with car lights streaking around it
culturefood

Paris Without a Plan

I've been to Paris five times and I've done the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Musée d'Orsay, all of it. On the sixth trip I decided to do none of it. I walked, sat in cafés, and looked. It turned out to be the best version of Paris I've encountered.

December 9, 2024
Seoul city skyline with traditional palace rooftops in the foreground and modern towers beyond
culturefood

Seoul at Maximum Speed

Seoul is a city that operates at a speed other cities don't quite reach. Not frantic — organised, efficient, perpetually in motion. Three days there felt like a week anywhere else, in the best possible sense.

December 25, 2024
Tokyo skyline panorama with Mount Fuji visible in the distance on a clear winter day
culturefood

Tokyo Is an Argument About Attention

Tokyo operates at a density and complexity that is almost impossible to describe to someone who hasn't been. It is not overwhelming — somehow it is the opposite. It is the most organised, most considered, most quietly extraordinary city I've been to.

January 10, 2025
Barcelona architecture
culturephotography

Barcelona: The City That Built Its Own Language

Barcelona is the only city I know that looks like an argument between a medieval monk, a modernist architect, and the sea — and all three are winning.

January 15, 2025