#travel

#travel

We're back, baby! And we're kicking off our ninth season of Normal Gossip by gabbing it up with Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai! In this episode, Rachelle and Malala dig into such questions as whether it's a good idea to let your college roommate plan a "dirt cheap" trip to Europe for you, whether hitchhiking is an important life experience, and whether comparing hand sizes always means you want to bone.

As someone who's constantly on the go (and always shopping on Amazon), I have a soft spot for the little holiday gifts that make travel smoother, especially when they fit perfectly inside a holiday stocking. Sure, unwrapping a big gift is fun, but there's something extra special about discovering a thoughtful gift that your loved one will actually use. I scoured the Amazon Holiday Shop and pulled together a few tried-and-true Travel + Leisure favorites that travelers can't stop raving about.

Black Friday is still a few weeks away, but Amazon has already kicked off early deals ahead of the big shopping event. If you meant to pick yourself up a portable charger, you haven't missed your chance just yet. Amazon now has the Anker laptop power bank on sale for 32% off. Usually this portable charger is priced at $135, but the deal has it down under a hundred at just $92. This 32% discount ends up saving you $43 for a limited time.

I've been a single mom for just over five years. My daughter's dad and I separated when she was six months old, and since then, I've dedicated my life completely to her. I haven't dated, traveled, or done pretty much anything "for me." Despite having joint custody, our daughter refused to sleep over at her dad's place, and they only saw each other once a week, during the day.

There is nowhere in the world quite like Istanbul. Spread across two continents, Europe and Asia, it's a city of layers and contrasts, of ancient empires and modern energy. With historical sights like the Hagia Sophia and Topkapı Palace brushing up against buzzing bars and lively cafes, Ottoman-era mosques a short walk from contemporary art museums, and traditional carpet shops around the corner from trendy boutiques, Istanbul is a place where old and new coexist. And it never stops moving.

As a shy, introverted kid, I never had big dreams of adventures in faraway places. In fact, I didn't even own a passport until my family relocated from the US to Ireland for my dad's job when I was 16. Now, things couldn't be more different. Living abroad opened my eyes to the world, and I was bitten by the travel bug.

"I was quite nervous to start, cautious with strokes and colours and afraid I'd ruin a page. It didn't have the energy of my digital work, but it had something new and I wanted to get to know it. The notebook starts off light, sparse and disjointed," says Harriet.

I was traveling with my family to scatter Mom's ashes at her childhood home and favorite places. We rented a car that had to be exchanged on the second day for one without iffy brakes. We were a four-hour drive away when I stopped in my tracks and asked my sister if she had gotten Mom's miniature travel urn out of the cup holder at my seat.

He was transferred to London, and I went to visit him when I was about 18-it was eye-opening. I had never been to a big city like that, where there are trains, subways, and double-decker buses. I was new to it all, and it changed me. It was interesting to see how different people live, eat, and even move their bodies.

Of course, it's never acceptable to lie...unless you have children, in which case it is one thousand percent necessary to have a few "fibs" in your arsenal. These are just harmless parenting tricks that are necessary for survival. So redditor u/TopRun8728 asked, "What's the most unethical parenting hack you know?" Here's what people said (including a white lie my dad used often when I was a kid that I still remember to this day).

The first time I went to Washington, D.C., I was in town for a meeting with others who worked for state Attorney Generals. We were there for a week and went to visit the usual tourist places, and I was with a friend who lived there. I had to ask if anyone around D.C. drove a pickup truck, because everywhere we went, I only saw vans and other vehicles. I'm from South Texas, and pickup trucks are everywhere, so it was just so surreal to not see one on every street or corner!

My sister and I have always been close in the kind of way that only siblings with a two-year age gap can be. We grew up sharing everything from wardrobes to the same old hand-me-down phone. As adults, though, life has pulled us in different directions. She's 33 now, I'm 31, and somehow, we spent most of our twenties living in different countries.

As a traveler, I've been privileged. Not due to family wealth or a secret benefactor, but the fortune of falling into a travel writing career that has included 10,000 hours, and then some, at hotels and resorts around the world. These stays - sometimes comped, sometimes not; sometimes incognito, sometimes not - are turned into reviews, guides, listings, features, profiles, round-ups for print and online publications. Topics run the gamut, too, from service, amenities and facilities to design, architecture and technology.

Wooooooooo, your tablehopper is set to hella turbo right now. On Monday, I was up in Geyserville at Francis Ford Coppola Winery to be a judge for the annual Perfect Your Pizzacook-off, which featured four fabulously creative pizzas and pairings, check my Instagram stories soon to see the winning pie (three words: pignoli chile crisp!). It's always a treat to have Razza's Dan Richer in town, and our Check Please! goddess Leslie Sbrocco as the emcee.

Until recently, my best friend, Josh, couldn't name a single Disney ride. Meanwhile, I've visited nearly every park worldwide and subscribe to Disney blogs. When a last-minute work trip sent him to Asia, he decided to take an extra week of vacation. Since his wife couldn't get the time off, he asked me to join him for our first guys' trip in a decade.

During trips to Iceland, I visited both the Blue Lagoon and the Sky Lagoon.

I travel a ton on tour, but I am really bad at taking vacation,

There's nothing quite like stepping into a fresh pair of sneakers while on vacation. If you have a trip planned, look to Target, which recently released over 80 pairs of walking shoes that resemble styles from top brands like On Cloud, New Balance, and Puma. As a bonus, some of the Target sneakers are already available at a discount. The retailer's latest sneaker drop includes the Rykä Devotion Fuse Walking Shoes, which one shopper said "didn't pinch anywhere" during their 10-day trip to Europe,

Everyone loves an optical illusion - even if they leave us completely stumped - and they're all around us in the natural world. From an underwater waterfall in the Indian Ocean to a surrealist scene in Namibia, we rounded up 18 naturally occurring illusions and optical phenomena that will make you double-take. If you can't fathom how these places are real, there's good news: Some of the locations named on this list are accessible to visitors,

The rain came early that winter and didn't stop. Scotland, where I live, is known for its miserable weather, but this was something different. The pavements were peppered with deep puddles, and grassy areas wilted into mud. It felt as though we hadn't seen the sun in months. I would sit in my apartment, watching droplets trickle down the windows, and find myself googling Andalusia-checking the weather there, looking at photos of sunny plazas and orange trees.

I'm much less reluctant of a traveler than I was since I'm getting much more out of the experiences of being there, but getting there is still an issue,

From exploring one of the UK's best small art galleries to taking a boat along its myriad waterways to visiting a nearby beach, the day is wide open with possibilities, while Birmingham's exceptional gastro scene comes alive when night falls. Whether it's sampling Michelin star restaurants in the city centre or bar hopping out in lively neighbourhoods like Moseley or Stirchley, activities in Birmingham are always first-class.

I've flown into Paris, and been in the airport, but I've never spent time in Paris, nor London,

As we boarded the ferry from Naples to Ischia, all I could think about was how similar it felt to standing in line at a theme park. Anticipation and anxiety hung in the air, along with the faint, sweet smell of sunscreen. Children fidgeted in the relentless August heat. But we took it all in stride because a big payoff-in this case, that roller coaster high of a fabulous Italian island vacation-was waiting on the other side.

Throughout his life and career, Anthony Bourdain gained a broad perspective by traveling the globe and sharing his experiences, usually with honesty and candor through his uniquely poetic prose. Whether it was his unabashed love for meat and sausages or his distaste for the famed James Beard Awards, Bourdain usually made his feelings clear about anything food or travel-related, and he had a healthy respect for underappreciated cuisines and cultures.