Even being physically uncomfortable while away from home can make travel much less fun. Who wants to be out experiencing the world when you’re tired, constipated, or just out of sorts?

Fortunately, I’ve been traveling continuously for nine years now, and I’ve learned a few things about staying healthy on the road.

The most important lesson is that, when it comes to health, everything is related. Getting a good night’s sleep helps you stay physically active, which helps you eat better, which helps your digestion, which helps you get a good night’s sleep!

This is true everywhere, of course, but it’s especially important while traveling.

Here’s how I stay feeling good no matter where in the world I am.

How I get a good night’s sleep

The single most important aspect of staying healthy while traveling might also be the most difficult: consistently getting a good night’s sleep.

After all, you’re in unfamiliar locations and climates, often in noisy city centers, on a variety of different — often crappy — beds (with equally crappy pillows). And you might also be dealing with jet lag!

But even with all this working against you, it’s not hopeless.

Here’s my strategy:

• I turn off any media devices an hour before I go to bed, and I read a book for at least 15 minutes every morning before I look at my device.

• When booking a room or apartment, I pay close attention to the size and quality of the bed, searching reviews and asking questions of the host, and also asking about any noise issues.

• If the pillows are bad, I simply buy new ones, especially if I’m staying longer than a week.

• On difficult nights, I used to use sleeping aids like Unisom and melatonin — and this is still an option before a particularly early flight.

• But these days, if I don’t fall asleep right away, I do ten rounds of four-seven-eight breathing: inhaling for four seconds, holding it for seven and exhaling for eight, counting out the numbers. Then I count backward from 300 by threes. I might have to do this twice, but I almost always drift off.

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How I eat well

Okay, sure, you might be on vacation, and part of vacation is enjoying yourself. But exactly what part of the vacation do you most want to enjoy? Because if everything is related, health-wise, then you’re going to pay for eating too much rich food — or simply too much food.

Here’s how I pace myself:

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I don’t believe in God, and I’m very skeptical that there’s any kind of afterlife.

I used to debate these issues with my friend Laura who I met in college when we were both teenagers.

“Something had to create the universe!” she’d argue.

“Okay, so who created God?” I’d push back. “Don’t you see? Saying ‘God’ created the universe doesn’t answer the question — it just pushes it back a bit.”

“You really think that when we die, we just cease to exist?”

“I have no memory from before I was born,” I’d respond. “Why should there be anything after I die?”

In the end, Laura and I came up with an idea how to settle the argument: whoever died first would try to contact the survivor from the afterlife — like the arrangement the great escape artist Harry Houdini made with his wife, Bess.

Now that I’m older — and less of a jerk — I’ve become more humble on the question of God and the afterlife. I mean, come on: no one knows anything for sure.

Plus, now I can see that one really strong argument in favor of these concepts is the comfort they provide the living.

And God knows, we can all use more of that — including me.

Last November, at the age of 59, Laura died.

Harry Houdini died before Bess, but she claimed he never did contact her.

Before Laura died, when she was in hospice, I said, “This is probably completely inappropriate, but you haven’t forgotten our agreement, have you?”

She smiled and said she hadn’t.

I no longer judge other people’s beliefs in God and the afterlife, but I’m still personally very skeptical about both. I’ve been open to hearing from Laura, and I’ve been trying hard to be receptive.

But I’ve also been expecting to be as disappointed as Bess Houdini.

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Then two weeks ago, Michael left for the day, and I went for a walk on the beach below our condo on Puget Sound. It was cold and overcast, and I was the only one there.

I was thinking about Laura, and before I knew it, I started talking to her.

For forty-five minutes, I poured my heart out, telling her that I missed her and how fondly I looked back on the many years we lived together. I was also brutally honest with her, talking about things I’d never told anyone — confessing the ways she’d disappointed me and the ways I suspected I’d disappointed her.

At one point, I laughed and said, “Since you’re dead, you know all this already, right?”

Laura mostly just listened, but when I asked her to share what she now knew about the mysteries of the universe, she said, “I can’t tell you. And would you believe me even if I could?”

It was true. This was all happening in my head, right? I was having a conversation with myself.

But it was still incredibly emotional.

In the end, Laura said she had to go and that she wouldn’t be coming back again. So I said goodbye to her for good — a second time.

Afterward, I felt better than I had in months, like something off-kilter had been put back in place. The world suddenly made sense again.

At this point, I was heading back to the condo, but I stopped and looked back the way I’d come.

There were two sets of footprints side by side in the sand: my own footprints coming and going.

But they looked more like the footprints of two friends taking a walk together.

It was only at this point that I remembered Laura’s and my agreement — that whoever died first would try to contact the other from the afterlife.

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Later, I mentioned the encounter to this therapist I've been seeing, and also the agreement Laura and I made all those years ago. I told her how powerful the experience was — talking to Laura, but also afterward, seeing those two sets of footprints in the sand.

“Do you think it was really Laura?” she asked me.

I thought about it for a long time. Then I said, “I honestly don’t think it matters. What matters is what I felt, which was as real as it gets. And what I still feel.”

My therapist smiled. “I think it was really her.” She’s a lot more woo-woo than I am.

So did Laura contact me from the afterlife?

In the end, I really don’t think it matters.

Then again, I’m never going to forget those two sets of footprints in the sand.

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Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out my new newsletter about my books and movies at www.BrentHartinger.com. And order my latest book below.

Last week, in a massive strike for liberal democracy, Hungary’s authoritarian dictator Viktor Orbán lost his election in a landslide.

All the news coverage reminded me of Brent’s and my 2021 trip to Hungary, especially our visit to Budapest, the country’s historic capital.

But I confess, Brent was the one who really wanted to go there — in large part because he loves hot springs, and he’d heard of the city’s famous thermal baths.

Me? I wasn’t really feeling it.

Budapest was originally three cities: “Buda” and “Óbuda” on one side of the Danube River, and “Pest” on the other. The cities were all unified in 1873, but the areas of Buda and Pest are still referred to by their original names.

Interestingly, the islands in the Danube River weren’t — and still aren’t — part of either Buda or Pest (although they are now considered part of Budapest).

Budapest has long been — and still is — one of Europe’s most affordable cities, 40-50% cheaper than most of the continent’s other capitals.

It also turned out to be extraordinarily beautiful and interesting.

Here’s exactly how the city won me over.

Those famous thermal baths

Brent wanted to come to Budapest to see the famous thermal baths, and over the course of our week-long visit, we visited three of them.

First up was Rudas Baths, which dates back to the 16th century, when the city was under Ottoman rule.

The centerpiece is a Turkish bath chamber with a central octagonal pool and a domed ceiling. Steam rises up from the pool into the shafts of light from the colored windows above.

We also visited the city’s largest and most famous baths: Széchenyi Baths. The massive complex includes both indoor and outdoor pools, everything built in the early 20th century with a grand neo-Baroque look.

But remember to bring your own towel and sandals, because the ones for sale at the entrance are outrageously priced.

Finally, we visited Lukács Baths, which was free with Budapest’s “City Pass” ticket. But there’s a reason why it’s free: it was far and away the least interesting.

That fabulous parliament building

Much of the coverage of last week’s Hungarian election showed shots of the country’s fantastic Parliament Building right on the banks of the Danube River.

The building includes 691 rooms and 10 courtyards, and its façade famously features hundreds of sculptures.

But just as famously, the original architect used exterior tiles made from a very soft limestone, which began to crumble almost immediately, and the country has been forced to restore and replace them ever since.

Orbán’s government had greatly reduced the number of visitors allowed inside the building, so we never did get to see the interior. But with a new government in place, that could soon change.

A system of adorable subways and trams

I’m a public transportation junkie, so I was surprised that I’d never heard of Budapest’s incredible system of public transportation. There are subways — including the M1, Europe’s oldest continental subway line, which looks like something out of a Wes Anderson movie.

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And there are also cute little trams all over the city, including Tram Line 2, which is often deemed Europe’s most scenic urban journey. The famous yellow trams trundle along the Pest-side Danube embankment past many of Budapest’s most famous attractions, including the Parliament Building.

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Michael and I are back in the United States for a bit, and he recently wrote about how he and I visited Seabrook, a “planned” vacation town on the coast here in Washington State.

He liked it, but I didn’t, and it took me a while to figure out what I found so off-putting about it.

After all, it’s an objectively charming place: a collection of quaint seaside houses and a picturesque little downtown, all built according to the principles of “new urbanism,” where everything is supposed to encourage interaction with your neighbors and build community.

This is all stuff I heartily support.

But when I looked up the rent on a small house or cottage at Seabrook for this summer, I was shocked to see that everything started at $5,000 USD a week — more than $700 a night. For a larger place, it’s twice that (or more).

I realized what was bothering me: Seabrook is essentially only available to the rich.

Being back in the United States after nine years away, I’m discovering that America is increasingly being divided up according to wealth.

Basically, there are three Americas: one for the rich, one for the middle class, and one for the poor. And no matter where you are in this country, you almost always immediately know which “America” you’re in — whether it be a neighborhood, mall, restaurant, or supermarket.

If you shop at gourmet shops and high-end specialty markets (or have someone do it for you), you’re rich. If you love Costco or Trader Joe’s, you’re middle-class. And if you’re a patron of Walmart or the food bank, you’re probably poor.

America is, of course, an extremely wealthy country. Despite having a little over four percent of the planet’s population, it controls more than 30 percent of the world’s wealth.

But the wealth here is distributed in a wildly unequal way.

There’s a small group of really rich folks, with the top one percent controlling more than 30 percent of the country’s overall wealth, and the top ten percent controlling more than 70 percent. And these rich people are getting richer really fast.

There’s also a sizable but shrinking middle class.

And there’s a growing underclass that is seriously struggling. America’s bottom fifty percent only control two to three percent of the country’s total wealth.

Everyone in every class is richer than they used to be, even when adjusting for inflation. But the wealthier are much richer now.

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To some degree, America has obviously always been divided by wealth. But the scale has changed. And these days, the businesses of America are increasingly catering primarily to wealthy folks.

