Travel Guides & Inspiration

Weald and Downland Open Air Museum: Rebuilding England's Rural Past In a fold of the South Downs at Singleton, near Chichester, a medieval farmhouse from Kent stands a few minutes' walk from a Tudor kitchen, a seventeenth-century watermill and a…

Lacock Abbey and Village: Monastic Estate to Screen Heritage Walk down Church Street in Lacock and it is hard to say which century you are in. The stone and timber-framed houses, the fifteenth-century church, the inns and the great medieval…

Avebury Stone Circle: A Living Neolithic Landscape in a Wiltshire Village Most prehistoric monuments are visited. Avebury is lived in. The Avebury stone circle, the largest prehistoric stone circle in the world, encloses part of a working Wiltshire village: a…

Khirokitia: Neolithic Houses and Early Village Life in Cyprus Khirokitia, also spelled Choirokoitia, is a Neolithic village on a hillside above the Maroni River in southern Cyprus, about six kilometres from the coast between Limassol and Larnaca. Founded around 7000…

Paphos Archaeological Park: Roman Mosaics and Civic Life in Cyprus Paphos Archaeological Park, by the harbour of Kato Paphos on the west coast of Cyprus, covers most of the ancient city of Nea Paphos, the capital of Cyprus under the…

Salamis, Cyprus: Harbour City, Antiquity and the Famagusta Coast Salamis, on the east coast of Cyprus a few kilometres north of Famagusta, was for well over a thousand years one of the great cities of the island: a harbour city-kingdom…

Troodos Painted Churches: Byzantine Frescoes and Sacred Landscapes of Cyprus The Troodos painted churches are a group of small Byzantine and post-Byzantine churches and monasteries in the mountains of central Cyprus, whose interiors are covered in wall paintings from the…

Lindos Acropolis: Sanctuary, Harbour and Island City The acropolis of Lindos is a high rock on the east coast of Rhodes, about 40 kilometres south of Rhodes town, crowned by the sanctuary of Athena Lindia and ringed by the walls…

Palace of the Grand Master Rhodes: Hospitallers, Ottomans and Italian Restoration The Palace of the Grand Master in Rhodes is the great fortified building at the top of the medieval walled town, the residence and headquarters of the Knights of…

Phaistos Palace: Minoan Power in the Mesara Plain The Minoan palace of Phaistos stands on the eastern end of a ridge in south-central Crete, about 60 kilometres south of Heraklion, looking out over the Mesara Plain, the largest stretch of…

Malia Palace, Crete: Courts, Storage and the Coastal World of Minoan Crete The Minoan palace of Malia lies on the north coast of Crete, about 35 kilometres east of Heraklion, on a low plain a little over a kilometre from…

Assyrtiko Santorini: Volcanic Vines, Basket Training and Island Wine Assyrtiko is the white grape at the heart of Santorini's wine: a variety native to the island that keeps its sharp, fresh acidity even in a hot, dry climate, and that…

Nea Kameni: Santorini’s Volcanic Caldera and a Landscape Still Forming Nea Kameni, "the New Burnt Island", is the young volcanic island at the centre of Santorini's flooded caldera, a dark mound of lava about two kilometres across that has grown…

Ancient Thera: A Dorian City Above Santorini’s Caldera Ancient Thera is the ruined Greek city that stands on Mesa Vouno, a steep limestone ridge almost 400 metres high on the south-east coast of Santorini, between the beaches of Kamari and…

Eastern Mediterranean Islands Itinerary: Santorini, Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus in 21 Days Santorini, Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus are four of the great eastern Mediterranean islands, and taken in that order they tell a single long story: a Bronze Age port…

Heraklion Archaeological Museum: Reading Minoan Art After the Site Visit The Heraklion Archaeological Museum, in the centre of Crete's capital, holds the finest collection of Minoan art in the world: the frescoes, figurines, stone vessels, jewellery, seals and clay tablets…

Akrotiri, Santorini: A Bronze Age Port City Beneath Volcanic Ash Akrotiri, on Santorini's southern peninsula, is a Bronze Age port town that was buried under metres of volcanic ash and pumice some three and a half thousand years ago, and…

Knossos Palace: Minoan Administration, Archaeology and the Evans Legacy Five kilometres south of the old harbour of Heraklion, on a low rise called Kephala hill, lie the remains of the largest Bronze Age centre on Crete. Knossos palace is one…

Ancient Greece Itinerary: A 22-Day Journey from Athens to the Peloponnese and Aegean Greece rewards travellers who take it in order. Visit the Acropolis on its own, or Delphi as a day trip from Athens, and each site is remarkable…

Corfu Old Town: Venetian Forts, Ionian Routes and European Layers Arrive in Corfu by sea, and the first thing you see is a fortress: a rocky headland crowned by two peaks, walled and bastioned, cut off from the town by…

Thermopylae Battle: Landscape, Memory and the Story of Leonidas Travellers driving south from Lamia towards Delphi today cross a broad, flat plain between mountains and the sea, cut through by a motorway, with the coast some way off to the…

Delos, Greece: Sacred Island, Trade Network and Archaeological City Half an hour by boat from the whitewashed lanes of Mykonos lies a low, dry, rocky island with almost no one living on it. Step ashore, and the ground is covered…

Meteora Monasteries: Rock Landscapes, Orthodox Communities and Sacred Height At the edge of the Thessalian plain, behind the town of Kalambaka, a cluster of grey rock towers rises abruptly from the valley floor, smooth-sided and streaked with dark weathering, as…

Oracle of Delphi: Consultation Ritual and the Sacred Landscape of Apollo For more than a thousand years, people climbed a steep mountainside in central Greece to put their questions to a god. Kings asked whether to go to war, cities…

Mystras, Greece: Byzantine City on a Spartan Hillside About eight kilometres from modern Sparta, a steep spur of the Taygetos mountains is covered from foot to summit with the ruins of a medieval city: domed churches, monastery walls, houses, gates…

Palace of Nestor: Mycenaean Pylos and the Archaeology of a Bronze Age Kingdom On a low hill among olive groves in the south-west Peloponnese, under a long modern roof, lie the remains of a Bronze Age palace that has told…

Mycenae Archaeological Site: Lion Gate, Tombs and Bronze Age Power Mycenae sits on a low, rocky hill in the north-eastern Peloponnese, tucked between two higher peaks and looking out over the plain of Argos towards the sea. From a distance…

Diros Caves: Water Caves and Prehistoric Landscapes of the Mani On the western shore of the Mani, where the bare grey mountains of the southern Peloponnese drop straight into the sea, a small boat slides from daylight into darkness. Inside,…

Ancient Olympic Games: Olympia, Festival, Sport and Panhellenic Identity The ancient Olympic Games were not, first and foremost, a sporting event. They were a religious festival in honour of Zeus, held every four years in a sanctuary in the green…

Parthenon History: Temple, Treasury, Church and Museum Piece Few buildings have lived as many lives as the Parthenon. Raised in the fifth century BC as a temple to Athena, it also served as the strongroom of an empire, then for…

Corinth Canal: An Ancient Isthmus and a Modern Engineering Cut West of Athens, on the road into the Peloponnese, the motorway crosses a gap in the earth so narrow and so deep that it looks less like a waterway than…

Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus: Sound, Sanctuary and Performance Stand in the round orchestra of the ancient theatre of Epidaurus and look up, and the whole hillside seems to fold towards you: fifty-five rows of pale limestone seats climbing a wooded…

Acropolis of Athens: Sacred Rock, Civic Symbol and Archaeological Landscape Seen from almost anywhere in central Athens, the Acropolis of Athens looks like a single monument: a pale limestone outcrop crowned by the Parthenon. Walk up it, and it turns…

Brunel’s Thames Tunnel: The First Tunnel Beneath a Navigable River London Overground trains run beneath the Thames between Rotherhithe and Wapping every day, and few passengers notice that they are travelling through one of the most stubborn engineering projects of…

Stockton and Darlington Railway: Coal, Passengers and the First Public Steam Railway On 27 September 1825 a small steam engine called Locomotion set off from Shildon in County Durham at the head of a long train of coal wagons, most…

Derwent Valley Mills: Cromford Water Power and the Factory Landscape In the narrow limestone valley at Cromford in Derbyshire, a tall gritstone mill stands behind a wall of severe stone buildings, with a village of workers' houses climbing the hill…

Neptune’s Staircase: Eight Locks on the Caledonian Canal At Banavie, a few miles north of Fort William, the Caledonian Canal comes down to the sea in one long, deliberate stride. Neptune's Staircase is a flight of eight locks built by…

Falkirk Wheel: A Modern Boat Lift Reconnecting Scotland’s Historic Canals On the western edge of Falkirk, two great curved steel arms turn slowly above a basin of water, carrying canal boats up and down between two waterways that had been…

New Lanark: Water Power, Robert Owen and the Model Industrial Community A mile below the market town of Lanark, the River Clyde runs through a steep wooded gorge, and at the bottom of it stands a complete Georgian factory village:…

Ribblehead Viaduct: The Settle–Carlisle Railway and a Landmark Saved At the head of the Ribble valley in the Yorkshire Dales, where the road from Ingleton to Hawes crosses an open, boggy moor, a line of twenty-four stone arches stands against…

Lancaster Canal: Contour Engineering and Waterway Transport in North-West England North of Preston, the Lancaster Canal runs for more than forty miles towards the edge of the Lake District without a single lock. It does this by refusing to climb:…

Llangollen Canal: Water Supply, Horseshoe Falls and an Engineered Welsh Landscape Most canals are still water. The Llangollen Canal moves. Walk its towpath west of Llangollen and you can see the current running gently eastward, because this narrow waterway in…

Ffestiniog Railway: Slate, Narrow Gauge and the Mountain Route to Porthmadog High in the mountains of north-west Wales, the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog sits among grey hillsides that are not hillsides at all, but tips of waste slate piled over…

Britain’s Canals and Railways: An Industrial Heritage Journey Through England, Wales and Scotland A boat rising inside a box of water at Anderton, a canal carried 39 metres above the River Dee, a slate train winding down a Welsh mountainside,…

Ironbridge Gorge: Iron Founding, Engineering and the Making of an Industrial Landscape The River Severn runs through a narrow, wooded valley in Shropshire, and for a few miles its banks hold more evidence of how iron changed Britain than almost…

Marple Locks: Water Levels, Gravity and a Flight of Sixteen On the south-eastern edge of Greater Manchester, the Peak Forest Canal leaves the high stone aqueduct over the River Goyt and climbs a wooded hillside in sixteen deliberate steps. These…

Anderton Boat Lift: How Victorian Engineering Moved Boats Between Canal and River On the north bank of the River Weaver, just outside Northwich in Cheshire, a three-storey black iron frame stands over a riverside basin like a piece of dockyard…

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct: Telford’s Canal in the Air Across the Dee Valley Walk out onto the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and the ground simply falls away. A narrowboat-wide channel of water runs level through the air, almost forty metres above the River Dee,…

Belfast Political Murals: Memory, Community and the City’s Changing Walls Walk up the Falls Road from Belfast city centre, or along the Shankill a few hundred metres to the north, and the gable ends of terraced houses begin to speak:…

Giant’s Causeway Geology: Basalt Columns and Northern Ireland’s Coast Few landscapes look as though they were made on purpose. The Giant’s Causeway does: some 40,000 dark basalt columns, most of them six-sided, packed together like the cells of a honeycomb…

Irish Diaspora in Australia: Migration, Memory and a Journey Back to Ireland At the 2021 census, more than 2.4 million people in Australia named Irish among their ancestries, and historians suspect the true number with an Irish forebear is far…

Siamsa Tíre: Ireland’s National Folk Theatre and Living Performance in Kerry In Tralee’s Town Park stands a circular theatre modelled on the ancient stone ringforts of the Kerry countryside, and inside it works a company with an unusual mission. Siamsa…

Harland & Wolff Shipyard: Belfast’s Industrial Heritage Beyond the Titanic Look east across the River Lagan from almost anywhere in Belfast and two yellow gantry cranes fill the horizon. They stand over the Harland and Wolff shipyard, where for more…

Donegal Gaeltacht: Irish Language, Landscape and the North-West Drive west from Donegal town along the shore of Donegal Bay and, somewhere beyond the fishing harbour of Killybegs, the road signs begin to speak only Irish. The village at the foot…

Donegal Tweed: Wool Craft and the Atlantic Landscape Look closely at a length of Donegal tweed and the colour comes apart. What reads from across a room as a soft heather-brown turns out, at arm's length, to be flecked with…

The Seven Churches of Aran: Early Christian Landscapes on Inis Mór Near the western end of Inis Mór, a little below the island road at Eoghanacht, a cluster of roofless grey buildings sits in a shallow hollow among graves, cross…

Dún Aonghasa: The Aran Islands Fort Above the Atlantic On the southern edge of Inis Mór, three great curves of drystone wall run up to a cliff and simply stop, as if the rest of the fort had fallen into…

Cliffs of Moher Geology: Reading Ireland’s Atlantic Edge Stand on the path near O’Brien’s Tower and the Cliffs of Moher look at first like a single dark wall dropping into the Atlantic. Look a little longer and the wall resolves…

Ireland and Northern Ireland Itinerary: An 18-Day Clockwise Journey Across the Island Most visitors see Ireland in pieces: a long weekend in Dublin, a drive around Kerry, perhaps a day trip north to the Giant's Causeway. Taken that way, the…

Dingle Peninsula Archaeology: Ringforts, Oratories and the Atlantic Edge West of Dingle town the road narrows, the fields shrink, the stone walls thicken, and the peninsula begins to show its age. Within a few kilometres of Slea Head you can…

Powerscourt Estate and Gardens: Landscape Design in Ireland’s Wicklow Mountains Stand on the upper terrace at Powerscourt Estate and the garden seems to fall away from your feet: grass banks and stone stairs stepping down to a round lake, a…

Rock of Cashel: Kings, Bishops and Medieval Ireland’s Royal Outcrop From the road across the Tipperary plain, the Rock of Cashel looks less like a group of buildings than a single thing that grew out of the ground: a limestone…

Blarney Castle: The Stone, the Tower and the Making of Irish Eloquence Most people know Blarney Castle for a single gesture: lying on your back at the top of a medieval tower, leaning out over a drop, and kissing a…

Drukgyel Dzong: Bhutan’s Fortress of Victory and the Tibetan Frontier At the head of the Paro Valley, where the road runs out and the old trail begins its climb toward Tibet, Drukgyel Dzong stands on a low spur above the…

Paro Rinpung Dzong: Fortress Monastery and Art in Bhutan’s Paro Valley Anyone who flies into Paro, or out of it, sees Paro Rinpung Dzong from the aircraft window. The runway follows the valley floor, and the fortress stands on the…

Punakha Dzong: Bhutan’s Palace of Great Happiness at Two Rivers Punakha Dzong stands on a narrow spit of land where two glacial rivers meet, its whitewashed walls rising straight from the water and its golden roofs catching the light of…

Dochula Pass: Himalayan Views, Chortens and the Road to Punakha On a clear morning the road east out of Thimphu climbs through blue pine and hemlock until the forest opens onto a saddle of grass, a small temple, and 108…

Gorumara National Park: Wildlife and Forests in India’s Dooars Gorumara National Park covers only about 80 square kilometres, yet a late afternoon at one of its watchtowers can bring Indian rhinoceros, gaur and elephant to the same stretch of riverbank.…

Dooars, India: Tea Forests and the Himalayan Foothills Somewhere below Gangtok, the road stops climbing for good. The terraced hillsides of Sikkim give way to sal forest, then to tea bushes clipped flat as a lawn beneath rows of shade…

Rumtek Monastery: Sikkim’s Dharma Chakra Centre and the Karmapa Tradition Rumtek Monastery sits on a forested ridge across the valley from Gangtok, its gilded roof ornaments catching the light long before the town below has properly woken. It looks ancient,…

The Kingdom of Sikkim: A Himalayan History Between Tibet, India and Bhutan For three hundred and thirty-three years, a line of Buddhist priest-kings ruled a small mountain state wedged between Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan. The Sikkim kingdom was founded in…

From Sikkim to Bhutan: Crossing the Eastern Himalaya by Road For much of the year, the road out of Sikkim runs through cloud. Pine ridges give way without warning to the flat, steaming plains of the Dooars, and within a…

Darjeeling Heritage: A Hill Station Between Sikkim and the British Raj Long before Darjeeling appeared on any colonial map, the ridge that carries the town today belonged to the Kingdom of Sikkim. Its name comes from the Tibetan words dorje…

Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan Itinerary: A 14-Day Journey Across the Eastern Himalaya Three destinations rarely sit on the same itinerary, and fewer still make sense together the way Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan do. A tea-growing hill station built by the…

Darjeeling Himalayan Railway: Mountain Engineering and the Toy Train At Darjeeling station, a squat black steam engine no larger than a family car pulls out onto rails set barely two feet apart, and for the next two hours it climbs,…

Gangtok, Sikkim: A Himalayan Capital Between Pilgrimage and Modernity Gangtok sits on a forested ridge at roughly 1,650 metres, wrapped in cloud for much of the year and looking out, on the clear mornings, toward Kanchenjunga. It was a scattering…

Bhutanese Food: Red Rice, Ema Datshi and the Culture of the Table Long before the first chorten comes into view, Bhutan announces itself through its kitchens. Strings of scarlet chillies dry on farmhouse windowsills, red rice ripens in narrow terraced…

Darjeeling Tea: Terroir, Gardens and the Story of a Himalayan Cup At just over two thousand metres in the Himalayan foothills, the hillsides around Darjeeling carry a particular kind of quiet: rows of glossy tea bushes running into cloud, cut…

Caucasian Food: Shared Tables and Distinct Flavours Across Three Countries In Sheki's old quarter, a halva-maker layers rice-paper-thin dough by hand — rishta, laid eight or ten sheets deep around a filling of hazelnut, cardamom and coriander, the whole tray…

The Kingdom of Colchis: Jason, Medea and Ancient Kutaisi The Greeks thought of the eastern Black Sea shore as the far end of the world, and the Colchis kingdom they placed there gave their poets a golden fleece, a king…

Armenian Khachkars: Stone Crosses, Memory and Medieval Craft Armenian khachkars are among the most distinctive works of medieval Christian art anywhere: upright slabs of stone carved with a cross rising from a rosette and surrounded by vines, pomegranates and interlace…

Vardzia Cave Monastery: Georgia’s Rock-Cut City and Medieval Frontier Vardzia cave monastery looks, from the valley floor, like a cliff that has been quietly hollowed out from within: hundreds of dark doorways and windows stacked in uneven terraces across a…

Georgian Wine and Qvevri: How an Ancient Clay-Vessel Tradition Survives Walk into a traditional Georgian wine cellar and the most important equipment is easy to miss. The vessels are buried to the neck in the floor, so all you see…

Uplistsikhe Cave Town: A Rock-Hewn Settlement on Georgia’s Historic Crossroads Uplistsikhe cave town is less a ruin than a city that happens to have been carved out of a hillside: streets, halls, wine presses, a theatre-like chamber and a hilltop…

Ushguli, Georgia: Svan Towers and Life in a High-Mountain Village Ushguli, Georgia, is not one village but four: Zhibiani, Chvibiani, Chazhashi and Murkmeli, strung along the upper Enguri River at roughly 2,100 metres, directly beneath the glaciers of Mount Shkhara.…

Caucasus Tours for Older Travellers: What a 22-Day Small-Group Journey Involves Caucasus tours cover a lot of ground — three countries, two mountain ranges and a genuine change of culture and script at each border — and it’s reasonable to…

East of Tbilisi, where the Alazani River cuts a wide, fertile valley beneath the Caucasus Mountains, lies Kakheti — Georgia’s oldest and largest wine-growing region, producing the majority of the country’s wine from soils that have supported vineyards for millennia.…

Long before Baku's skyline filled with glass towers, the city's real gateway to the world was a walled quarter of narrow lanes and merchant houses called Icheri Sheher. Our small group tour of the Caucasus opens here, in the old…

