Exoticism is often talked about as if it were an objective quality. Some places are “exotic”; others aren’t. But in practice, exotic appeal is relative — shaped as much by where you live as by where you travel. Nowhere is this clearer than when you compare the Canary Islands with Hawaii. Distance changes everything From […]
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How are pages kept updated? Behind Car or No Car sits a long-running fascination with how cities actually work. That curiosity goes back nearly 50 years and has been shaped by observing how people move through places, how transport networks evolve, and how urban form affects everyday life. Layered on top of that is more […]
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One of the most useful distinctions in our ratings is between what most people do and what we think you should do. These two scores often line up closely, which is reassuring: it suggests that traveller behaviour, local infrastructure, and the car-hire market are broadly in sync. Abu Dhabi, for example, scores 7 for what […]
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Featured image: the Great Pagoda rising above the trees at Kew Gardens, London. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, usually known simply as Kew Gardens 🌳, is one of those rare places where science 🔬, beauty 🌺, and history 🏛️ quietly coexist. Sitting beside a gentle bend in the Thames 🚣♂️ in southwest London, Kew is not […]
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Featured image: The bleak alpine landscape of Jungfrau, Mönch and Eiger deep in a May afternoon, with the frozen waters of Bachalpsee in the foreground. The absence of people and the muted tones give the image an almost monochrome quality, despite being a colour photograph. In mid-May 2007, I spent a few days in Interlaken, […]
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