Cecilia Jimenez, the woman in Borja, Spain who mistakenly turned the mural "Ecce Homo" (Behold the Man) into "Ecce Mono" (Behold the Monkey) died today. I hope she's in heaven sitting next to Monkey-Jesus. I loved seeing it with my own eyes and writing about it. www.bbc.com/travel/artic...

A friend of mine once worked at AirBnB and they used to have themed lunches for employees. On 11/4/2013, it was a Prince-themed lunch. Here's the menu: Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here to get through this thing called lunch.... Mis en Prince Live from Menuapolis · November 4th, 2013

If you're going to gift someone just one book about Italy and the search to find the lost foreskin of Jesus, make it this one! a.co/d/a5DCVx4

Today is as good a day as any to remember that “pavo” means “turkey” in Spanish and “pavo real,” literally “royal turkey,” is a “peacock.”

In this airport lounge in Budapest, there is a low-level hum of the blending of different languages along with a few very boisterous pockets of confident American accents broadcasting to us all what they did on their trips along with various details of their life stories. #AmericansAbroad

I love writing about restaurants that I love. In this case, The Infatuation let me pen mini love letters to my favorite places to feast in Prague. www.theinfatuation.com/prague/guide...

In 2002, Thailand began wielding soft power with the Global Thai program, subsidizing Thai restaurants abroad. There were 5,000 Thai spots abroad in 2002. Today, there are 17,500. 6 years ago, Czechs began a "beer diplomacy" program aimed at craft brewers in North America. It's been a success.

About 2x per week, I get an email from a London-based PR person inviting me to an event in London or implying in the email that I'm UK based. I'm baffled by this since 1) I'm not British and 2) I've never lived in the UK. When I recently expressed bewilderment about this...

One of my favorite things about living in NYC is fetching money from an ATM in Queens where, often, you have the option to conduct the transaction in one of 16 different languages. I always do it in English—I'd be lost in Hindi, Thai, etc.—but I just love what that says about the place I live.

NYC

Since everyone’s talking about Parker Posey at the moment, I recall having a few encounters with her, one of which was randomly encountering her near her E. 10th Street apartment and chatting about her little white dog. The other, though, was the most memorable:

"I have good news," said the PR person in the elevator, as we made our way up to a suite in the Fairmont San Francisco. "He's in a good mood today." She was referring to Val Kilmer. I was about to interview him and apparently he was known for being not so gracious in these situations.

Trump's talk of running for a 3rd term is just a diversion to 1) get the media to turn away from the Signal-gate scandal and 2) to keep any Republicans from announcing they're going to run for the 2028 nomination, so the attention remains on Don and also so he doesn't look like a lame duck.

No one can drive you crazy unless you give them the keys.

So many airport lounges are increasingly restricting access for travelers—such as myself—with @prioritypass.bsky.social. Perhaps they should consider re-naming it to Increasingly Limited Priority Pass™.

"Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it..." — Jonathan Swift “The truth is different these days; it’s more of a hunch you’re willing to die for.” — Homer Simpson

I'm visiting my family in the LA area and last night after dinner at a sushi spot, we called an Uber to take us from the door of the restaurant to our car, parked about 200 feet away in the parking lot. Not really. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone here did that. Since #NodbodyWalksInLA

Many of the streets where my family lives—around San Juan Capistrano and Ladera Ranch in Orange County, California—have Spanish names and I'm convinced a non-Spanish speaker named them by opening a Spanish dictionary and pointing to random words.

Last month, I spent 10 days in Prague hanging out with brew masters and people who love beer. It was terrible. Just kidding. It was bibulously fun. The result is this WSJ article on small breweries outside the center of Prague. Gift link. www.wsj.com/lifestyle/tr...

There are many reasons to be both outraged and embarrassed by the Trump Administration but the way he and JD Vance treated and talked to Volodymyr Zelensky was downright disrespectful and a national embarrassment.

I recently waxed on about travel and travel writing on the Intrepid Times podcast: intrepidtimes.com/2025/02/bigg...