Gobustan’s boulder fields, carved with Stone and Iron Age rock art, overlook the coastal plain that runs down to the Caspian Sea. South-west of Baku, the Absheron Peninsula thins into a dry, cratered plain where boulders carved more than five…

Caucasus Itinerary for Mature Travellers: From Baku to Yerevan Tbilisi's old town at dusk, with the Kura River and the Caucasus foothills beyond — roughly the midpoint of the route this itinerary follows. A good Caucasus itinerary is not three…

Yerevan at golden hour, with Mount Ararat on the horizon — the mountain behind both the city’s brandy houses and its vineyards. Winston Churchill kept a case of it at Chartwell and, for years, insisted no other spirit came close.…

Lake Sevan, the largest lake in the Caucasus, is the hinge of this stage of the journey from Dilijan to Yerevan. Lake Sevan appears without warning. After a morning spent moving between medieval stone and forested hillsides, the road opens…

Svaneti's stone towers, built for defence and still standing centuries later. Svaneti does not feel like the rest of Georgia, and that is precisely the point. Cut off for centuries by the Greater Caucasus range, this high mountain region on…

Daitokuji Temple: Zen, Hospitality and the Cultural World of Tea Daitokuji's roofs and gardens spread across 56 acres on Kyoto's northern edge, most of them still closed to the public. On the twelfth day of Odyssey's Walking Japan tour, after…

Ginkakuji, seen from across the garden pond in autumn. Ginkakuji has never worn the metal its name promises. Built in the 1480s as a retirement villa for the eighth Ashikaga shogun, Yoshimasa, and converted into a Zen temple after his…

Odyssey Traveller · A practical guideSmall Group Tours in Your 70s and 80s: What to ExpectThe number to check is the Activity Level, not the birthday.The honest answer to “can I still do this?” is almost always yes — but…

Odyssey Traveller · An editorial guideTours for Seniors Travelling Alone: What to Look ForThe right questions matter more than the right marketing words.Not every tour marketed at solo travellers actually works well for one. Here’s what is worth checking before…

Odyssey Traveller · Practical travel guidanceSolo Senior Travel: Safety Tips for Small Group ToursTravelling alone is not the same as being left to handle everything alone.This guide covers the practical side of solo travel safety: what a well-run small group…

At the western edge of Kyoto's temple district, a walled rectangle of raked white gravel and fifteen weathered stones has become one of the most reproduced images in the study of Japanese design. Ryoanji Temple's dry-landscape garden gives away almost…

On the second of two full days in Kyoto, the Walking Japan tour leaves the shogun's audience halls at Nijo Castle for a very different kind of monument: a small three-storey pavilion, its top two floors sheathed in gold leaf,…

Mogami River: River Travel and Basho’s Journey through Mountain Japan The Mogami River, whose swift current inspired one of Bashō's most quoted haiku and once carried Edo-period rice to the coast. No stretch of Matsuo Bashō's northern journey unsettled him…

Sado Gold Mine sits on an island most visitors to Japan never reach, yet for more than two centuries it helped pay for the government that ran the country. Its tunnels, cut by hand into the hills above the port…

Long before dawn on the eighth day of Matsuo Bashō's pilgrimage through Tōhoku, the poet climbed through cedar and mist toward a mountain claimed equally by Buddhist and Shintō belief. Mount Haguro, the lowest and most accessible of Japan's Three…

Aikawa harbour, Sado's historic mining town and the group's overnight stop on the island. From the Tohoku coast, Sado Island sits low on the horizon — near enough to see on a clear day, far enough that for most of…

Chusonji Temple: The Golden Hall and the Northern Fujiwara Legacy On a forested hilltop above the Kitakami River, a single small hall has survived nearly nine centuries of fire, war and northern winters, entirely sheathed in gold. Chusonji Temple is…

Hiraizumi: Buddhist Power, Gardens and the Cultural Landscape of Northern Japan Hiraizumi's temples and gardens are recognised by UNESCO not for any single building, but for a complete religious landscape built to represent Buddhist paradise on earth. The Northern Fujiwara…

Matsushima Bay, its roughly 260 pine-clad islets long ranked among the traditional Three Views of Japan. When Matsuo Bashō finally crossed by boat into Matsushima Bay in the early summer of 1689, he arrived at a place almost too written-about…

Kenrokuen Garden: Landscape Design and Daimyo Culture in Kanazawa Kenrokuen Garden sits on a low plateau above Kanazawa Castle, built not for a single vista but for a sequence of them, revealed and withheld as a visitor moves through eleven…

Long before it appeared in Matsuo Bashō's Oku no Hosomichi, the Shirakawa Barrier had already spent nearly a thousand years as one of the most written-about thresholds in Japanese poetry. Today the site survives only as a quiet clearing of…

Matsuo Bashō walked out of Edo in the spring of 1689 with a paper coat, a change of clothes and a notebook, and did not return for the better part of a year. What he wrote about that journey, Oku…

Nikko Toshogu: Tokugawa Memory, Sacred Forest and the Start of a Northern Journey Nikko Toshogu's gilded halls rise from centuries-old cedar forest, a setting as deliberate as the carvings themselves. On the third day of the Walking Japan small group…

Icelandic Sagas and the North Atlantic: Reading the Settlement Landscape The settlement story the sagas record reaches beyond Iceland's own coast: a Greenland fjord, settled from Iceland around 985. Stand in the Almannagjá rift at Þingvellir and the ground itself…

North of Hrútafjörður, the Vatnsnes Peninsula reaches into the sea like an afterthought — a low, treeless finger of basalt and grazing land that most drivers on Iceland's Ring Road never see, because the Ring Road itself skirts well to…

Látrabjarg Puffins: Bird Cliffs and Seabird Life on Iceland’s West Coast Látrabjarg's cliffline runs for kilometres along Iceland's westernmost coast, with puffins nesting along the grassy edge. At the westernmost tip of Europe, a wall of basalt drops more than…

Skjálfandi Bay opens out from the fishing town of Húsavík like a wide, sheltered amphitheatre, and on a calm North Iceland morning it can feel like the whole ocean is holding its breath. This is the water Icelanders themselves call…

Nijo Castle's low, elegant palace sits behind a moat and gardens rather than stone ramparts — a fortress built to stage authority, not repel one. Nijo Castle does not look, at first glance, like a fortress built to intimidate. There…

Fukagawa's quiet canal-side streets still open onto the skyline of the modern city just across the river. Long before Matsuo Bashō became the wandering poet of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, he was a Tokyo local — living…

Ísafjörður’s Fishing Heritage: How the Westfjords Shaped Icelandic Life The road north from Látrabjarg climbs, drops and climbs again through a landscape of fjords carved by ice, before it finally reaches Ísafjörður — a town of some 4,000 people, built…

Iceland Small Group Tours for Mature Travellers Iceland rewards travellers who take their time with it. The volcanic landscapes, fishing villages and saga-era history strung around this small island are best absorbed at a walking pace, with someone on hand…

Snæfellsnes and Jules Verne: Journey to the Centre of the Earth in Iceland Jules Verne never set foot in Iceland, yet he chose one exact spot on it — the ice-capped crater of Snæfellsjökull — as the entrance to the…

How Iceland Uses Geothermal Energy: From Hot Springs to Greenhouses Geothermal heat shapes daily life across Iceland, from home heating to greenhouses and hot spring bathing. Iceland sits directly on the boundary where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates…

South of Iceland's interior icecaps, the coastline turns black. Rivers braid across a volcanic outwash plain, glaciers calve into the same sands that swallow a footprint within minutes of a receding wave, and a village barely large enough to hold…

A fjord road threads beneath dark basalt headlands past one of the Westfjords' small, isolated fishing settlements. Most of Iceland's Ring Road runs through a landscape still being made: young lava fields, steaming vents, glaciers grinding fresh gravel into outwash…

Iceland Ring Road Itinerary for Mature Travellers: A 17-Day Circumnavigation Landmannalaugar's rhyolite mountains and obsidian lava fields, the highland crossing near the end of this 17-day circumnavigation. Iceland does not reward a single detour so much as a full circuit…

Lake Mývatn: Volcanoes, Craters, Birds and the Making of North Iceland Few places on the tour compress so much of Iceland's volcanic story into a single afternoon as the basin around Lake Mývatn. Within a few kilometres you can stand…

Icelandic Food: Fish, Lamb, Rye Bread and Geothermal Greenhouses A working farm on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, where curing sheds and pasture meet the Atlantic coastline. Iceland has never been an easy place to grow food. Its farmers work a short…

Snorri Sturluson and Reykholt: Sagas, History and Icelandic Independence Reykholt's church stands at the centre of the valley settlement that was once the estate of Snorri Sturluson. West of Reykjavík, where Route 50 leaves the Ring Road and climbs into…

Icelandic horses grazing in the breeding valleys of Skagafjörður, on Iceland's north coast. Iceland has exactly one breed of horse, and by law, it will never have a second. Since the Althing outlawed the import of foreign horses in 982,…

Xuanzang Shrine at Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan: Pilgrimage and Memory Sun Moon Lake, seen from the water, with Xuanzang Temple set into the forested hillside above. On the southern shore of Sun Moon Lake, a white-walled hillside temple holds what…

Taoyuan Lantern Festival: Lights and Lunar New Year in Taiwan The Taoyuan Lantern Festival spreads varied lantern displays across an open civic plaza, anchored by a central main lantern. The Taoyuan Lantern Festival closes Lunar New Year the way it…

Sun Moon Lake Tea: How Assam Roots Became Taiwan's Ruby Black Tea Tea terraces above Sun Moon Lake, where Assam-derived bushes have grown since the 1920s. Sun Moon Lake tea did not begin in Taiwan at all. Its bushes trace…

Qingshui Cliff: Marble Cliffs on Taiwan's Pacific Coast Qingshui Cliff's escarpment drops toward the Pacific along Taiwan's east coast. For twenty-odd kilometres between Su’ao and Hualien, Taiwan’s Central Mountain Range simply refuses to negotiate with the sea. The marble face…

Fort Provintia and Tainan: Dutch Trade, Zheng Rule and Maritime Taiwan The Koxinga Shrine in Tainan, built in Fujian style to honour the general whose siege ended Dutch rule at Fort Provintia. Tainan is Taiwan's oldest city, and Fort Provintia…

Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum: Humanistic Buddhism in Kaohsiung, Taiwan The Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum campus, set into the hills outside Kaohsiung. South of Taiwan's ancient river towns and the misted headlands of the east coast lies a valley…

Lanyang Museum: Yilan's Landscape Architecture on Taiwan's Coast The Lanyang Museum sits where Yilan's mountains, plains and sea meet — the same three landscapes its galleries are built around. Where Yilan's rice plains meet the Pacific, a black granite roof…

Baxian Caves: Archaeology and Sacred Geography on Taiwan's Coast The cave-pocked cliff of Baxian Caves catches the last light above the Pacific, on Taiwan's remote east coast. Along Taiwan's remote east coast, a run of cave mouths opens out of…

Sanxiantai's eight-arch footbridge links the Taitung coast to the offshore island, with the open Pacific beyond. The road south from Hualien runs close to the Pacific for most of the morning, and then the coastline opens into something stranger: a…

Yilan National Center for Traditional Arts: Taiwan's Living Crafts The theatre-and-temple district at the National Center for Traditional Arts, on the Dongshan River in Yilan. Halfway between the sky lanterns of Pingxi and the marble coastline near Hualien, the itinerary…

Jiufen and Jinguashi: Gold Mining Towns on Taiwan's Northeast Coast Jiufen's lantern-lit lanes climb the hillside above Taiwan's northeast coast — once one of the most productive gold-mining towns in the Japanese empire. Before dawn breaks over Jiufen, the hillside…

Taiwan Lantern Festival: Ritual Light and an 11-Day Journey Sky lanterns rise above Pingxi's old railway street at blue hour, the tradition Taiwan's modern Lantern Festival grew from. On the first full moon after Chinese New Year, thousands of paper…

Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival: Wishes, Railway Towns and Lunar New Year Once a year, on the fifteenth night of the Lunar New Year, the narrow valley around Pingxi fills with light that has nothing to do with electricity. Paper lanterns,…

The National Palace Museum, Taipei: Reading an Imperial Collection The National Palace Museum's Northern Branch in Shilin, seen on approach in early morning light. In the last months of 1948, as Nationalist and Communist armies fought for control of China,…

Raohe Night Market: Ciyou Temple and Street Food in Taipei, Taiwan By the third evening of a small group journey through Taiwan, most travellers have already stood before the golden roofline of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and walked the porcelain-lined…

Victor Hugo in Guernsey: Exile, Hauteville House and Literary Legacy Victor Hugo did not choose Guernsey so much as run out of places that would have him. By the time he stepped off the boat at St Peter Port in…

Brittany Food and Drink: Crêpes, Cider and Coastal Cuisine, France Brittany does not cook like the rest of France, and it does not want to. The peninsula's Celtic settlers brought buckwheat and a taste for dairy rather than wine, and…

Normandy Food and Drink: Cider, Calvados, Cheese and Coastal Cooking Normandy's fields do the talking long before its history does. Ranks of apple trees lean over hedged lanes in the Pays d'Auge, black-and-white cattle graze the same damp pastures that…

Why the Channel Islands Are Crown Dependencies: A Traveller's Guide Sail from Saint-Malo to Jersey and the ferry keeps the French coastline in view for most of the crossing — yet the island ahead flies the Union Jack, banks in…

Jersey, Guernsey and Sark: An Island-Hopping History Itinerary Sark permits no motor vehicles — carriages and bicycles are the only way to see the island, a sharp contrast to Jersey and Guernsey. Three ferries, three islands, three quite different ways…

Brittany's Celtic Culture: Language and Identity in France Quimper's timbered old town, gathered beneath the spires of Cathédrale Saint-Corentin, is the traditional cultural capital of Brittany's Cornouaille region. Brittany's Celtic culture sets it apart from the rest of France. Long…

The St-Malo to Jersey Ferry: Crossing to the Channel Islands Saint-Malo's ramparts at golden hour, with the ferry that carries travellers on to Jersey waiting in the harbour below. Few short sea crossings carry as much history as the hour…

Carnac Stones: Brittany's Prehistoric Megaliths in France Long before Stonehenge was raised on Salisbury Plain, the people of southern Brittany were already dragging stones across this stretch of Atlantic coastline and setting them upright in long, deliberate rows. Today, more…

Normandy, Brittany and Channel Islands: A 22-Day Itinerary Draw a line from Paris to London on a map of northern France and the Channel, and you cross a border that has moved more than almost any other in Europe. Normandy…

Normandy Channel Islands Tours for Seniors: What to Expect Normandy Channel Islands Tours for Mature Travellers: What to Expect Deciding how to see Normandy, Brittany and the Channel Islands is really deciding how much logistics you want to manage yourself.…

Normandy D-Day Beaches Itinerary: A Guided Route from Bayeux Most visitors arrive at the Normandy coast with a general sense of what happened here on 6 June 1944 and little sense of how to actually see it — which stretch…

Bayeux Tapestry and the Norman Conquest: Normandy's Window into 1066 Bayeux Cathedral above the town's preserved slate-roofed skyline — the starting point for this Norman Conquest itinerary. Few single objects explain as much European history as the Bayeux Tapestry. This…

Brittany, France Travel: A Cultural Route for Mature Travellers Saint-Malo's granite ramparts, reflected across the beach at low tide. Cross the border from Normandy into Brittany and the landscape changes before the language does. Granite replaces limestone, Celtic crosses stand…

Tapas, Port and Sherry: Food and Wine Across an Iberian Journey Porto and the Douro at golden hour — one of three distinct food and wine traditions on a route through Spain and Portugal. Travel far enough across the Iberian…

Seville, Jerez and Cádiz: An Andalucía Itinerary for Seniors Seville, Jerez de la Frontera and Cádiz sit within roughly ninety minutes' drive of one another, yet each pulls at a different thread of the same Andalusian story. Seville carries the…

Córdoba to Granada: Tracing Al-Andalus in Southern Spain The Alhambra seen from the Albaicín at dusk — the old Nasrid capital's final and most enduring vantage point. Two cities, roughly three hours apart by road, hold most of what remains…

Moorish Architecture in Spain: Reading Córdoba, Seville and Granada The Alhambra above Granada — the final chapter in a story that begins in Córdoba. Three buildings, three cities, one continuous story. The Mezquita in Córdoba, the Alcázar in Seville and…

Spain and Portugal Travel for Seniors: A 24-Day Preparation Guide The approach to the Alhambra involves sustained walking on gravel and uneven stone — a fair test of the tour's Level 2 activity rating. Twenty-four days across two countries sounds…

Mérida, Spain's Roman Ruins: Inside Ancient Emerita Augusta The two-tiered marble stage backdrop of the Roman Theatre, built between 16 and 15 BC, still hosts performances each summer. Long before Madrid existed as anything more than a fortified outpost, Emerita…

Porto, Braga and Guimarães: Portugal's Northern Leg from Spain Porto's Douro riverfront and the Dom Luís I Bridge, seen from Vila Nova de Gaia. Cross the border from Salamanca and Portugal's north announces itself in three very different registers. Braga…

Toledo's old town, wrapped almost entirely by a bend in the Tagus River, with the Cathedral and Alcázar anchoring the skyline. Forty-five minutes from Madrid by high-speed train, the medieval streets of Toledo climb a granite outcrop wrapped almost entirely…

Salamanca, Spain: University City and Gateway to Portugal Salamanca's Roman Bridge spans the Tormes River, with the city's cathedral skyline rising behind it. Salamanca announces itself in colour. Its sandstone buildings turn amber and gold as the afternoon light lengthens…

Salamanca's Roman Bridge and cathedral skyline on the Tormes River, the starting point of this crossing into Portugal. A Salamanca to Lisbon itinerary is one of the more overlooked stretches of Iberian travel, mostly because guidebooks tend to treat Spain…

Spain and Portugal Itinerary: Barcelona to Granada in 24 Days Spain and Portugal are usually sold as two separate holidays, yet neither country's history makes complete sense without the other. Their royal houses intermarried, warred and signed treaties with one…

Spain and Portugal Small-Group Tour: How a 24-Day Iberian Journey Works The Alhambra and Generalife above Granada, the final stop on the 24-day route from Barcelona. The word Iberia covers two countries that spent centuries defining themselves against each other,…

The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao: A Modern Landmark on a Spain Journey Most of the buildings on a Spain and Portugal itinerary are older than the nations that now claim them — Roman theatres, Gothic cathedrals, Moorish palaces built and rebuilt…

Barcelona to Granada Itinerary: A Spain and Portugal Journey The Alhambra and Generalife above Granada at golden hour — the journey's end for this 24-day route from Barcelona. Draw a line on a map from Barcelona to Granada and it…

Basque Country, Spain: Why the Northern Route Changes Your Trip La Rioja's vineyard terraces mark the first stage of the route north from Barcelona. La Rioja's vineyards run out to the horizon in tidy rows, the light turning them copper…

The façade of the principal tomb, where Egyptian funerary form meets Greek architectural detailing carved nearly two thousand years ago. In September 1900, on the western edge of Alexandria, a donkey pulling a cart broke through the ground and dropped…

Wadi el-Seboua: The Valley of the Lions on Egypt's Lake Nasser Wadi el-Seboua's relocated temple complex on the shore of Lake Nasser. Most visitors to Egypt's ancient temples arrive by road. Reaching Wadi el-Seboua means boarding a boat instead, since…

Lake Nasser Cruise: Egypt's Remote Nubian Temples and History A Lake Nasser cruise vessel crossing open water, with the desert headlands of Nubia rising on either side. Most travellers who cruise Egypt never see this stretch of the country. Once…

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina's tilted, discus-shaped roof rises above Alexandria's eastern harbour. The original Library of Alexandria has been gone for so long, and so completely, that no one can say with certainty when it actually disappeared. What survives instead is…

The Great Temple of Abu Simbel, carved into the sandstone cliff above Lake Nasser. Twice a year, at dawn on 22 February and 22 October, sunlight travels sixty metres into the rock-cut sanctuary of the Great Temple at Abu Simbel…

