Last August, I was living in Barcelona for the summer, and during the Festa Major de…
From the minute you step into the bright, shiny, neat and tidy, perfect curated aisles of the huge warehouse that is the Pinball Hall of Fame, if you’re anything like me and have a soft spot in your heart for nostalgia, you’ll have found your nerdy heaven.
In an age when travel has become more affordable as the world becomes increasingly connected, “tourist” has become a dirty word. People who LOVE to travel will often find themselves avoiding that word at all costs. They call themselves names like, “Globetrotter”, “world traveller”, “explorer” or my most hated term, “digital nomad”. The word “tourist” has seemingly become synonymous with that annoying, loudmouth person who will only eat at Americanized restaurants and prefers overpriced activities over local traditions.
When it comes to taking long-haul flights in economy (which let’s face it, almost 99.9% of us fly economy), there is no real way to be completely at ease BUT there is plenty you can do to make it as enjoyable as possible. The number one tip I have is to be prepared long in advance. There’s nothing like stress to set off your trip on the wrong foot. I tend to pack a full few weeks in advance, and while I don’t recommend this necessarily, it is good to have all your ducks in a row a few days before your flight.
When visiting any city, it’s nice to have an experience that both exposes you to the city’s everyday culture and also is a unique activity that could only happen there. For me this could be a Gondola ride on the Grand Canal, homemade pasta sitting on a balcony in Tuscany or, as I experience this New Year Eve’s, skating at the McCormick Tribune Plaza & Ice Rink inside Chicago’s famous Millennium Park!
Tokyo Tower is one of those attractions that feels like something you have to see while you’re in Tokyo. Kind of like the CN Tower in Toronto. But if anyone ever asked me if they should go up the CN Tower, I would roundly object and tell them a myriad of other things they could do instead. Despite being in all the guidebooks about Tokyo, after spending a week in this city and looking back, I think that the tower is something you could probably do with skipping. That being said, we did enjoy ourselves, and when a city this big feels overwhelming, it’s an easy option to choose which gives you a unique way of looking seeing the entire city all at once.