Travel

All we wanted after a magnificent snorkeling session off the coast of Western Australia was for the stupid motor home to start, to stop grinding away with that almost-but-not-today sound that made our hearts race faster than the engine. Bertie, as we called the 21-foot recreational vehicle we had rented, sounded like she wanted to work. She just lacked the energy.

My wife, Diana, turned the key once, twice, three more times, yielding only the same sneezy rhythm. I could see panic in her usually cheerful eyes as she pulled her hands away from the troubled ignition. We were in a remote spot with more marsupials than people.

“OK, breathe,” she said, exhaling slowly.

I stayed silent, as did our two children, Baz, 14, and Amelia, 12. Sitting in the van with the teal Indian Ocean to our left and a campground to our right, we were shocked at our misfortune. Five years ago, Amelia bounded home from school begging with third-grade enthusiasm to someday see what she’d apparently just learned about in class — the Ningaloo Coast, home to one of the longest near-shore reefs in the world, where hundreds of enormous, peaceful whale sharks gather every year.

We were 150 miles from her dream. I had already paid a fortune for us all to swim with the gentle giants early the next morning. It was our third attempt. The first, for Amelia’s 10th birthday in July 2020, fell to Covid lockdowns. So did the second — just a day before departure, no less, leading to wails and desperate pleas for refunds.

Even this time, we feared and attracted trouble. A Category 5 cyclone hit Western Australia the week we arrived. It was about 800 miles north of us, but on our first night, wind gusts tossed our R.V. from side to side like the plaything of a Marvel villain.

Amelia, miraculously, took it all in stride. “I don’t think Western Australia likes us very much,” she joked as Diana called the rental agency to ask for a tow truck, and as I searched the web for a taxi service willing to travel long distances on remote roads for God knows how much.

“We’ll get there, Amelia,” I said. “I just don’t know how.”

Bumps in the (long) road

Truth be told, stuck in the rusty plains of a vast continent, we were all feeling torn between problem-solving and doom. The pandemic was still whispering in our minds: Do not trust in the gods of serendipity and adventure; every little thing will not work out.

Pre-Covid, Diana and I had been true believers. We’d dragged our kids at a moment’s notice to new places all over the countries where I’d worked as a New York Times correspondent, without rigid itineraries. During Covid, living in Australia, where state and national borders were closed for more than a year, that was impossible. And when borders reopened, we were racked with doubt. We feared snags at airports, Covid, quarantine, labor shortages that slashed services. Travel had changed. So had we.

More than anything, we wanted all that fear to be gone. We wanted to move around the world like ourselves again, to exorcise the Covid demons — and what better way to do it than by reviving a trip to Western Australia that the coronavirus had ruined?

But, sheesh, were we out of practice. After picking up Bertie in Perth, Diana and I argued about how long to drive on Day 1 — she was nervous about hitting kangaroos after dark; I was nervous about missing out on sledding down giant dunes of salt. And when we arrived at our campground a few minutes past dusk (OK, an hour; the salt dunes took a while) we learned that I had forgotten to pack enough flashlights. We gave up on finding the showers. With the most minimal setup accomplished, I persuaded Diana to do what we often did during travel setbacks in our 20s: Sit down with a drink.

As we sipped gin and tonics in camping chairs, the kids surprised us by getting to work with dinner. Amelia made a salad; Baz cooked some steaks. It was the first time they had ever cooked an entire meal for us. Maybe we could get used to this R. V.ing thing after all.

On the second night, the comedy of errors continued — we didn’t have the right hose connector for the water hookup so we had to borrow one from a couple next to us. They were from Perth, and regular road trippers. Asking about our plans, they raved about the Kalbarri Skywalk. We had a few stops planned on our way north, but not that one.

Diana and I examined our itinerary. It would add an hour or two of driving, but with the cyclone still around farther up the coast, why not slow down, pivot, enjoy?