Kom Ombo Temple: Why Egypt's Double Temple Honours Two Gods Kom Ombo Temple at sunrise, on its rise above the Nile between Edfu and Aswan. Most Egyptian temples were built for one god and one purpose. Kom Ombo, rising on…

Dendera Temple: Hathor's Sanctuary and Egypt's Famous Zodiac Dendera Temple: Hathor's Sanctuary and Egypt's Famous Zodiac Few temples in Egypt reward a slow look the way Dendera does. Roughly an hour north of Luxor, on the west bank of the…

The Unfinished Obelisk of Aswan: Egypt's Ancient Granite Quarry On the west bank of the Nile at Aswan lies a slab of pink granite more than three thousand years old, still fused to the bedrock it was cut from. Had…

Edfu Temple: Horus, Myth and Egypt's Best-Preserved Ptolemaic Temple For nearly two thousand years, Edfu Temple lay buried under drifting Nile sand, its roofline barely visible above the mudbrick village that grew up around it. That accident of neglect is…

Rising in three broad limestone terraces against the cliffs of western Thebes, the Temple of Hatshepsut is unlike anything else the ancient Egyptians built. Its architect, a court official named Senenmut, faced an unprecedented problem: how do you build a…

Egypt Itinerary for Mature Travellers: Cairo to Lake Nasser An Egypt itinerary that does the country justice needs room to breathe. Cairo alone holds enough history to fill a week, and that is before the Nile carries you south past…

Old Cairo, Egypt: A Guide to Coptic, Jewish and Islamic Heritage Cairo's oldest quarter sits inside the walls of a Roman fortress, where a single laneway can carry you past a fourth-century church, a synagogue tied to the legend of…

The Seljuk Turks in Anatolia The Seljuk Turks were nomadic peoples who originated in the Central Asian steppes and entered into Anatolia in the 11th century. From here, until around 1300, they would rule an…

Deir el-Medina: The Artisans' Village of Egypt's Valley of the Kings Deir el-Medina sits in a shallow desert hollow on the West Bank of the Nile at Luxor, a short walk from the tombs its residents spent their working lives…

National Museum of Egyptian Civilization: Cairo's Royal Mummies, Egypt Cairo has no shortage of extraordinary museums, but the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization takes a different approach from its famous neighbours. Rather than concentrating on a single dynasty or discovery,…

Step Pyramid of Djoser: Egypt's First Pyramid at Saqqara Twenty kilometres south of Cairo, on a low desert plateau above the ruins of Memphis, a six-tiered limestone monument rises out of the sand. It has none of Giza's polished symmetry,…

Pergamon and the Asclepion: Healing and Power in Ancient Turkey The terraced acropolis of Pergamon, overlooking the Bakırçay plain in western Anatolia. Two thousand years before spa retreats and wellness clinics became a travel industry of their own, the sick…

Şirince Village: Wine, Peaches and Traditional Turkish Life High in the hills above Kuşadası, in western Turkey, the whitewashed and terracotta-roofed houses of Şirince spill down a mountainside surrounded by peach orchards and vineyards planted on terraces cut into the…

Troy, Turkey: Separating Homer's Myth from the Archaeological Reality Homer never saw Troy. By the time the Iliad took shape as oral poetry in the eighth century BCE, the Bronze Age settlement it describes had already been built, burned, and…

ANZAC Cove: Gallipoli's Landscape and 1915 Campaign ANZAC Cove is a small crescent of beach on Turkey's Gallipoli Peninsula, barely wide enough to land a rowboat, hemmed in on three sides by ridgelines that climb almost straight up from the…

Gallipoli and the Dardanelles: Turkey's First World War Legacy Morning light over ANZAC Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The Dardanelles is a strait barely two kilometres wide at its narrowest point, yet for three thousand years it has shaped the…

Perge Ancient City: Exploring the Ruins of Asia Minor, Turkey The colonnaded street at Perge, its paving still grooved from the central water channel. Long before Ephesus or Aphrodisias drew crowds of Roman travellers, Perge was already a working city…

Sultanhani Caravanserai: Trading on the Seljuk Silk Road The old Seljuk trade route crossing the Anatolian plateau near Sultanhani. Halfway along the old highway between Aksaray and Konya, a fortress-like stone building rises out of the flat Anatolian plain with…

Aspendos Theatre: Rome's Best-Preserved Stage in Turkey Most Roman theatres survive as suggestions of themselves — a curved wall here, a few tiers of seating there, the rest carried off for building stone centuries ago. Aspendos theatre is the exception.…

Aphrodisias, Turkey: The City of Sculptors and the Goddess of Love The reconstructed Tetrapylon gateway, marking the ceremonial approach to the Temple of Aphrodite. Long before marble became a byword for European sculpture, the workshops of Aphrodisias were shipping finished…

Konya, Turkey: The Whirling Dervishes and Legacy of Rumi Long before Konya became a stop on the modern traveller's map, it was the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum and the adopted home of a Persian scholar named Jalal…

Çatalhöyük, Turkey: One of the World's Earliest Cities On the flat, wind-scoured plain south of Konya, a low mound rises just a few metres above the surrounding wheat fields. There is little to suggest, from a distance, that this unassuming…

Yazılıkaya and the Hittite Gods: Hattusa's Rock Sanctuary, Turkey The open-air rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya, set in the Anatolian landscape near Hattusa. A short walk from the fortified capital of Hattusa in central Turkey, a natural cleft in the limestone…

Ancient Turkey Itinerary: A 21-Day Route from Istanbul to Gallipoli A well-built Turkey itinerary has to solve a problem most countries don't present: how do you move through nine thousand years of settlement, from Neolithic Çatalhöyük to the trenches of…

Cappadocia's Underground Cities: Ancient Refuges in Turkey Beneath the fairy chimneys and honey-coloured valleys of central Turkey lies a second Cappadocia, one carved downward rather than up. Entire settlements — stables, kitchens, wine presses, chapels — were hollowed from soft…

The Hittite Empire: Exploring Ancient Hattusa in Central Turkey The Hittite Empire: Exploring Ancient Hattusa in Central Turkey The fortified walls of Hattusa, capital of the Hittite Empire, on the Anatolian plateau. Long before Rome had a name, a fortified…

NorthLink Ferries to Orkney and Shetland: A Scottish Islands Guide Two nights of this Scottish island-hopping route are spent not in a hotel but at sea, aboard a NorthLink ferry crossing some of the more exposed waters of the North…

Shetland Ponies: History and Heritage in Scotland's Northern Isles A Shetland pony overlooking a dramatic coastal headland, Shetland Islands. Long before Shetland ponies became a familiar sight on postcards and in petting paddocks, they were working animals bred to survive…

Jarlshof, Shetland: 4,000 Years of Settlement at the Edge of Britain The ruins of Jarlshof spread across a low headland beside the West Voe of Sumburgh, Shetland. On a low headland at the southern tip of Shetland's Mainland, where the…

Few structures anywhere in Europe compress two thousand years of survival into a single silhouette the way Mousa Broch does. Standing over 13 metres tall on a small, uninhabited island off Shetland's east coast, it is the tallest and most…

Kirkwall, Orkney: St Magnus Cathedral and Norse Heritage in Scotland Kirkwall, Scotland, is easy to underestimate on a map — a compact harbour town on Orkney's Mainland, tucked between the Atlantic and the North Sea. Yet for anyone tracing the…

Carloway Broch: An Iron Age Tower on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland Carloway Broch sits on a rocky rise above Loch Roag on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis. On a low rise above Loch Roag, on the…

The Churchill Barriers: Orkney's Wartime Causeways, Scotland The Churchill Barriers: Orkney's Wartime Causeways, Scotland The Churchill Barriers thread between four of Orkney's southern islands, seen here at golden hour. Drive south from Kirkwall today and you cross four low causeways…

Arnol Blackhouse: Crofting Life and Peat Heritage in Scotland The Arnol Blackhouse on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. On the windswept west coast of the Isle of Lewis, a single thatched house has been left more or less…

The Italian Chapel in Orkney: A Wartime Story of Faith and Ingenuity The Italian Chapel's facade at golden hour, Lamb Holm, Orkney. On the small island of Lamb Holm, joined to the Orkney mainland by one of the Churchill Barriers,…

Neolithic Orkney: Scotland's Greatest Prehistoric Landscape The Ring of Brodgar seen from above, golden light breaking through storm clouds over Orkney's Neolithic landscape. Few landscapes anywhere in Europe hold as dense a concentration of Neolithic monuments as Orkney, where the…

Scotland Island Hopping: A 20-Day Route from Arran to Shetland Island hopping across the Scottish Isles, where ferries link seven islands into a single 20-day route. Scotland island hopping sounds straightforward until you look closely at a map of the…

Iona Abbey, Scotland: The Island That Shaped Celtic Christianity Iona Abbey and the coastline of the Isle of Iona, seen across the Sound of Iona. Iona is barely five kilometres long, a low green island off the western tip of…

Isle of Arran Itinerary: Castles, Standing Stones, Scotland Brodick Castle framed by rhododendrons, with Goat Fell rising behind it. Arran sits in the Firth of Clyde barely an hour from Glasgow by train and ferry, yet it holds enough geological…

Highland Clearances on Skye, Scotland: Crofts and Clans Drive along Skye's western coastline today and you'll pass field after field of low grassy mounds — the outlines of houses that stood empty within a generation. These are the traces of…

Callanish Standing Stones: A Neolithic Guide to Lewis, Scotland Stand at the centre of Callanish at dusk and the stones seem to lean in, thirteen weathered fingers of Lewisian gneiss holding a shape that has outlasted every explanation offered for…

The Rus’ and Viking Trade Networks In the early Middle Ages, the Viking Rus’ emerged as a formidable power, controlling vast trade routes stretching from Scandinavia as far as the Caspian Sea – a journey of nearly 3,000 miles. Several…

Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads While much is talked about Viking activity westwards into the North Atlantic, their journeys eastwards are just as – if not more – varied and intricate. From Scandinavia, they travelled across the Baltic…

Trade in the Viking Age Although the Vikings today have a reputation for being violent raiders and conquerors, they were also peaceful traders in their time. Many individuals combined activities, even switching in the course of their voyages, trading or…

Vikings in North America Although they often do not receive their due accolades, the Vikings were actually the first Europeans to cross the Atlantic Ocean and discover and explore North America – almost 500 years before Christopher Columbus. The Viking sagas…

A hilltop village above Corsica's vineyards and maquis scrubland, with the Mediterranean beyond. Corsican Food: A Mountain-to-Coast Guide to Eating in Corsica Corsica's kitchens tell the story of an island caught between two worlds: a mountainous interior long shaped by…

Arab-Norman Palermo: Monreale, Cappella Palatina and Sicily's Layered Past The Norman Palace (Palazzo dei Normanni), seen from above at golden hour. Step inside the Cappella Palatina in Palermo's Norman Palace and three artistic traditions collide in a single room: Byzantine…

The Knights of St John in Malta: Valletta, the Three Cities and a Lasting Legacy Valletta at golden hour, seen across Grand Harbour. Walk into St John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta and the ceiling alone will stop you mid-step: a barrel…

Ajaccio, Corsica, France: Napoleon's Birthplace and Legacy Ajaccio's old town peninsula, Corsica Ajaccio sits on a wide, sheltered bay on Corsica's west coast, its ochre and cream buildings rising above a harbour still busy with fishing boats and ferries. It…

Things to Do in Corsica Beyond the Beach: Towns, Coast and Heritage Corsica's coastline gets most of the attention, but the real character of the island lives inland and in its towns — in the fortress streets of Bonifacio, the…

Nuragic Civilization of Sardinia: Su Nuraxi and Tombs of the Giants A nuraghe stands watch over Sardinia's interior — evidence of a building tradition more than 3,500 years old. Long before Rome existed, Sardinia's interior was dotted with thousands of…

Bonifacio, Corsica, France: A Guide to the Citadel and Coast Bonifacio's promontory, with the harbour inlet and the Lavezzi Islands visible beyond. Bonifacio sits on a spur of limestone that drops seventy metres straight into the Mediterranean, and the town…

The Valley of the Temples: A Guide to Agrigento's Greek Legacy The Valley of the Temples ridge at Agrigento, Sicily, at golden hour. On a limestone ridge above Sicily's southern coast, the Valley of the Temples preserves one of the…

Things to Do in Sardinia Beyond the Beach: Cagliari, Nora and Barumini Sardinia's dramatic coastline is only part of the story — the island's history runs far inland. Sardinia's coastline draws most of the attention, but the island's real depth…

Sardinia Itinerary for Cultural Travellers: Cagliari to Alghero, Italy Cagliari's waterfront and old town, the starting point of this Sardinia itinerary. Most visitors to Sardinia arrive for the coastline and never get much further than it. A route built around…

Things to Do in Valletta: A Historical Guide for Curious Travellers Valletta's bastions rise directly from the coastline — the Knights of St John built this capital to be unassailable. Valletta rises from its harbour like an idea made permanent…

Best Time to Visit Sicily, Italy: Weather, Festivals & Touring The Valley of the Temples, Agrigento, in spring morning light with almond blossom in the foreground. Sicily rewards travellers who choose their season carefully. Arrive in the wrong month and…

A 25-Day Mediterranean Islands Itinerary: Malta, Sicily, Sardinia & Corsica for Mature Travellers From Valletta's Baroque harbour to Corsica's mountain citadels, this itinerary layers four distinct island histories into a single route. Four islands, four very different histories, and one…

Malta Itinerary for Mature Travellers: Valletta, Gozo and Ancient Sites Mdina, Malta's walled "Silent City," rising above the surrounding countryside at golden hour. Malta rewards travellers who slow down. Within an archipelago you could drive across in an afternoon, sit…

A Sicily Itinerary for Culture Lovers: Noto, Syracuse, Agrigento and Palermo Most Sicily itineraries are built around the coastline — a string of beach towns loosely connected by a hire car. The route that actually makes sense of the island…

Port Wine and the Douro Valley: A Tasting Guide to Portugal The Douro River winds through terraced vineyards and quinta estates in Portugal's Alto Douro wine region. The Alto Douro is one of the oldest wine landscapes still worked largely…

The Age of Discovery: How Portugal Mapped the Known World Long before Spain, England or the Netherlands sent ships beyond sight of land, Portuguese caravels were already charting the coast of Africa, the winds of the Atlantic, and the sea…

Fátima Pilgrimage: History and Significance in Portugal The Sanctuary of Fátima, seen from above, with its two basilicas facing one another across the Cova da Iria esplanade. On a warm afternoon in May 1917, three shepherd children tending sheep on…

Fado Music and Azulejos: Exploring Portugal's Soul and Art In the working-class quarters of Lisbon, the sound of a lone voice accompanied by two guitars still rises through café windows after dark — a sound the Portuguese call fado. Walk…

Nazaré & Alcobaça, Portugal: Fishing Traditions and Gothic Grandeur An hour or so north of Óbidos, Portugal's Silver Coast holds two neighbouring towns that tell very different stories about how the past survives into the present. Nazaré is loud, salty,…

A Portuguese Food Guide: What to Eat on Your Portugal Tour Inside a traditional Portuguese market hall — salted bacalhau, fresh fish, and local produce on display. Portuguese food rarely gets the international attention paid to its Spanish or Italian…

Batalha and Tomar: Knights Templar Monasteries in Portugal The Convent of Christ crowns a forested hilltop above Tomar, with the Nabão River winding below. Between the plains of Estremadura and the hills of the Ribatejo stand two of Portugal's most…

Coimbra & Luso: Portugal's Historic University and Spa Towns For travellers who have already stood beneath the gilded rafters of Lisbon's monasteries and wandered the wine-country hillsides above Porto, Coimbra and Luso offer something quieter but no less rewarding. Coimbra…

The Walled City of Óbidos: Portugal's Medieval 'City of Queens' Óbidos rises from Portugal's Silver Coast as a single walled hill, its whitewashed houses, bright bougainvillea, and cobbled lanes all held inside a ring of 14th-century fortifications you can walk…

Évora, Portugal: Exploring the Alentejo's Medieval Heart Évora's walled historic centre rises above the Alentejo plains. Most visitors to Portugal never leave the coast, which means most visitors never see Évora. An hour and a half inland, this walled hilltop…

Évora, Portugal: Exploring the Alentejo's Medieval Heart Évora's walled historic centre rises above the Alentejo plains. Most visitors to Portugal never leave the coast, which means most visitors never see Évora. An hour and a half inland, this walled hilltop…

Day Trips from Lisbon, Portugal: Sintra, Cascais & Cape Roca Lisbon's hills hold plenty to occupy a traveller for days on end, but the countryside just west of the city holds something the capital cannot offer: a Romantic-era hilltop palace…

Portugal Travel Guide: An 18-Day Itinerary for Mature Travellers Portugal rewards travellers who give it time. Beyond the postcard view of Lisbon's tiled facades lies a country of five-thousand-year-old settlements, working fishing villages, monasteries built by crusading knights, and a…

Things to Do in Porto, Portugal: Wine, History, and the Douro The Douro Valley at golden hour, upriver from Porto. Porto does not announce itself the way Lisbon does. There is no grand riverfront square, no monastery built on the…

Things to Do in Lisbon: A Traveller's Guide to Portugal Lisbon does not reveal itself all at once. The city climbs a series of steep hills above the Tagus, so that a walk from one neighbourhood to the next often…

The Story of West Africa West Africa consists of the modern nations of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. Across the region is a…

The Partition of Africa The Scramble for Africa, occurring in the late nineteenth century, saw European powers divide and claim nearly the entire continent. Formalized during the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, European nations established rules for colonization without African representation,…

Sir Francis Drake and England’s Challenge to Spain’s Global Supremacy On the morning of December 13, 1577, Francis Drake, a pirate and former slaver, ordered his small fleet in Plymouth, England, to weigh anchor. Two of the most consequential figures…

Bhutan: a journey into the Hidden Kingdom Bhutan, a tiny and remote nation nestled within the Himalayas, has been described as a real-life Shangri-La. It is famed for its Buddhist spirituality, pristine mountain landscape, and for measuring national growth in…

Gold and Empires of the Sahel European expansion is often seen as the trigger for modern history, but in reality, globalisation came even earlier to West Africa’s Sahel region, underpinned by the gold trade. Analysis by archaeologists of the gold…

Tipasa Lying on the present-day Algerian coast, 65 km (40 miles) west of Algiers, are the fascinating remains of the ancient city of Tipasa. Phoenician, Roman, early Christian, and Byzantine ruins all lay scattered alongside the golden beaches of the…

Africa’s Gold Coast and the Gold Trade West Africa’s fabled ‘Gold Coast’, the former region on the Gulf of Guinea now known as Ghana, was once best known for its relationship with the expanding global money supply. Providing gold for…

Croatia’s long history and natural beauty lure tourists from all over the world. Croatia has a very long history. Human presence in the country dating back to the middle-Palaeolithic (50,000 BC) has been recorded in the 19th century with the…

Fez is the oldest city in Morocco, located in the northern part of the country on the banks of the Wadi Fez. The old town was originally composed of two fortified quarters divided by the river.

Istanbul, Imperial City | Small Group History Tours Turkey For more than a thousand years, Constantinople stood as the capital of the Byzantine Empire, surviving numerous attacks and internal rebellions, until the cannons of the Ottoman Empire breached its walls.…

From Cairo to the NAC: Egypt Builds a New Capital City On July 11, 2018 Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi laid the first stone of what was to become Egypt’s new capital. The city is so new it still does…

Riquewihr, France Riquewihr is classified as one of France’s most beautiful villages, and it’s easy to see why. Nestling at the entrance to a small, tree-clad valley on the Alsace plain, the village offers a splendid view over the valley…

The Ancient Underground City of Derinkuyu The Derinkuyu underground city is a massive subterranean network of caves and underground dwellings located in the Derinkuyu district of Nevşehir Province in Cappadocia Turkey. The caves may have first been excavated by the…

Venta Silurum of Roman Wales In the village of Caerwent in the south of Wales stand the impressive remains of Venta Silurum, a market town established by the Romans in 75 CE. Named after the defeated local Silures tribe, it…

Josiah Wedgwood Anti Slavery Medallion Throughout his life, the famed English entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood was deeply concerned with the social issues of his contemporary 18th century Great Britain.  Unsurprisingly then, he was actively involved the cause for the abolition of…

Conques The small village of Conques, located in the Aveyron region of Southern France, is an incredible site. Lying at the confluence of the Dourdou and Ouche Rivers, it is surrounded by stunning mountain and forest scenery forming a kind…

Saint-Cirq-Lapopie From atop its cliff, the French medieval village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie has been looking over the valley of the Lot for centuries now. The Gallo-Romans, and perhaps even prehistoric people before them, were attracted to this rocky headland as their…

Vézelay The village of Vézelay – officially one of the most beautiful in France – sits on a hill on the left bank of the Cure River over stunning views of pristine French countryside. It’s located in the north-central French…

Jerash in northern Jordan is noted for its well-preserved Roman ruins, one of the largest in the world.

