Leah Berenson
Freelance Writer
Most travelers pack their bags carefully, confirm their hotel bookings twice, and still leave home without the one thing that matters most in a real emergency: a plan. Travel in 2026 is genuinely exciting, and in most respects it’s safer than ever. Travel safety trends in 2026 show that while travel remains statistically safe, the
Freelance Writer
Most people pack their bags, book their flights, and figure they’ll sort things out when they land. Experienced travelers tend to work differently. They’ve learned, often through small misfortunes, that staying safe abroad is less about luck and more about a consistent, low-effort mental habit they carry with them at every stage of a trip.
Freelance Writer
Most travelers step off a long flight, drag their bags through arrivals, and slide into the nearest available taxi with something close to relief. That moment of exhaled tension is exactly what experienced route scammers are counting on. The tricks used against tourists in the back of a cab are rarely dramatic, and that’s precisely
Freelance Writer
Every seasoned traveler has a story. A phone left on a café table. A wallet that vanished somewhere between the metro turnstile and the platform. A bag unzipped in a crowd, contents gone before anyone noticed. The story almost always begins the same way: a moment of distraction. Distraction is not just a contributing factor
Freelance Writer
Summer at a hotel pool is supposed to be simple: you pack the kids into their swimsuits, slather on the sunscreen, and head downstairs for a few carefree hours in the water. What many families don’t realize is that hotels have quietly expanded and tightened their pool policies in recent years, and some of those
Freelance Writer
There was a time when driving carried a kind of social contract. You waved when someone let you in. You kept your lights low for oncoming traffic. You moved right when you didn’t need to pass. These weren’t laws exactly, more like shared understandings that kept the whole system running smoothly. Somewhere along the way,
Freelance Writer
There’s a sound that most visitors come to national parks specifically to escape: the relentless hum of urban life. Traffic, sirens, the constant digital chatter. What they find instead, increasingly, is someone’s playlist echoing off canyon walls or drifting across a mountain lake. The Bluetooth speaker has become one of the most quietly disruptive pieces
Freelance Writer
Most people think about Minnesota and picture long winters, walleye fishing, and maybe a Paul Bunyan statue. Clean air rankings don’t usually come to mind. Yet tucked into the northeastern corner of the state, a corner of Minnesota has quietly earned some of the most impressive air quality scores in the entire country, verified by
Freelance Writer
There’s something quietly radical about pressing play on a cassette tape in 2026. No algorithm. No shuffle. No recommendations from a machine that’s been studying your listening habits. Just a sequence of songs someone chose, in an order they carefully considered, recorded in real time with intention and a little bit of held breath. The
Freelance Writer
There was a time, not so long ago, when a family road trip meant stopping at a shaded pull-off, spreading a cloth over a wooden picnic table, and eating a proper meal with the sound of wind in the trees and the distant hum of passing cars. Nobody called it a wellness ritual. It was
Freelance Writer
There’s a quiet but unmistakable shift happening in how certain travelers are choosing to move through the world. The packed metro, the relentless urban grid, the noise that never fully stops – for a growing number of people, that life has started to feel less like ambition and more like weight. And among those walking
Freelance Writer
There was a time when getting a little lost on a road trip was part of the experience. You’d take a wrong turn, end up on a two-lane road through a small town you’d never heard of, and stumble across a diner, a viewpoint, or a painted barn that nobody had ever pinned on a
Freelance Writer