On the way into Kalbarri, we doubled down and decided to follow signs for a pink lake. There are a bunch of them around Western Australia, produced by salty aquifers and algae that produce beta carotene (also found in carrots). Like so much on our journey, the pink lake was otherworldly, awe-inspiring and Instagram-friendly.

Then we pulled into the Skywalk parking lot and found ourselves amazed by the giant platform stretching out over a canyon of planetary proportions in deep reds, oranges and browns. Suspended over it all, we were able to take in the expanse with only a few other people, and then grab a decent flat white at the national park’s cafe.

Diana and I were starting to feel pretty good about our progress. A few days in, we were finding our rhythm: Drive for up to six hours a day, make at least one sightseeing stop, and find a campground by sunset with help from a crowdsourced app called WikiCamps.

The long stretches of road bothered us less than we had anticipated. The kids rolled around in the back with unlimited screen time — a reprieve to keep the peace — while Diana and I talked, listened to podcasts and admired the landscape, which became progressively drier, redder and emptier, but that still offered the occasional surprise.

American have always boasted about rugged individualism; Australians emphasize the communal effort of “mateship.” We were reminded of that difference on our road trip whenever we had a question at a campground or on the road — and especially when Bertie decided not to start.

Stuck in Coral Bay (population: 245), we didn’t just call tow trucks or try to pay our way out of the problem with a taxi. We also asked for local help.

Everyone we asked gave us one name: Johnny. About 45 minutes later, a guy with a bald head, a truck and a trailer full of tools showed up. First Johnny tried to give us a jump-start. When that failed, he asked to see the key to the motor home.

“Has it gotten wet?” he asked.

The key fob’s button to open the doors hadn’t worked for the whole trip. Rather than leave it on the beach, Diana had suggested we take it with us when we snorkeled.

“That’s the problem,” Johnny said. Today’s key fobs remotely connect to the computer in the vehicle, even when they can’t open the doors. Soak the key, forget starting the engine.

Johnny sent me to the store for a new battery as he pulled out the corroded one inside and laid out all the parts in the sun.

“I’ve seen this work maybe one out of 20 times,” he said. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

When he returned, a sherbet-colored sunset was cooling the evening. Our options had dwindled to luck with bad odds. We all held our breath as Diana turned the key.

Bertie roared to life. After confirming she could hold her diesel gurgle long enough for a drive, I danced in the parking lot. The kids screamed. Diana — leaving the engine running — gave Johnny a huge hug through tears. He just smiled and waved away our questions about the cost, saying he would take the package of extra batteries and nothing more.

Finally, the whale sharks

The next morning, we were up at sunrise and in the water before noon. The whale sharks were huge, the largest creatures we had ever seen. Spotted, majestic and navy blue, they are identifiable as sharks because of their vertical tails that look the same as a great white’s. But as we swam as fast as we could to stay beside them — one, two and three times in separate dives — I kept thinking they looked like prehistoric catfish.

The second one we saw was about 30 feet long, according to our guides with Ningaloo Discovery. It was the same company I’d booked with three years earlier. They’d given me a rain check, a refund, then a third wonderful try.

We had an all-female crew of sea lovers who told us Ningaloo is the only place where you can swim with whale sharks, observing them without interference — unlike in the Philippines and Mexico, where tours attract them with food. A few hundred show up in Western Australia every year. Many are returnees with nicknames like Fingers (for a split fin).

“They all have personalities and different behaviors,” said Holly Matheson, our boat’s underwater photographer. “The best ones are ‘bubble eaters’ — they see our bubbles and swim toward us.”

Between whale shark swims, we saw dolphins speeding along with us at the nose of the boat. We snorkeled near a pristine section of the Ningaloo Reef. We ate tasty snacks and sat in the sun at the front of our catamaran, where Baz and Amelia laughed as water drenched their faces. We even met an American who had been close to a mutual friend in Senegal.

The day was a mix of random, meditative and wonderful. It was travel as the serendipity gods intended and as we’d remembered.

