Finding Peace in a Secret London Oasis, a Symbol of the City’s Struggle and Resilience

A short walk from Monument tube station, in a side street of the City of London, lies St-Dunstan-in-the-East. This abandoned church has been converted into a garden open to the public, which remains largely undiscovered despite its location. Tucked away from skyscrapers like the Shard and Walkie Talkie, this unexpected gem is a surprisingly peaceful…

Country Bumpkin Lane in Paris

Okay, so that’s not its real name, but they should just call this place what it really is– a countryside paradise in the heart of Paris. A zippy ten minutes from the Eiffel Tower on my mobilette and I had putt-putted my way to Pernety in the 14th arrondissement, a very family-orientated neighbourhood with lots…

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The Secret City on the Peloponnese Rock

It just looks like a big old dry rock, doesn’t it? No visible signs of humanity on its barren landscape. Impressive, but not much to it. We should probably just keep going…. Drive along the coast of the mainland, through the small port village of “new” Monemvasia, and yep– it still looks like a giant…

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The Tiny Tudor Village & Other Hidden Treasures of New York

As much as I wish I could travel back and forth between Paris and New York (by way of my own secret portal disguised as a telephone booth, of course) for now, I’ve chosen Paris to roam and explore down to the very last cobblestone street. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been taking notes…

That Time a Wheat Field Grew in Downtown New York

The 1980s was a weird time to be in New York. Punk was flourishing, but so was crime. There was Basquiat and Keith Haring. The creative energy was non-stop, but tumultuous, and living conditions were gritty and hard for many. But in 1982, one artist’s knee-jerk reaction to that reality was breathtakingly simple: in the face of…

My Brooklyn Bronco B&B

It’s a (concrete) jungle out there when it comes to finding the perfect place to rest your head at the end of an action-packed day in New York City. Are you going to choose from the long list of twenty-story plaza hotels where every room is identical, or are you in search of something unique and off-beat? What I’m…

The Supersized Ghost City

Welcome to no man’s land, sorry, Naypyidaw, the vast and empty ghost city that became the brand new capital of Burma a decade ago when the government suddenly announced it was moving the capital from Rongoon, without explanation. If you’ve never heard of the place or never seen pictures of it before, that’s perfectly normal. Most…

That Time Walt Disney Bought His Own Autonomous Utopian City of the Future

And then, Walt Disney created utopia. Well, almost. Before his death in 1966, America’s greatest entrepreneur was planning his own city which would have almost total autonomy within its borders, where residents would live and work for Disney in some way, using the latest technology in their homes and experimenting with innovative community ideals. Walt called it E.P.C.O.T,…

The Guy Who Digs up Lost Cities Buried at Sea

For the last thirteen years, he’s been busy digging up a lost underwater civilization the size of Paris off the coast of Egypt. The remarkably well-preserved ruins that were discovered have been sitting at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea for the past 1,200 years, at long last solving the mystery of the lost city of…

Once a Californian Boom Town, Now a Sunken City at the Bottom of a Lake

At one time Kennett, Ca, had 40 saloons, dozens of trade stores, a hotel, hospital, a schoolhouse– it even had an opera house– that is, before it was sitting at the bottom of the huge man-made Lake Shasta. Kennett is now completely invisible, buried as deep as 400 feet below the water’s surface. There is no…