Local Knowledge — All Articles — Page 6 of 7

These posts are about the local people we meet, with insider tips we gather from locals, Q&As with locals, as well as great local spots and hidden gems we discover.

New York City, but Not for Tourists

By Lara Dunston|

We may have decided not to use guidebooks as part of our local travel experiment, but we’re certainly not discarding the map, which, as far as we’re concerned, is often all you ever need to explore a city. Well a guide 'Not for Tourists', was one guide with great mapping, but also one that helped ...

Local Knowledge — Rob from the East Village, New York City

By Lara Dunston|

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 ...

An Irreverent and Curious Guide to New York City by David Farley

By Lara Dunston|

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 ...

Local Knowledge: Kiki from Bali

By Lara Dunston|

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 ...

Local Knowledge: Yuto from Tokyo

By Lara Dunston|

Tokyo locals aren’t friendly, we’d heard. “They’re shy, so they won’t make an effort to speak to you,” said one person. “They’d rather you just go away, because they get embarrassed they don’t speak English,” said another. “They actually don’t want you here at all,” said one long-term expat. Had the Gods heard? Because every ...

Local Knowledge: Luca from Venice on What to Do, Buy, Eat and Drink in Venice

By Lara Dunston|

Our latest Local Knowledge interview is with Luca Zaggia, a coastal oceanographer working for Venice’s Institute of Marine Science, specialising in the study of the sea and wetlands, and spends most of his time in Venice on the water. Here are his local tips on things to do in Venice, what to eat and drink, ...

Meet the Locals behind My Local Guide to Venice

By Lara Dunston|

I first spotted My Local Guide to Venice in June 2009 when we were in town for the opening of the Art Biennale. It was actually our last day of a weeklong stay at the Novecento Hotel and we’d been using another excellent local guide produced by the hotel’s owners, the Romanelli family, so we ...

Local Knowledge: Anna from Alberobello

By Lara Dunston|

Effervescent Anna Rosato knew the meaning of hospitality well before the 23 year-old graduated with her tourism degree from the University of Bari last year. The daughter of chef-restaurateurs, Anna has worked at her family pizzeria for as long as she can remember. Majoring in culture and languages — she speaks English, French and German in ...

Local Knowledge: Vesna from Kotor, Montenegro

By Terence Carter|

Vesna Alavanja doesn’t walk, she bounces. And she skips. And she sprints up the steps when Terence suggests he shoot her portrait at the top of a stone staircase in the Stari Grad or Old Town of Kotor. The woman oozes energy, even though she tells us she’s a little tired when we meet her. ...

Local Knowledge: Marie Theres from Montmartre

By Terence Carter|

Our latest insider we're profiling for the Paris edition of our Local Knowledge series is Parisian artist and art historian Marie Theres from Montmartre. It’s a beautiful spring evening when Marie Theres Berger takes us to her small studio, hidden, with a dozen other artists’ ateliers, in a dimly lit lane behind big wooden doors in ...

Local Knowledge: Coralie from Ceret

By Terence Carter|

A fashion designer who studied Fine Arts at Goldsmiths and Textile Design at Central St Martins in London, Coralie Scarnato moved to Ceret eight years ago and opened La Boheme, a boutique and atelier where she makes and sells her vibrant striped Catalan cloth products, and her own collections of winter clothes. Born in Provence ...

Local Knowledge: Sergio from Barcelona

By Lara Dunston|

“I love working with people, having a common goal, and seeing the evolution of the project,” our Local Knowledge expert Sergio from Barcelona tells us as we soak up some sunshine with his friends at a café terrace opposite his home in Gracia. “And then at the end of the project when everyone goes away, you ...