By the time Tony co-founded Lonely Planet Publications in 1973, he already had the travel bug. And ever since, travel and discovery have been at the heart of his life and career.
I’ve recorded several podcasts, interviews, conversations recently.
At London Business School Maureen and I recorded Journeys, a conversation with Rajesh Chandy the Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Developing World at the Wheeler Institute. People seemed to enjoy it, someone suggested that we ‘looked like two teenagers our to start an exciting adventure,’ not business like at all.
With Tyrel Cameron Eskelson I talked on his Interlocutor podcast about my travel life, starting in Pakistan when I was a small child right up to travel in recent weeks and for the rest of 2025.
Made a little pilgrimage during my recent New England visit – to Lowell, Massachusetts, birthplace of On the Road author Jack Kerouac. He’s buried there as well. To make it a proper writers’ trip I went along with Rolf Potts (Vagabonding) and Jeff Greenwald (Size ...
Thursday night – in Melbourne, Australia – I helped launch Divided Cities by Jon Calame and Esther Charlesworth. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press the book looks at the stories of five divided cities – Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar and Nicosia. I’ve v...
In 1919 John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first flight across the Atlantic. And experienced the first case of jet lag. ◄ In November Maureen and I drove from Galway to Clifden on the west coast of Ireland. Just north of Ballconneely, 4km south of Clifden, we s...
Rent-a-cars amaze me. The concept that I can turn up in all sorts of weird places, someone will hand me the keys to a car and I can drive off continues to delight me. But if there’s one thing worse than airlines loading on extra charges – see my recent Ryanair blog – ...
With a few days to spare before speaking at Hostelling International USA’s 75th birthday bash in Boston I set off on a quick circuit of northern New England. Some photos from my travels through Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont: ◄ Marblehead start...
Slovenia is the fourth ‘new’ country I’ve been to in 2009, I started with Malawi when I bicycled a stage of the Tour d’Afrique. Then there were mid-year trips to Costa Rica and the Faroe Islands. Finally I walked across the border from Gorizia in Italy to Nova Gorica ...
From Trieste I took the train an hour north to Udine for the town’s Fuorirotta (‘off the beaten track’) festival. Udine is one of those very swish small Italian towns, a place that looks well off. It’s a reminder that if you divided off northern Italy from the rest of...
After my visit to western Ireland the next stop in my November travels was the Italian town of Trieste, on the Adriatic coast, right up in the north-east corner of Italy. Trieste enjoyed a visit from a notable Irishman, James Joyce lived here for a spell before WW I. ...
I finally got around to flying Ryanair. I’ve flown on assorted LCCs – Low Cost Carriers – but never had a reason to get on the European airline which generates all the bad publicity. Michael O’Leary, the airline’s outspoken boss, specialises in being controversial...
I’ve been on the road for the first couple of weeks of November. Starting with a visit to Ireland for an Irish Tourist Board (Fáilte Ireland) conference in Galway. Walking along Galway’s main pedestrian street I came across a strangely familiar statue of that noted I...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013