Vikings and the Carolingian Empire When the Viking Age began in the late 700s, the Carolingian Empire was already established as the mightiest political power in Western Europe. Under Charlemagne, the Franks had expanded the kingdom in all directions, eventually…

The Roman Ruins of Volubilis: Morocco's Lost Imperial City Hidden in the fertile foothills of Morocco's Zerhoun mountains lie the Roman ruins of Volubilis, one of the best-preserved ancient cities in Africa. Once a thriving frontier outpost of the Roman…

Troy, Turkey: The Ancient City Behind Homer's Iliad Troy is one of the most famous cities in the ancient world — not for its size or wealth, but because it was the stage for Homer's Iliad, one of the foundational…

Thebes, Egypt Rising from the banks of the Nile some 800 kilometres south of the Mediterranean, Thebes was for centuries the beating heart of ancient Egypt — a city so wealthy in its prime that Homer described its gates as…

Liverpool Cathedral, United Kingdom Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, located on St James Road, Liverpool, is the biggest church in England and the eighth largest cathedral in the world, towering over the city skyline. It has the world’s tallest tower at 101…

Life in the Medieval British Village In a previous article, we looked at the icons of the British village–the pub and the cottage–and looked at their history and evolution from Roman and Norman times. In this article we will look…

Lying amid Umbria's rolling plains is the city of Assisi, best known as the birthplace of Saint Francis, Italy’s patron saint and founder of the Franciscan order.

A History of Empires Throughout the World The history of human civilisation has been for the most part a history of empire. The term empire refers to the rule by a particular group in a…

By Marco Stojanovik  New Yorkers are obsessed with their museums. And why wouldn’t they be? The city has arguably the richest and best museum culture in the world, with the utter number of museums and cultural institutions absolutely mind-blowing. In…

The Rosetta Stone The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian stone slab discovered in 1799 by a French officer near the town of Rosetta, or Rashid. Until this point, we knew very little of the ancient Egyptians. But this would…

The British Country House Cliveden House, Burghley House, Blenheim Palace: country houses have long stood as icons in the British landscape. From the Middle Ages until today, the historic houses have gone through various changes, evolving in styles from Jacobean,…

John Constable  English artist John Constable (1776-1837) is one of the greatest landscape painters of all time and one of the most important artists of the Romantic Tradition. Nature was his primary inspiration. Along with his rival J M W…

The Naming of America In 1492 Christopher Columbus became the first European to reach the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, showing Europeans how to sail across the Atlantic and ushering in a wave of exploration and colonisation. But it…

Atlantic Triangular Slave Trade Somewhere between ten million and twelve million enslaved Africans were transported across the Atlantic to the Americas between the middle of fifteenth century and the end of the nineteenth. The largest long-distance forced movement of people…

The Birth of Venice Italy The floating city of Venice has a long history dating from the sixth century CE, when it emerged following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. As successive waves of Germanic and Hunnic invasions tore…

Medieval Pérouges Be instantly transported back in time when you visit the French medieval town of Pérouges. Perched high on a hill overlooking the Dombes Plateau, about 40km from Lyon, it remains preserved as it…

History of the Faroe Islands The Faroe Islands, also referred to as the Faroes or Faeroes, is a self-governing region of the Kingdom of Denmark, a pristine archipelago of 18 volcanic islands sitting in the North Atlantic ocean between Iceland…

Zakopane Zakopane is a beautiful resort town on the edge of the Tatra Mountains in Southern Poland famed for skiing during the winter months and mountain climbing and hiking in summer. Visitors are treated to a stretching Alpine-like landscape, a…

The History and Attractions of Poznan Poznan city lies on the Warta River in west-central Poland, in the Greater Poland region, halfway between Warsaw and Berlin. The birthplace of the Polish state in the 10th century, the city has long…

salt fish once played a significant role in shaping the economies, societies, and cultures of much of Europe. That’s because before food could be preserved by freezing, salting was vital to cure meat and fish, assuring a supply of protein…

Bell Rock Lighthouse The Bell Rock Lighthouse is the world’s oldest surviving rock lighthouse. Built between 1807 and 1810 by renowned engineer Robert Stevenson, it stands on a partially submerged reef in the North Sea, 11 miles from Arbroath off…

Collonges-la-Rouge Emerging from surrounding greenery, some 12 miles (19km) southeast of Brive in the Limousin region, France, is the red village Collonges-la-Rouge. Regarded by many as the most beautiful village in France, it is built entirely from local red sandstone.…

Birth of the Nile River The Nile, recognized as the longest river globally, stretches over 6,800 km from south to north through East Africa, traversing or bordering 11 countries such as Burundi, Tanzania, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,…

The Scientific Revolution in England The Scientific Revolution refers to drastic changes in scientific thought that occurred in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, marking the emergence of modern science. During this period, science…

Ely Cathedral Ely Cathedral, located in the city of Ely, Cambridgeshire, is perhaps England’s most eccentric cathedral, outstanding architecturally for both its scale and stylistic details. Rising up from the flat, marshy fenland of East Anglia, it is often referred…

Caesar and Cleopatra in Egypt: Politics, Power, and the Nile When Julius Caesar arrived in Alexandria in 48 BCE, Egypt was already teetering on the edge of civil war — and the encounter that followed between the Roman dictator and…

From Anatolia to the Ottoman Empire: A History of Turkey For six centuries, the Ottoman Empire ruled from the gates of Vienna to the deserts of Arabia, absorbing the older civilisations of Anatolia — the Hittites, Greeks, Persians, Romans, Byzantines…

Al-Andalus: History of Islamic Spain In 711 CE, Muslim armies crossed from North Africa into the Iberian Peninsula and, within a few years, brought most of modern Spain and Portugal under Islamic rule for the next seven centuries. The society…

Les Baux-de-Provence Located at the heart of the of the Alpilles Regional Nature Park in Southern France, Les Baux-de-Provence has a certain charm that makes it stand out from every other village in the region. It sits high on a…

The French Baguette It doesn’t get more quintessentially French than the baguette. For centuries, the long, thin, crusty loaf – made with just flour, water, salt, and yeast – has stood at the core of French culture, an essential part…

History of English Wool Wool plays a significant role in England’s history and heritage. Sheep, along with Neolithic shepherds, first migrated to the British Isles around 6,000 years ago, and it didn’t take long before their wool was being extracted…

York Minster Cathedral: England's Greatest Gothic Church York Minster is the largest Gothic cathedral by volume in England, its stone towers visible from almost anywhere in the city below. Built in stages from the 12th to 15th centuries, it houses…

London Coffee Houses in the 17th and 18th Centuries In the late 1600s and early 1700s, there were as many as 3,000 coffee houses spread throughout London. These were popular public social places, where men of all strata of society…

Sydney Opera House Design The iconic Sydney Opera House is one of the great buildings of the 20th century. The World Heritage-listed building is an image of great beauty – a masterpiece or architecture that is known throughout the world.…

25 Tips to Travel Light Packing light isn’t easy, but if done properly it can bring unheard benefits to your travels. By streamlining your packing down to hand luggage only, you can save a great deal of money on check-in…

Winchester Cathedral, United Kingdom The magnificent cathedral in the city of Winchester, England, is one of the largest of its kind in Northern Europe. And with an overall length of 170 m, it is the longest medieval cathedral in the…

England’s Cathedrals: From Medieval Times to the Modern Era In over 1400 years since the establishment of the first English cathedral, the Church of England has gained 43 cathedrals and lost about 15, while the Roman Catholic Church has acquired…

Durham Cathedral The UNESCO World-heritage listed Durham Cathedral, located in Durham city, is a giant amongst English cathedrals. Standing proudly on a cliff over the River Wear, its central tower rises over 200 feet high for panoramic views of Durham…

Chester Chester Cathedral is the mother church of the Diocese of Chester, squeezed into the centre of the old city in Chester. According to legend, the site was originally a druidical temple, before it was…

The History of Krakow Krakow, traditionally known as Cracow, is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Lying on both sides of the upper Vistula River in Southern Poland, the city has a long history dating…

The Nullarbor Plain Inland from the Great Australian Bight, straddling Western Australia and South Australia, is the world’s largest limestone plain – the Nullarbor. The flat, almost treeless landscape of semi-arid country stretches about 1,200…

Kelmscott Manor: ‘Heaven on Earth’ Described as ‘heaven on earth’, Kelmscott Manor was beloved by William Morris – the poet, author, architectural conservationist, and social reformer, widely regarded as the founding father of the Arts and Crafts movement. The limestone…

35 Tips for the Responsible Traveller The tourism industry is one of the world’s most powerful, accounting for around 10% of the world’s jobs and GDP, and with nearly 1.2 billion people a year taking international flights. Travelling in a…

Neoclassicism Neoclassicism was a Western cultural movement in the 18th-19th centuries inspired by the art and culture of classical antiquity (Greece in the 8th to 4th Centuries BCE and Rome in the 5th to 1st Centuries BCE). The movement was…

Bologna Italy Tours & History Bologna city, capital of and largest city of the Emilia Romagna region in Northern Italy, might not be as popular a destination as other Italian cities like Rome and Venice. But for those who are…

The Althing In the Thingvellir valley, in the southwest of Iceland, the world’s longest running national parliament first assembled over 1000 years ago. Known as the Althing (Icelandic: Alþingi), the parliament was founded as an outdoor assembly in 930, uniting…

Rise of Pisa and Genoa Maritime Republics     A view of Pisa’s Cathedral Square, featuring the Cathedral, the Tower and the Baptistery, taken just after sunrise.

Discovered in late 2020 underneath the sands of the west bank of the Nile is the remains of a lost ancient Egyptian city, known as The Dazzling Aten, or Aten for short. Uncovered near the modern-day city of Luxor, home…

Islam in the Mediterranean During the Early Middle Ages In the early 7th century, a religious and political power emerged that would transform the early medieval Mediterranean world. Although it was not born in the…

The English entrepreneur and most significant potter of the 18th century, Mr Josiah Wedgwood, is famous for embracing Etruscan heritage in his designs. Urns, cameos, and vases all emerged from his kilns to be decorated with reclining figures, mythological characters,…

Rhodes, the capital of the Greek Dodecanese islands in the South Aegean Sea region, has served as an important centre of civilisation since the 5th century BCE. Inhabited since the Stone Age, in ancient history it was occupied by the…

With a single main street winding upwards, and tiny alleyways that duck under and through its buildings, Amalfi seems like an unlikely rival to the great Italian maritime republics of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa. And yet, between roughly 850 and…

Norman Tindale’s Aboriginal Tribes of Australia Norman B Tindale – pioneering anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist, and ethnologist – is best remembered for his work mapping the distribution of Indigenous Australian people and their languages. His lifetime project utilised data from various…

London in the 18th Century The 18th century was a period of unimaginable change in England. The century witnessed not only the early stirrings of the Industrial Revolution, after the industrious revolution, but also a consumer revolution in which a…

the Soviets prioritized heavy industry, particularly in preparation for conflict with the capitalist West, which the Kremlin believed was imminent. By 1950, Soviet Ukraine had surpassed pre-war levels of industry and production, becoming the centre of Soviet arms industry and…

The gondola (or Gondole) is the most famous and unique Venetian boat and was first mentioned in a document at the end of the 11 th century. It is believed that the gondolas were used long before they were documented,…

At the turn of the 20th century, the river was widely regarded as the best location for shipbuilding in the British Empire. By this time, the industry here was constructing around a half of all ships worldwide, including some of…

During the last three decades of the seventeenth century, however, Liverpool emerged as one of England’s leading ports. The port's commercial rise began as a result of profitable trade with the Americas and the West Indies. Its merchant fleets subsequently…

Rising disposable incomes, a growing supply of inexpensive goods, and social emulation combined to spark a ‘consumer revolution’ during the Georgian England period. From the late 1600s, a new form of society emerged based on the mass consumption of a…

This blog is part of a series on five influential Italian Renaissance families that shaped Italy, especially during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is based on both our Italian Renaissance Summer School course, and our Small Group Tour of…

For generations Scottish lighthouses have lighted the dark and dangerous seas along the spectacular coasts of the country. These days they are all automated, but for over 200 years they were manned by ever-watchful keepers presiding over the treacherous waters…

Originally established by the Presbyterian Church in 1913 at Port George IV Port, in 1920 the mission moved to Kunmunya for more arable land and a better water supply. Here it existed until 1951, when the residents agreed to relocate…

In 1880 news reached the little town of Pinjarah, Western Australia (then the Swan River Colony), of the wonderful, rich, extensive land in the Kimberly recently explored by Alexander Forrest and party. Upon hearing the news, pioneer Hamlet Cornish, along…

All four generations of the Lighthouse Stevensons, as they’ve come to be known, were dedicated to the seemingly impossible task of lighting the dark and dangerous seas around Scotland.

Standing Stones of Britain and Europe: A Guide to Megalithic Monuments "These great structures were built to enhance very special places on the earth's surface, where a force or current works to make this expansion of consciousness more intense." —…

Warri and Yatungka were the last of the Mandildjara nomadic people to remain in their country – the Western Gibson Desert region of Western Australia. Having fall in love in the 1930s, they chose to elope as Indigenous tribal law…

Cape York Peninsula, located in Far North Queensland, is the northern-most extremity of Australia. Consisting of an area of about 220,000 sq km, the landmass extends northwards into the Torres Strait, surrounded by the Gulf of Carpentaria to the west…

South Australia's Yorke Peninsula region offers 700 kilometres of spectacular coastal scenery, pristine white beaches, and azure seas, contrasting starkly with the mallee landscape behind. One of South Australia’s most accessible seaside holiday escapes, the leg-shaped peninsula is located just an…

Despite the benefits of canals, they still had their issues. As not all areas were environmentally suited for them, they could not extend entirely across Britain. Instead, they were largely restricted to operating in the Midlands and North West England,…

a fascinating town filled with cultural, historic and natural attractions. On a trip here you can explore museums, colonial 19th century architecture, lush wetlands, some of Australia’s largest and most important Aboriginal rock paintings, and the region’s rich mining history.

Colonial Australia could quite easily have been split between Great Britain and France. In 1772, an explorer called Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn landed at Shark Bay and claimed Western Australia for the French, just two years after Captain Cook

As a rider, you have invested in your bike, it is important and responsible to yourself and for those who care about you including your family that you take any chosen outback motorcycle adventures with your safety and those of…

Phillip’s choice of the settlement site fitted well with an officer of naval background as first of all soundings taken in the harbour revealed it to be deep and apparently with hidden shoals or rocks. A fresh water stream ran…

The Industrious Revolution was a major shift in economic history, seen in the everyday consumer behavior of individuals in Northwest Europe and North America in the 1700s. In this period, a greater diffusion of new durable and exotic goods created…

In 1492 Christopher Columbus first arrived in the Americas searching for a more direct route to Asia. Little did he know that his voyage would spark a process of colonization and conquest over more than three centuries that would transform…

John Eales’ Life & Legacy By Marco Stojanovik When John Eales died at Duckenfield in 1871, he was reputed to have been one the wealthiest men in New South Wales. From the moment he set foot in the colony, arriving…

In 1844, the explorer Captain Charles Sturt set out with a large party into the central Australia to find what he believed would be the Australia inland sea. This latest course of exploration had begun at Narrandera, onto Balranald where…

May 1928, the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) was born, taking its first flight across the skies of Cloncurry, Queensland, on a life-saving mission.

The Black Summer: An Unprecedented Australian Bushfire Season Fire and fire management has historically been part of the this continents fabric. Ecosystems have adapted to fire from the regeneration of Eucalpyt forests to triggers for Leptospermum seeds to germinate after…

Alice Springs is home to a thriving hub of Aboriginal culture and art, with the town's cultural infrastructure and renown illustrating a national profile that far outsizes the town's relatively small size.

The Yarra Valley is one of the state's most popular tourist destinations, with its rich culinary and wine culture attracting visitors from the busy city, as well as from all over the country. For the avid wine lover, or epicurean,…

The empires of Asia were expansive both in geography and in tenure.  The Mongols had an empire that spanned the entire Asian continent as far as Europe, and the Ottomans ruled for almost 700 years, far wider and longer than…

In Aboriginal culture, ownership provides rights to the resources of the land, as well as responsibilities for managing the land and caring for country. For tens of thousands of year, in a process tightly connected to this duty, Aboriginal cultures…

For thousands of years different Aboriginal nations and clans of Australia communicated with each other over vast distances with incredible speed and for various purposes. When European settlers first realised messages were being effectively sent and received over these distances,…

prominent is the rock art of the North Kimberley Rock Art of the Mowanjum people, who consist of the Ngarinyin, Worrorra and Wunambal language groups. These Aboriginal art works depicting Wandjina Ancestors and totems of local groups, as well as…

How the Guggenhein Venice, eventually became a gallery   “There is a fine historical irony in the fact that a building designed to glorify a patriarchal dynasty, and one that had been left to rot once that dynasty crumbled, was…

The city of Alexandria lies in the northwest part of Egypt along the Mediterranean Sea. Founded in 331 BCE by Alexander the Great, it would go on to thrive as the greatest city of the Mediterranean world during the Hellenistic…

Setting sail no matter what the condition, the Black Ball Line packet ships quickly became popular to businessmen and passengers alike, valued for their predictability. Other companies soon caught on to the revolutionary business venture, with scores of competing North…

Menzies By Marco Stojanovik The historic mining town of Menzies thrived during its heyday at the turn of the previous century, riding the wave of the Western Australian gold rush. With several successful mines in its vicinity, and as the final…

The Doge and the council encouraged Venice to extend itself beyond a trading centre of Europe. The threats from Constantinople, Crete, Genoa, Pisa and Almafi as alternative places to conduct trade to and from where real,  potential destroyers of the…

Australia and New Zealand, isolated geographically from the rest of the world, have developed their own distinctive natural world quite unlike anywhere else on earth. To the rest of the world, some of these natural phenomena are interesting, some a…

From the Middle Ages to the present day, Venice has been a magnet for tourists who want to experience Venetian history by marvelling at grandiose architecture, stunning waterways and, of course, the famous Venice carnival.

The Hanseatic League, or German Hansa, was a medieval trading confederation of merchant guilds and market towns along the shore of the Baltic and North Sea, and across great swathes of the north German hinterland.

In the early days, Norse traders and raiders came predominately from eastern Scandinavia, Sweden to be exact, using its location and eastern seashore as a stepping stone into Russia. From the islands and waterways heading east, crossing the Baltic Sea,…

Within the Murray-Darling basin on the Warrego River, 750 km due west of Brisbane, lies the celebrated town of Cunnamulla.  In the Gunya (or Kunja) dialect of the original inhabitants – an offshoot of the Bidjara language, which is being…

The Venetian state - a commerce and industry hub that was once the wealthiest and most influential centre of Europe for hundreds of years.