Whether it’s airline seats, cars, fashion, or home design, “affordable” is out and “luxury” is in.

And why not? The rich are the ones with all the money to spend, so this is now where the profits are. In our “K-shaped” economy, this is becoming even more true as the poor and middle class cut back and the rich continue to spend.

This might all be less obvious to foreigners who have only visited the United States once or twice, or to Americans who have lived in this country their entire lives.

But as someone who lived most of my life in the United States, left for nine years, and has now returned, the change is stark and incredibly obvious. It’s literally all around you now, everywhere you turn.

If you’re rich and taking one of your many annual flights, you wait in one of the country’s increasingly opulent private airport lounges, and on the plane, you sit in one of the ever-more-lavish first-class cabins. If you’re middle-class, you sit in business or economy. And if you’re poor, you’re rarely on the plane at all.

If you’re rich and visiting one of the Disney parks, they let you in early, plus you get to skip the insane lines entirely. If you’re middle-class, you mostly endure the hordes. And if you’re poor, you don’t go at all.

If you’re rich, you don’t hesitate to shell out $1,500 on concert tickets to your favorite artist, or $500 for a good seat at a hit Broadway show, or $50,000 for a VIP suite at your local sports stadium, which was probably recently rebuilt specifically to include more such seating. And if you’re middle class…

Well, you get the idea.

In many of these cases, the experience is technically still available to the middle class (if not to the poor). But you’ll have to pay through the nose to get it — or you’ll have to endure the increasingly miserable non-“premium” version.

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Almost every country has its rich, of course, and openly catering to the wealthy is definitely a worldwide phenomenon.

It’s also worth noting that even middle-class Americans like myself are essentially “rich” when we travel outside the United States: almost every other country in the world is much more affordable.

But America still seems more segregated by wealth than most places — in part because there are simply more rich folks here. Also, America celebrates “excess” in a way that most places don’t.

I once had an American say to me, completely without irony, “I’m not materialistic — I just like nice things.”

And cities play a different function in America than elsewhere: less about all classes of society mixing together and more about being playgrounds for the ultra-rich and holding pens for the desperately poor.

Meanwhile, in most of the sixty-four other countries I’ve visited, people seem more content — because their governments provide better social support, the families are tighter, or both.

In Switzerland, for example, prices are even higher than in the United States, but the wealth is much more evenly distributed, and there’s a strong government safety net. And Mexicans know they can’t rely on their government for much, so they have cultivated incredibly strong familial relationships and social networks.

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To be fair, the rich in America do pay a premium for their luxury lifestyles.

Michael and I are middle-class, so we’ll be spending our summer not at Seabrook but in a condo in a different town on a different Washington beach. We’ll have access to a gym and hot tub (and an arguably better beach), plus weekly housekeeping, but it’s only costing us $2,700 a month — not the $20,000 that a similarly sized unit at Seabrook would cost.

Our condo is a bit dated, and the town is kind of ragged — Seabrook is definitely more charming.

But Seabrook is not seven times more charming.

To me, the insane prices that the wealthy pay don’t seem nearly worth it.

On the other hand, I’m not worth ten million dollars. If I were, I probably wouldn’t even notice prices.

The thing about all this is that America really didn’t used to be this way — at least not since the Gilded Age. Almost every American knows or senses that health care and housing costs have recently risen far faster than inflation.

But so has the cost of Disney parks, and Broadway shows, and concerts, and sports events, and restaurants, the prices at most of which have risen at least double the rate of inflation — and much more than that for the premium spots.

Michael and I used to be much less wealthy than we are now, and Seabrook was always a bit pricy, but we could still afford it every once in a while. Not now.

These crazy price increases have come about precisely because the rich in America have become so much richer, and they’re willing to pay these prices — especially as the experiences themselves become ever-more-decadent and exclusive.

Incidentally, if some Americans are now so rich that they can afford $1,500 concert tickets and airport lounges that serve lobster and offer massages, it seems to me that they can also afford to have their taxes raised — not dramatically lowered, as Trump and the Republicans have done. But maybe that’s just me.

Also, I’m frankly tired of Americans giving themselves so much damn credit for being so wealthy. When you travel a lot, you quickly realize that wealth is, yeah, partly about talent and hard work, but it’s mostly just a function of where you happened to have been born.

Anyway, if the American rich have it so great, the cost of living in the United States is also survivable for those of us in the middle class, like Michael and me. At least we have Costco and Trader Joe’s, even if we now also have an unsubsidized $26,000 health insurance premium, again thanks to Trump and the Republicans.

In other words, in Rich America, life is fantastic. In Middle Class America, it’s at least manageable.

But what about the “third” America: Poor America? How is the bottom forty percent supposed to survive all this? They face all the challenges the poor do in any country, but they also live in a place with weak communities and inadequate government support.

Then again, that’s why most of us go out of our way to avoid Poor America, isn’t it?

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Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out my new newsletter about my books and movies at www.BrentHartinger.com. And order my latest book, below.

It was last spring, and I’d gotten up before sunrise to wander about taking photos while Brent slept in.

I’d already taken hundreds of pictures of Mexico’s “most colorful city,” but this morning I headed for a neighborhood I’d seen mentioned online. It was working-class, said to be “off the beaten track” and less visited by tourists like me.

Guanajuato is located in a valley, and I walked along the upper edge. Buildings climbed the valley’s sides like bougainvillea up a trellis. The colors were stunning: rust-red, mustard yellow, ochre, and every possible pastel.

I reached the top of the neighborhood I wanted to explore. Narrow concrete lanes and steep staircases snaked downward between the densely packed buildings.

This early in the day, everything was quiet except for the occasional bark of a dog. Even better, it was golden hour, perfect for photography.

What neighborhood was I exploring?

Actually, I’m not going to say. As a travel writer and photographer, I often worry about the impact I have when documenting various places.

I don’t have delusions of grandeur. I know my impact is minimal — that I’m not personally sending waves of tourists anywhere.

But my influence also isn’t zero.

Or is my not identifying this place just an empty gesture on my part — a way to reassure myself that I’m a “thoughtful” traveler? God knows, Brent and I still get criticized for contributing to overtourism.

This early, I’m the only one moving about the narrow alleys. I can take my pictures without making anyone feel awkward — or feeling awkward myself.

I wander around, delighted by the pastel colors, even the cracked and peeling paint that I see as “character.”

But do the people in this neighborhood find character in its peeling paint?

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It was January 1988, and my college buddy John and I, both in our early 20s, were backpacking around Australia until mid-April, when my new job started as a tour guide at the World Expo in Brisbane.

At the moment, we stood hitchhiking on the side of the road in rural New South Wales, somewhere between Sydney and Melbourne, desperately waiting for a driver to give us a lift.

But on this lonely stretch of road, potential rides were few and far between. And none of the handful of cars we’d seen had stopped.

We weren’t surprised. We’d already learned that some drivers didn’t want to pick up two men. Sometimes, when the wait got too long, we’d split up and then meet up again later in the next town.

But with so few cars passing by, splitting up didn’t seem like a great idea. So we waited together, the summer sun beating down on us, the heat radiating off the sticky black tarmac.

In fact, this was the day John snapped one of the few pictures I still have of our trip together.

Finally, a car stopped. I’m not a car guy, but I do remember it was an older four-door car of some kind.

The driver was a white man, as nondescript to me as his car. He had dark hair and was somewhere in his thirties or early forties.

He nodded us in without asking where we were headed. Then again, it didn’t much matter to us, as long as it got us farther down this lonely road. John hopped in the back while I climbed in the front.

The man started driving, staring straight ahead, silent and intense. The radio was off as the road ticked by beneath us.

This felt strange. Every other driver had been friendly, asking us questions like, “Where are you from, mate?” Or, “American, eh? What do you think of Australia?”

An uneasy feeling dropped into the pit of my stomach, a seed taking root.

Now I stared straight ahead too, looking at his cluttered dashboard. It reminded me of a junk drawer, covered with stickers and littered with knick-knacks — some religious in nature. There was a statue of the Virgin Mary glued to the dashboard and a cross dangling from the rearview mirror.

And there was also a VHS copy of The Hitcher, the 1986 movie about a man who picks up hitchhikers and, uh, murders them.

Seriously.

I glanced back at John, but he was in the backseat, staring out the window. If he’d noticed anything off, he gave no sign of it.

That feeling in my stomach grew, uneasiness snaking outward. If fear were a plant, its tendrils would’ve been spreading out into my chest, my arms, and my head.

The car rumbled down that empty stretch of road, the driver still staring straight ahead as if we weren’t there.

My eyes scanned ahead, too, looking for oncoming traffic. Seeing another car wouldn’t necessarily change whatever was happening here, but at least I wouldn’t feel as isolated as I did right then.

But there were no other cars and now, the fear blooming into full-grown panic, my gut shouting: This feels bad. Very, very bad!

So when we came to the first stop sign less than ten minutes later, I immediately said, “This is great! Come on, John! Let’s go!”

Before the driver could react, I opened my door and leapt out. I also opened John’s door, urgently motioning him out, while I grabbed my backpack.

The car sat there a moment, the engine idling, while I willed the driver to pull away. Finally, he did.

John, who hadn’t seen what I had, didn’t understand what was going on.

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But the encounter stayed with me. And when twenty years later, I learned about a man named Ivan Milat — the so-called “Backpacker Killer” — who had been convicted of murdering seven young hitchhikers in the late 80s and early 90s, my mind flashed back to that day.

All were backpackers in their late teens or early twenties. All had been hitchhiking between Sydney and Melbourne. And all of them disappeared in New South Wales, the area where John and I had also been hitchhiking.

Milat’s first confirmed victims, James Gibson and Deborah Everist, both 19, vanished in December 1989. In the years that followed, five more backpackers disappeared under similar circumstances — all of them picked up along the Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne.

He might never have been caught if not for a British hitchhiker named Paul Onions. In early 1990, Milat picked him up along the highway. At first, everything seemed normal. Then Milat pulled out a gun.

