Perceptive Travel Blog

On an Istanbul ferry, the journey between Europe and Asia reveals the rhythms of a city I once took for granted. On a weekday morning, the ferry is already full of people going somewhere. A man reads the news while balancing a tulip-shaped glass of tea. Students scroll through their phones. Office workers sit with laptop bags between their feet. Seagulls circle behind the boa...

Ask a bunch of departing American tourists how long they’re going to spend in Lima and you’ll be lucky if anyone says more than “one night.” In the land of no mandated vacation time, the getaways are short and must be maximized. So off to Machu Picchu or the Amazon jungle, no time to stop and smell the roses (or look at the flowers in Miraflores). This is a shame though for a...

Layers upon layers of history have made Mexico’s 700-year-old capital a smorgasbord of architectural styles and eras. The history of earthquakes and lack of historic preservation (there wasn’t a historic registry in Mexico City until 1980) has added to the visual hodgepodge, meaning you will find geometric Art Deco facades alongside columned Neocolonial beauties, and boxy bru...

It was when I was kneeling down so I could put my iPhone lens level with the asphalt of a Bogota street that the street photography penny finally dropped. A few minutes earlier, I’d taken a boring photo of an intersection on a drizzly afternoon. Snapped at eye level, it captured people going about their rainy-day business in a very ordinary way. With guidance from Diego Ferna...

Quick, name a historic highway in the USA. Can you name five? Probably not, but there are plenty of ribbons of pavement that will provide scenic drives or memorable experiences in the sprawling USA, so look for some scenic drive alternatives to Route 66, especially if it’s summer vacation season. As I write this in the summer of 2026, we’ve got two big anniversary events goin...