"All I know is that I want to live somewhere I'll have to relearn everything: how to cross the street, how to order coffee, how to deal with people whose modes of thinking are utterly, intriguingly foreign to my own. I want to be uncomfortable, to be an outsider not just in my own mind...

"Tourists, I could now better understand, were not some lesser species. Like all travelers, they had earned their right to travel as they wished, and if that meant organized tours and checklist sightseeing, who was I to tell them they were wrong? Travel did not always have to be hard or deep. It could even...

"The first thing you do when you arrive in a strange city and want to get lost is put your bags away. Getting lost involves -- requires -- intense wandering, and a suitcase or heavy backpack is only going to slow you down and make you long for a hotel, a shower, and a change...

One of my favorite columns is "The Frugal Traveler," written by Matt Gross for the the New York Times . He gives his final swan song in this piece: Three things I've learned about frugal travel It's a great retrospective of his career as a travel writer. While I haven't always agreed with his definition...