Onions managed to escape and reported the incident to the police. At the time, nothing came of it.

But years later, after the bodies of the missing hitchhikers were discovered in nearby Belanglo State Forest, Onions saw the news and contacted authorities again. His testimony helped lead to Milat’s arrest and conviction. (After the trial, police were roundly criticized for not having done more and possibly prevented at least some of the other murders.)

Keep in mind that travel was very different forty years ago. There was no internet, no smartphones — not even cell phones.

Using payphones, I called my parents back in America once a month, if that. If I’d disappeared, they would’ve had little idea where I’d been. Often, I only had the vaguest idea where I was going. There’s a lot of space between Sydney and Melbourne.

Travelers like me made it easy for this serial killer to get away with his crimes.

Is it really possible that the man who picked us up was Ivan Milat?

There are reasons to think it wasn’t.

For starters, we hadn’t been picked up on the Hume Highway, but on a more rural road in the same area. Also, when Milat picked up Onions, he’d driven a truck, not a four-door car. And our driver had seemed anything but “normal” right from the start.

But the main reason it might not have been him is that Milat didn’t murder his first victims until 1989, almost two years after John’s and my encounter.

That’s a pretty big gap to explain away.

And the truth is, there were a lot of hitchhikers between Sydney and Melbourne in the 1980s. And most of us had stories of the occasional “strange driver.”

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But there are also reasons to think it could’ve been Milat.

John and I were backpackers in our early twenties, hitchhiking from Sydney to Melbourne — exactly the kind of victims he targeted in the exact area where he hunted them. And four of his victims were abducted as duos.

I’ve seen photos of him, and it’s been too many years for me to say with any certainty that Milat was our driver, but his age and general appearance are the same. And I’ve since learned he was Catholic, which might explain the religious iconography.

Yes, Onions said he seemed “normal” at first. Then again, maybe Milat moderated his behavior after people like me got spooked by his earlier demeanor — no copies of The Hitcher on the dashboard, for one thing.

And while Milat later drove a truck, he had previously driven, yes, a four-door Ford Fairmont.

But here’s the kicker: police are now almost certain Milat had killed before he murdered Gibson and Everist.

After Milat’s conviction, police began investigating cold cases in that part of Australia, including the murder of 18-year-old hitchhiker Peter Letcher. Police now believe that Milat murdered Letcher in November 1987, just months before John’s and my encounter.

Just like that, the two year gap vanished, putting our encounter squarely within the dates of Milat’s confirmed killing spree.

And while all the other known victims were picked up on the main Hume Highway, Letcher was picked up on a rural road — just like where we had been.

I’ll never know for sure whether I rode next to a serial killer on a lonely road in rural Australia.

The logical part of me says I probably bolted from a strange, religious, but ultimately harmless man with an interest in slasher films.

But the reptilian part of my brain?

It’s really, really glad I got out of that car so fast.

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Michael Jensen is a novelist and editor. For a newsletter with more of my photos, visit me at www.MichaelJensen.com.

But now the anti-overtourism movement is spreading to some surprising places: fantasy realms like Narnia and Middle-earth.

“Tourists have completely ruined Narnia!” said Reepicheep, the formerly dignified talking mouse from that fictional realm, sputtering with outrage over the recent deluge of visitors. “Turkish Delight is now so damn expensive we locals can’t afford it anymore!”

“Yes, yes, you got here because you had a ‘wardrobe malfunction,’” added a surly Mr. Tumnus. “We’ve never heard that one before!”

Overtourism has become a growing problem at all kinds of enchanting fictional locations.

“I really regret creating those damn Golden Tickets,” said Willy Wonka, the proprietor of the Wonka Chocolate Factory, which has lately seen entry wait-times of up to six hours. “Three of those five kids ended up badly deformed, and, yes, Veruca Salt was killed in the incinerator. Everyone still thinks they’re going to be ‘Charlie,’ but guess what? He ate so much chocolate that he died two years later from Type 2 diabetes!”

Ironically, the isolationism and xenophobia in these fictional places is rising just as travel to actual tourist destinations is dramatically lessening — the result of America’s war with Iran, which is causing rapid increases in airfare and making travelers fearful of chaos.

But travel to fantasy realms has remained unimpeded, experts say, because it only happens in your imagination.

Furthermore, people may be retreating to these fictional worlds because the real world is currently so stressful. Searches for the term “happy place” have increased eightfold since the start of the war.

“Oh, grow a pair!” said Elrond, the 6,478-year-old elf-lord who oversees the formerly peaceful sanctuary known as Rivendell, now crowded with gawkers that residents say have trashed the place. “I had to help defeat Sauron — twice! — and you can’t handle a three-hour wait at the airport?

“The more you make Rivendell your ‘happy place,’” he added, “the less happy it is for the people who actually live here.”

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Mr. Lundie, one of the residents of the mythical land of Brigadoon, had an even more basic complaint: “Tourists pee everywhere. So much for the heather on the hill!”

Imaginary travel to fantasy realms seems increasingly out of control, but there is one thing that could shift the trend. In the real world, locals have grown aggressive in their protests against overtourism, harassing visitors and even brandishing squirt guns at them.

But the residents of fantasy realms have access to magic.

“I’ve used an animation charm to animate all the suits of armor and statues at Hogwart’s, commanding them to brutally slay any incoming tourists,” said Professor Minerva McGonagall, the deputy headmistress at the fictional wizarding academy.

“Then again,” she added with a smirk, “I’ve always wanted to use that spell.”

HAPPY APRIL FOOL’S DAY

From Brent and Michael

See our previous April’s Fools Day articles:

Council of Fools Declares April Fools’ Day Officially Canceled

“Airbnb Experiences” to Include New Feature: “Airbnb SEXperiences!”

ChatGPT Will Never Take Over Travel Journalism — or Anything Else Either

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Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out my new newsletter about my books and movies at www.BrentHartinger.com. And order my latest book, below.

Michael and I are back in the United States, and we’ll be staying here at least through the fall.

But it’s not for the reason you might think — because we’re worried about all the chaos and uncertainty caused by American foreign policy.

When we wrote about this topic last month, most people agreed that this is a serious problem, but a significant minority argued:

• That the chaos is still very isolated and is being irresponsibly exaggerated by the media — including Michael and me.

• Or that they’re personally choosing to continue traveling anyway, refusing to give in to fear.

We think the folks in the first group are just flat-out wrong. We have traveler-friends and contacts all around the world who are telling us that things are already pretty chaotic, with the potential to get much worse.

But we think the people in the second group have the right to choose whatever path they feel is right.

And, of course, being the King of Travel Discounts, I also recognize that the increasing chaos and uncertainty around travel are exactly the kinds of thing that will produce incredible travel bargains and opportunities, especially for international travelers.

For much of the COVID pandemic, Michael and I rented a fantastic villa in Mexico at a ridiculously low price. And right after vaccinations became available, we immediately made a beeline to Istanbul, Turkey, long before the hordes returned — and we had the entire city almost to ourselves, at prices that were even lower than what we’d seen in Mexico.

I see similar possibilities now. And honestly, all our friends in the travel industry can certainly use the money.

But for the time being, we’re still staying put here in America.

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Another edition of our unusual travel hacks.

For other travel hack columns, go to Part Fifteen and Part Sixteen and Part Seventeen and Part Eighteen and Part Nineteen and Part Twenty and Part Twenty-One and Part Twenty-Two and Part Twenty-Three and Part Twenty-Four and Part Twenty-Five and Part Twenty-Six and Part Twenty-Seven and Part Twenty-Eight and Part Twenty-Nine and Part Thirty and Part Thirty-One.

Here are our latest hacks!

Get the best airline food

When traveling by plane, what are your best choices for meals?

• Airport meals are, of course, very expensive — and the offerings also tend to be loaded with fat and salt.

• Onboard airline meals are almost always cheaper than airport meals and usually healthier. Plus, they’re specifically designed to taste better at high altitudes. Ordering ahead usually gives you more options.

• Your cheapest, healthiest option is almost always to bring a homemade or deli meal from outside the airport. Yes, prepared meals of solid food are allowed through security (but yogurt is considered a liquid, and any sauces or dressings need to be kept at under 100 milliliters — and this also applies to your total allotment of liquids that need to fit in one quart-sized bag). But make sure it isn’t stinky, okay?

• Finally, have you considered simply fasting — especially if you’re on a 5:2 diet where you regularly fast anyway? High altitudes actually decrease appetite, and you can bring your own trail mix or other healthy snacks to keep your energy up.

Actually get in and out

Michael and I recently spent time in California where we discovered that In-N-Out Burger is just as good as we remembered — but the backup at the drive-through window is a thousand times worse!

But since everyone uses that drive-through, the secret to fast service is to park nearby and walk in. That way, you’ll soon be, er, in and out.

h/t Mathew Nelson

Always opt for the video chat

When buying travel insurance, always get the “video health chat” option, even if it’s an add-on — the cost is usually negligible. Then, of course, save the link in a place where it’s easily accessible.

As long as you have internet access, you’ll be able to get your medical questions quickly answered, possibly saving you a trip to the emergency room. And if you do need to see a doctor, they can often suggest a nearby medical facility that serves tourists and, more importantly, is definitely covered by your policy.

Consider medical tourism to China

Speaking of medical care, I’ve written a lot about our experiences with “medical tourism” in Turkey, Thailand, and elsewhere. But this new(ish) company connects Americans to medical treatment in China — for prices that are 60-70% cheaper than in the U.S.

Learn nomading

Our friends Matt and Lisa have a pretty great beginner’s guide to nomading.

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Is that true of Seabrook, a small community of some 600 houses and apartments nestled in the woods overlooking the coast of Washington State?

On one hand, Seabrook does look pretty perfect.

It’s a “planned community” with a uniform Americana look. The houses — a few modest cottages, but mostly multi-story showpieces — adhere to the design principles of “new urbanism.”

Front porches are big, and garages and parking areas are always in the back.