Pinnacle Point, a small promontory near Mossel Bay on the south coast of South Africa, appears to be the place where the very first human beings ever settled down by the sea. They arrived here some 164,000 years ago, during…

  “Aunt Jane began her day with music—for which I conclude she had a natural taste; as she thus kept it up—tho’ she had no one to teach; was never induced (as I have heard) to play in company; and…

The Pillars of Hercules is the ancient name referring to the two promontories at the eastern entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar, a narrow opening 14 kilometres wide between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean separating the continents of…

Situated on the pristine Sorrento Coast in the Bay of Naples, Southern Italy, the small town of Castellammare di Stabia has been attracting high profile visitors for centuries. Famous for the healing properties of its thermal mineral waters, many a…

Most scientists agree that Neolithic agrarians were the first people to construct a monument on the Stonehenge site in approximately 3000 BCE. The site was then built upon in later phases during the Bronze Age by the Beaker People, a…

The Exeter Book contains the largest and probably oldest surviving collection of Old English literature in the world. Dating back to the late 10th-cenutry, it is one of the four most significant verse manuscripts to survive from the Anglo-Saxon period

Article for senior couples and mature solo travellers exploring Queen Victoria's Empire including Britain and the personalities. Supports small group educational tour about the monarch and the industrial revolution. 

Article for senior couples and mature solo travellers exploring Queen Victoria's Empire including Britain and the personalities. Supports small group educational tour about the monarch and the industrial revolution. 

The Sámi people are the only indigenous people of the European Union and are one of the oldest living cultures of our planet.

William Creek follows the words of Henry Ford, except in William Creek, you can have any colour as long as it is White! And it is infamous for having a drive through bottle shop for "light planes" Welcome to outback…

Cadiz city, on the western coast of southern Spain, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe. Its archaeological remains date back to the 8th century BC, around the time it was founded as a Phoenician outpost.…

The most expensive and treasured product of the Phoenician civilization was the famous Tyrian purple dye (also known as Phoenician purple, royal purple, imperial purple, or imperial dye) extracted from the mucus of the murex shellfish.

Lisbon Travel Notes for mature & senior Travellers Travellers, meet Lisbon. Lisbon, Travellers. Hello there. Olá! I am Lisbon, an elegant Portuguese city perched upon the banks of the sparkling River Tagus. Locals call me ‘Lisboa’. I am famous for my…

Seville is a lively and disarming city, and a popular tourist destination in Spain.

Berlin, capital of Germany, venue of the Berlinale, seat of the German Parliament, and location of UNESCO-protected Museum Island, occupies a place of prominence as a cultural and economic powerhouse. Dynamic and vibrant with a richly textured history, there is…

One of the most daunting and hazardous sea voyages in Viking history during the Middle Ages (and the Viking Age) was heading west to Greenland crossing the Atlantic Ocean in their longship(s). The sailing conditions were dangerous due to harsh…

Read the landscape (and beat the crowds!) One of the perils of modern tourism is crowds. We all know the feeling. After a long-haul flight, a hotel room, a train and much excitement and anticipation, we finally arrive at a…

The London Underground Beneath London is another London, a shadowy counterpart still not mapped in its entirety, but in many ways similar to the London above the ground. According to Peter Ackroyd in London Under (Vintage, 2012), “It was said of the Victorian…

When the royal House of Hanover ascended the throne of the United Kingdom with George I in 1714, it ushered in a distinctive "Georgian style" seen in the architecture and interior design of the houses and buildings in Great Britain. In…

Gargoyles and grotesques were a hallmark of the Gothic period of architecture, which grew popular in Western Europe from the 12th to the late 15th centuries, and which was carried over well into the 20th century during the age of…

London's architecture during the Victorian Era was defined by the transformation of British society, due to the rapid changes of the Industrial Revolution. Industrialisation transformed British life, leading to innovative new technologies, rapid wealth accumulation, and a proliferation of new…

In the beginning of the 9th century when the Viking era was in full swing, a Viking raid was an uncoordinated and unplanned attack that would usually end in the Norse being paid to return to their homeland.

In the early medieval period, a group of seaborne Scandinavian raiders known as the Vikings left their mark on history as brutal warriors, smart traders, and adventurous explorers.

There are more than  30 spectacular UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the United Kingdom. They comprise some of the most spectacular and memorable cultural sites in Europe, and attract many tourists every year.

In order to modernise 'dreary central London', D'Oyly Carte built the Savoy Hotel across the lane from the Savoy Theatre. His aim was to build the 'Hotel de Luxe of the World'. It was completed in 1889.

Our long-standing fascination with the Viking age paired with a slightly apprehensive curiosity for the Viking's spirit of courage and adventurous minds, and intriguing wildness associated with their conquests, have always been connected to their Scandinavian heritage of Northern Europe

This country has some two hundered and sixty five small Icelandic museum (265) and permanent exhibition spaces. The Icelander has a passion for collecting things so much so that it permeates Icelandic culture.

During the Industrial Revolution, the city became one of the most important ports in North-West England, prominent for its cotton, tobacco, and slave trade (especially during the American civil war).

Victoria came to the throne in 1837 and remained there until 1901, the longest reigning monarch in English history. During this period the British Empire expanded to its greatest extent.

Newcastle (or Newcastle upon Tyne) in northeast England is rich in architectural wonders and steeped in history.

England offers amazing attractions to lovers of literature and art. Many famous figures lived and worked here over the years, and because of the country's beautifully preserved history, it is possible to feel as though you are being transported back…

Victorian England Rural Life In this post we will look at what rural life was like on a country estate in Victorian England. Janet Sacks’ Victorian Country Life is a good reference for those who want to know more; other sources…

The legendary Ghan train is still operational today as a popular tourist attraction, widely regarded as one of the world’s great train adventures.

In this post we will look at the latest news and discoveries about the prehistoric stone circles in Britain, including its most famous icon, the Stonehenge.

Since Mungo Man was returned to his county, he has been stored along with Mungo Lady in an interim secret location, with traditional owners divided about their final resting place.

The Harris Tweed industry, made up of island weavers creating fine cloth from island wool, was a true cottage industry, and soon needed protection from cheap and inferior machine woven tweed made elsewhere and mimicking the traditional.

Forming and becoming part of a travelling group is enjoyable and a lot of fun, solo travel tours could be difficult if all travellers exhibit shyness, as a company offering small group tours since 1983 we remain wary of solo…

A myth repeated about the medieval world is that ordinary people never travelled more than five or six miles from their home. In reality, this was far from true – travel was an important part of daily life in medieval…

Learning about Manchester’s Early History Well-known parts of Manchester’s history include their textile boom during the Industrial Revolution and the first steam engine railway to Liverpool. But what about its precursor? Manchester saw different leaders leading up to the Revolution,…

Exploring York Like a page out of a history book, the North-Eastern city of York in the United Kingdom is a Gothic wonder. This is a great day tour from London, with its rich history and amazing scenery. From your…

Connecting the highest part of the Australian continent and the south-eastern coast is a 365km long ancient Aboriginal trail known as the Bundian Way. Situated in southern New South Wales, it runs from the snowy peaks of Targangal (now known…

Amongst a wealth of natural wonders in the Kimberley region of Western Australia sits one of the state’s most unique tourist attractions – the Argyle Diamond Mine – until recently the world’s largest single producer of natural-coloured diamonds.

This article aims to immerse the reader in the landscapes – town, city, and countryside – of medieval England, with a focus on the 14th century (1300-1400).

Victorian Women's Fashion: Style and Status in Victorian Britain The Young Queen Victoria by Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1842). Photographic reproduction from Wikimedia Commons. Victoria ascended the throne at the age of 18. Few eras reveal so much about a woman's…

The Franklin River itself winds its way 125km south-west through the wilderness national park, from its source in the alpine lakes of the Cheyne Ranges to its confluence at the Gordon River.

In this article, we're sharing ten little-known facts about London. Whether you've visited London over twenty times, or have never been, we hope that you'll uncover something that you never knew before.

The Lake District, part of the county of Cumbria, is the largest of the United Kingdom’s National Parks. The national park contains 16 lakes, including Lake Windermere, England’s largest natural lake, and more than 150 high peaks, four of which…

Discover the story of Capability Brown, the style of his landscapes and the mark they have left on modern England. Read about Brown's most famous clients and where you can admire his work today.

With 800 or so years of history, the university has not only shaped the city Oxford but has become a significant part of the fabric of English history, enduring through times of social upheaval and great change.

In this article, we will know more about the famous long-distance walk, including what to expect during the walk and the fascinating sights we may encounter. We will also share advice on how to prepare for this epic journey across…

Atlantic Ocean and How it Shaped Ancient Communities In Europe.

The Lake District is the glittering crown jewel of England’s countryside and sure to capture any traveller’s heart with its magic. Picture expanses of lush meadows swathed in flowers and shimmering blue lakes against craggy peaks and you’ll have some…

The Alligator Rivers area in the Arnhem Land region of the Northern Territory of Australia is home to some of the richest biological diversity and most stunning landscapes in the country.

France Guide for Mature or Senior Travellers There are good reasons why France has been the world's most popular tourist destination for over twenty years. This France guide should give you the start  of an insight into this diverse and…

European Concert Halls in Paris & Hamburg A concert hall or opera house is often a city's most striking architectural feature. Recently, in Europe, two spectacular new concert halls have opened, and each is worth visiting to view from both…

The mighty Ord River in the eastern Kimberley region of Western Australia is one of the country’s most significant waterways, home to spectacular scenery.

In the early hours of 16 October 1920, a small pearling lugger named Henry departed from the wharf at Wyndham, in Western Australia’s far north, destined for the pearling port of Broome. Onboard, Captain John Morgan Johnston and his crew…

Transformations of the Colony of New Zealand By Marco Stojanovik British colonists proclaimed sovereignty over New Zealand in May 1840, initially as part of the Colony of New South Wales before its establishment as a Crown colony the following year.…

Hermannsburg By Marco Stojanovik The Western Arrernte community of Hermannsburg, also known as Ntaria, is located on the remote foothills of the majestic Western MacDonnell Ranges in the Northern Territory, 130 kilometres southwest of Alice Springs. Established as a Lutheran…

Edward John Eyre, one of Australia’s youngest and most fearless explorers, is immortalized in the names of the South Australian landscape, most notably Lake Eyre and the Eyre Peninsula.

The Birth of Scotland In A History of the Scottish People (1560-1830), T.C. Smout describes Scotland as an isolated, wild place. “More than half the land was barren mountain,” he says, and, quoting G.W.S Barrow, adds: “if one takes the modern…

Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland since the 15th century but it has been inhabited since the Stone Age. It has been a Roman settlement, who constructed the Antonine Wall as the Empire’s northernmost defence, and also the home of…

Glasgow's historic buildings are an important part of the city's social history, and should not be missed by any traveller - even those with only have a passing interest in architecture!

Islands of the Outer Hebrides An article that shares some the culture, people and history of the key islands on the Western side of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides The name Hebrides is derived from the Norse word Havbredey, meaning the ‘isle…

Questions about the Outer Hebrides for senior travellers. Odyssey Traveller specialises in crafting unforgettable experiences for senior and mature-aged travellers interested in learning as they travel whether as a couple or solo traveller. Providing adventure and educational programs to escorted…

What to Pack for a small group tour holiday can be a challenge. Checked luggage fees, tight airline bins and potentially long waits at the luggage carousel are just a few reasons it pays to pack light with just hand…

The Challenges of Art Restoration For centuries, professionals have been restoring masterpiece artworks back to their original appearance or function so that future generations can also experience their grandeur. Restoration involves any attempt to preserve and repair paintings, drawings, sculptures,…

Joining a small group tour, then face masks for travel should form part of your luggage when begining to pack. Collectively being a responsible traveller goes beyond considerations of your carbon footprint choices and the challenges of over-tourism. Being aware…

11 places to consider visiting in Edinburgh off the beaten track From the world’s largest annual international arts festival to the largest literary festival in the world, Scotland’s hilly capital has its pulse on art culture. This is Edinburgh, the…

Visiting Scotland:  Standing stones, neolithic history and whisky While Scotland has no shortage of  modern sites and activities – such as golf courses, whisky distilleries and hiking – no visit to Scotland is complete without a thorough exploration of Scotland’s…

Perth, which lies elegantly on the River Tay, regained its city status in 2012. Once thought to be the ancient capital of Scotland, Perth built its fortune on weaving, fishing and brewing industries, giving the country two of its most…

The Scottish mainland's most northerly town, Thurso, is a charming gateway to the Scottish Isles and, being on the country's north coast, is considered to be Scotland's surf capital. The remote town is on the North Atlantic and has similar…

Tours of Scotland Scotland is a world-renowned travel destination. Travellers enjoy a terrific diversity in the Tours of Scotland that are offered to this popular country. Such diversity results in  countless memorable experiences for visitors. Known for its dramatic scenery,…

Touring the beautiful Scottish Islands:  Scotland is island-rich, with some of the most awesome scenery in the United Kingdom. There are nearly 800 islands around Scotland, scattered around its western and northern coastline. Each has its own individual character, identity…

Guided Tours of the Scottish Islands Whether you are tracing your ancestry or chasing the romance, landscapes, or wildlife of the Scottish Islands, our carefully crafted educational tour will paint Scotland in a whole new light. In order to understand the…

When one thinks of island-hopping, images of Scotland probably don’t immediately come to mind but Scotland is island-rich, with some of the most awesome scenery in the United Kingdom. There are nearly 800 islands that are part of Scotland, scattered…

The Orkney Islands, also referred to as Orkney, are an archipelago off the north coast of mainland Scotland. Comprised of around 70 islands (20 of which are inhabited), the Orkney Islands have a mystical charm that makes you feel as…

Shetland Islands Discovered Scotland’s Shetland Islands (or simply, Shetland) is a group of more than 100 islands, only 16 of which are inhabited, with a pristine coastline unrivalled in all of the United Kingdom. Its capital is Lerwick, with a…

An island in the Inner Hebrides, lying just off of Mull, Iona is a tiny piece of land, measuring just 6 km long by 2 km wide. However, Iona's tiny size does not reflect its meaning or relevance to Scotland.…

Problem of Overtourism The night crowd at the Trevi Fountain in Rome, Italy Tourism is a double-edged sword: it brings economic prosperity to a community, but can also be a burden on its resources. Cities and countries walk the razor’s…

European Train Journeys By Katherine Pitkin. There is something quite magical about entering a train station at the start of a train ride, whether it be the majestic Gare de Lyon in Paris, the quaintness of the Crianlarich Railway Station…

Moonta, located on the Yorke Peninsular of South Australia, 165 kilometres from Adelaide, is steeped in history. Following the discovery of copper in the area in 1861, both the Moonta Mine and town developed rapidly and prospered.

Happy ageing! Advice for the over-50s Recent reports  in the media suggest that life gets better after the age of fifty. Happy ageing! This article provides some advice for the over 50s with respect to life, exercise & travel. Recognition…

How to Prepare for a Walking Holiday – 10 Tips It’s hard to beat the pleasure of a walking tour. While the comfort and speed of a coach or train has its place, exploring a new place on foot means…

Located on a peninsula winding southwest into The Atlantic Ocean, Cornwall is among England's most culturally and geographically distinct regions. The scenery here is spectacular and varied, ranging from windswept moors to England's best (and warmest) beaches, craggy cliffs to…

The history of the county of Devon goes back to at least the Stone Age. At the end of the last ice age, Devon was one of the first places to be settled as the ice retreated. An adventurous traveller…

Article about the West Country of England and the fascinating areas of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.

the Saint-Malo Intra Muros we see today carries us much further back in time to the swashbuckling age of the corsairs.  Brittany has always been a very independent-minded province, and Saint-Malo - a fortress of medieval origin, tucked away on…

The Hawke’s Bay region is situated on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island. It includes the hilly coastal land around the northern and central bay, the floodplains of the Wairoa River in the north, the wide fertile Heretaunga…

Kadina By Marco Stojanovik Kadina is the largest town on the Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, only 148 kilometres from Adelaide. Along with the nearby towns of Moonta and Wallaroo, it was established as a direct result of copper mining in…

The History of Renaissance Milan The city of Milan is the capital of Lombardy in Northern Italy. It is located in the plains of Lombardy in the Po Valley, south of the foothills of the Alps Mountains and several lakes…

Within Australia there are a range of private plane options suitable for an aircraft charter service operation. As a tour operator working with the private aviation sector we are selecting the right aircraft for the small group tour of outback…

The History and Attractions of Padua Padua city is an intellectual, artistic, and economic centre in northern Italy, situated on the River Bacchiglione, west of Venice. The city has a long history – according to legend being the oldest in…

The Leyshon Joneses and the South Australian Copper Smelting Industry By Marco Stojanovik The early mining industry in South Australia during the second half of the 19th century could not have prospered without the decisive role played by Welsh smeltermen.…

Historic Buildings of Broken Hill and Silverton Broken Hill and Silverton are historic outback mining towns in the far west of New South Wales, home to several heritage buildings. Broken Hill developed quickly in the…

Ancient Aboriginal Shell Trade Baler and pearl shell ornaments played a key role in the history of distant trading relationships across ancient Aboriginal Australia and remain an important part of many Aboriginal cultures today. Prior…

The Falkirk Wheel, Falkirk, Scotland The Falkirk Wheel boat lift is the world’s first and only rotating boat lift, designed and built to connect the Forth & ClydeCanal and the Union Canal which allows the traveller to enjoy a boat…

Ghost Towns of Western Australia. Eastern Goldfields Following the discovery of gold in the 1890s, thousands of prospectors flocked to Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields region. From initial finds in 1892 at Coolgardie.

Coolgardie Coolgardie, a small town in Western Australia, 558 kilometres east of Perth, has a grand history. During the Eastern Goldfields goldrush at the turn of the twentieth century, it reigned supreme as the unofficial…

Alexander Forrest & the Early Development of the Kimberley Cattle Industry The first pastoralists arrived in the Kimberley region of in north-west of Australia in the early 1880s, encouraged by the favourable report by the…

Farina On the edge of the desert within the Lake Eyre Basin, South Australia, 600 kilometres north of Adelaide, sits the abandoned railway town Farina. Historic crumbling buildings yearn for a by-gone time the busy town bustled with energy. Once…

Port Fairy By Marco Stojanovik Port Fairy is a charming, well-preserved, 19th century seaside town in western Victoria, the middle of three harbours along the coast between Portland and Warrnambool. It boasts wide, cobbled streets lined with magnificently restored heritage…

Derby Derby is town and port in West Kimberley region of Western Australia, located on the western shore of a peninsula in King Sound on the Indian Ocean, near the mouth of the Fitzroy River.…

The Avon Valley The Avon Valley region, less than two hours’ drive east of Perth City, Western Australia, offers rolling green hills, gentle streams, picturesque scenery and and historic towns brimming with heritage. With endless options abound, the region makes…

Boab Tree: Botanical Symbol of the Kimberley Endemic exclusively to the Kimberley region of Western Australia, Boab trees be found from the West Kimberley coast to as far east as the Victoria and Fitzmaurice rivers in the Northern Territory. From…

Gwion Gwion Rock Art (Bradshaw Paintings) Gwion Gwion art – formerly commonly known as ‘Bradshaw paintings’ – is a sophisticated tradition of Kimberley rock art found in the north-west region of Western Australia. The art…

This article looks at the importance of socks and shoes in keeping you mobile and active without problems or aches and pains from your feet.

