While stuffing my face with butterscotch pancakes, my phone was stolen from my coat pocket. Unbeknownst to me, London was experiencing an epidemic of iPhone thefts, and I was one of its many victims. What ensued was a long night of police reports, credit card cancellations, and frantically turning off the phone’s features from my laptop. I hadn’t slept in a day or two and, by this point, was running on Diet Pepsi and Sour Patch Kids.
LONDON — I had just checked into my hotel and decided to get something quick to eat before collapsing into bed. I went online and found My Old Dutch, a restaurant that calls itself the original London pancake house. “Sure, why not?” I thought. “Everyone loves pancakes for dinner.”
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While all this was happening, I thought about a conversation I had had the night before on my flight to London. The woman seated next to me asked me what I did for work. I told her I was celebrating my 10th year as the Globe’s travel writer. She said what countless people had said when I told them about my profession.
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“You have the best job in the world.”
Yes, except for stolen phones, hours and hours of uncomfortable flights, missed birthdays, dinners, and holidays, forgotten phone chargers, lousy airport food, bad hotel food, awkward conversations about international politics with taxi drivers, endless hours of lost sleep, and one lost suitcase.
But between you and me and the cat who hangs out by the canal in Rotterdam (his name is King), I do have the best job in the world. At least it’s the best I’ve ever had. Ten years ago, when I was asked to take on the role of travel writer, I had my doubts, and there are days I wonder if, perhaps, I’m clinically insane.
Still, I’ve also had moments when I’ve driven a speedboat by George Clooney’s villa on Lake Como (repeatedly) yelling his name, biked in the Swiss Alps, snorkeled in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, stood on a glacier in Patagonia, and even had a marriage proposal in Montreal. Please pull up a suitcase and sit back while I share an amuse-bouche of my best and worst travel memories. This is a G-rated smattering. If I took a deep dive, the story would be 10 times as long, not exactly family-friendly, and I’d promptly be fired. Shall we?
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The Ocean Towers Shops on the boardwalk in Wildwood, N.J. Christopher Muther/Globe Staff
Wildwood, NJ. August 2020
My summer sojourn to enjoy the honky-tonk splendors of the Jersey Shore was particularly memorable for two reasons. First, Wildwood is filled with retro-licious mid-century architecture (called Googie). It’s a magical throwback of neon signs and old-school mom-and-pop hotels, recalling an era when hot dogs were considered a nutritious part of the food pyramid and parents smeared coconut-scented tanning butter on their kids instead of hypoallergenic SPF 100 sunblock. Aside from its time machine charms, the Wildwood trip was my first out of New England since COVID-19 upended travel in March 2020. It was the first time in months I felt optimistic that travel might not be scary forever.
Sammy Adams with Rob Gronkowski on the Gronk Party Ship. Christopher Muther
The Gronk Party Cruise, Miami to the Bahamas. February 2016
A co-worker forwarded me an online advertisement for “Gronk’s Party Cruise” and challenged me to spend a long weekend infiltrating the debaucherous universe of former New England Patriot Rob Gronkowski. He threw down the gauntlet (turns out it was a beer funnel), and I accepted. I brought along a friend and former co-worker to document the Bro-tastic blast. Gronk’s handlers didn’t anticipate reporters would be on board. Naturally, they were scared of what we would write. We saw many people having fun until they were vomiting off the ship’s side, and then the fun stopped. There was also a stop at Gronk Island, where the Gronkmeister offered an amorous couple $10,000 “to bang in front of everyone”! Cue the theme song: “If you like piña coladas, and a slight burning sensation while urinating…”
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El Castillo Museum and Gardens in Medellin, Colombia. Christopher Muther/Globe Staff
Medellín, Colombia. March 2023
After a lackluster work trip to Bogota, I wasn’t expecting much when my husband and some friends planned a vacation to the Colombian cities of Medellín and Cartegena, but I was content to go along. If you write about travel for work, you find yourself jumping on any trip someone else plans. Unlike my Bogota experience, I found Medellín to be a vibrant, cosmopolitan city. After years of salty stories about drug cartels, kidnappings, and internal terrorism, I wasn’t thinking, “Medellín will be safe and fun!” But I was very wrong. Forget Pablo Escobar. Medellín is a colorful, inexpensive jewel in the Andes. I loved it so much that I turned my vacation into a travel story.
Dr. Alex Gonzalez watches the sunset on the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec, July 2014. Christopher Muther/Globe Staff
Montreal. July 2014
I always get the “What’s your favorite place?” question, and for a long time, I would automatically respond, “Lake Como, Italy.” It was a glamorous enough-sounding answer, and people who had been would always nod in agreement. The real answer is slightly more complicated. For beaches, my favorite places are Bora Bora and the Cook Islands. My favorite Caribbean Island is either St. Bart’s or Martinique, and I love Slovenia and Spain in Europe. I’m also a huge fan of Iceland and Portugal. I’m not lying when I say Lake Como is a favorite, but if I count up the number of stories I’ve written about a city, Montreal wins. Also, I adore Montreal. The food is top-notch, and there’s always a hipper-than-thou festival. But it’s also where my husband proposed marriage on July 16, 2014, at the end of an arduous but fun family cruise, making it my true favorite.