The next morning we watched the sunrise from a lighthouse outside the town of Exmouth. The natural beauty of white dunes and red earth astounded us all. We had breakfast at a beach where we were alone and went for another swim.

On our return trip to Perth, we all seemed to be more relaxed. Vast distances traveled in tight quarters had cleared our minds of anxious clutter.

We played cards as a family at night while by day, Diana and I worked out the driving and revived our spontaneity so much that we were quick to book a quad bike tour of a national park near Shark Bay — a highlight as we sped down dirt tracks at sunset with the kids.

On our last night, we pulled into Cervantes, a town just a few hours north of Perth, with a mix of relief and ambivalence. After 2,000 miles and more than a week of travel, we were one night away from an actual bed, not on wheels.

So after a pub dinner and another glorious sunset, we did what made no sense at all — we crawled up into the narrow bed at the back of the R.V., squeezing in side by side like sardines, to watch “Ted Lasso” by connecting a laptop to Bertie’s tiny television.

It was the episode from the most recent season where the team is in Amsterdam trying to figure out how to reconnect and revive their sense of purpose. There may have been some illicit substances involved — Diana and I did not do a great job explaining hallucinogens — but by the end, Team Lasso is back on the bus, a little lighter but still trying to make sense of a confusing world tilting between despair and joy.

Suddenly, Rebecca, the team’s owner, breaks out into song — a Bob Marley song that all four of us recognized and also started to sing. Squeezed so close together that we could feel every breath and note in back end of a rented R.V., we shouted to ourselves, to a town named after Don Quixote’s creator and to everyone everywhere: “Every little thing gonna be all right.”

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At my boutique hotel high in the Swiss Alps, I returned from dinner, jet lagged and a tad tipsy, to discover that a television set inside a bathroom mirror had been turned on during turndown service. I pressed all of the buttons on the wall panel and then tried the switches on a control box next to the bed. Nothing.

Since I could not locate anything resembling a telephone in the room (remember, I was tipsy), I hoofed it to the lobby and returned with a receptionist to power down my “smart mirror.” Twenty minutes later, already in my pajamas, I encountered a new challenge: No switch I turned, no knob I twisted would kill the bathroom lights. I closed the door, affixed a face mask over my eyes and made do.

These days, it’s all about making do when I’m greeted by the glut of smart technology in hotel rooms. Voice-activated lights. Chatbot concierges. QR codes on television sets. Mobile browser or app check-ins. Texting the valet for my car. Don’t even get me started with motorized drapes — attempting to view the ocean in Miami was as difficult as tackling Faulkner. It’s all infuriating. And overwhelming.

A recent study from the industry magazine Hospitality Technology and the University of Nevada’s William F. Harrah College of Hospitality in Las Vegas, surveyed 100 hotel operators and noted that adoption across the industry of self-service features like check-in kiosks and mobile room keys is booming.

Proponents say the guest benefits behind these investments are numerous, from personalizing the hotel experience and anticipating guest needs to reducing their “friction” points and freeing up staff.

Neha Jaitpal, the global general manager for Honeywell Technologies’ Building Technologies sector, oversees “intuitive” solutions for more than 2 million hotel rooms worldwide, working for companies like Accor and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. “Imagine arriving at your hotel room after a long day of travel, and it’s already adjusted to your preferred settings — from the temperature, lighting and even the position of the drapes,” she said. “Through automation, guest rooms can be personalized without the need for human interaction.”

“Smart hotel rooms are about empowerment,” said Robert Firpo-Cappiello, Hospitality Technology’s editor in chief. “Contactless interactions were a survival pivot for hotels during the pandemic. People are used to them now. There is no going back.”

Yes, some (young) travelers I’ve talked to love it.

“At the Wynn Hotel, I enjoyed having Alexa close the blinds, turn off the lights and play music,” said Eddie Burns, 25, a drummer and touring musician. “I arrived super late and it was great to navigate everything from bed.”