Ancient Aboriginal Marketplaces By Marco Stojanovik Trade was a central part of life in Aboriginal Australia prior to British settlement, with trading routes criss-crossing the breadth of the continent, flowing from one nation to the next. Isabel McBryde (1987: 267) explains that…

George Grey’s Expedition in the Kimberley (1837-1838) In late 1837 to early 1838, Sir George Grey, at the time a young British army lieutenant, led the first land-based exploration of the Kimberley in north Western…

Ancient Aboriginal Pituri Trade By the time European colonisation began in Australia 1788, Aboriginal people had been using and trading a leafy psychoactive plant substance called ‘pituri’ for thousands of years (Watson 2011). A highly…

The Peopling of Australia Before Europeans reached Australia, there were probably already more than a million Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people inhabiting the land. Their ancestors had been there for upwards of 60,000 years.…

Ancient Roads Around the World For thousands of years roads have played a vital role in the development of human societies. For trading civilisations, they facilitated the exchange over vast distances of specific goods in…

Wyndham Perched beneath the Bastion Range, at the mouth of the King, Pentecost, Durack, Forest and Ord Rivers in the Cambridge Gulf, sits the town of Wyndham. In its surrounds, salt lakes, desert, mudflats, and…

Tenterfield Tenterfield is a historic town in the rolling New England region home to heritage-listed buildings, elegant wineries and superb wilderness, surrounded by rugged mountains and impressive national parks. Sometimes referred to as the ‘birthplace…

Bora Rings By Marco Stojanovik Bora Rings, or ceremonial grounds, were an ancient Aboriginal institution that held many functions, particularly for ceremonial purposes and as meeting places. They came in a variety of configurations depending on location and specific use,…

Ancient Aboriginal Trade of Stone Axe and Spear Heads  Ethnographic evidence from Australia shows us that the Aboriginal tribes were interconnected with another by a complex network of exchange systems from one side of the…

Key Aboriginal Trade Routes By Marco Stojanovik Trade was a central part of life in Aboriginal Australia prior to British settlement. Trading routes criss-crossed the breadth of the continent, flowing from one nation to the next, dispersing goods information, technologies,…

Ancient Aboriginal Ochre Trade The natural clay ochre was one of the most important and valuable trading items for Australian Aboriginal people. An iron oxide pigment, it is found in a range of colours, ranging…

Caravaggio’s Paintings Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was a leading 16th century Italian painter whose short but tempestuous life rivalled the controversy and drama he created through his highly influential art. Born in Lombardy, northern Italy, he had always been…

Gawler is a pleasant country town 40 kilometres to the north of Adelaide and close to the major wine producing districts of Barossa Valley. The oldest country town in the state of South Australia, in Victorian times it was extremely…

Indigenous Traditional Pathways & Australian Stock Routes From the Canning Stock Route, to the Murranji, Birdsville and Strzelecki tracks, stretching across Australia is an historic network of travelling stock routes known colloquially as the ‘Long…

The ‘Pituri Road’ was one of the most important, serving as an extensive network of Aboriginal trading routes across the continent.  Pituri is made from leaves of the shrub Duboisia hopwoodii, the most potent of Australian plants containing nicotine. Widely…

The opening in October 1872 of the Overland Telegraph Line signalled a new era for the Australian colonies. Previously isolated from the rest of the world by a tyranny of distance and slow and irksome communications, the colonies suddenly found…

Rockhampton’s Historic Railway Stations By Marco Stojanovik Rockhampton was the sprawling centre of the steam train railway empire of Queensland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was the headquarters of what was called the Central Division of…

Australian Megafauna Harkening back to a surreal and exciting chapter of Australia‘s natural history, the era of Australia‘s megafauna sees a recurrence of the many familiar faces seen in our native wildlife today, such as the much loved fuzzy wombat,…

Walgett is reputedly the Kamilaroi (Gamilaroi) word for "the meeting place of two rivers". The history of conflicts between the Kamilaroi and white settlers is painful, and the worst episodes occurred in 1838 just as the first settlement appeared on the…

Arnhem Land Songspirals Songspirals, or Songlines, form a vital part of Aboriginal Australian cultures and their practices, providing important knowledge, values, and wisdom, and connecting people to their land. As ancient narratives, they trace the journeys of ancestral spirits who…

Beechworth By Marco Stojanovik Historic Beechworth, situated in north east Victoria between Wangaratta and Wodonga, is one of Australia’s best-preserved towns from the gold rush era. Having avoided modernisation of much of its built environment, it is home to 32…

Iconic Animals of the Australian Outback When it comes to Australia‘s iconic wildlife, the more well known faces of the Kangaroo, Emu, or Koala generally spring to mind. But for many Australians, or visitors from abroad, it can be easy…

Moree, Inverell, Glen Innes, Tenterfield, Armidale, Uralla, Walcha, Tamworth, Quirindi, Gunnedah and Narrabri, and you have the New England region, encompassing the Northern Tablelands and North West Slopes. 

Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia, situated on and around the Swan River. The area had been the traditional land of the Noongar people for thousands of years before the first European…

For the Arrernte, their language goes to the core of who they are, including their cultural identity, their belief systems and their social order. Speakers do not just share the Arrernte group of languages but also an understanding of the…

The town of Balranald is located in the Riverina district of New South Wales, Australia, situated on the Murumbidgee River, near its junction with the Murray River.

The Red Centre’s Albert Namatjira Albert Namatjira is certainly the most famous Indigenous Australian of his generation, regarded widely as one of the country’s all-time great artists. A pioneer of contemporary Indigenous art, he was the first Aboriginal to be…

Pooncarie Pooncarie is a delightful village in south-western New South Wales, Australia, sloping on the eastern banks of the Darling River along the route from Wentworth to Menindee and Broken Hill. Known locally as ‘The Port’, during the 19th century…

Having split from the continent of Australia roughly 80 million years ago, New Zealand's islands have developed their own unique, and distinct ecosystem quite unlike anywhere else on earth. The most notable feature of New Zealand's native wildlife is the…

Ngangkari & Traditional Healing Methods Ngangkari are the traditional healers of the Anangu, Aboriginal Australians from the various Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands in the remote Western Desert of Central Australia. The powers, or force, ngangkari healers are given to…

A large body of archaeological sites specifically associated with Aboriginal estuarine fishing lie scattered across the southwest of Western Australia. The most comprehensive of these are confined to the 130km long shoreline between Broke Inlet and King George Sound on…

The Hawkesbury River Located just an hour’s drive northwest of Australia’s largest metropolitan city of Sydney, The Hawkesbury River region is a peaceful, and serene landscape with all the hallmarks of a flourishing rural agricultural region, replete with farmers markets,…

Budj Bim Eel Traps Over thousands of years the Gunditjmara people of southwestern Victoria, Australia, used volcanic rock created by the Budj Bim lava flow to construct a sophisticated stone aquaculture complex of fish traps, weirs, dams, and channels. Drawing…

Uncovering the ancient history of Aboriginal Australia … from time immemorial, we believe as Aboriginal people, Australia has been here from the first sunrise, our people have been here along with the continent, with the first sunrise. We know our…

Madjedbebe Archaeological Site, Northern Territory Near the border of western Arnhem Land and Kakadu National Park in Australia’s ‘top end’, Madjedbebe rock shelter (formerly known as Malakunanja II) is the oldest archaeological site in Australia, and one of the most…

Songlines trace the journeys of ancestral spirits who created the land and all natural phenomena. The creation stories as well as practical knowledge needed for survival.

Rugged mountains, tree-lined gorges, an abundance of wildlife: the national parks of the iconic Flinders Ranges are the beginning of Australia's outback. 

Follows a traditional Aboriginal trading route along a line of natural mound springs feeding from the Great Artesian Basin – the same route taken by the explorer John McDouall Stuart on his third expedition in 1859, and that chosen for…

The Australian Overland Telegraph Line, connected Port Augusta with Darwin and thereby Australia overseas to England and the wider world.

Cave Hill, also known as Walinynga in the local language, is the most significant rock art site within Central Australia and was a ceremonial site for Aboriginal people from various regions.

The Van Diemen's land Company is an indelible part of the Tasmanian story as a whole, with the company effectively assuming de facto control over a huge swathe of Tasmania's north-western territory.

Ireland’s Gems More than 11 million people travelled to Ireland according to the latest tourism statistics, lured by its lush scenery, historic landmarks, and centuries-old culture. (This number includes visitors to both Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, and…

Stonehenge and Avebury are outstanding prehistoric monuments, which are thought to date back to the Neolithic and Bronze Age. The ancient megaliths of these sites provide an insight into the mysterious rituals, beliefs, customs and engineering abilities of prehistoric peoples.

Ancient Aboriginal trade routes of Australia Trade was a central part of life for Aboriginal people prior to the British settlement of Australia. Trading routes criss-crossed the nation, dispersing goods, information, technologies and culture thousands of kilometres away from their…

Brisbane, Queensland Located in the southeast corner of Queensland, Brisbane is Australia‘s third largest city, as well as Queensland’s capital. The state of Queensland will be easy to recognize for many travellers coming from abroad, being well known for its…

Kununurra, Western Australia Located along Western Australia‘s Kimberley coast, Kununurra is a small town nestled in Australia’s east Kimberley region, renowned for its incredible natural beauty, awesome infrastructure works, and exhilarating outdoors experiences. Like many towns in Australia’s largest state,…

A charming historic town situated on the junction of the Murray and Darling Rivers in southwestern New South Wales. Once Australia’s busiest inland river port frequented by paddle steamers, many historic buildings remain today from its heyday including the Old…

the Birdsville Bakery has built a reputation as a fantastic place, not only for the tastiest pies in the outback, but also the most exotic. Their signature is the unique and award-winning curried camel pie – tender meat that melts…

Wilcannia was once the third largest inland port in all of Australia. During the great river boat era of the mid-19th century, the port thrived as wheat and wool was transported along the Darling River by paddle-steamer.

Aboriginal stone arrangements are a form of rock art deliberately placed in position by Indigenous Australians and associated with spiritual ceremonies or utilitarian purposes.

The town of Uralla lies almost exactly halfway between Sydney and Brisbane on the Northern Tablelands, New South Wales. It has become a favoured destination for visitors due to its rich history, unique shops, galleries and museums, and nearby natural…

For people who don't want to travel by air--either due to phobia, budget concerns, specific travel needs, or environmental mindfulness--travelling by sea on a ship is a viable option.

Every year on the first weekend of September, crowds of 6,000 racegoers flock to the town of Birdsville for what has been dubbed the Melbourne Cup of the Outback.

The Tasmanian Devil is truly one of a kind – the world’s largest surviving carnivorous marsupial

the fascinating story of the McLean family and their estate, particularly the Morven Hills and Waikakahi runs and the houses "The Valley" and "Holly Lea" ("McLeans Mansion").

What are the the benefits of a small group tour for the mature traveller when considering where and how they would like to travel to on their next tour?

Unaipon made several significant contributions to Australian society in scientific ideas, literature, and Aboriginal affairs

In the remote desert of Western New South Wales, scientists in the late 1960s and early 1970s made some of the most important archaeological discoveries ever found in Australia: the remains of a woman and of a man, known as…

Griffith Griffith is a major regional city in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA)  located 568 km (353 mi) south-west of Sydney and 512 km (318 mi) from Melbourne in the north-western part of the Riverina region of New South Wales, known…

Situated on the western shores of Sydney Cove, underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge and over-looking the Opera House, The Rocks is one of Australia’s most beautifully preserved 19th century colonial villages.

explores the history of gold mining during the late 19th century rush era in Otago, a region of New Zealand located in the southern half of the South Island.

Walking tours for active travellers – tips for seniors Why walk? Because for the traveler , as a couple or solo traveler , walking tours are a great tour to access sites off the beaten track. Exploring on foot, on…

Being travel fit, in mind and body. In this article, we will discuss ways in which to treat your mind and body, ensuring you remain travel fit and enjoy your time as a mature-aged or senior traveller. We are inspired…

Cairo: The City Victorious Magically chaotic and full of contrasts, Cairo is Egypt‘s largest city and its capital. With a population of 20 million (the second largest city in Africa), it is a bustling and vibrant blend of old and…

This article explores the nature of the Alpine Fault, its appearance at Gaunt Creek, and the estimated extent of a looming large earthquake caused by a slip in the fault.

Johannesburg is located in South Africa's smallest and most densely-populated province, Gauteng, which owes much of its development to the discovery of gold in 1886.

Since the 1860s, Nelsonians – the locals of Nelson, a city in the West Coast Tasman district of New Zealand – have had but one dream: to have trains connect them to the rest of the South Island.

Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, Victoria In 2019, the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the first site to be included solely on the grounds of its Aboriginal cultural importance. Dating back at least 6600…

Contemporary Aboriginal Paintings This article for small group tours into Outback Australia for mature and senior travellers as a couple or solo traveller is to assist you in understanding and appreciating Aboriginal art as you travel and explore with your…

The island of Mull is the second largest island in the Inner Hebrides (after Skye) and the most accessible of the archipelago. Of all the Hebrides, it has some of the most diverse scenery and magnificent flora and fauna. For…

Learn about the recent part of Yorkshire's long history, covering the 17th to 19th centuries and the effects of the Industrial Revolution.

The Importance of Australian Aboriginal Kinship Systems Aboriginal lore was laid down in the Dreaming which is the embodiment of Aboriginal creation. The Dreaming gives meaning to everything and affects the relationships people have with the land, their environment, each…

Silk Road Explorers – “Imperialist Villains” The Silk Road, extensive trade routes that once connected the East and the West, fell into decline in the 15th century due to several factors, among them the drying up and eventual abandonment of the…

Milingimbi Art Milingimbi Island is the largest of the archipelago cluster known as the Crocodile Islands, lying just a few kilometres off the north-east Arnhem Land coast in the Northern Territory. During the 1950s and ‘60s it burst onto the…

Bass and Flinders Mapping of Australia By Marco Stojanovik On October 7, 1798, George Bass, Matthew Flinders, and a crew of eight set sail aboard the colonial sloop Norfolk from Port Jackson bound for Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). Separate voyages…

Ephesus Ruins By Marco Stojanovik The well-preserved ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus lie near the western shores of modern-day Turkey, where the Aegean Sea meets the former estuary of the River Kaystros, 80km south of Izmir. Considered as…

Antalya By Marco Stojanovik Antalya is Turkey’s principle holiday resort on the Mediterranean coast, a city of historic and natural beauty located on the Turkish Riviera on Anatolia’s southwest coast, boarded by the Taurus Mountains. Each year tourists are drawn…

The Bosporus Strait The narrow natural strait of the Bosporus, also known as the Strait of Istanbul, is considered as the continental boundary between Europe and Asia and divides Turkey by separating Anatolia from Thrace. Although only 30km long and…

A Historical Tour of Tallinn Estonia By Marco Stojanovik The city of Tallinn, Estonia‘s capital, is a beautiful old city within which is a medieval old town. Old Town Tallinn complete with cobblestone streets and medieval wall splitting the lower old…

Known as the town 'where the red dirt meets the sea', the unofficial capital of the Kimberley region, Broome, is a relaxed beach town with a unique history.

Is 60 the new 40? When can you classify yourself as being ‘old’ rather than ‘middle aged’? The truth is, the older you get, the further you distance your self from being considered ‘old’ and all of the stereotypes that…

Australian Outback Cattle King: Sir Sidney Kidman  By Marco Stojanovik From a humble background as a stockman, Sir Sidney “The Cattle King” Kidman (1857-1935) would go onto build an outback cattle station empire covering 3 per cent of the Australian…

Stanley, Tasmania Stanley is a historic town located on Tasmania‘s North West coast, with Tasmania’s pristine Tarkine wilderness, and the tip of Cape Grim to each of its sides. Stanley is famed for its incredible natural endowment, with some of…

The Strzelecki Track, South Australia Passing through a remote and timeless landscape, packed with historical sites, the Strzelecki Track is one of Australia ‘s great outback adventures for road users or those with a passion for the history of outback…

Reasons for the British Settlement of Sydney By Marco Stojanovik On 7 February 1788, Governor Arthur Phillip formally proclaimed the first of the Australian colonies, New South Wales, at Sydney. Twelve days earlier Governor Phillip had landed Britain’s first fleet…

New Zealand Wine – a story for small group tours By Marco Stojanovik In just over 40 years modern New Zealand wine has been catapulted to international acclaim, largely due to its famed Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and more recently its…

Aboriginal Australian Arrival Some Aboriginal Australians have always believed that their ancestors came from across the sea in canoes in the Dreamtime. In northern Australia, for example, one of the major themes in indigenous Creation stories concerns the arrival of…

Carbon Dioxide Measurements at Mauna Lao and Cape Grim In May 2013, the Mauna Lao Observatory in Hawaii recorded an historic milestone.  Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere had exceeded 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time…

The Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand is situated around the bight of the same name on the northern coast of the North Island. About 260km long, the bight extends from the Coromandel Peninsular in the west to Cape…

Christchurch, New Zealand Located on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island, Christchurch is one of New Zealand’s major cities, being the largest on the South Island with a population of roughly 390,000, and the second most populous city…

Bruny Island, Tasmania Located on the south-eastern coast of Tasmania, just off the Tasmanian mainland, Bruny island is a popular travel destination for visitors to Tasmania, being an ideal spot for a day trip from Hobart, or for an extended…

The Aurora Australis When it comes to the dazzling light displays of the Aurora, many will be more familiar with the well-known Northern Lights, or ‘Aurora Borealis‘. The aurora, however, is a phenomenon that is not unique to the northern…

Australian Rivers By Marco Stojanovik Australian rivers have shaped the country from the moment the first Indigenous people arrived tens of thousands of years ago through European occupation until today. Supplying the vital ingredients of life and supporting a significant…

The Channel Country By Marco Stojanovik The Channel Country constitutes some of the most distinctive landscape in Australia: wide open flat alluvial terrain that is essentially desert that floods after heavy rainfall. An estimated 280,000 sq km, it covers the…

The Wairarapa By Marco Stojanovik The Wairarapa, known by Māori as the “Land of Glistening Waters”, is a region in New Zealand’s North Island filled with a spectacular landscape of rugged coastlines, wide valleys, lush forested mountains, and quaint colonial…

Napier By Marco Stojanovik Napier city and port is the centre of the Hawke’s Bay region on the eastern coast of New Zealand’s North Island. With a well-established Maori history spanning centuries, Europeans began settling here in the mid-19th century.…

The Murray River The mighty Murray River, Australia’s longest river and main stream of the Murray Darling Basin, flows some 2,700 km across south-eastern Australia. Rising in the Australian Alps, it drains the western side of Australia’s highest mountains before…

Venice, Italy Located in the Northeast of Italy, Venice lies in a unique natural position inside the enclosed Venetian lagoon. This area lies between the Po and Piave rivers, and periodically rises and falls depending on the tides. The Venetian…

Gdansk, Poland Located in the region of Pomerania, and sitting along the Baltic coast, Gdansk is one of Poland‘s most important cities. Nestled at the delta of the Vistula River, and with a population of roughly 470,000, Gdansk is the…

Rome, Italy Rome is the capital, and largest metropolitan city of Italy, with a population of roughly 4.3 million. Standing upon the banks of the Tiber River, and at the foot of the Palatine hill, Rome is known as the…

The Maori People New Zealand‘s Maori people are the original inhabitants of the island nation, with a history that predates European colonization by centuries. The Maori are a people of Polynesian descent, sharing some cultural and linguistic similarities with other…

Learn more about the history of early European settlement in New Zealand, and the origins of the Maori people.

White Cliffs By Marco Stojanovik Famous White Cliffs, home to the first commercial opal field in Australia, is a small town in Outback NSW, Australia. Located in the Central Darling Shire, it is around 255km northeast of Broken Hill and…

Curdimurka By Marco Stojanovik The long abandoned Curdimurka railway siding located on the Oodnadatta Track is incredibly remote. A few kilomoles west of Lake Eyre, 104km west of Marre and 620 kilometres north of Adelaide, it really is in the…

Fiordland National Park Fiordland national park lies in the southwest of New Zealand, covering an area of approximately 12,000 km across New Zealand’s South Island. The park is one of four in the larger Te Wahipounamu world heritage area, which…

Launceston, advice for small group tours  Northern Tasmania is well known for its sweeping valleys, vast farmland and historic cities. Launceston, one of Australia’s oldest cities, lying where the South and North Esk River meet to form the River Tamar…

Bourke, Outback NSW: Explored for small group tours By Marco Stojanovik “If you know Bourke, you know Australia,” wrote the famous Australian poet Henry Lawson in 1910. Lying on the edge of a desert at the start of Outback Australia,…

Aboriginal Art for small group tours Australian Aboriginal art is the oldest unbroken tradition of art in the world dating back at least 85,000 years. Prior to the arrival of Europeans in Australia, Indigenous people used many art forms including…

Wroclaw, Poland Wroclaw (pronounced Vroths-Wahf), is a Polish city located on the banks of the Oder River, and is part of the country’s Lower Silesia region. Wroclaw is the fourth largest city in Poland with a population of roughly 640,000,…

Bordeaux, France Located alongside the Garonne River, just at the beginning of the Gironde Estuary, Bordeaux is a historic French city famed for its beautiful chateaux and world class wine. Bordeaux is one of the largest cities in Southwest France,…

Explore the sights and wonders of Milford Sound, one of the world's most stunning natural wonders.

