Viator Travel Blog

Editor’s Note: This is part of the ‘Contemporary Family Vacation’ series by Jeff Gates, the New Media Lead Producer for the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Managing Editor for its blog, Eye Level. Catch up on Jeff’s posts from this year’s family outing to the Pacific Northwest. As we stood on the bluffs overlooking the [...]

Forget the South of France. Forget Italy. And Ibiza. These days being glamorous on your yacht, wearing flowing white designer linen, and partying every night is all about – Croatia. Kevin Spacey, Nicky Hilton, Valentino, Gwyneth Paltrow – they’ve all discovered it. And this summer I was right there with them. Sort of. The yacht [...]

Singapore has a lot more going on than meets the eye. Maybe it can’t match the messy human chaos of Bangkok, the high-tech chaos of Tokyo or the grand outdoors of Sydney, but it does have all these things in small, Singaporean-sized pieces. Take a few days to discover more than just its shopping and stopover clichés.

Editor’s Note: Loyal readers will have fond memories of the last family vacation taken by Jeff Gates, the New Media Lead Producer for the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Managing Editor for its blog, Eye Level. Catch up on posts from Jeff’s last vacation and then enjoy his posts from this year’s family outing to [...]

Terry Carter has photographed and, with his wife and writing partner, Lara Dunston, written or contributed to half a dozen travel guides to Dubai and the UAE and have made it their home base since 1998. We asked Lara and Terry to write about experiencing the “real” Dubai. They have kindly obliged with a guide to eating, sleeping & sightseeing in Dubai aimed at first-time visitors.

Bangkok’s river, the Chao Phraya, is alive and vibrant and working and simply amazing. I know because I took one of our most popular tours in Thailand, the Bangkok Rice Barge Cruise, and I have the pictures to prove it! This really is one of those cases where words don’t do justice to the subject, [...]

Turkish Memorial at Gallipoli The sun is shining, warm with the beginning of spring. The narrow sandy beach is deserted. Tiny crystal clear waves lap at the few piles of seaweed. It’s an idyllic scene and hard to imagine thousands of soldiers landing here at dawn on April 25 1915. But I try, because this [...]

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan (which began September 2) puts many people off travelling to the Middle East during the period, but travel writer and Dubai resident of 10 years Lara Dunston thinks it’s a fabulous time to visit. Here’s why.

So if you carefully followed my instructions some time back, you should have made it as far as the Western Australian border. You trembled at the escarpments of Timber Creek, wept at the unparalleled beauty of the Beef Road Monument (sob) and you cried as they took your food away from you at the Quarantine [...]

While we wait for the next update from the Optimistic Fools (click here to read previous posts), Chris has sent through some photos of their journey (they’re currently in Russia, having just passed through Kazakhstan). So here’s a quick photo update from the 2008 Mongol Rally, courtesy the Optimistic Fools. An excerpt from Chris’ last [...]