Thirty-one days, thirty nights, six regions, one country I gave a full month for the first time. Every hotel and every tour below is one I actually booked and actually did.


Thirty-one days, thirty nights, six regions, one country I gave a full month for the first time. Every hotel and every tour below is one I actually booked and actually did.

Seven days, six real day trips, and the reef, laid out so you can build your own version of Cairns itinerary. I flew into Cairns from Melbourne on 17 January, a motel on Sheridan Street booked, Skyrail and a waterfall day already locked in before I’d even landed. Cairns was the fourth stop on a month-long Australia trip, and by the time I got there I’d...

Twenty-eight nights, every flight and every day I actually spent, across a country I'd tell anyone to give real time to.

I got into Nagoya on a late Shinkansen from Tokyo, checked into a hotel two minutes from the station, and had exactly one day to see a city most people skip entirely. Nagoya sits on the Tokaido Shinkansen line between Tokyo and Kyoto, and a lot of travellers treat it as nothing more than a place the train passes through. I wanted to know if that reputation was fair...

This is the 7 days in Tasmania itinerary I actually did, Launceston to Hobart, one way, no backtracking. It is not the only way to see the island, and if you have longer, I have included an honest section on what I would add rather than pretend a week covers everything. But if you have seven days and want to see the real range of what this island does, this is the...

I spent five days in Hobart across a longer Tasmania trip, and I could have used every one of them. But most people do not have five days, so this is not a diary of what I did in order. It is the itinerary I would hand a friend with three or four days, built from everything I actually saw and checked, reordered where a stranger’s trip benefits from a different...

I did not plan this post the way I planned the others. There was no single walk, no single day. This is what happens when you add up four nights of wandering Hobart’s waterfront, its heritage streets, its markets, and its museums, then step back and look at what you actually did. If you are planning a Hobart trip and want the real shape of the city rather than...

I have been asked more times than I can count: “How do you actually plan a trip to Bhutan?” It is a fair question, because Bhutan does not work like anywhere else I have travelled to. You cannot book a flight, land, and figure the rest out as you go. Almost every visitor arranges their entire trip â guide, driver, hotels, permits â through a licensed...

Nikko is a small but beautiful city in Japan. It is located in Togichi prefecture in a mountainous setting and is a popular tourist weekend gateway from Tokyo. This photo guide will tell you about a list of things to do in Nikko.

I had four days in Melbourne. No rental car, no local knowledge, no group to share the planning with. Just a Myki card, a rough idea of what I wanted to see, and a city that turned out to be far more generous to the car-free visitor than most guides suggest. This is the 4 days in Melbourne itinerary I actually followed – four days, four genuinely different...