When vistiging Milan you have many day trips on offer, using italy's train network you cane easily visit Lake Como, Lake Maggiore, Parma, Bergamo and many more.

Discovering Georgia Standing at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, where Europe and Central Asia intersect, the land of Georgia is filled with wondrous landmarks and cultural experiences just waiting to be discovered on a sightseeing tour. A place of…

Best Motorcycle tours for the mature and senior traveller. This is the time for that motorcycle trip you may have dreamt about becoming a reality.Odyssey Traveller offers you the opportunity to ride through some of the most amazing landscapes in…

Izmir, Turkey Izmir is the location of the ancient Smyrna situated in the Gulf of Izmir on the Aegean Sea. This city only recently lost to Istanbul, after 1400 years, the honour of being the largest export port city of…

Cappadocia, Turkey Cappadocia, central Turkey, approximately 1h 15m flight from Istanbul airport to Kayseri airport, is a region of exceptional natural wonders, in particular characterized by fairy chimneys and a unique historical and cultural heritage. Goreme National Park and the Rock Sites…

Canberra Museums and Galleries As you probably already know – Canberra, Australia’s capital, is the epicentre for Australian history, culture and politics. The Australian War Memorial and the National Gallery making up just two of five major culture centres in…

Olympia, Greece Olympia is among the most important places in Greece and a Unesco world heritage site. The archaeological site and of Olympia, located on the western side of Peloponnese, is the site of the first ancient Olympic Games, originally between…

Kalamata, Greece Kalamata, Greece, is the major town of the Southern Peloponnese, and the capital of Messenia. Kalamata is most famous for its olives, the Kalamatianos dance and it is also home to an attractive seafront and stylish marina. Kalamata city is…

Delphi, Greece The name ‘Delphi’ comes from ‘Dolphin’ because it is widely believed that Apollo first visited the region in the shape of a Dolphin. Believed by the Ancient Greeks to be the centre of the earth, Delphi is located in…

Meteora, Greece The 6 monasteries perched on top of rock pinnacles near Kalambaka in Central Greece is probably the most spectacular visitor site in Greece. Meteora means “suspended in the air” and the remaining six monasteries are built on the…

The Australian Alps Walking Track Winding 650 kilometres through Australia’s highest reaches, the Australian Alps Walking Track is one of Australia’s most challenging – and most rewarding – long walks, passing through snowy peaks, stunted snow gums, and wildflower valleys.…

Questions About New Zealand for senior travellers Odyssey Traveller specialises in crafting unforgettable experiences for senior and mature-aged travellers interested in learning as a couple or as a solo traveller when they travel. Providing adventure and educational programs to escorted…

Birding in Broome, Western Australia The town of Broome, in the remote north of Western Australia, is a birdwatcher’s paradise. Over 330 bird species have been recorded in and around Broome – more than one third of Australia‘s total bird…

La Spezia, Portovenere and the Cinque Terre The eastern Ligurian Riviera between Cinque Terre and Portovenere is a cultural site of outstanding value, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 along with the Islands Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto.…

Highlights of Australia: Dutch tulips of Table Cape, Tasmania Australian tulip lovers take note. While thanks to coronavirus, a trip to the world famous Kukenhof Gardens in the Netherlands might be off the table for 2020, that doesn’t mean that…

Questions About Australia for senior travellers Odyssey Traveller specialises in crafting unforgettable experiences for senior and mature-aged travellers interested in learning as a couple or as a solo traveller when they travel. Providing adventure and educational programs to escorted small…

The Simpson Desert, Australia Sand dunes, desert flora, and splendid isolation: the Simpson Desert is one of the great wildernesses of outback Australia. Crossing the borders of South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory, the Simpson Desert covers a vast…

The Tarkine Rainforest, Tasmania Home to ancient Myrtle beech and Huon pine, dense rainforests, and wild ocean views, the Tarkine forest Tasmania, found in an area in the north west of the island is one of Australia’s great temperate rainforest…

Questions About Sweden for senior travellers Odyssey Traveller specialises in crafting unforgettable experiences for senior and mature-aged travellers interested in learning whether travelling as a couple or as a solo traveller. Providing adventure and educational programs to escorted small group tours since 1983. Odyssey has built…

The expedition of Edward John Eyre, 1841 In 1841, the explorer Edward John Eyre made one of the great treks across the Australian continent, passing from Port Lincoln, South Australia, to Albany, Western Australia through the arid expanses of the…

Camels of the Australian Outback Here’s a trivia question : where are the world’s only wild single-hump (dromedary camel) camels found? If you guessed Arabia or the Sahara, you’d be wrong. In fact, the answer is the deserts of central…

Tuscany’s gorgeous countryside Tuscany, named after the Etruscans, the forerunners of the Romans, with its spectacular hill towns and scenery, is one of Italy’s top vacation destinations. Tuscany‘s attractions include historic cities and art, lush vineyards, great wine and food,…

Ice age archaeological sites of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, Australia The Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park is one of the most remote places in Australia, a wild labyrinth of winding gorges, rushing rapids, river bends and limestone cliffs;…

The Bibbulmun Track, Western Australia Ranging from inland planes to beaches, limestone ranges to damp gullies, the 965-kilometre Bibbulmun Track, spanning from Perth to Albany, is one of Australia’s great walks. The track was first proposed in 1972 by Geoff…

Gawler Ranges and Lake Gairdner, South Australia Melding stunning scenery, abundant wildlife, and a fascinating history, the Gawler Ranges and Lake Gairdner are among the hidden gems of South Australia. This article shares with you some of the interesting aspects…

Highlights of Australia: The yellow-footed rock-wallaby Today a threatened species, the yellow-footed rock-wallaby is one of Australia‘s most charming and attractive marsupials. Yellow footed rock wallabies are the largest marsupial of the rock-wallaby family of wallabies. Sitting up, they reach…

Definitive Guide to Auckland, New Zealand Few cities are as geographically blessed as Auckland. While New Zealand’s largest city might be home to almost a third of the country’s total population, nature is never far in this laid-back, outdoorsy city.…

Archaeological mysteries of Australia: How did a 12th century African coin reach Arnhem Land? Few places in Australia feel as remote as the Wessel Islands, Northern Territory, which arch out into the Arafura Sea from the north-east of Arnhem Land.…

Astro Boy & Osamu Tezuka   Many older Australians, Americans, New Zealanders & Canadians are  likely  to still remember the rousing introductory theme music for the 1960s animation Astro Boy, with some probably able to recite at least a few of…

Trans Siberian Railway: Travel advice. What is it? The trans-Siberian railway was once hailed ‘the fairest jewel in the land of the Tsars’. Crossing Russia, Mongolia and China, this web of tracks provides unrivalled views of a changing landscape and…

Wilpena Pound, South Australia The vast mountain amphitheatre of Wilpena Pound, South Australia, should be considered one of Australia‘s geological wonders, along with the Kata Tjuta, the Twelve Apostles, and Uluru. But Wilpena Pound remains little known and even less…

Iceland Landscape: Lunar Likeness and Geology The strange, moon-like landscapes of Iceland inspire astronomers for the Northern light and the clear night skies, also stargazers and film buffs alike to pursue that Iceland tour. Others travel across the world for…

the Eyre Peninsula region remains a place of rugged beauty and wildness.

Arcades of Melbourne, Victoria Imagine yourself in Marvellous Melbourne, in the second half of the 19th century. The Gold Rushes – and subsequent land boom – have made your city the richest in the world, and the second-biggest in the…

Understanding Petra. Travelling through Jordan in the Middle East can be something like a trip through history as you explore the remains of cultures of the ancient world dating back thousands upon thousands of years. Certainly, these days a tour…

Soweto, Gauteng Province, South Africa Soweto is an urban settlement or ‘township’ in South Africa, southwest of Johannesburg, with a population of approximately 1.3 million Soweto was created in the 1930s when the minority white government started moving black South…

Saigo Takamori is now seen to have embodied the crisis facing Japan as it moved towards modernization

The history of Japan is composed of a great number of aspects. A reader may see the history purely as a chronicle of events but the very nature of the culture of this country of Japan makes it so much…

Designing Melbourne, Victoria For more than seven years, Melbourne has ranked top among the world’s most liveable cities, recognised for its urban planning and cultural vibrancy. And while some might attribute this to the good coffee, tram network, and vibrant…

Exploring Paris and France by rail, tips for learning about history Exploring Paris and France by rail, tips for learning about history is a small group tour offered to mature and senior travellers be they couples or single travellers. This…

Darwin, Northern Territory Australia ‘s only tropical capital, laid-back Darwin melds European, Asian, and Aboriginal influences into a vibrant stew. Famous for beautiful sunsets and colourful characters along Darwin’s cosmopolitan foreshore up here in Northern Australia. The traditional owners of…

Arnhem Land, Northern Territory This is a vast region in the north-east of Australia‘s Northern Territory and of importance to the Aboriginal community. Arnhem Land is home to some of Australia‘s most beautiful scenery. With the land owned by Aboriginal…

Aboriginal history and culture of Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory Kakadu National Park is not just a place of stunning natural beauty, but a living cultural landscape. For over 60, 000 years, the Bininj/Mungguy people have shaped the land here,…

Landscapes of Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory Australia’s largest national park (and one of the largest in the world’s tropics), Kakadu is a place of rare majesty, a land of rugged escarpments, lush rainforest, and thundering waterfalls; inhabited for over…

Small group tours of European gardens for couples and solo travellers. From the Chelsea Flower Show to the tulips of The Netherlands, many European countries take pride in their horticulture. Visiting gardens, parks, and flower shows can make for a…

Small Group Summer School Experience for  Odyssey Travellers. Over the last twenty-five years, Odyssey’s Small group Summer School experiences  has given countless travellers an unforgettable educational and travel experience. Each summer, we offer numerous special interest courses and programs. Courses…

The Australian Outback: A Definitive Guide ‘Back o’ Bourke’, ‘beyond the black stump’, ‘Outback’, ‘Never Never’: the various names given to the vast inland of Australia reveal just how hard it is to precisely summarise what exactly the Outback is,…

Packing Advice for Odyssey Traveller’s Small Group Tours Blog , Packing and Clothing , Travel tips Packing Advice for Odyssey Traveller’s Small Group Tours Many travellers ask us how best to prepare for their Odyssey Traveller programs, seeking out advice…

Travellers regularly pass through open country and roadsides lined with mallee, and when they penetrate a little further north into more arid country they encounter mulga.  Many people know little about these symbolic Australian plants.

Using weirs, dams, fish traps, and other technologies, Aboriginal communities directed water in order to ensure a consistent and abundant supply of fish. These sites became major centres of trade and cultural exchange, and many supported permanent communities, challenging the…

Odyssey Traveller visits the Mallee regions of Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia as part of our new tour of the Southern States of Australia. Designed to make you re-think the way you understand Australia.

Burra, South Australia Self-proclaimed as ‘An Historic Copper Town and Merino Capital of the World’, the town of Burra in South Australia might be the best-preserved 19th century streetscape in Australia, offering a fascinating wealth of historical sites for those…

Mildura, Victoria On the banks of the Murray River, Mildura is a leafy oasis in the midst of a dry region, and a magnet for tourists since the beginning of the 20th century. But delve deeper into the story of…

One of the best destinations we tour each year is to Ireland. Our client profile is couples and also for single senior tours of Ireland.

Spinalonga has not always been an island, completely separated from Crete. Although there has been no concrete evidence found in the sources, it is believed the Venetians destroyed some of what was then Spinalonga peninsula to create the island.

Crete, the largest of the Greek islands, stands as the southernmost border of Greece. Its position sees it as acting as something of a communication bridge between the African continent and Europe.

Hokitika, New Zealand The epitome of a Gold Rush ‘boomtown’, Hokitika, on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand is now officially known as the ‘cool little town’, an ideal gateway for the spectacular scenery of the…

A small group escorted tour of Southern Africa will send visitors away from a safari with wonderful photographs and amazing experiences of wildlife, birds and truly magnificent scenery as the backdrop for stories on any of the South Africa modern…

Kaikoura, New Zealand Perched spectacularly between the mountains and the sea, the small town of Kaikoura, New Zealand offers incredible opportunities for marine wildlife spotting. Kaikoura is on the South Island of New Zealand, around 180 km north of Christchurch,…

The Garden Route leaves the rich farmland and passes through the Karoo National Park which is a wildlife reserve of semi-desert area covering 750 square kilometres. Bushbuck and Blue Duikers are common in the forested areas, and Common Eland can…

Castle Hill, New Zealand In a country famous for beautiful landscapes, only Castle Hill has received one particular honour: being declared by the Dalai Lama as a ‘spiritual centre of the universe’. Castle Hill is a rock formation set in…

Flinders Island, Tasmania Windswept Flinders Island is Tasmania in a microcosm – granite mountains, beautiful beaches, and abundant wildlife. Flinders Island is the largest island of the 52 islands of the Furneaux Group, located off Tasmania’s north-east coast. The islands…

Benalla, Victoria Known as the ‘Rose City’, the picturesque rural centre of Benalla is the gateway to Victoria’s high country. Benalla is situated on the Broken River, a tributary of the Murray-Darling. The town is located on a flat floodplain,…

Victorian architecture of central Melbourne, Australia Thanks to two economic booms bringing prosperity and people to the growing city, ‘Marvellous Melbourne‘ was the quintessential Victorian ‘boom-town’. Today, the city has the finest collection of Victorian architecture in Australia, and one…

Castlemaine, Victoria Less famous than Bendigo and Ballarat, Castlemaine was an important centre of the Australian Gold Rush. Today, its a charming rural town with opulent Gold Rush architecture that belies its small size. The traditional owners of the land…

As you move through the cities and countryside of Turkey and you will come to realise that remnants of Turkish history form a major part of the topography surrounding you. 

Bendigo, Victoria One of Victoria’s great Gold Rush cities, Bendigo is widely considered to have the best collection of architecture in regional Australia. Bendigo is Australia’s fourth-biggest inland city (after Canberra, Toowoomba, Queensland, and Ballarat), and the fourth-biggest city in…

Echuca and Murray-Darling Trade, Victoria The ‘paddle-steamer capital of the world’, Echuca on the Murray River might be Victoria‘s prettiest small town. The name Echuca is an Yorta Yorta Aboriginal word meaning ‘meeting of the waters’. It is here that…

Ballarat, Victoria The gold rush town of Ballarat, Victoria played host to one of the most significant events in Australian history – the Eureka Stockade. Today, this elegant regional city boasts some of Australia‘s finest Victorian architecture, fascinating historical museums,…

The scenery is spectacular and diverse, varying from mountains, rivers, grassy plains, lakes, lagoons and endless coastlines to sun-scorched semi-deserts. South Africa is divided into nine provinces

Stewart Island's location - at 47 degrees south - puts it in the path of the icy, howling winds of the 'roaring forties'. Because of this harsh climate, it has largely avoided human development. The island played an important role…

Tongariro National Park was established in 1887, making it the oldest national park in New Zealand, and the sixth-oldest in the world. The park was first established thanks to members of the Ngati Tuwharetoa iwi (tribe), who wanted to restrict…

The Bay of Islands has played an important role in New Zealand's history. Around 700 years ago, Maori tradition holds, the great voyaging canoe Mātaatua reached the Bay of Islands from Hawaiki, the ancestral home of the Polynesian people.

The leaders of the Victorian Exploring Expedition, Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills are forever etched together in the Australian imagination, representing Australia's most ambitious and most tragic journey of the 19th century age of exploration.

Marree and the Railway Track, South Australia At the meeting point of the Oodnadatta Trail (Oodnadatta Track)and the Birdsville Track , the town of Marree, South Australia, has a fascinating history at the crossroads of the outback.  Marree, South Australia…

Birdsville and the Birdsville Track, Queensland On the very western edge of Queensland is Birdsville. The Birdsville population is 115, regarded as the quintessential Australian outback town, a tourist destination, though Oodnadatta, Marree, or Coober pedy for example may disagree.…

A group of self-taught artists from Broken Hill, Pro Hart and the 'Brushmen of the Bush' took the world by storm in the 1960s and 1970s,

The 'capital of the outback' and the 'silver city', Broken Hill, on the western edge of New South Wales, is an outback Mecca, packed with history, art, and culture.

Lake St Clair was formed by ice during several glaciations over the past two million years. The deep basin in which the lake lies - Australia's deepest - was formed by the action of glaciers.

Strahan sits on the edge of Macquarie Harbour, a large natural harbour on the west coast of Tasmania. It was first used by European settlers as a place of convict imprisonment.

The Freycinet Peninsula is one of the jewels of Tasmania's east coast.

One of Tasmania's most iconic natural wilderness destinations, the stunningly beautiful Cradle Mountain is a highlight of any tour of Tasmania.

Fascinating history, stunning location, and 'old world' architecture, Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania, is a highlight of any trip across the Bass Strait.

Winton also played an important role in the formation of QANTAS, the oldest airline in the English-speaking world, and the second-oldest still operating today.

A small town in outback Queensland, Barcaldine (population: 1, 422) has played a big role in Australian history as the birthplace of the Australian trade union movement, and Australian Labor Party.

Kangaroo Island separated from the Australian mainland around 10, 000 years ago. It was known as Karta or 'Isle of the Dead' to mainland Aboriginal groups.

Port Adelaide offers a number of fascinating opportunities to delve into the maritime history of South Australia.

One of the lesser-known Adelaide highlights is the Morris & Co. collection at the Art Gallery of South Australia, the world's second biggest collection of Morris decorative arts after the Victoria and Albert Gallery in London.

In 1802, the Fleurieu Peninsula was home to one of the most important meetings in Australian history. That year, two rival ships had been given the task of circumnavigating the Australian continent: for the French, Nicolas Baudin, commander of the Géographe, and for…

The two major wine-growing regions of South Australia, the Barossa Valley and the McLaren Vale, are among the most historic and acclaimed wine-growing areas in the world.

Durham is a city steeped in history and packed full of hidden gems. Situated in the North East of England, the community is welcoming to visitors, and is easy to access.

The History of Cardiff The city of Cardiff is the capital of Wales, surrounded by beautiful scenery at its location on the Bristol Channel at the mouth of the River Taff. From its historical humble beginnings as a Roman fort and…

Beaumaris Castle, Edward I of England’s architectural masterpiece built from 1295 to protect his territorial gains in the region. The historic castle is a world heritage listed site considered to be one of the most significant and sophisticated surviving examples…

The Convent of Christ (Convento de Cristo) in Tomar, Portugal is a former Roman Catholic convent that is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the 12th century, it was originally the Convent of the Knights Templar of Tomar.

St Davids the smallest city in Great Britain, consisting of four streets that meet in the ancient marketplace Cross Square.

Shrewsbury, county town of Shropshire, has an impressive history, with a medieval street plan that is largely unspoiled and over 660 listed buildings.

In 1883, Stuart's tree was located, and photographed in 1885, verifying his claims. The route he established through the centre of Australia became the basis of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line. In 1942, the principal road from Port Augusta to…

Llanberis is a lakeside village in Gwynedd, northwest Wales, on the southern bank of Llyn Padarn at the foot of the magnificent Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. The area has a long history spanning back 1000 years, initially as…

Llangollen is a small market town in Denbighshire, North Wales. It is renowned for its tumbling river and surrounding hills, situated on the south bank of the River Dee

Aberystwyth is a small ancient market town and stunning seaside resort in Ceredigion on the west coast of Wales. Established as a castle town in the Middle Ages,

Castell Coch is a 19th-century gothic revival castle built above the village of Tongwynlais in South Wales, just outside of Cardiff. The original castle built on the site was a Norman stronghold to defend the newly conquered town of Cardiff

Lightning Ridge is synonymous with opal mining in Australia. While having a population of only 3,000, it attracts over 80,000 visitors each year to experience the fascinating town.