Meanwhile, the surrounding community is walkable and human-scaled, with a tightly controlled mix of homes, shops, parks, and amenities. The houses are built in clusters around public areas, with outdoor fire pits, benches, and even a giant carved Bigfoot.

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But unlike the similar town of Seaside in Florida, Seabrook is fairly remote. Non-Washingtonians don’t always understand that the Washington coast is surprisingly rugged — and fairly difficult to get to. It’s 140 miles from Seattle, separated by long and meandering Puget Sound, not to mention an entire mountain range called the Olympic Mountains.

So what’s the truth about Seabrook? Is it a coastal utopia evoking the American dream — or some kind of modern-day “Stepford,” with enforced conformity and a lack of diversity?

Seabrook was founded in 2004 by developers Casey and Laura Roloff, but Brent and I first discovered it in 2007 on one of our many getaways to the Olympic Peninsula.

Back then, Seabrook had fewer than two hundred houses and a single business: a small cafe.

But boy, did the Roloffs have vision! We spent an afternoon with Casey, who showed us his plans for a community swimming pool, many more houses, and even an entire “downtown” area that had been staked out in an area cleared of trees.

Despite Seabrook’s very unfinished state, we were charmed. Since we’ve always been remote workers, we even briefly considered buying a house there.

In the end, we decided it was too far from Seattle and too expensive: $620,000 for a modest three-bedroom house (though it did include an adorable “carriage house” — a detached garage with a studio apartment upstairs).

Mostly, we were skeptical that the developers would actually follow through with their grand designs. Having looked at hundreds of homes over the years, we’ve heard many developers promise great things — and looking back now, almost none of those visions actually came true.

Still, we liked Seabrook enough that we occasionally took advantage of their rental program — like Airbnb, but strictly controlled by Seabrook’s management — renting various houses for weekends with friends.

In 2017, we became nomads, traveling the world continuously, and we didn’t see Seabrook again until this February.

To our surprise, Seabrook has grown to include nearly 600 homes spread across eight distinct “neighborhoods,” with evocative names like the Sunset District, Fernwood, Alderwood, and Greenway.

The houses all have names too, like Whale Song, Ocean Breeze, and That’s What Sea Said.

More importantly, the promised downtown has actually come to pass. It includes a surprisingly large gourmet grocery store, a coffee shop, a pizzeria, a bakery, a wine bar, a candy shop, gift shops, and more.

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Seabrook currently has plans for another 1,300 homes, and they’re in the process of building a luxury hotel.

Meanwhile, Seabrook’s rental program is very popular — and very expensive. We spent three nights there in a one-bedroom condo in the heart of downtown.

We paid $582.86 for three nights, or $195 a night.

But this was also in gray, gloomy February, the lowest-of-the-low season, and we had taken advantage of a Cyber Monday sale that saved us 30% — only for off-season dates.

It was also a small, one-bedroom condo — among the cheapest available lodging.

Had we wanted to go in July, the five-night minimum for our unit would’ve cost us $4,138, or an eye-popping $827 a night. To participate in the rental program, Seabrook charges owners an equally astounding 37% administrative fee.

Owning a home in Seabrook isn’t cheap either.

The house we almost bought in 2007 would now sell for about $900,000 — less than we expected, actually. But a 416-square-foot cottage currently sells for $525,000, a smaller three-bedroom home for $834,000, and large, stately homes for several million dollars — even more if they have sea views.

These high prices are among the biggest criticisms of Seabrook. As a result, people say, it’s become a playground for rich Seattleites.

Other criticisms include:

1. The rigid control of Seabrook’s “look,” which detractors claim makes the town look sterile and Stepfordian. A common comment on Reddit — where there are a lot of Seabrook haters — is that it resembles The Truman Show and that residents are “cosplaying” living in a small town.

2. That it really isn’t a town. Some 80% of the houses are “second homes” — many serving as vacation rentals. The town has more year-round residents than ever, but they still number fewer than 200.

3. That it detracts from the Washington Coast’s real character and harms nearby communities.

4. That it’s bad for the environment.

Brent and I have different takes on Seabrook. He’s become a bit of a hater too.

He thinks the cost is absolutely outrageous for what you get. That one small apartment we rented was so small, it didn’t even have a dining room table, just a breakfast bar.

And the construction quality seemed poor (though in fairness, we’ve been in other houses that do seem better-built).

He also agrees that the sky-high prices have created an artificial town for the rich, completely lacking in diversity. While he likes Seabrook’s original neighborhoods, he dislikes the newer ones that are harder to reach and seem more cheaply built.

He agrees Seabrook doesn’t even feel like a town, just a collection of vacation rentals. It promises “community” that it doesn’t really deliver.

He also laments how much tourism the town has attracted to the area, which used to be more working-class or a place where people could drop out.

As for the Washington coast, it’s “beautiful” in a way — but also harsh and rugged, especially in winter. The town is trying hard to be a cozy New England beach community that it can’t ever really be.

Brent also notes that the entire Washington coast sits right next to one of the planet’s biggest fault lines and that it’s only a matter of time before a massive tsunami engulfs the entire area.

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Do I think Seabrook is perfect?

No, but I quite like it and am genuinely perplexed by all the negativity.

I appreciate the work that has gone into creating a place that aspires to be more than just a random collection of buildings thrown up without thought. I love how walkable it is, how many parks and green spaces it has, and, yes, even that old-fashioned feel. Where others see conformity, I see thoughtfulness.

Honestly, the U.S. has so many towns built entirely around the car and overrun by ugly strip malls, fast-food chains, and endless sprawl that I’m glad Seabrook exists to show there’s another way.

It’s not yet another subdivision or poorly planned town.

Seabrook’s year-round population might be only 200, but as more homes are added, that number will grow. And with it, a greater sense of actual community.

And I’ll take Seabrook over the sprawling resorts that have gobbled mile after mile of, say, Mexico’s coastline and that then send most of their revenue to big corporations.

Speaking of which, I think it should be noted that Seabrook isn’t owned by a massive real estate conglomerate. It’s a relatively small operation that has stayed very close to its local roots and was created by folks taking a very real chance on building something different. Indeed, the first years of Seabrook were very dicey, and at one point, it looked like they might lose everything.

As for the attractiveness of the Washington coast, it’s true: it ain’t all that. The coast is often flat, gray, and melancholy. It’s more Wuthering Heights’ windswept moors than the Beach Boys’ Southern California.

The Roloffs did choose an attractive place on a bluff overlooking the ocean, and the long beach is great for walking. And isn’t it better that Seattleites have the option to drive to a beach holiday rather than flying to California or Mexico?

As for the cost, do I wish Seabrook were more affordable and more diverse?

Absolutely. Frankly, I’d love to be able to afford a house there.

But the Roloffs took a huge chance building a town where absolutely no one else dreamed anything could be built. People have responded by happily buying and renting there, and the creators deserve to be rewarded for their work.

It should also be noted that Seabrook has forged connections with the local community. They have worked with the nearby Quinault Indian Nation, using some of the three million dollars in assets from the Seabrook Community Foundation to improve education across the region.

As for those lamenting Seabrook’s impact on the area, I’ll point out that Grays Harbor County, where the town is located, consistently ranks near the bottom in terms of economic indicators, including higher rates of poverty and lower yearly income than most of the rest of Washington State.

Seabrook might be an expensive place to rent or buy, but there’s no denying the town has brought much-needed jobs to the area.

As for the environment, the land it’s built on has already been logged once and would likely have been logged again. And trust me, the clear-cuts spread across the Olympic Peninsula are neither attractive nor good for the environment.

So is Seabrook a coastal utopia or a Stepfordian hell? There’s no dark secret, so it really depends on your point of view.

Brent still dislikes it, but for me, the pros far outweigh the cons.

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Michael Jensen is a novelist and editor. For a newsletter with more of my photos, visit me at www.MichaelJensen.com.

Nine years ago, Michael and I left Seattle to become digital nomads, indefinitely traveling the world.

Back then, we lived on around $85,000 USD a year before taxes — which, given how expensive Seattle was even before we left, was a pretty modest lifestyle. These days, I think that same lifestyle would cost $110,000 or more.

Meanwhile, since we left America, we now live “better,” eating out far more often and depriving ourselves of less.

Since then, here’s what we’ve spent (pre-tax):

• 2018: $41,000

• 2019: $46,000

• 2020: $51,000

• 2021: $53,000

• 2022: $56,000

• 2023: $60,000

• 2024: $72,000

Our costs have risen, in part, because of inflation — and rising travel costs in general, which seem to have skyrocketed everywhere, much faster than inflation.

But as we get closer to retirement, we’re also choosing to live a bit more comfortably.

To be clear: yes, being an American able to live more affordably outside of America is classic Western privilege.

That said, we currently have a very low tolerance for nomad-bashing. We strongly assert that while travel and tourism aren’t perfect, they’ve definitely been a “net plus” for the world.

[He said defensively.]

Anyway, here are our expenses for the past year, divided into categories, with analysis for each, followed by our overall total at the end.

Lodging

Some dates overlapped, so months are used for clarity only. All figures are in USD and include all taxes, fees, and gratuities.

January - March

• Puerto Vallarta Airbnb, 8 nights: $971 ($121/night)

• Puerta Vallarta villa, 77 nights: $5082 (or $66/night).

April

• Seattle transit hotel: $115

• Seattle area time-share condo, 13 nights: $1404 ($108/night)

• Seattle transit hotel: $109

• Mexico City transit hotel: $74

May - June

• San Miguel de Allende rental, 60 nights: $4400 ($73/day)

• Mexico City transit hotel: $87

• Seattle transit hotel: $87

• Seattle area time-share condo, 13 nights: $1404 ($108/night)

• Seattle transit hotel: $147

July - August

• Seoul, Korea, hotel, 7 nights: $707 ($112/night)

• Taipei, Taiwan, two apartments, 65 nights: $5,200 ($80/night)

September - October

• China tour, ten nights, various hotels: $1,100 ($110/night)

• Hong Kong Airbnb, 24 nights: $2,095 ($87/night)

• Tokyo hotel, 5 nights: $752 ($150/night)

• Japan road trip, 9 nights, various hotels: $1,148 ($127/night)

November

• Osaka Airbnb, 30 days: $2,918 ($97/night)

December

• Second Osaka Airbnb, 31 nights: $2,697 ($87/night)

• Kyoto hotel, 3 nights: $209 (or $70/night)

Annual Total: $30,706 (or $2,559/month, or $84/night)

Some observations:

• We spent $8,461 less on lodging this year than last year (which was $107/night), but these figures are deceptive because we didn’t take any cruises this year, and last year I included those total costs in “lodging.”