Power in the palm of your hand?

One “guest technology provider” is pushing guests to rely more heavily on their ubiquitous cellphones.

Sonifi Solutions, Inc., which works with global brands such as Hyatt and Marriott, generates unique QR codes for guests on their in-room television — to activate, you scan with your phone camera, as you would a web-based restaurant menu, which takes you to an app or website. Then with their phones, guests control their TVs and lighting, connect with the concierge (by chat), order in-room dining or make a spa appointment. The “personalization” piece of the platform extends to the television, which based on guest behavior and information gleaned from a loyalty program, can be set to a yoga class for a fitness enthusiast or ESPN for a football fan.

“By streamlining mobile capabilities and letting phones be the place of fulfillment, it saves guests time,” said Kara Heermans, a Sonifi senior vice president.

Juliana Colangelo, 33, a vice president at the wine and spirits marketing firm Colangelo & Partners, is a fan. (Note her age.)

“Smart TV QR codes get me what I need on my phone, from hotel gym classes to valet parking,” she said, adding that she wishes that rooms had QR codes to leave staff tips. “I never carry cash anymore.”

A system that wastes ‘mental energy’

But please, can we go back? These “guest enhancements,” touted as in-demand by hoteliers and the tech companies that make them, are not in demand by me. They have been, in fact, obstacles — obstacles between me and sleep, me and the view that I had paid for, and me and firm pillows (in Miami, that request was not an option on the tablet, and no human answered the phone in housekeeping). What was once straightforward is now idiotically complicated.

“I used to walk into a hotel room and relax. Now it is a job to figure out how to use the lights and switch off the television, which, of course, is set to the hotel’s promotional station,” said Jill Weinberg, 67, a regional director with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and like me, a frustrated hotel guest. “Here is an entirely new system to waste mental energy upon every single time I travel.”

Another quibble with “personalized” hotel rooms? They are impersonal. “Frictionless” functionality does not engender character or soul; people do. I like being welcomed by the front desk, to discuss restaurant ideas with the concierge and chitchat with the other staff, who more often than not have interesting local tips. I could care less if a room “knows” that I like Pilates and the thermostat set to a nippy 69 degrees. And I’m not downloading an app just to request towels. Can’t I just ask housekeeping?

Other travelers want to, too.

Stephanie Fisher, an adviser with the luxury travel agency Local Foreigner, said many of her clients “request hotels with personalized service that prioritize guest relationships.”

“The best memories come from connecting with people, not devices,” she added.

Thankfully for me and many other guests, not all hotels are embracing technology as the magic bullet of the future. Some, like the Graduate Hotels, a chain of boutique hotels in college towns like Ann Arbor, Mich., and Nashville, are — aside from Wi-Fi and some smart TVs — intentionally analog.

“We are about nostalgia, the notion of transporting guests to a simpler time, so we never bought into remote anything,” said Ben Weprin, founder of the Graduate Hotels. “We want guests to immerse themselves in the college community and then come back to their rooms to decompress. Our motto is: Out of the metaverse and into the universe.”

In Europe, the only technology offered in the rooms of the Rocco Forte Hotels is high-speed internet. That’s not to say technology is pooh-poohed: The doormen use an earpiece to communicate a guest’s name to reception so they receive a personal greeting as they check in, and back-end systems track preferences so the wait staff might “remember” a guest’s morning specialty coffee order. Cutting-edge, it is not. That is the point.

And that’s fine by me. While the idea of human-centric lighting to match my circadian rhythm is a noble one, please, just give me a light switch. Perhaps a good, old-fashioned landline with a human at the other end, too. I’ll be more than fine. I’ll be a happier, more relaxed guest.

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The Pile and Ploce Gates, the two entrances into Dubrovnik’s Old Town, once had drawbridges that lifted during the overnight hours, forcing visitors wanting to enter to wait outside its stone walls until morning. The bridges no longer lift, yet the bottlenecks of morning visitors remain.

