Weekly Travel Reads: Europe’s Arctic edge

[The Travel Wire #98] I visited every Colombo restaurant in a 25-year-old guidebook, the charm of unremarkable places, pointless competition with other travelers, and more travel reads.

Travel reads

• The lonely road to Europe’s Arctic edge (archive) [BBC Travel]
“Most visitors come to Norway for its dramatic western fjords. But the country’s most extraordinary drive heads in the opposite direction – into a treeless Arctic wilderness where Europe finally runs out.”

• I visited every Colombo restaurant in a 25-year-old guidebook; these ones have stood the test of time [Adventure]

• The charm of unremarkable places [Tokyo Calling]
“A weekend at Kawafuru Onsen.”

• Chickens, Chairman Mao and spiced tea with the neighbours: Welcome to ‘the real China’ [The Sydney Morning Herald]

• What China taught me about the future, the past, and my own blind spots [The Making of a Journey with Ilona Vinogradova]

• The Big Mango [Backstories]
“It’s the smell that you notice first. Then the heat, both immediately after stepping off the plane.

Almost 30 years ago, those two sentences kicked off the first of my travel journals, and they were talking about Bangkok.”

• Flavors of the world’s highest desert [The Shooting Star Insider]
“An ode to the Indigenous communities that have thrived in Chile’s Atacama Desert for centuries.”

• Suddenly losing my husband catapulted me into a life of solo travel—and continuing to see the world has saved me [Travel + Leisure]

• San Lorenzo: Rome’s rebel neighbourhood shaped by resistance, art and students [The Guardian]

• Avoid pointless competition with other travelers [The Vagabond’s Way]
“Getting caught up in silly travel comparisons is a way of never fully leaving home.”

• The mystery of one man’s fortress in Longgang [SCMP]
“In a Shenzhen market town, a forbidding concrete tower is drawing the fascination of young urbanists. Welcome to the ‘Weird Building’.”