Here's a curious trivia tidbit from U.S. history: In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams took leave from their Europe-based diplomatic duties and traveled to Stratford-upon-Avon to visit the home of William Shakespeare. Not much was recorded of the occasion, but one fact of their pilgrimage to the Bard's birthplace stands out: At some point...

"The anti-tourist rhetoric of consumption usually goes like this: Your holidays demonstrate a lack of sophistication. You indulge in cheap pleasures and buy tacky souvenirs. You show no restraint or moderation, you overeat, overdrink, overspend. You are far too passive, just dozing in the hammock, hanging around the pool, or letting yourself be transported from...

"Europeans may sneer at Chinese tourists who pursue Beethoven, Bordeaux and Hugo Boss with the same undiscriminating avidity. But Europeans used to tour their own continent in a similar way. The original Grand Tour was also a display of relative economic power, as the gilded youth of northern, industrializing Europe headed to France, Switzerland and...

Cairo, Egypt When I returned to the United States this past weekend after spending six weeks in the Middle East, I didn’t have all that much in my backpack. One thing I had almost packed but didn’t was a chunk of rock. It was one of thousands thrown outside my Cairo hostel, by Tahrir Square,...

I have a lot of nice stuff. I have a painting of a peacock feather, all gold and blue and tiny jewels, that I plucked from a windswept art fair at Burning Man the first year I went by myself. I have a curvacious photo that I took, developed, and printed myself, of the naked...