It’s the little things that make a difference to a holiday rental stay – whether there’s soap and toilet paper provided, some breakfast ingredients to get you started, or even a welcome gift of a bottle of local wine. Some properties we’ve stayed in this year have really impressed us, but none as much as … Read more
We first used Context a couple of years ago when we were working on some stories in Rome. We were just starting to develop the germ of the idea for Grantourismo then, and in a way Context was part of our experiment. We wanted to see if walking tours such as those offered by Context could … Read more
Connecting with locals in New York City hasn’t been hard at all this trip. We’ve used the same strategies we apply in every place we visit and we’ve found New Yorkers to be really responsive. They’ve been friendly, accessible and easygoing, so why did we find it trickier to find a Local Knowledge candidate for … Read more
I can’t recall how New York writer David Farley and I first made contact, but I do remember that at the time of our email exchange Terence and I were ensconced in the library of my uncle and aunt’s house in Bendigo, Australia, gazing out at their English cottage garden as we wrote up our … Read more
For travellers who need some handholding, the only thing they’d probably miss from a holiday rental is a concierge. Being travel writers, we’re not the types to depend on one other than to score us a hard-to-get restaurant table, although we can certainly appreciate a good concierge. Occasionally we’ve been surprised to find a holiday rental … Read more