• This year’s number is $6,494 more than we spent in 2024 (which was $66/night) and $14,131 more than in 2022 ($45/night). This is mostly due to the rapidly rising price of lodging worldwide, but partly because we’re choosing nicer places.

• Our lodging costs — and overall cost of living — always depends a lot on whether we’re living in “affordable” or “expensive” countries. By design, we usually spend about half the year in affordable places and half in expensive ones, and that was true in 2025 as well: we spent half the year in Mexico (affordable) and the other half in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan (expensive).

• For comparison purposes, our pre-nomad, pre-2018 Seattle-area housing costs were: $2700/month (mortgage + utilities): $32,400/year or $89/day. I estimate the rise in utility and tax rates would bring that to about $34,675, or $95/day, now.

• As always, when examining our annual lodging costs, it’s important to note that, as nomads, our “vacation” costs are now $0 (since we’re basically always traveling). Our annual total holiday costs previously averaged around $3,500, and with the very high travel inflation rate (and our higher standards), they’d now probably be around $7,000. If we subtract that amount from the annual total, that means our annual lodging costs are over $11,000 less than our total housing costs used to be back in Seattle (and while we’re not building equity in a house, the money we made off the sale of that house is now invested, earning some return).

• In addition to hotels and Airbnb apartments, we also had our usual mix of unconventional lodgings: our time-share condo back near Seattle (which is working out perfectly for our purposes); various cash deals with friends and friends of friends; and occasionally staying with friends (which is why the total number of days, above, is less than 365).

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Food

Groceries: $10,220 ($852/month)

Restaurants: $9,468 ($789/month)

Annual Total: $19,688

Some observations:

• Our food costs are up pretty dramatically this year, in part because of inflation, but also because we’re simply choosing to spend more. We like fresh fruit and cheese for breakfast — what can we say? We’re also buying more prepared “deli” meals, at least outside of America. And we’re trying very hard to eliminate (cheaper) ultra-processed food from our diets and this is also driving up costs.

• As in previous years, we eat out far more often now than we did when we lived in Seattle (because restaurants are so much cheaper outside of America, even in “expensive” countries). But part of the higher restaurant bill is also because, whenever we spend time in America, we want to eat out with friends — and a “nice” dinner out in America has become shockingly expensive (IMHO), quickly driving up our overall costs.

Transportation

Airfare

• Seattle to Puerto Vallarta (round-trip): $0 (frequent flier miles)

• Seattle to San Miguel de Allende (round-trip): $1800

• Seattle to Seoul, South Korea: $500 (frequent flier miles + seat upgrade)

• Seoul, South Korea, to Taipei, Taiwan: $603

• Taipei, Taiwan, to Guangzhou, China: $191

• Hong Kong to Tokyo, Japan: $450

Rental Cars/Gas

• Seattle in April (two weeks): $670 + $75 gas = $745

• Seattle in June (two weeks): $870 + $134 gas = $1004

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A little over a year ago — three weeks into the second administration of Donald Trump — we asked a simple question:

Is travel going to become more difficult in the age of Trump?

Trump was embarking on an extremely aggressive and belligerent foreign policy: launching trade wars even with close allies, and also openly threatening the sovereignty of allies like Greenland and Denmark, Canada, and Panama.

We predicted that, as a result, travel might become more difficult, especially for Americans who could encounter a colder reception abroad.

But that didn’t really happen — not to us or any of our traveling friends.

That was then, this is now.

On February 22, the Mexican government captured drug cartel leader El Mencho. His arrest and subsequent death unleashed a wave of cartel violence across parts of Mexico, most notably in Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, and Cancun.

Brent and I have spent more than a year and a half living in Mexico, and we’re well aware of how cartel violence shadows much travel in that country. But at the same time, the cartels have long made a point to generally steer clear of tourist centers — in part, because they sometimes invest in and make money from those areas.

This wave of violence was very different: it happened in major tourist centers, directly ensnaring tourists. In Puerto Vallarta, people were forced from cars and buses, which were then set on fire. Businesses were also set on fire as terrified tourists looked on.

No tourists were killed, but in various cities, flights were canceled and airports closed, stranding thousands for days. Other tourists were instructed to “shelter in place” until the Mexican government reestablished control.

“The hotel staff kept telling us we were safe,” says our friend Ellen Zwalsky, who happened to be staying in Cancun at the time. “But we canceled an excursion, and on day two, I noticed a lot of the staff were missing, probably staying close to home. A van took us to the airport, and I saw police and military on the route to the airport.”

While it was the Mexican government that killed El Mencho, the operation reportedly came after sustained pressure and intelligence support from the Trump administration.

It’s too soon to know how this will impact Mexico, but in the days after the attacks, 20% of hotel reservations were canceled in the state of Quintana Roo, where Cancun is located.

“Will I return?” our friend Ellen says. “Probably not.”

Less than a week after those events, the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.

Some 23,000 flights were soon canceled in Dubai, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait, and Israel, and flights to Europe and Asia that normally flew through or near Iranian airspace were disrupted.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of travelers were left stranded in what had suddenly become war zones. Airfares for the few flights getting out of the Middle East skyrocketed to thousands of dollars.

Compounding the problem, Americans were only told to evacuate after the war had started and airports were closed, and initially, the U.S. State Department said it would be offering no assistance — something that resulted in a furious blowback.

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John Pine, another friend, was in Dubai with his wife when the war broke out, but they quickly changed their plans and headed by car to nearby Oman and then caught a flight to Turkey.

“Dubai felt very safe, but we wanted to keep options as open as possible,” he tells us. He admits to being very nervous yesterday, boarding the flight from Oman to Turkey, worried they might not get out.

Before the conflict with Iran, the U.S. had already bombed six other countries, including Venezuela — a presidential record in the first year — and Trump is now openly boasting Cuba will be next.

And thanks to the war with Iran, oil prices recently hit $120 a barrel and could go higher. This has caused the price of jet fuel to rise 50%, with further hikes almost certain.

Life is obviously much worse for the victims of the world’s various wars and military operations than it is for most tourists or travelers.

That said, whether you approve of U.S. actions in either Mexico, Iran, or elsewhere, these actions are obviously making travel more difficult.

We’re barely into the second year of Trump’s second administration, with almost three years left to go.

And more chaos seems almost inevitable — maybe a lot more.

The war in Ukraine shows no signs of letting up — largely because Russian president Vladimir Putin senses, correctly, that Trump feels little obligation to either Europe or NATO, the international alliance that has (mostly) maintained world peace since the end of World War II.

And given Trump’s ongoing chumminess with Putin, Europe fears, also correctly, that Russia will continue its ongoing campaign of sabotage and terrorism throughout the continent — and may even be emboldened.

How might more Russian attacks on the European power grid — or airports — affect travelers?

There’s also an increasing chance that the war in Iran will inspire terrorist attacks in the United States and elsewhere. On March 8, the U.S. Embassy was bombed in Oslo, Norway. Norwegian police haven’t made any arrests, but they think the attack was likely in response to U.S. actions.

Meanwhile, over in the Pacific, war between China and Taiwan seems increasingly likely, partly due to Trump’s unraveling of international law, and partly due to China’s perception that the U.S. is distracted by the military action in Venezuela and now also Iran.

Any action there would probably be even more disruptive than what’s happened in the Middle East.

Then there are the events that no one is yet predicting.

All this leads us to the question of anti-American sentiment. The reputation of the United States is in free-fall all around the world — something we also predicted last year.

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And the decline has been especially strong in formerly close allies like Canada (where support for America has dropped 44 points) and South Korea (where it’s dropped 38 points) — exactly the kinds of countries where Americans are most likely to travel.

When we wrote about this topic last year, people pointed out that outside of the U.S., people are fairly sophisticated, separating their dislike of America’s actions from individual American travelers who may oppose the Trump administration.

And in nine years of travel, this has been Brent’s and my experience too.

But in addition to impacting travel, all of this instability and chaos also increases the likelihood of a global recession — which stood at a 60% chance before the war in Iran.

That war is now massively disrupting a world economy that was already struggling, in part due to Trump’s ever-changing tariffs. In addition to causing oil prices to spike, the cost of natural gas is soaring, especially in Europe and Asia.

At some point, the more U.S. policies directly hit people’s wallets and daily lives, we think the distinction between the American government and individual Americans will get much blurrier.

“Last night I sat at an open-air restaurant in Albania,” a nomad friend recently posted online. “The tables surrounding me were filled with men scrolling through social media showing news of the wars the United States is waging around the world. More than once, I heard the phrase ‘Fu*k Americans.’

“This is the first time in my seven years of nomading across every continent where it feels dangerous to be an American,” she added.

Last year, we predicted that a second Trump presidency would make travel more difficult, especially for Americans.

It didn’t happen quite as quickly as we predicted, but it sure seems to be happening now.

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Michael Jensen is a novelist and editor. For a newsletter with more of my photos, visit me at www.MichaelJensen.com.

Brent and I have different travel styles, which were very evident on our recent visit to Tokyo.

I had a long list of things I wanted to do. Indeed, I meticulously planned out an itinerary for each day.

Brent, on the other hand, had a few places he really wanted to see, but mostly, he wanted to be open to on-the-ground possibilities. He also wanted a more leisurely pace — he didn’t want to end up exhausted.

And, sure enough, after a couple of encounters with the madness of the Tokyo subway system at rush hour, he declared himself done with anything requiring a subway trip that time of day.

