A tiny town of just 400 people, Hólmavík is creeping onto the tourism scene as a quiet highlight of the Westfjords. The Westfjords in general is also growing its visitor numbers, offering an interesting solution to the overtourism issue along Iceland’s South Coast. Hugging the scenic Steingrímsfjörður, Hólmavík is a charming and unique town, most…
One of my favorite towns in the Westfjords is Hólmavík, one of the first towns you’ll approach if you’re coming from the Northern edge of the RIng Road if you’re driving counterclockwise (the most common circumnavigation route). For me, it came at the end of a week in Western Iceland and the Westfjords and it…
It’s no secret that Iceland has some issues with overtourism. When I spent a week in Iceland, I admit I was a little nervous to come – afraid I was contributing to their massive overtourism issue with my mere presence. As I spent 8 days road-tripping through some of the lesser-known parts of Iceland, covering…
Iceland tops many people’s bucket lists, and with good reason. This country has natural beauty nearly everywhere you look, and the variety of landscapes you’ll see on a trip to Iceland simply boggle the mind. In a small package, you can see everything from glaciers to volcanoes to continental rifts to fjords to lava formations…
It’s 2026. Every single person you know has probably already been to or is planning a trip to Iceland. It’s not surprising: Iceland is pretty much Instagram-perfection. We’ve all seen those photos of the Blue Lagoon, picture-perfect waterfalls, and pristine black sand beaches. But let’s pull behind the curtain a bit. People are everywhere you…
There are so many photogenic ways to experience Iceland — its thunderous waterfalls, its uneven and otherworldly lava fields, its windswept beaches, its glacial lagoons. But then there are the experiences that go beyond the ability to be photographed: experiences that you embody and bottle up, a memory to take home with you that can’t…
Messina sits almost at the northeastern tip of Sicily, just across the strait from Reggio Calabria, the southernmost city in mainland Italy. Despite its prime location, Messina is often overlooked by travelers compared to flight hub cities like Palermo and Catania, it is still a rather popular stop for cruise ships due to its port,…
I had first heard of Taichung from a girl I met while I was traveling in Greece, who had taught English there for two years. The way she described the city made me fall in love with it before I had even visited. Close to hikes and lakes, full of cafés and streets jammed with…
With its brightly-painted narrow streets set on a pristine crystalline lake with a backdrop of majestic mountains, Annecy is the ultimate scenic vacation destination, in the heart of the beautiful Haute-Savoie region of France. Annecy truly has it all: a picture-perfect old town with historic neighborhoods crisscrossed by charming canals, all set in a beautiful…
