archaeologyJune 10, 2026St. Paul's Catacombs: Malta's Underground City of the DeadBeneath the streets of Rabat sits one of the most impressive catacomb systems I've ever walked through — a 1,700-year-old underground cemetery where Christians, Jews, and pagans were buried side by side, complete with stone tables for dining with the dead.Read Full Article
archaeologyJune 7, 2026Ħaġar Qim: Malta's Temples Are Older Than the Pyramids and StonehengeĦaġar Qim was built around 3600 BCE — a thousand years before the Great Pyramid, centuries before the first stones at Stonehenge. For almost a decade it was the oldest place I'd ever stood. Almost nobody outside Malta knows it exists.Read Full Article
ohio-hidden-cornersJune 4, 2026Henry Church Rock: The Blacksmith Who Carved a Political Monument in an Ohio ForestIn 1885, a self-taught blacksmith named Henry Church Jr. spent years carving a political statement into a boulder in a Chagrin River forest — alone, at night, by lantern light. He never explained it. He never became famous. The rock is still there.Read Full Article
dark-historyJune 4, 2026Poveglia: The Plague Island Venice Won't Let You VisitPoveglia is closed. You're not supposed to go there. My mom found a boat guide who would drop us off and refuse to set foot on it himself — and we spent half an hour inside the abandoned hospital on Venice's plague island.Read Full Article
memoirJune 2, 2026Plague Islands, Ancient Temples & the Worst Vatican Experience: Italy and Malta 2015A 2015 family trip through Venice, Florence, Rome, and Malta — including an unauthorized visit to Venice's plague island, a cliff-jumping spot with no water, and the Vatican fight that ended our Vatican visit.Read Full Article
archaeologyApril 29, 2026Ek' Balam: The Maya Pyramid Nobody VisitsChichen Itza gets 2.5 million visitors a year. Ek' Balam is 25 kilometers away and you can still climb the pyramid. That gap isn't accidental.Read Full Article
dark-historyApril 28, 2026Vlad the Impaler: The Real Dracula's Castle Tourists MissBran Castle isn't where Dracula lived — Poenari is. I climbed all 1,480 steps to the real Vlad the Impaler sites tourists never find, and the history is darker than the legend.Read Full Article
memoirApril 27, 2026Not a VacationIndia and Nepal, September 2014 — fourteen days overland from Delhi to Kathmandu, a motorcycle vs. my sister, the Taj Mahal, and the boat on the Ganges at sunset.Read Full Article
memoirApril 21, 2026Halloween in TransylvaniaThe most impulsive trip we ever took — a G Adventures Halloween tour through Romania in 2012 that set a bar most carefully planned trips have failed to clear.Read Full Article
memoirApril 14, 2026Where Wanderlust Blooms: The Yucatan AwakeningA life-changing 2008 family trip to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula awakening my lifelong passion for exploration and adventure.Read Full Article
memoirApril 6, 2026Planting the Seeds: Early Travels & Childhood WanderlustThe early childhood journeys with my mom and sister that sparked a lifelong passion for exploration and adventure.Read Full Article