Outback Queensland is particularly hiding a number of unforgettable indigenous tourism experiences. Especially at the Brewarrina Fish Traps, Carnarvon Gorge, and Wallaroo station you can experience and learn about dreamtime creation stories, age-old cultural practices and traditions, and Aboriginal art.

Conwy is a walled town and community in Conwy County Borough on the north coast of Wales situated on the west bank of the River Conwy estuary.

Betws-y-coed is North Wales’ most popular inland resort and accommodation provider. The village has been attracting visitors for centuries to experience its scenic beauty and numerous outdoor activities.

Great Orme’s Head is a prominent limestone headland on the coast in North Wales. Attractions include its massive Bronze Age copper mine, rich flora and fauna, stunning views from the summit, historic Orme tramway and Llandudno cable-car, and outdoor activities.

Australia's fifth-biggest city and the capital of South Australia, Adelaide has a fascinating and distinctive history as the only Australian state without a convict past.

Oodnadatta is likely an adaptation of an Arrernte word utnadata meaning 'blossom of the malga'. Prior to European settlement, the area around Oodnadatta was inhabited by the Arabunna people. The town was part of a network of Aboriginal trading routes existing…

The peninsula is located in the Waikato region, north of Bay of Plenty forming a natural barrier for the Hauraki gulf both from the Firth of the Thames and the Pacific Ocean.

Wellington is the capital of New Zealand, and the administrative centre of Wellington region, located on the south part of the North Island between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range.

The town of Coober Pedy was not established until 1915, when a 14-year old boy found a precious opal in a remote part of the South Australian outback. Soon afterwards, miners flocked to the area...

Woomera today is rather like something from a sci-fi movie, a space-age ghost town deep in the arid land of the Australian Outback.

The iconic Flinders Ranges of South Australia have a rich Aboriginal heritage and are home to a number of vitally important cultural sites and ancient artworks.

Before European colonisation, the local Aboriginal people knew the area as Curdnatta, meaning 'sandy place'. The area was reached by the explorers Alexander Elder and John Grainger in 1852, who named the town Port Augusta.

Wildflower Way itself runs 309 kilometres from Dalwallinu, north of Perth, going north and west to the coast of Geraldton, covering numerous farming towns and 21 meaningful sites developed to educate travellers.

The town of Mount Barker and the nearby Stirling Range National Park are one of the best places in Western Australia to see the state's incredible collection of wildflowers.

Albany is the southernmost town of Western Australia. Lying on the northern shore of Princess Royal Harbour on King George Sound. Albany was settled some three years before the Swan River colony, later to be known as Perth.

The biggest inner-city park in the world, the 400 hectare Kings Park, with 6 million visitors a year.

Stratford Upon Avon is a town in England's west midlands, located within Warwickshire county. Stratford's most prominent claim to fame comes from its history as the birthplace of William Shakespeare, arguably the most famous playwright in the English language.

The Roman Villa of Desenzano del Garda is Northern Italy’s most important and best preserved great late antiquity villa extending over a hectare of prime lakeside land is explored on a small group tour.

Western Australia becomes home to one of the world's most incredible collections of wildflowers. The state is home to more than 12, 000 species of wildflower - 60% of which are only found in Western Australia. Join Odyssey's wildflower tour.

Dubbo is explored on a small group tour. located in the heart of the beautiful Macquarie Valley by the majestic Macquarie River at the intersection of the Newell, Mitchell, and Golden highways.

Esperance amongst wildflower enthusiasts it is famous. Each spring the town and the surrounding South West eco-region is filled with bursting colour overtaken by blooming wildflowers.

Hugged by mountains and long sandy beaches, beautiful Lake Garda is a favoured holiday location. The stunning scenery, relaxed atmosphere, year-round mild temperature, and richly cultured historic towns and villages all make Lake Garda a popular place to visit.

Lake Argyle, Australia Lake Argyle, Western Australia. An immense man-made reservoir in the remote East Kimberley, Australia, Lake Argyle has transformed the surrounding landscape, creating a beautiful marine environment and refuge for local fauna. The traditional Aboriginal owners of the…

In few places is the difference between wet and dry seasons as distinct as in the remote Kimberley Region of Western Australia. Learn more on a small group tour with Odyssey Traveller.

The Kimberley is home to thousands of ancient rock art sites, believed to be the world's oldest examples of rock art.Discover more on this Odyssey Traveller small group tour.

in Halls Creek, one of the region's remote towns, and you'll discover a fascinating gold rush history as part of the stories on a Odyssey Traveller small group tour.

UNESCO world heritage listed Purnululu National Park is home to the Bungle Bungle Range, the beehive-shaped structures of striped orange and grey sandstone that have become icons of Western Australia.

Red sands, strange limestone formations, boab trees, and stunning gorges: Western Australia's Kimberley region epitomises the remote grandeur of the Australian outback.

Continental Crossroads: Discover Morocco Morocco is a land of incredible diversity. On an Odyssey Traveller Morocco tour of this magnificent country you will encounter bustling marketplaces, grand and ornate architecture, spectacular deserts, rugged mountain ranges and thrumming African cities.  Situated at…

Roman houses for wealthy people built in the times of the Republic and the Empire. Popular locations included on the lakes of Northern Italy, in the hills to the East of Rome, on the bay of Naples, and outside of…

The Aran Islands, Republic of Ireland - not to be confused with the Isle of Arran in Scotland - are a rugged archipelago in Ireland's wild Atlantic, visible from the west coasts of County Galway and County Clare

Galway is centre of traditional Irish culture, home to the country's largest Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) region, on the Connemara Peninsula and the Aran Islands. 

Lakes, mountains, wild Atlantic beaches: County Kerry is a highlight of any tour of Ireland, packing some of the world's most spectacular scenery into a small area for Odyssey Travellers to explore on a small group tour.

The Globe Theatre that stands on London’s south bank today is not the same theatre that stood in Shakespeare’s time. The original Globe Theatre was destroyed in 1613 by a misfiring canon during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII...

Queenstown is a resort town on the South Island of New Zealand. Built on the lakeshore of Lake Wakatipu, the town provides amazing views having the Remarkables Mountain Range as its background.

County Cork, in the south-west corner of Ireland, is the largest county by area, home to Ireland's second-biggest city, Cork. Known as the 'Rebel County', Cork has always had a fiercely independent streak.

Te Anau is a small town on the South Island of New Zealand, often labelled as the gateway to the wilderness and amazing scenery of Fiordland.

Famed for poets, playwrights, and pubs, Dublin is a city of contrasts: home to some of the English language's greatest writers, the city is also known for its down-to-earth pub culture; the heart of modern, prosperous Ireland.

Musee Maillol, a small museum devoted to the work of Aristide Maillol, a pioneering turn-of-the-century sculptor.

Marmottan Monet Museum - home to the world's largest collection of Monets, along with works by the other great impressionists - remains a hidden gem, often left out of the standard tour of Paris. 

World’s most extensive collection of Auguste Rodin’s work, displayed in the beautiful house and gardens of the Hotel Biron, the Musee Rodin is a highlight of any trip to Paris.

Tiger Hill is located 11 kilometres from Darjeeling town in West Bengal, India, and one of the places to visit in this town famous for its tea gardens.

The Musée Yves Saint Laurent is Paris's latest must-see destination, an extensive and deeply personal look through the life and works of the revolutionary fashion designer - who embodied the spirit of the 'Swinging Sixties'

Known as the Toy Train, this historic railway is one of the three Indian railways listed as the UNESCO World Heritage Site

Questions About New Zealand Odyssey Traveller specialises in crafting unforgettable experiences for mature-aged travellers, providing adventure and educational programs to small groups since 1983. Odyssey has built up a reasonable knowledge bank to answer questions about New Zealand that travellers…

the easiest ways to get around Paris as a visitor is the extensive and effective public transport network. For an affordable price, a trip on the Métro or the RER will get you to and from your destination of choice.

The Maori first settled what’s modern Auckland around 1350, and named their settlement Tāmaki Makaurau, which can be translated in many ways

Parisians are fiercely loyal to their area of choice, shopping and dining locally at markets, restaurants, and wine bars, and rarely leaving their home turf. Learn more before you visit.

Highlights of New Zealand | Rotorua We offer a small group tour of Rotorua New Zealand during our 14-day long tour of New Zealand . Odyssey Traveller offers this small group tour (typically 6 to 12 people) for senior and…

For visitors with an interest in literary history, Paris has so many gems. Museums are devoted to writers and second-hand bookstores stock classics rarely found elsewhere. Book lovers can trace the steps - and visit the haunts - of their…

Llanelli is a coastal town situated on the northern bank of the Loughor River, on the Bristol Channel, Wales.

The desert kingdom of Jordan is a place of wonder and majesty. With a history stretching back thousands of years, past civilisations and peoples have left Jordan with an incredible cultural heritage.

The abbey of St Michael's Mount was built as a (more modest) Cornish counterpart of Mont-St-Michel by Benedictine monks in the Middle Ages.

Scientists and historians suggest that the Isles of Scilly were, until quite recently, part of a singular island called Ennor.

Vilnius would become one of the more vibrant and tolerant cities in Eastern Europe, home to a mix of different cultures and religions, flourishing for centuries as an administrative capital and centre of trade.

Believed to be the home of King Arthur, Tintagel Castle on the North Cornish Coast is one of the most visited destinations in England.

The History of Warsaw By Marco Stojanovik Warsaw, the Polish capital city, has a fascinating history of cultural and economic development in the face of foreign occupation. Emerging in the 14th century as an important central trading point, the city…

The History of Riga By Marco Stojanovik Riga, the Latvian capital, is a beautiful city that lies on the banks of the Daugava River at its mouth on the Gulf of Riga at the Baltic Sea. Its amazing Old Town…

Lynton and Lynmouth are the gateway to 'England's Little Switzerland', Lynmouth is a seaside town, with a harbour full of fishing boats, while hilltop Lynton is elegant and Victorian.

Alfama is Lisbon’s oldest extant neighbourhood, built in the 8th century during the Muslim conquest of Portugal and neighbouring Spain.

The Tower of Belem was built around 1514 on the banks of the Tagus River to defend the port of Lisbon. Built during the city of Lisbon’s Golden Age, the monument was ceremonial gateway to the city.

The Society is dedicated to preserving the culture of Hammerfest. The polar bear is the city’s coat of arms and was therefore chosen as the society’s logo.

The Arctic Circle is the most northernly major circle of latitude, at approximately 66°30′ N. It marks the area within which, for one or more days each year, the Sun does not set (June 21) or rise (December 21), and…

Derwent Valley Mills offers a unique opportunity to experience an industrial landscape that would become the model for textile factories throughout the world in subsequent centuries.

Odyssey has built up a reasonable knowledge bank to answer questions about Austria that travellers are likely to ask, as they make their plans to tour independently, or with us as part of a small group tour.

Crickhowell is a popular tourist location from which to experience the scenery of Brecon Beacons and partake in enjoyable outdoor activities such as hiking, mountain-biking, rock climbing, fly-fishing and more.

Madaba, Jordan Madaba is a town in west central Jordan situated on a highland plain 760 metres above sea level, 32 kilometres south of Amman. It is famous today in historical cartography for the Madaba mosaic map, a 6th-century mosaic…

The science of the Northern Lights Although many are more familiar with the Northern Lights, the natural phenomenon is not exclusive to the Northern Hemisphere. The polar lights are caused by solar activity. When there is a solar storm called…

Tromsø, Norway Tromsø is the largest city of Northern Norway and one of the most popular destination in the country to watch the Northern Lights for a memorable holiday. Tromsø lies 350 km north of the Arctic Circle on the…

Shobak Castle, Jordan Shobak Castle is the name given to the ruins of a Crusader castle perched on a rocky hill in the modern town of Shobak (or Shoubak) in Jordan. The hill was formerly called Mons Realis, Royal Mountain,…

Wadi Rum, Jordan Wadi Rum in southern Jordan is the largest wadi (valley) in the country. About 60 kilometres east of Aqaba, this valley in the Jordanian desert, where famously Lawrence of Arabia was filmed and where the Bedouin tribes…

The Dead Sea The Dead Sea is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel to the west. It is located 430.5 metres (1,412 feet) below sea level in the Jordan Rift Valley, the lowest point…

There’s also lots of history in Newquay. It was first settled in the Iron Age, evidenced by a hill fort which has ditches and six ramparts making it an impressive fortress, and experts claim there was continuously settlement from the…

Penzance, The area is rich in legend and history, and Mousehole in particular has been central to this. In 1595, the village was burned by a fleet of Spanish ships.

Su Nuraxi di Barumini located on the island of Sardinia, is one of the world's most fascinating archaeological sites, a window into an ancient and uniquely advanced Bronze Age civilisation. 

Amman, Jordan Amman is the capital and largest city of Jordan. It is the seat of government and the city where the king resides, and among the most modernised Arab cities. Built on the rolling hills of the Aljun Mountains,…

The Formartine and Buchan Way is a popular walking route, following a former railway line across the picturesque Scottish countryside.

Pamplona, Spain Pamplona, the capital of Navarre in northern Spain, is famous worldwide for the running of the bulls during the San Fermin fiesta, and for being one of Ernest Hemingway’s favourite cities. Hemingway visited Pamplona numerous times and wrote…

Burgos, Spain Burgos in northern Spain is the country’s original heartland, initially known as Castilla la Vieja – the old part of the kingdom of Castile. The city of Burgos, founded in 884, was the capital of Castile from 1073…

The Kazakh Steppe, Kazakhstan Stretching across vast swathes of Central Asia, the Kazakh Steppe covers much of the northern region of Kazakhstan, an area roughly of 800,000 square kilometers. The great steppe is comprised of areas of grasslands savannas and…

Matera, Italy The ancient town of Matera, Basilicata. The ancient city of Matera, in southern Italy, is among the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities, a place of primordial beauty, where cave houses are carved directly into ancient cliffs. Long a…

Bari, Italy Aerial view of Bari, Italy. While travel guides and blogs have begun to tout Apulia as Italy’s ‘newest hotspot’ (Vogue Australia), the province’s capital, Bari, has been unfairly neglected. But we think this might be for the best,…

Apulia, Italy The iconic trulli of Alberobello. The heel of Italy’s boot, the Apulia region (Italian: Puglia) is slowly taking its place among Italy’s major destinations. With a wealth of historic towns, beautiful scenery and a much less frantic pace…

Aeolian Islands, Italy Panarea Expansive blue seas, white sands, and volcanic mudbaths: the Aeolian Islands are among the best of Italy’s beach paradises. But unlike their busier rivals, the Aeolians are an ideal place to get away from it all…

Messina, Italy Messina cityscape. Only a few kilometres from the Italian mainland, the city of Messina has long been the gateway to Sicily, a fascinating historical centre with a Belle Epoque twist. The city of Messina has an ancient history.…

Epidaurus was a small city in Ancient Greece on the eastern coast of the Argolid Peninsular at the Saronic Gulf

Mykonos has an amazing history, rising and falling as an economic powerhouse and trade centre dominated and defended by various rulers.

Corfu differs to much of the rest of Greece, with notable limited archaeological sites but an abundant mixture of forts, medieval castles, palaces, Greek orthodox churches, and monuments.

Sparta was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece famous for its powerful military. Throughout ancient Sparta a prominent militaristic culture pervaded with citizens’ lives centred around war.

This article traces the Peponnese peninsula history from the Bronze Age, through classical antiquity, the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, and finally modern Greek independence.

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia Mongolia’s Capital of Ulaanbaatar is a city whose history is written in its landscape, architecture and people. Located at 1,350 m (4,430 ft) above sea level and close to the river Tuul, Ulaanbaatar looks out onto the wilderness…

The Volga River Flowing from Russia‘s northwest to the Caspian Sea in the south, and measuring 3,530 m, the Volga river is the longest river in Europe. The Volga has throughout its history become an integral part of the identity…

Sheki, Azerbaijan Sheki is often the last stop in a small group tour of the Caucasus as it sits close to Azerbaijan’s border with Georgia. The city, situated in northern Azerbaijan and one of its oldest cities, was once on…

Yerevan, Armenia Similar to its neighbouring countries in the South Caucasus, the Republic of Armenia has a history marked by incredible losses and bloody wars, which continued even after its independence from the former Soviet Union. But the tide of…

Baku, Azerbaijan Baku is the capital of Azerbaijan, the centre of the city sitting on the shore of the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan is perhaps a country in the Caucasus region that travellers do not think to include on their list…

Tbilisi, Georgia Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, was recently voted third best place to travel to Europe—trailing only Colmar, France and Athens, Greece—by more than 600,000 people in a 2020 survey run by European Best Destinations. The travel website devoted…

Walhalla Memorial, Germany The Neoclassical Walhalla Memorial, reminiscent of the Parthenon and reaching for the grandeur of the mythological Norse Valhalla after which it was named, is located high above the Danube River, east of Regensburg, Bavaria. The white stone…

Bayreuth, Germany Bayreuth is located on the Red Main river in Northern Bavaria. The pretty, mid-sized town is world famous for the Bayreuth Festival, and for its affiliation with the German composer Richard Wagner. The composer lived here from 1872…

Munich, Germany Munich, capital of Bavaria, lies on the elevated plains north of the edge of the Bavarian Alps. The city of Munich is the third largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. It traces its origins to a…

Odyssey has built up a reasonable knowledge bank to answer questions about Italy that travellers are likely to ask, as they make their plans to tour independently, or with us as part of a small group tour.

Odyssey has built up a reasonable knowledge bank to answer questions about England that travellers are likely to ask, as they make their plans to tour independently, or with us as part of a small group tour.

Dresden, Germany Dresden is the capital of the German state of Saxony, and the third largest city in eastern Germany after Berlin and Leipzig. It lies in the basin of the Elbe River between Meissen and Pirna, 30 kilometres north…

Questions about Germany for seniors on a escorted small group tour. Odyssey Traveller specialises in crafting unforgettable experiences for senior and mature-aged travellers seeking educational experiences as a couple or as a solo traveller.  Providing adventure and educational programs for small…

Tikal, Guatemala Tikal in Guatemala was once a great centre of Mayan civilisation, the largest urban centre in the ancient Mayan lowlands inhabited from the 6th century BC to the 10th century AD. Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in…

Palermo, Sicily Palermo Cathedral mixes Arab and Norman styles, a testament to Sicily’s multicultural history. The capital of Sicily and the island’s chaotic heart, Palermo is where civilisations – Arab, Norman, Italian – collide. Palermo was founded by Phoenician traders…

Copan, Honduras Near the Guatemala-Honduras border is the ancient city of Copan (also known as Copan Ruinas) on the west bank of the Copan River, occupied for more than two thousand years and now an important archaeological site of Mayan…

Baikal is the world’s oldest lake, formed around 25-30 million years ago, it is also the deepest and largest by volume, making up 20% of the world’s unfrozen fresh water.

Antigua, Guatemala The beautiful city of Antigua in Guatemala has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1979. Its full name, “Antigua Guatemala”, means Old Guatemala, and here you can see preserved ruins and colonial buildings dating back…

San Jose, Costa Rica The city of San Jose is the largest Costa Rican city and capital of the only country in the world to disband its military. Founded by the cabildo (legal representative of the Spanish Crown) in 1736,…

Delhi, India Humayun’s Tomb, Delhi. If Jaipur is historic India, and Mumbai its modern heart, Delhi is where the two collide: a frantic mix of medieval architecture, broad avenues, and modern design. Few cities have been built and rebuilt as…

Casco Viejo, Panama Casco Viejo—“old quarter”, also called Casco Antiguo or San Felipe—is a neighbourhood in Panama City in Central America that has been inscribed on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites since 1997. This is the historic district…

Panama City is the capital and largest city of Panama, a country in Central America located on a narrow land mass (Isthmus of Panama) that connects North and South America.

Highlights of Uzbekistan | Samanid Mausoleum The Samanid Mausoleum, dating from the 10th century, is the oldest Muslim monument in the city of Bukhara, Uzbekistan. This final resting place was built for Ismail Samani (or Isma’il ibn Ahmad) the founder…