Connecting with locals has been the most satisfying part of our travels so far this year. By far. Not seeing the Sagrada Familia, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State, or any other important monument or major sight. Because we haven’t visited any of those, in fact. As much as we love great architecture, we’d rather take ...
When we first met James M White, the owner of The Broken Spoke in Austin, we knew we had to interview the guy. James is just as much of a legend as his legendary honky tonk dance hall. Not only is The Broken Spoke the oldest and most famous honky tonk joint still in operation, ...
The number of taco places in Austin is mind blowing — from white tablecloth restaurants to humble roadside stands, from dawn to the dead of night, you’ll find tacos on a menu or a blackboard somewhere in this Texas town. Everyone in Austin has advice on tacos, so in order to narrow down the field ...
Austin is known as the USA's live music capital but this arty, laidback city also has a flourishing film scene. In fact, for film-types like myself, it was an indie movie, Richard Linklater's Slacker, about a day in the life of 20-something Austin Gen X-ers, that put the city on the map. Successful Austin-based directors include Terrence Malick ...
We introduced you to Austin musician Suzanna Choffel who shared her local tips and insider secrets for our Local Knowledge series. Now meet the amazingly soulful singer, hirsute and hunky Dan Dyer. These guys aren’t just friends, they also share a stage with their well-received side-project, the band The Coveters. We sat down with Dan Dyer and ...
When I hit my teens, music became everything. My local music shop was an old-fashioned one, with massive rows of records and an instrument section where kids would hang out and annoy everyone by playing wonky renditions of Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water or Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. This stuff was old-fashioned to me. Punk had ...
We first watched Austin local Suzanna Choffel perform with her band on a sunny afternoon at the sprawling alfresco café at Central Market. We were lucky to find a table — the place was packed with families and groups of friends enjoying some Texan wine while they watched this sassy young singer-guitarist perform. Suzanna’s performance was ...
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 Rusty ...
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 ...
Connecting with locals in New York hasn’t been hard at all — 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 was it trickier to find a Local Knowledge candidate for New York City? The ...
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 ...
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 ...