Viator Travel Blog

Have you heard of Passports with Purpose?

If you’re a serious about travel, and serious about making travel a force for good (not evil!) in the destinations you explore, Passports with Purpose is your new best travel friend. This annual fund-raising effort aims at making a difference in developing destinations around the world.

I have a crystal-clear memory of my very first morning in Istanbul. It was 1996. I was on assignment for Lonely Planet and Fodor’s to update their respective guidebooks to Turkey. My flight arrived late, 10pm or something.

I jumped into a taxi and headed straight to the small hotel I had booked in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district. The last thing I remember before collapsing into bed is opening the window of my 4th-floor room.

It was the second last weekend in November and a friend of mine was in London without a room booked for the Saturday night (a long story). Dragging her suitcase, she walked into about 50 hotels ranging from one star to five. None of them had a vacancy.

She headed to an internet café, checked the usual sites: there were only18 rooms available in London that night. The point of this story is that London in the lead-up to Christmas is busy. Very, very busy.

It’s the time of year when thoughts turn to healing bruised egos with mulled wine. Yes, all over London magnificent outdoor ice rinks are opening and perfectly sensible people are shodding their feet with narrow lines of sharp metal, sliding onto mirror smooth cold ice, and waving their arms around their heads in an attempt not to fall over.

“I am going to Iceland to see the Aurora Borealis,” I said confidently. Everyone was envious. Which only egged me on. “Yeah, it’s the right time of year, and I’ve just got a feeling.”

Digging myself a whole trench full of trouble. Everyone knows the Northern Lights are capricious at best, downright elusive the rest of the time. But since childhood I’d wanted to see them. So here I was in Iceland. This was my chance.

The 2010 Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany, is a once-a-decade event that takes over, consumes, and essentially overwhelms the entire town of Oberammergau. Once every 10 years, more than half of this Bavarian village’s 5,000 inhabitants take part as actors in the world-famous Oberammergau Passion Play. This may be the world’s most famous play… that you have never heard of!

So you’ve travelled and taken lots of digital photos. Now you are now home, pining for the next adventure. What to do? Why not dust off your travel pictures and have some fun? You could show them to your friends and family again, but apparently that is boring (note to self: why aren’t people more [...]

I arrive for my Rome catacombs tour early and so sit in the last of the October sun munching on a suppli (a Roman snack containing a deep-fried ball of rice and mozzarella). Aptly our first destination is the catacombs of Saint Calisto – one small part of a huge network of catacombs in Rome.

It wasn’t easy dragging myself out of the hot thermal waters of the Polynesian Spa in Rotorua on that cold winter night. Birds were rising from the lake, heading home to roost as steam rose in the dying light of Saturday.

As I forced my relaxed muscles to work, cold air hit skin: this traditional Maori Hangi dinner better be worth it.

Before the arrival of the euro, Madrid was well known as one of Europe’s cheaper destinations. These days, as on the rest of the continent, you can go through money like water if you don’t come prepared. You need to plan ahead, and go with the local flow, to make Madrid achievable on a budget.