Reason #457 why I love Spain: my mother-in-law, who had not been feeling well lately, lamented to me this morning that she couldn't get proper high-quality jamon Iberico for my visit. The good news is that you can't throw a croqueta in this country without finding good jamon. I'll buy some today!

I hate the way bartenders in the US pour a pint of beer and am happy to see some bartenders are starting to learn from the Czechs about how to pour a proper pint—with a nice, foamy head. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/d...

I'm always excited to read an article called "The Most Anticipated New York Restaurant Openings for 2025," except for when I realize it should be titled, "The Most Anticipated New York Restaurant Openings Someone Like Me Won't Get a Table at Until at Least the End of 2025"

Some sober philosophy to pair with your potent drink in a dive bar…

@colbertlateshow.bsky.social @stephencolbert.bsky.social ky.social how is it possible that in all the Colbert Questionert interviews, no one has said that the best sandwich is the banh mi? This is clearly the correct answer.

A PR person pitched me on a story about a gay bar that happens to be around the corner from me. The angle? The 31st anniversary of the bar! I was like, "Really? A 31st anniversary peg?" Maybe she's trying to normalize non-big-round-number celebrations and for that I tip my hat and wish her the best.

The days of eating bad food and enduring bad service just to sustain a night of drinking beer in Prague are long gone. Well, not really. But the dining scene here has improved so much in the last 20 years. I recently wrote about it for Departures. www.departures-international.com/gastronomy/r...

A couple of months ago, I got to walk where few (living) people have been in a long time: Hart Island, NYC's mass gravesite for the impoverished and the unknown. 1 million bodies on buried on this 1-mile-long island. I wrote about it for the Washington Post www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2024/...

A pho feast in Van Cu, the village 70 miles south-east of Hanoi in the Nam Dinh province, that claims Vietnam’s national dish originated here.

I made a pilgrimage to Borja, Spain to see "Ecce Homo," "Behold the Man," which was dubbed "Ecce Mono," "Behold the Monkey," after the famously botched restoration was discovered. What I saw surprised me. I wrote about how a tourist attraction is born in the 21st century. www.bbc.com/travel/artic...

I've always been flummoxed by the increasing ubiquity of the trdelnik, or "chimney cake," on the streets of central Prague. So I recently took a deep dive—or, I should say, deep bite—into it for BBC Travel. It didn't taste so great. www.bbc.com/travel/artic...

Sunset over the Mekong in Laos …

Hanging out at a Buddhist monastery in Luang Prabang—as one does.

A few months ago, I went to Rome to sleuth out the origins of carbonara. I also had to eat thousands of calories worth of the pasta dish. I know, terrible job. The result is the cover story in the current issue of AAA Explorer magazine. PDF version here: dfarley.com/uploads/3/5/...

Cameras were invented in the 1820s. People began smiling in photos in the 1920s. I wonder if the older generation mocked the smilers in the way I curmudgeonly mock people for doing the duck face pose or the affected pose of back to the camera, looking off into the distance with feigned introspection

The most photographed restaurants on Yelp in 2023 don't translate to the best restaurants. Case in point: one of two NY restaurants on the list, #5, is Olio e Più, a very mediocre pizzeria around the corner form me in the West Village. www.yelp.com/collection/3...

If you woke up today and thought: I wonder where the Amish go on vacation and what they do when they get there—and, really, who hasn't had this thought?—then I have an answer for you: dinalitovsky.com/Personal-Pro...

Weird 9/11 fact I didn't know: Mohammed Atta was a trained architect who wrote in his master's degree thesis that he hated skyscrapers. slate.com/news-and-pol...

Philip Roth called history "...the relentless unforeseen ... where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable." I love this.

NYC food history: In 1963, Craig Claiborne, the first food/restaurant critic of The New York Times, reviewed two new Japanese restaurants, Nippon and Saito. In the review he mentioned sushi, noting that it “may seem a trifle too ‘far out’ for many American palates.”

Are the Spanish about to rip the burger from Americans’ claws the same way they swiped the gin and tonic from the Brits and made it their own? Some of the best burgers I've eaten in NYC lately have been at Spanish (and Spanish-owned) restaurants. tastecooking.com/a-bull-marke...