The dining room of Home Hostel Lisbon is packed with backpackers, each seat at the long, wooden tables occupied by a hungry body, eagerly anticipating “Mamma’s Dinner.” Six nights a week, Mamma, the actual mother of the hostel’s owner, prepares
Quiet, meandering streets wind up the hillside past bakeries where sweet smells and the soft sounds of guitar spill out the windows. The gentle slopes converge at the foot of the remains of a castle, its fortress towers looking out
Van doors slam and six bodies dart over sand dunes and bushes, racing wildly to catch the last rays of the sinking sun before they disappear beneath rolling ocean waves. It is time to explore the cliffs of Lagos, Portugal. We
Bura Surfhouse in Lagos, Portugal is a great hostel. And it seems I’m not the only one who thinks so. The family-run hostel has a 95 percent thumbs up rating on TripAdvisor. But what is it that pushes a hostel beyond the
We talk about rivalries all the time in sports. Yankees-Red Sox. Lakers-Celtics. Cowboys-Redskins. But every once in a while, in a rare scenario that’s becoming even less common over time, there’s a rivalry that crosses social boundaries. In such rivalries
I run into the sea and the thick pounding waves break on my body, filling my wetsuit with a layer of summer-warmed salt water. I hop on my board and paddle past the break at Zurriola Beach, distancing myself from
For four decades, Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, lay behind the Iron Curtain, closed off from the West and ruled by the Soviets under a strict and oppressive Communist government. What is today known as Slovakia had yet to stand
Located on the Danube River, reachable within a day from Vienna and Budapest, I found Bratislava to be the biggest hidden gem on my trip to the former Eastern Bloc. Packed full of history and less frequented by tourists, the capital
Out of all the day trips I took while living in Madrid, Campo de Criptana easily stood out as my favorite. This small pueblo, two-hours from Madrid by train in the region of La Mancha, would be largely unremarkable if it
During my last month in Madrid I discovered what would become one of my favorite places in the city – Parque Europa. I learned about this park, which contains replicas of 18 of Europe’s most iconic monuments, from my first and