We did a lot of things together, but I also ended up doing a number of things on my own.

And we were both very happy with our choices.

What did we both think of Tokyo itself? Read on to find out!

But here’s a clue to that final answer: we both had the same opinion.

Why Tokyo?

Well, duh. Tokyo is one of the World’s Great Cities, renowned for its neon, skyline, amazing fashion and food, and vibrant pop culture, which includes manga, anime, and video games.

Then there are those famous cherry blossoms, and nearby Mount Fuji, and the crazy-big metro system with some 880+ stations, including the single busiest train station in the world, Shinjuku, which sees more than 3.6 million passengers a day.

And did we mention the city’s love of technology? There are robot cafes and hotels, and there are innumerable vending machines, most right out on the street — reportedly, one machine for every 23 people.

Plus, if you think Americans spend too much time on their smartphones, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Here’s an interesting fact: the city is home to Kongō Gumi Co., the world’s oldest continually operating company — a construction business operating since AD 578.

Oh, and even the men really care about their hair. (But honestly? We thought a lot of the styles looked, er, ridiculous.)

And the high-tech toilets — all over Japan, of course — really are next level. In fact, many restrooms include slippers you can use in the bathroom (which kinda makes sense, since you generally take your shoes off when you go inside).

Is Tokyo the largest city in the world? For a long time, it held that title. But last year, the U.N., which ranks cities by size, downgraded it to third.

But whether it’s home to 14 million (in the city proper), 33 million (according to the U.N.), or 41 million (in the greater metropolitan area), a lot of people live here.

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Where Did We Stay?

Tokyo is notorious for lodging that is both expensive and small. And the closer you stay to popular neighborhoods like Shibuya and Shinjuku, the more expensive it is.

But even farther out, prices can be high, which was why we were thrilled to find GIVE Meidaimae, an aparthotel in the Meidaimae neighborhood.

This modern studio had a small kitchen, full bathroom, and a small living room.

Even better, the neighborhood is served by two lines with express service to Shinjuku and Shibuya, which made getting into the city surprisingly quick and easy. It also had a cute commercial center with shops, restaurants, and coffee shops.

We paid:

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These days, travel is big business — with a million different travel businesses.

But how do you decide which ones to use?

Here are three recent experiences I had with three different travel companies from which I learned three different lessons.

Problem is, these lessons sometimes contradict themselves. This has forced me into a kind of existential crisis: when it comes to travel, how do you pick the best company to do business with?

When all is said and done, I’ll try hard to leave you with some kind of overall travel wisdom.

I Made a Claim with Genki Travel Insurance

I regularly write about health and travel insurance for nomads, expats, and long-term travelers — and I have long strongly recommended policies offered by a company named Genki Insurance, which Michael and I use.

They offer traditional “travel insurance” (which assumes you have a place to go where you’re covered for chronic or long-term care) and also full “international health insurance” (which means this is your only policy and covers all your healthcare needs).

Michael and I have made a few small claims with Genki before, through their AirDoctor app, which made the whole process really easy.

But maybe it was too easy, because the company has discontinued its association with the app, claiming it was driving up frivolous claims. They also raised their prices and put caps on their payouts (which used to have no maximums) — in response to exploding healthcare costs worldwide, they say.

A year ago last October, I had a very painful kidney stone on board a cruise ship and had to be taken to a hospital in Tromsø, Norway, for three days. I paid for the medical care on the ship ($1500 USD) out of pocket (and, upon furnishing receipts, was promptly reimbursed by Genki within a week). But I merely gave the hospital in Tromsø my insurance information upon entry, and I didn’t notify Genki, even after I’d been cleared to leave three days later.

Later, the hospital billed Genki directly ($3345), who then forwarded the bill on to me, saying I had not followed their proper procedure. DR-WALTER — the German company that handles Genki’s payouts — said they could still reimburse me, but I would first have to pay the hospital out of pocket and submit the proper documentation.

I was wary that I would be reimbursed, but the bill needed to be paid regardless, so I ended up wiring thousands of dollars to a random number somewhere overseas, in a process that was fairly complicated and very nerve-wracking.

The folks at the hospital were helpful — and, of course, they spoke perfect English — but they also informed me that the Norwegian medical system simply doesn’t offer “itemized” bills, as required by DR-WALTER. However, they sent me a printed explanation to give to my insurance.

Was DR-WALTER going to use this loophole to avoid paying me?

I submitted proof of payment and the other necessary forms via email.

At this point, DR-WALTER informed me that they required the original bill from the hospital in Tromsø. Which I had — because I keep everything — but I’m a nomad, and the bill was stored somewhere in a file back in America.

Here we go! I thought. This is how they’re going to weasel out of paying me!

But DR-WALTER also said I had two full years from the incident to submit the necessary bill, and when I finally returned to America this past January, I sent it in — using as secure an international shipping option as possible (Priority Mail Express, which cost $85).

All this time, I stayed in close touch with DR-WALTER, and sure enough, when my documents arrived, they promptly paid me in full (but the only payment option for Americans like me is through Revolut, which required me creating an account there).

Lessons learned:

• When using travel insurance of any kind, always bring the company into the conversation as soon as possible. Don’t merely rely on the hospital to contact your insurance for you. In my case, the situation was a bona fide “emergency,” which usually waives pre-authorization requirements, but even so, Michael and I should have contacted them sooner than we did. In the end, I think Genki’s review process in my case was fairly reasonable. (Check out Genki here — and please use this link if possible.)

• Pay attention to a company’s online reviews and feedback. I write about insurance a lot, and I hear from a lot of people: Genki has a good reputation among folks I respect. Online reviews are strong too — and, more importantly, the few negative reviews seem to mostly be people who bought a limited, cheaper “travel” policy and are upset because it doesn’t provide “full” coverage.

I Got a Hotel Day-Pass Using ResortPass.com

Here at Brent and Michael Are Going Places, we never accept comps or freebies in exchange for coverage: if we recommend something, it’s solely because we genuinely like it.

That said, we are open to pitches of ideas from publicists (and we get plenty — dozens a week). And we also very occasionally accept travel products for review (but with absolutely no guarantee of any coverage at all).

Recently, a publicist pitched a small travel item, which I ended up using. In gratitude, she said she wanted to offer me a $500 credit at another company she did publicity for, ResortPass.com, which offers “day-passes” to resorts and spas all around the world.

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This seemed like kind of a journalistic grey area. She wasn’t necessarily suggesting I write about ResortPass.com — she claimed it was a thank-you gift. But come on: she’s a publicist, and I’m a travel journalist. On the other hand, it was a kind of travel product, and if I liked it, maybe I could eventually write about it. Was that so wrong?

In the end, Michael and I were visiting friends in San Francisco, both of whom have cancer, so I decided to use the credit to treat everyone to a day at a local spa.

Unfortunately, using the credit on their website turned out to be really confusing — and their customer support was very frustrating too. Even worse, they knew I was a travel journalist. I couldn’t help but think: if this is how they treat people they’re trying to suck up to, how do they treat everyone else?

After a couple of frustrating hours, I finally managed to book a day at a nearby spa. I received both email and text confirmation from ResortPass.com.

But when we showed up at the spa (in a posh hotel), they had no record of the reservation. Worse, when I talked to the manager, he said the hotel had changed ownership over a year ago and had terminated its contract with ResortPass.com — something he said they’d repeatedly told the company.

So no spa day for my friends with cancer. (But we stopped at Trader Joe’s on the way home, and ended up having a lovely impromptu picnic.)

When I recounted my experience to my contacts at ResortPass.com, they said, “Your experience is completely unacceptable and does not reflect the ResortPass standard.”

And the fact is, the company's online reviews are fairly decent, as is much of its other press.

But my experience also isn’t unique — with lots of reports of bad customer support, and other people sometimes showing up to find there is no reservation.

Lessons learned:

• Listen to your gut. When booking the spa day, I had so many problems with both the website and customer support that I started to think: Am I going to show up for this booking and find out it doesn’t exist? And my gut had it exactly right.

• Good online reviews don’t necessarily tell the whole story. The fact is, ResortPass’s Trustpilot reviews are almost as strong as Genki’s. Normally, I’d say, “Maybe I was just unlucky — shit happens,” except that my experience with both the reservation and customer support was bad. So maybe something about the business has recently changed?

We Regularly Rent Cars with Fox Rent a Car

Michael and I have been digital nomads for nine years now, and we generally come back to Seattle, our former-home in the United States, for visits once or twice a year. Because it’s America, we always need to rent a car.

And because we rent for up to a month at a time, I’ve always looked for good deals, and the lowest price, by far, has always been a smaller company named Fox Rent a Car, with locations around the country, including Seattle.

Plus, unlike some companies, Fox allows you to add a spouse as an extra driver for free (at least at all U.S. locations) — and they’ve never asked for proof or made the slightest fuss about the fact that we’re a same-sex couple.

(Some rental companies allow you to add a spouse for free if you sign up for their loyalty program, although sometimes you need to do it in advance, and California and New York mandate that spouses be able to drive for free.)

In the nine years we’ve been renting cars from Fox, we’ve had two issues: a higher-than-quoted fee and a “manager’s special” that was deceptive, resulting in a ridiculously oversized car (which we declined, resulting in a considerably more expensive smaller car). In both cases, I contacted the manager, and he conceded my point and reversed the charges.

So our experience has been uniformly positive.

But that isn’t the case with a lot of other renters — at least according to online reviews. Those reviews are mediocre at Trustpilot (3.2 out of 5) — and downright disastrous at Yelp and ConsumerAffairs, where they’re 1.6 and an eye-popping 1.1 out of five, respectively. And these numbers are the result of thousands of reviews.

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The complaints run the gamut, but they mostly boil down to unexpected fees and poor customer service.

So what gives? How can our experience have been so good while everyone else’s is so bad?

Have we simply been lucky? We’ve definitely had bad experiences at other car rental companies.

The truth is, looking at all these horrible reviews has made me suspicious. The price is still so much better than other companies’ that we’ll probably continue renting with Fox.