This compact, seaside city in Croatia has drawn millions of travelers from around the globe for years. Its popularity grew when HBO’s “Game of Thrones” used it as a primary location and visitors soon overwhelmed the city, particularly in the summer. Officials have introduced measures to manage the crowds without limiting the number of visitors, but according to the Croatian National Tourist Board, this year is on pace to become the city’s busiest ever.

Yet a trip to “Pearl of the Adriatic” need not require jostling with other tourists, bumping about like a stream of rambunctious salmon. Planning takes artful timing, minor sacrifices and a bit of luck. Here are six ways to start.

Game the cruise ship schedule

Dubrovnik is a mainstay on the itineraries of cruise ships navigating the Mediterranean, and 377,000 passengers disembarked last year, according to the city’s Port Authority. This year that number could jump to 500,000, as up to five ships are expected to arrive daily during the high season.

Every cruise ship’s arrival sends an avalanche of humanity barreling toward Old Town, mostly between 7 and 9 a.m. In this surge, a few hundred to several thousand people congregate at the two gates, waiting in lines of up to two hours to enter the Old Town, and then typically disperse to view the city’s biggest draws — its ramparts, the main street, or Stradun, or scenery related to “Game of Thrones.”

To avoid joining this ebb and flow of cruise ship passengers, monitor the port’s schedule online. The Port Authority’s schedule and sites like Cruise Dig offer cruise ships’ arrival times as well as the potential number of travelers disembarking. The number of passengers arriving is more important than the number of ships.

A two-hour buffer should be enough to avoid the crowd at the gates, the Jesuit Stairs (best known from the “Walk of Shame” scene in “Game of Thrones”) or the city’s other major attractions.

The city also offers Dubrovnik Visitors, an online resource that estimates how crowded the Old Town is at any moment, and also uses machine learning to forecast visitor numbers during future dates.

Ditch the golden-hour photo shoot

The city’s streets empty somewhat in the late afternoon. Day-trippers shuffle out while other visitors rush to the city walls for selfies or even the occasional marriage proposal in front of the setting sun. The golden hour is a better time to take in the Old Town, with a stop by Onofrio’s Fountains before getting lost in the narrow passageways and streets.

If you do need a photo you can hashtag, check the passages and stairways below the walls for unique shots; there will be much less jostling for space.

But don’t skip the city’s fortifications entirely. Undulating terra-cotta roofs rippling off into the distant, glistening Adriatic Sea remain a vista unique to Dubrovnik. It is best experienced as soon as the walls open at 8 a.m., before the crowds and before the sun rises high. A visit is 35 euros ($38), but the Dubrovnik Pass, which costs the same, offers access to the city walls as well as discounts to other attractions and free public transport.

Take a breather in a monastery

One can find respite from the congestion by ducking into one of the city’s two monasteries and their courtyards. Each offers stone walkways lined by arches, with lush greenery at the center and history everywhere. They are open daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The 14th-century Franciscan Monastery, just past the Pile Gate, features elegant pillared columns encircling a courtyard with a small fountain and orange and palm trees (entrance: €6). Next door is the oldest operating pharmacy in Europe, with formulas, tools and tincture bottles on display.

The Dominican Monastery, closer to the Ploce Gate, offers a grander version of the same charms, housed within a larger complex blended into the city’s fortifications (€5).

At both monasteries, the atmosphere encourages hushed tones and meditative silence, perhaps good spots to sip water while contemplating Dubrovnik’s knack for simultaneously preserving and commodifying its historic beauty.

Find life outside the walls

Veteran travelers often steal away to the Gruz and Lapad neighborhoods to find better cuisine, easier access to nature and fewer crowds. These neighborhoods are the de facto urban heart of Dubrovnik, where many of the approximately 40,000 locals actually live, and can be reached from the Old Town by a 30-minute walk or a 10-minute bus or cab ride.

