Most people see Bruges between eleven and six, which is the busiest version of it. Visiting Bruges properly means staying the night, when the canals go still and the streets are lit rather than crowded.

An Ireland travel guide built around driving time rather than mileage: which regions actually combine, how long each needs, and the roads that take twice as long as they should.

An Iceland travel guide that starts with one question: lights or long days. The winter island and the summer island share a map and very little else.

Using your phone abroad comes down to two decisions: how you get data, and whether your photographs survive the trip. Everything else is preference.

A two-week Thailand itinerary, and why most first-time plans give Bangkok one night and lose two days to overland travel. Three regions, and the internal flights that make it work.

Everyone arrives asking for Bora Bora. A French Polynesia honeymoon that sees two or three islands in ten days is usually the better one, and the second island is where the character is.

The live music pubs in Dublin run most nights of the week, and mostly not where the tour groups are. Where to go, and what to do with the daylight.

An international travel packing list built on one decision: pack seven days, plan one laundry stop, and a three-week trip fits the same bag as a one-week trip.

Most people come home with two thousand photographs and look at eleven of them. How to preserve travel memories starts on the trip, not after it.

Booking a cruise through a travel advisor rarely costs more, because the line sets the fare. What changes is the cabin you end up in, and who answers at eleven at night.

The Gap of Dunloe near Killarney is eleven kilometres of glacial pass, and how you cross it decides whether it is a photograph or a day.

San Sebastián pintxos are not tapas, and a pintxo bar is not a restaurant. One dish per bar, three or four bars a night, and three city beaches to fill the day before.

Edinburgh in two days covers both halves of it, the medieval one and the Georgian one, with an extinct volcano in the middle. What to book ahead, and what August does to all of it.

The Barcelona beaches sit twenty minutes from a Gothic cathedral and are effectively empty before nine. What to do with the rest of the day, and which Gaudi tickets to book first.

Too much choice does not produce better trips, it produces no trip at all. How to decide where to travel next, in five constraints that usually leave two candidates.

Family trips fail for one reason more than any other: too much planned into too few days. The tips for travelling with children below all come from fixing that.

Most people weigh travel insurance against lost luggage. Do you need travel insurance? The answer rests almost entirely on medical cover and evacuation.

Reaching the Cliffs of Moher from Galway takes half a morning. Galway is where you sleep, eat and hear the music, and it is the base for Connemara and the Burren as well.

A Stockholm travel guide built around the water: which island to walk and when, what fika actually is, and the six-hour train west that adds a second country.

A Costa Rica vacation turns on one fact: the two coasts are rarely wet at the same time. Which side your month points at decides almost everything else.