That said, I have a funny feeling in my gut that I didn’t have before.

Lessons learned:

• Bad online reviews don’t necessarily tell the whole story either? As much as I’m always a bit skeptical of rave reviews, maybe I should be a bit skeptical of bad reviews too. People do love to complain.

• Personal experience is the most important factor of all — and your gut feeling matters a lot too. Ultimately, these are the things I trust the most. Problem is, I’m not sure what to do when they conflict.

So What Does It All Mean?

I said at the beginning of this article that the lessons I learned from all these experiences sometimes contradicted each other. When it came to online reviews, the results were all over the place — fairly good for a company I personally found bad, and really bad for a company I’ve found good.

So are online reviews worthless?

Not entirely, but they’re just one piece of information. It also matters what’s in the reviews, so you should read them closely, including the lower-rated ones. Are they just a bunch of cranks, or do they have what seem to be legitimate gripes? Is there a common thread?

As for the five-star reviews, it’s good to get into the habit of reading between the lines. Do they sound legit — or do they read like they were written by the business itself or its friends? Might they have been artificially inflated by personal contact with the business? This is often the case with smaller businesses.

All that said, I think the most important factor in determining whether you should patronize a particular business is your own personal experience with that business — or the personal experience of people you know and trust.

And if you don’t have personal experience, trust your gut. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is — and if something seems “off,” it almost certainly is.

In terms of importance, I would rank the different factors this way:

1. Personal experience or recommendation: far and away the most important.

2. Your gut: also very important.

3. Online reviews: something to consider, especially if you read between the lines, but your mileage may vary.

In the end, though, I concede this is more than a little unsatisfying. When it comes to choosing a travel business, there is still — and I suppose there always will be — a big element of mystery and plain old random chance.

Then again, that’s also true of travel itself.

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Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out my new newsletter about my books and movies at www.BrentHartinger.com.

A few years ago, I wrote how I was “done” with Disney.

I’d had it with the crazy-high prices and insane crowds, but I was also upset by a major change in Disney’s philosophy: they were openly embracing an idea pioneered by competing parks but that they had initially resisted — namely, that rich people should be able to pay to avoid the lines at attractions, thereby making the insane lines even more miserable for everyone else.

Even so, Michael and I recently spent seven months in Asia, and over that time we visited three Disney parks: Hong Kong Disneyland and the two parks at the Tokyo Disney Resort, Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea.

It’s partly that these parks are considerably cheaper than the ones in America — at least 40% cheaper, by my estimate.

Also, I haunted the “crowd predictor” calendars to find days when attendance at the parks was expected to be very light. There’s a Universal Studios park in Osaka, Japan, but there were no “less-crowded” days in the months we were there, so I opted not to go at all.

What can I say? I hate crowds.

That being said, I did want to see what Disney was like outside of America. I’d heard that all these parks had been “adapted” to local tastes — especially DisneySea — and I wanted to see exactly what this meant.

So how did the three parks stack up?

Here’s what I thought of each park, from worst to best:

Tokyo Disneyland

Sometimes I think there are two kinds of people in the world: normal people who see Disney the way it really is, and Disney People who experience these amusement parks through some kind of weird “Disney Goggles.”

People who wear Disney Goggles don’t see the very obvious problems the rest of us see — and these problems were especially bad at Tokyo Disneyland.

My biggest complaint was, yes, the insane crowds. If this was a “low-crowd” day, I can’t imagine what it must be like on a “very crowded” day. Even on these days, the lines at the premium rides quickly reached two-plus hours (or you could buy “Premier Access” passes, which are available through the park app at $10–15 per person per ride).

Regarding the attractions, the older ones — like Pirates of the Caribbean, The Jungle Cruise, and Peter Pan’s Flight — are badly in need of updating, and are interesting mostly for reasons of nostalgia. And I found the newer ones, like Pooh’s Hunny Hunt, to be state-of-the-art but fairly boring.

And not only is the park not especially “Japanese,” it actually leans into Disney’s “Americana” aspect — for example, still including a friendly pass through “Indian country” on the Disneyland Railroad.

Alas, the Haunted Mansion, the attraction I most wanted to ride — and the one that is apparently most unique to Tokyo Disneyland — was closed for repairs.

But here's one fun fact: Tokyo Disneyland is home to the world's last remaining Splash Mountain, since this attraction has been converted into a less-than-enthusiastically-received ride called Tiana’s Bayou Adventure at other parks.

One fascinating phenomenon here that may or may not be unique to Tokyo Disneyland: the park now attracts a large contingent of “influencers” and/or Disney cosplayers who come to the park in full “Disney” regalia — and apparently spend much of their day posing for pictures and videos, which they post on social media.

The park even includes official “Photo Spots” — scenic viewpoints, temporary displays, or character meet-ups — that draw long lines of eager selfie-takers.

Weirdly, nowhere in Tokyo Disneyland can you find Dole Whip — that popular pineapple soft serve available only in Disney parks.

I know I said I wanted a more “local” Disney experience, but are you kidding me? Dole Whip may be the single most objectively great thing about the Disney parks, even despite its insanely inflated price.

The truth is, Michael and I were so disappointed by our visit to Tokyo Disneyland that we considered bailing on our visit to the area’s sister park, DisneySea, the following day.

My Non-Disney-Goggle Rating: D

Hong Kong Disneyland

This is the world’s smallest Disney park, both in terms of area and capacity.

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I love a great all-you-can-eat buffet.

And by saying that, I can now hear the scoffing of about half the readers of this article.

They’re unsanitary! some of you are thinking. And the food is baaaad.

And anyway, our culinary experiences should be about quality, not quantity, right? Less is more.

Except the most sublime dining experience isn’t only about quality. It’s also about variety.

Indeed, studies clearly show that we perceive our first taste of something to be the best — and the more we eat of it, the less interesting the flavor becomes.

This is called sensory-specific satiety, and it makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective: humans require a variety of nutrients to survive, so we’re compelled to eat as many different foods as possible, increasing the chance we’ll get everything we need.

So if we most enjoy the taste of something new, and a meal has lots of different kinds of food, well, that seems like a pretty good way to get an interesting meal, no?

This idea of sensory-specific satiety is why we humans celebrate with “feasts” with lots of different dishes — and also why, no matter how much we eat at Thanksgiving, we always still seem to have room for dessert.

This is also the thinking behind the famously lavish Turkish breakfast, and the increasingly popular “tasting menus” at high-end restaurants.

But I’ve never heard any scoffing or negative judgment at all about celebratory feasts, or Turkish breakfasts, or tasting menus.

Something about heat-lamps and warming trays really rubs some people the wrong way, I guess.

In fairness to you scoffers, the food in all-you-can-eat buffets sometimes is truly terrible.

I’m on record as saying that the breakfast buffets at American hotels are almost always unspeakably bad: sticky-sweet muffins and pastries, scrambled eggs obviously made from powder, and deep-fried but warmed-over hash browns or weirdly flavorless home fries.

And I’m not sure Chinese food in an all-you-can-eat buffet can ever be “good.” Isn’t the whole point of much of that cuisine that it comes out sizzling hot straight from the wok?

That said, even these places have their patrons, and they must be finding some pleasure, even if it’s from sheer gluttony, which I feel I should also celebrate to avoid looking like a complete hypocrite.

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But there are also all-you-can-eat buffets with good or even great food. Breakfast buffets outside of America are often as amazing as they are terrible back in the U.S.

One hotel I stayed at in Cambodia had a lavish fruit bar, a large salad bar with a wide selection of cheeses, and three different hot noodle stations — and they were also taking orders for traditional Western breakfasts from the kitchen.

And in 2023, this hotel with breakfast cost only $38 USD a night (but that’s neither here nor there).

Possibly the best all-you-can-eat buffet I’ve ever seen was in 1992, when I was invited to my first Hollywood press junket, for the Tom Hanks movie Philadelphia. The movie studio put us journalists up at the luxury Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, and the dinner buffet was unbelievably posh. That was the first time I’d ever eaten about six different things, including caviar, truffles, and real saffron.

But it was also shockingly expensive: $65 USD (or about $150 in 2026 dollars).

Fortunately, the movie studio had granted me a daily stipend of $100 for meals at the hotel.

Alas, I made the mistake of also having breakfast at the hotel buffet the following morning, and I learned upon checkout that, despite being at the hotel for the two-day junket, I had been booked for only a single night — and only had a stipend for one day.

So while I’d eaten two amazing buffets, I also now owed the hotel about a third of the monthly rent I paid on my modest housing back in Seattle — and about half the money I was making for this whole writing assignment. Part of me still wonders if this wasn’t a bit of a scam.

Unlike Chinese, some cuisines do lend themselves to buffets. Indian food is mainly prepared in advance anyway, and the flavors actually improve upon simmering. It’s also heavy in “cheap” items like rice, potatoes, lentils, and vegetables.

Then there’s Mongolian cuisine, which I’ve never actually tasted and probably isn’t anything like the “Mongolian grill” restaurants that swept America back in the 90s. But fake or not, this is another cuisine that is perfectly suited to an all-you-can-eat buffet: you pick out your own veggies, meat, and sauces, and then the guy cooks it for you over blisteringly hot heat.

In this case, it is served piping hot — directly to you, not even passing briefly under a kitchen’s heat lamp.

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There will always be terrible all-you-can-eat buffets. Then again, there will always be terrible restaurants of all kinds.

And if you’re thinking, “They don’t put enough care into the food they serve in buffets!” I suspect you’ve never seen how they sometimes cook in the kitchen of a busy traditional restaurant.

Here’s another important way buffets are superior to almost every other restaurant: you can literally see the food you may be eating before you commit and sit down at a table. I always ask to take a look first.

As for cleanliness, you can get a good sense of that too, and you also have the option of washing your hands between every visit to the buffet. Many of these establishments even have a handwashing station — that everyone else will ignore, but at least you won’t have to wait in line.

But the biggest misconception about all-you-can-eat buffets? That the joy comes from stuffing yourself silly.