The waterfront in Gruz offers relaxing eateries as well as a nightclub, Klub Dubina, and local craft brewery, the Dubrovnik Beer Company. For traditional seafood dishes under a vaulted ceiling, have anything grilled at Glorijet. One of the city’s more inventive vegetarian restaurants, Urban & Veggie, offers homemade gnocchi with cashew Parmesan and refreshing lemon tarts.

Across from Gruz, Lapad’s lush greenery includes the Velika and Mala Petka Forest Park. A promenade along the sea wall reveals several improvised swimming areas and a beach.

The neighborhood eateries here offer variety, experimentation and unique experiences. Ponat Beach Bar has a slick combination of seaside bites and drinks that can stretch your night beyond midnight. Or have a coffee or a nightcap in Cave Bar More — which claustrophobic visitors should probably skip.

A green oasis, just offshore

What’s the antithesis of Dubrovnik’s imposing city walls and terra-cotta roofs? An island covered in pine, cypress and olive trees, just offshore.

Lokrum Island, a 10-minute ferry ride away, is one of the few spots even locals visit to beat the summer crowds. The island has a visitor center, bars and restaurants, but also botanical gardens and peacocks roaming the remnants of an abandoned medieval monastery.

The more adventurous can head to FKK Rocks, at the island’s southeast corner, to partake in Croatia’s long history of nudist beaches (bring a thick towel — the rocks can be uncomfortable on bare skin).

In the visitor center, one can find a “comfortable” seat on the original Iron Throne from “Game of Thrones,” given by HBO to the city of Dubrovnik.

Ferries leave the Old Town port about every 30 minutes (€7). Entry to the island, €27.

Head farther to sea

Only 50 of Croatia’s 1,244 islands have permanent residents, leaving most of the truly unspoiled nature offshore. The Elaphiti Islands, six miles northwest of the Old Town, gives visitors and city residents alike a close-up view of nature. The eight islands and five islets include cozy coves and secluded beaches that trump most of the mainland’s swimming options. (In Croatia, the coastline is public access.)

Three of the islands — Sipan, Lopud and Kolocep — have modest villages with few residents. After the bustle of Dubrovnik, time here feels much slower.

Renting a vessel offers the best chance to create a one-day island-hopping itinerary, and most have skippers available for an additional charge. Prices vary, a group of four can expect to pay about €70 per person for a smaller skipper-less motorboat, with costs increasing along with the size of the vessel. Some companies, like Dubrovnik Boats, offer either custom or prepackaged tours, and craft of various sizes.

Kayaks are also available for rent, with most tour outfits located at Sulic Beach, by the Pile Gate. Again, prices vary, depending on whether you’re joining a group tour or going solo, but expect to spend around €40 for about four hours out on the water.

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Fatimah Al Zimam likes to walk around in black leggings and casual tops, and she wears her curly hair loose and uncovered. She owns a silver GMC pickup truck, which she loves to take on solo drives across the Saudi desert. And she is passionate about her work: As a tour guide, she has introduced her country to visitors from the United States, France, Britain, Italy, China and beyond.

Ms. Al Zimam, 34, is a Saudi woman and she works for herself. She represents a profound transformation that’s underway in her home country, which has long been known as a deeply conservative place. Saudi Arabia’s opening to nonreligious tourists in 2019 is a major part of the ongoing shift, as are several important gains that women have been granted over the past half decade, though some restrictions remain.

But even with the recent changes, the country has continued to come under fire for its record on human rights, which may raise concerns among potential visitors. One travel index has ranked Saudi Arabia second-to-last in the world in terms of safety for L.G.B.T.Q. travelers.

But Saudi Arabia is betting big that tourists will come: The government is investing $1 trillion in the industry over 10 years, with the aim of attracting 100 million visitors annually by 2030. It’s all part of an effort to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels.