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Dancers from the Cuban National Ballet take a break during rehearsal in Havana, June 2015. Christopher Muther/Globe Staff
Havana, Cuba. June 2015
Unlike memorably posh experiences such as staying in a $2,000-a-night hotel in Vermont or testing Ritz Carlton’s new yacht, Havana was anything but glamorous. One hotel I stayed in had dark, ugly mold spots blossoming on the ceiling. Another had dust bunnies the size of Fiats collecting in a corner. The city was crumbling, save for a street painted in lovely pastels and lined with cars from the 1950s. I went because the Obama administration recently lifted travel restrictions after years of the island being closed to most American tourists. When I traveled outside Havana, I experienced a world where horse-drawn carts were still used, and stores had minimal stock. But I was taken by the kindness and warmth of the people who peppered me with questions about Americans and their perceptions of Cuba. Some incredible meals and stunning natural scenery also won me over.
Passengers woke up early to snap pictures of Glacier National Park aboard Amtrak’s Empire Builder in October 2022. Some of them woke up too early. Christopher Muther/Globe Staff
The Empire Builder, Seattle to Minneapolis, October 2022
I love the romance of rail travel and was eager to try an overnight route in the US that was more pleasant than Amtrak’s Silver Meteor, the train that runs along the East Coast. I took the Silver Meteor once and suspected that hobos riding the rails are treated better than passengers on the Meteor. At least their straw beds would be more comfortable and sanitary. I had a better time on the Empire Builder, Amtrak’s overnight train that runs through some of the most scenic parts of the country — namely Glacier National Park. While an improvement over the Silver Meteor, overall, Amtrak could do much more with its product. Based on reader response, I think there is strong demand for an alternative to planes.
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Cats at the Lanai Cat Sanctuary in Hawaii gather for treats in April 2019. Christopher Muther/Globe Staff
Lanai Cat Sanctuary, Lanai City, Hawaii. April 2019
Aside from lie-flat business class seats and peppermint stick ice cream, my biggest weakness is cats. So imagine my reaction when arriving at a tropical island where more than 600 felines frolicked in the Hawaiian sunshine in an incredibly maintained 3-acre sanctuary. The Lanai Cat Sanctuary started in a barn at the nearby Four Seasons Lanai as a way to maintain the island’s cat population and also protect the rare birds that the strays had a taste for. Now, it’s not only a place where cats are well cared for. It’s a heavenly escape for those who occasionally prefer the company of cats over people.
The sun sets behind wicker umbrellas in Bodrum, Turkey.
Izmir to Anatalya, Turkey, September 2015
I had been writing travel for about a year when I became ambitious. I planned a two-week road trip along the West Coast of Turkey, otherwise known as the Turkish Riveria. But from when I planned the trip to when I departed, things had begun to go south for the country. There were bombings, the Syrian refugee crisis, and political protests. I decided to go anyway, and I’m glad I did. Travel isn’t always perfect, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either an influencer whose job it is to put a filter on the world so they get free trips, or a television host with a production staff to smooth out wrinkles. For the rest of us, the world isn’t a perfect, Insta-filtered place, which makes it more interesting.
A Level Airlines aircraft. Travel writer Christopher Muther said he found that the airline didn’t meet his expectations. Level Airlines
The worst of the bunch
Despite my crusty exterior and the ice water coursing through my veins, I try to stay positive about experiences and the places I go. But sometimesyou come up against a nightmare that can push even the kindest travel writer too far.
I had my worst flight ever in May when I took bargain carrier Level Airlines from Boston to Barcelona. There was negative legroom, and while they did serve water, they nickeled and dimed everything else. The service was nonexistent, and I saw other passengers being spoken to rudely by flight staff. I wasn’t expecting much, and I was still disappointed. You get what you pay for, folks.
I’d never been a fan of bed and breakfasts, and my limited patience for them was pushed over the edge during a trip to Bath, Maine, in 2015. The B&B hell I checked into has since folded, but it was so bad it inspired a lengthy rant two years later.
Airbnbs can be just as challenging, such as the one I stayed at in Upstate New York on a sweltering Memorial Day weekend. Stinkbugs invaded it, but the windows had to remain open because the air conditioning wasn’t functioning. Our options were to die of heat stroke or be swarmed by stink bugs. We couldn’t reach the owner of the property. It took several years until I dared to step into an Airbnb after that.
Christopher Muther can be reached at christopher.muther@globe.com. Follow him @Chris_Muther and Instagram @chris_muther.
Severe storms across the US could snarl holiday travel during one of the busiest weekends of the year
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