Maybe that’s part of it — hey, I’m still trying hard here not to be too judgmental of sheer gluttony! — but I maintain that the real pleasure comes from the variety of food.

You find yourself eating things you wouldn’t ordinarily try. In Bristol, England, I went to a fairly mediocre buffet solely because their dessert area included endless trays of every bulk candy imaginable — and I got to try the many confections I’d been curious about all my life but had never bothered to sample.

But the beauty of all-you-can-eat buffets is about even more than that.

What if you could experience that first incredible sensation of sinking into a hot bathtub, over and over again? Or repeatedly feel the wonderful tingle of that first touch of the masseuse?

And what if you could taste that fantastic “first bite” of delicious food over and over again? Who wouldn’t do that?

You see where I’m going with this: at an all-you-can-eat buffet, you kinda-sorta can — for a fraction of the price of a more expensive restaurant’s tasting menu.

If you occasionally enjoy a good all-you-can-eat buffet, I suspect you already know this.

But those of you who began this article with a sneer on your lips? You’re reluctantly admitting to yourself I may have a point, aren’t you?

Not to worry. One of these days, you’ll come upon an unexpectedly tantalizing buffet, and you can test my theory for yourself. It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me the results.

But if you do tell me, I promise I won’t tell your friends.

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Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out my new newsletter about my books and movies at www.BrentHartinger.com. And order my latest book, below.

Big suitcases. The kind you see in movies with transatlantic cruises.

Back then, we thought we needed to be prepared for any occasion: semi-formal clothes for fancy nights out. Clothes for all kinds of weather — warm and cold. Enough of our favorite toiletry brands to last the year before returning to America.

By the start of the third year, we’d grown tired of feeling like our own porters. We also planned on doing more train travel and didn’t want to be lugging those suitcases up and down stairs and through narrow aisles.

So we switched to, yes, backpacks — specifically the Cotopaxi 42L — which, incidentally, we absolutely recommend. The quality is amazing.

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On one hand, it was nice to no longer be dragging around huge suitcases — especially when our Athens cab driver mistakenly dropped us off in the wrong spot, forcing us to walk two kilometers through a mobbed farmer’s market to our Airbnb.

On the other hand, we’d taken to traveling with a second small backpack, which we used to carry electronics, prescriptions, and other valuables — all the things we didn’t want to check on a plane.

Problem is, we kept gravitating to bigger and bigger “carry-on” backpacks.

Before we knew it, we were both basically carrying two big backpacks.

Which was really awkward and difficult! And also — in retrospect — very stupid.

Then, last year, we took a trip through the mountains of Central Japan with some nomad friends, Howard and Whitney.

Instead of backpacks or huge suitcases, they traveled with one small suitcase and one small backpack each.

Emphasis on the word “small.”

We envied how easily they carried those bags around — and how seamlessly they all fit into our van.

Meanwhile, Brent and I were carrying those two big backpacks and breaking our backs.

So we ordered the exact same suitcases they were using: Travelpro Maxlite 5 Softside Expandable suitcases. And we got two genuinely small personal backpacks too.

Interestingly, the Travelpro suitcases and Cotopaxi backpacks have similar volumes — at least on paper. But the Travelpro’s sides are rigid, while Cotopaxi’s cloth sides have way more give. The Cotopaxi also has more packing compartments.

But this means you can cram way more stuff into the Cotopaxi.

And we definitely did, especially over time.

With Travelpro, we’ve been forced to pack smarter.

Here are all the lessons we have learned about the differences between backpacks and suitcases — and also all the ways you can pack smarter too, especially as a nomad or long-term traveler:

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As nomads, Brent and I are very lucky in one specific way: unlike most people, we can choose our climate. And if the weather gets too hot or too cold, we can easily move on.

And we do. Since we both hate the cold, we usually follow the spring.

Unfortunately, we both also love the snow.

You can’t have both, and in the last nine years of our travels, we’ve seen almost none of the white stuff.

I grew up in Colorado, so it feels like snow runs through my blood.

Which makes it sound like I have ice in my veins, but you know what I mean.

Some of my best childhood memories are of building snowmen and snow forts, and going for nighttime walks while snow silently fell around me.

But my favorite snow-related memory came when I was a bit older. Colorado is famous for its skiing, and I once rode a chairlift up a silent mountainside alone — the only skier in sight. The landscape was blanketed in white, the tips of pine trees just poking up, as if cautiously checking whether the storm had passed.

The word “magical” is badly overused, but it applies here.

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Brent grew up in Puget Sound, where snow was much rarer — but that just made it more precious, he says. When it fell, it turned shrubs and mailboxes into sculptures of white.

And every Christmas vacation, he took the train from Seattle to Northern Idaho to ski with his cousins, so he also knows the incredible beauty of the mountains in winter.

Some of our favorite shared memories of our old life in Seattle are walking around Green Lake — an urban lake near our house — after a snowfall. The busy city would fall completely still, and late at night, we would sometimes have the park to ourselves. The following morning, the neighborhood kids would all turn out to enjoy the wonderland.

Even now, few things excite me more than looking out a window to see the first few flakes twirling down from a sky pregnant with the promise of more snow.

In our nine years of travel, we have sometimes visited colder climates in December, in hopes of experiencing a White Christmas: Vienna in 2021, to see the Christmas markets, and London in 2022.

But both times, snow didn’t fall — despite London being downright freezing. The closest we got to snow that year was a hard frost — the meteorological equivalent of getting to first base.

And about as satisfying.

Our years of nomading have offered one glorious “snow” exception.

In October 2020, in the thick of the Covid pandemic, we rented a place in Helena, Montana.

A week later, a surprise blizzard dumped nearly two feet of snow on the city. Drifts in our neighborhood were easily twice that.

We didn’t have proper winter clothes, but we didn’t care. With midnight approaching and the storm still raging, we tucked our jeans into socks and headed out into the blizzard wearing fairly light jackets and tennis shoes.

The streets had disappeared, and the sidewalks were knee-deep snowdrifts, but we explored our transformed neighborhood. The nearby church looked even more gothic than before, and we soon found a red-and-green Victorian house that we christened the “Christmas House,” because it looked straight out of a Hallmark Christmas movie.

We stayed out for hours, warmed by our excitement.

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The following day, despite temperatures well below freezing, we took a long walk to the edge of the city and beyond — into the frozen woods.

In retrospect, this was even more stupid than our being out in the snow late at night, because once the sun dipped behind the trees, our hands and toes froze too, and we were still several miles from home.

But it was so beautiful, it was absolutely worth it.

Fortunately, we survived, and the whole “Helena snow” experience turned out to be wonderfully unforgettable.

And it was unforgettable, in part, because it was a gift we hadn’t had to earn. We’d gone straight from a lovely fall to a deep winter storm.

And a few weeks later, after the snow melted, we flew down to sunny Mexico for the rest of the winter.

That blizzard was a cheat on our part — one of the many ways nomading is kind of unnatural.

It was a cheat because enjoying snow means accepting everything that comes with it: the icy streets and the long, cold winters. Most of the time, you need to prepare for snow: wrapping your pipes, winterizing your car, and stacking wood for the fire. And when it finally falls, you need to bundle up to go out and shovel the driveway and sidewalks.

Simply going outside requires planning, layers, and resolve.

To be clear, we did suffer some in Helena — those frozen fingers and toes. But that was due to our own stupidity. Frankly, we deserved it.

I hope we choose to experience snow again. I think we love it too much not to.

But it will come at a cost. Switzerland and Montreal aren’t cheap, especially for short-term visits. And trips to more remote areas, like Brașov in Eastern Europe or Northern Norway, require a fair bit of effort.

And there’s always the chance it might not snow.

Right now, we’re back in the United States for a month, at our part-time condo in Port Townsend, on the Olympic Peninsula.

And it could snow here in the days ahead.

We really hope it does. If you’re listening, Mother Nature, hear our prayer and let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

On the other hand, in a couple of weeks, we’re catching a cruise to Hawaii, so please don’t snow us in so badly that we get stuck here and can’t make the boat.

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Michael Jensen is a novelist and editor. For a newsletter with more of my photos, visit me at www.MichaelJensen.com.

Yet another edition of our unusual travel hacks!

For other travel hack columns, go to Part Fifteen and Part Sixteen and Part Seventeen and Part Eighteen and Part Nineteen and Part Twenty and Part Twenty-One and Part Twenty-Two and Part Twenty-Three and Part Twenty-Four and Part Twenty-Five and Part Twenty-Six and Part Twenty-Seven and Part Twenty-Eight and Part Twenty-Nine and Part Thirty.

These are our latest hacks!

Avoid bad sushi

If the sushi restaurant smells like fish, leave.

Sushi is obviously raw fish, so it needs to be as fresh as possible — and cleaning conditions need to be as clean as possible.

Match your name exactly

When traveling by air, the name on your ticket needs to exactly match the name on your passport (or your other ID, if it’s a domestic flight).

If you go by “Mike,” but your passport says “Michael,” use “Michael” when buying your ticket. If your friends know you as “Nicky,” but you’re really “Nicole,” make sure the latter is your ticket.

Oh, and if you use “autofill” on your computer, always check to make sure that what’s been entered is exactly what you need it to be.

In just the past month, I’ve had two friends tripped up by slightly incorrect names on their tickets, and they both needed to purchase new tickets at sky-high last-minute rates, with no guarantees that they’d get refunds.

This is yet another reason to always book airline tickets directly with the airline (or an official airline partner). If you do, the airline will be more likely to help you at no cost. If you use a third-party vendor, they’re much more likely to say there’s nothing they can do.

Consider Venice in December

It can be a bit wet, but it’s Christmas-y, and the crowds have finally — finally! — disappeared.

Master the all-you-can-eat buffet

If you look down your nose at all-you-can-eat buffets, there is nothing I can say to change your mind. But not all buffets are created equal, and be aware that research shows that the first few bites of something are always the best — and one way to have an amazing meal is to have almost every bite be of something new.

Here are all the other ways you can enhance the all-you-can-eat buffet experience:

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