“If there is no oil, we don’t have anything. So now there are a lot of projects to promote agriculture, solar energy production — and tourism, too,” Ms. Al Zimam said.

I first met Ms. Al Zimam on a recent solo trip to Saudi Arabia, when I hired her as my tour guide in Riyadh, the capital, and spent a day riding shotgun in her pickup truck. A few weeks later, I reached her on a video call at her apartment in Jeddah, on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast. She was eager to tell me about her favorite places to take first-time visitors, and how Saudi men react when they see her without a long robe, or abaya.

Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What kind of reactions have you seen among Saudis since the country started issuing standard tourist visas?

The vast majority of people in Saudi Arabia are very generous with tourists. I’ve seen this even in remote villages, where people tend to be very religious — they’re really helping tourists, especially hitchhikers and cyclists who sometimes just appear out of nowhere.

And look at a place like Al Ula, in the northwest, where you see so many tourists now. At first, some local people might have been skeptical about the crowds, the noise, the visitors. But then they started to see the jobs, the money, the extra work that they could find through tourism — they became aware of the opportunities. Now, they are very happy with tourism.

The government has been spending a lot of money to turn the ancient city of Al Ula into a tourist destination. Is that a place that you would recommend to visitors?

Al Ula is the best destination in the world for me. The Royal Commission has done a great job of developing the sites around there, and they’re still doing excavations, finding new things. Visitors love the ancient tombs in Mada’in Saleh, which is nearby. There’s so much else. Al Ula is full of rock inscriptions. Wherever you walk, you can find them.

And I love to bring people to Hail, also in the north. Hail is a historic area — Lawrence of Arabia spent a lot of time there — and the landscape is stunning. The sand dunes, the red mountains, and just the beautiful shapes of the rocks and rock inscriptions. You can be driving and driving, then suddenly you come across a small oasis, a cluster of palms between the mountains.

Are there many other women tour guides in Saudi Arabia?

There are many, many female tour guides, and even more in training. In the class that I took to become a licensed guide, there were twice as many women as men, and I think that’s pretty common.

A lot of potential female visitors might have questions about how to dress in Saudi Arabia. I know you don’t wear a head scarf or an abaya. Did you stop doing that as soon as the rule changed a few years ago?

It was gradual for me. At first, I would still wear an abaya and hijab in the city, but not if I was out in the desert or in the mountains. But then I moved to Riyadh for work and I found myself more comfortable and happier without an abaya, as long as I was still dressed modestly. Now, I don’t wear an abaya or hijab. The only exceptions are if I’m going somewhere official — the courthouse or a police station — or if I’m going to a mosque. If I’m going to pray, I need a scarf.

Some people might stare because it’s still kind of a new thing to see, but they respect my choice. I once had an Uber driver in Al Jouf who told me: “Look at me, with my beard and my mustache. I’m a man, but I married the woman my mother chose for me. But look at you, without an abaya: You’re a woman, and you made your choice. You’re braver than me.”

What do you advise women visitors in terms of how to dress?

Some Saudis will recommend that women visitors wear a scarf. But why? It’s OK not to. In rural areas, they might stare at you, but I find that, even there, most people are welcoming. And the people who aren’t welcoming won’t say anything because there is no longer a rule about it. I always feel safe, even though I travel alone and without an abaya. Come and I’ll take you to the Red Sea, and you’ll see — there, you can wear a bikini. The only exception is if you visit a mosque. There, it’s mandatory to cover your legs, and for women to wear long sleeves and a scarf.

What do you like to do when you’re not guiding tours?

I love traveling around Saudi Arabia, and I did it even before I started working as a tour guide. I’ve also been a rock climber since 2019, and I love going to Tanomah, which is where I first learned to climb.

I know it wasn’t that long ago that Saudi women were granted the right to drive. What do people think when they see you behind the wheel of your truck?

I must admit that I do love the reactions of people seeing me driving. Sometimes in rural places, people follow me, just because they’re curious. “Is this really a woman? Is it not just a man with curly hair?” But then they see I’m a woman and they call me, “My daughter! My daughter!” And they ask if I’m a tourist.

Have you ever traveled outside your home country?

I’ve traveled around the Gulf and to Jordan, but my first time outside the Middle East was last year, when I went to the U.K. and then to Switzerland with the Ministry of Tourism. On that trip, we spent one week at a tourism school in Montreux. The ministry sent thousands of people to the best tourism schools in Europe. I was in the last group.

What’s your next gig?

Summer is the low season for tourists here. So I’m working on my book, which is both a memoir and a travel guide to Saudi Arabia. I’m planning to publish travel secrets about places around the country. I have it all in my head, and now I will write it down.

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Many of the 63 national parks across the United States have seen an explosion of visitor numbers both during and after the pandemic, which often has led to booked campsites, clogged trails and timed entry requirements in an attempt to limit crowds.

The big-name national parks however are just one category of public lands under the purview of the National Park Service. And the designation does not necessarily imply a superiority of scenery and activities — many of the lesser-known national historic sites, monuments, recreation areas and seashores also provide excellent spots to explore the varied natural beauty and attractions of the United States, but without the big ticket crowds.

“Regardless of formal designation, each of the 424 sites in the National Park System offer visitors a variety of opportunities for inspiration, relaxation, recreation and education,” said Kathy Kupper, a public affairs specialist with the N.P.S.

Here are five suggestions for less crowded alternatives to national parks in this busy summer season.

It’s a wild, rocky coastline surrounded by lush woodland and striking cliffs — but on Lake Superior, not the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. The 42-mile shoreline of Pictured Rocks is a stunning destination for those looking for hiking, camping and waterfront recreation, and in 2022, this national lakeshore received about a quarter as many visitors as Acadia National Park. The namesake Pictured Rocks, sandstone cliffs covered in vibrant swaths of color from mineral deposits, rise up to 200 feet from the water and can be explored via boat tour, kayak or hiking trail.

If you’re looking for the wooded mountain beauty of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee, consider …

The chance to hike through and camp in the densely forested mountains of Appalachia are major draws of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which was the most visited national park in 2022, drawing close to 13 million recreational visitors. Find a similarly stunning environment in the 24,000 acres of Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, which received fewer than 750,000 visitors last year. The Gap, a natural pathway through the Appalachians, was a trading route for Native Americans and, later, a route for pioneers heading West. In addition to 85 miles of trails rich with lookouts, waterfalls and wildlife, tour the historic Hensley Settlement or Gap Cave, home to striking stalagmites and bats.

If you’re looking for a river trip through the geologic marvel of Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, consider …

Colorado and Utah

Dinosaur National Monument

Rafting through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River is a bucket list activity for many. As such, it’s a trip that can require extensive advance planning; last year, the park saw more than 4.7 million visitors. Comparably epic and decidedly more accessible, rafting the Green and Yampa Rivers through Dinosaur National Monument offers a similar experience of racing rapids, towering canyon walls and remote mountain and desert wilderness (and received just 350,000 visitors in 2022). And, as its name implies, the National Monument is a destination for ancient dinosaur fossils and petroglyphs.

If you’re looking for the otherworldly hoodoos of Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, consider …

Hoodoos, the name for spindly, towering spires of rock, are the major draw of Bryce Canyon National Park, which boasts the largest number of these rock formations on the planet — and over two million visitors a year. The hoodoos at Chiricahua National Monument in the Chiricahua Mountains in Southeastern Arizona lack the distinctive orange hue of Bryce Canyon, but are still numerous, striking and comparably crowd-free; the park received just over 600,000 visitors in 2022.

If you’re looking for the wildlife-spotting opportunities of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, consider …

California

Point Reyes National Seashore

The Pacific Coast location and wide-open grasslands of Point Reyes in the West Marin region may not seem like an obvious alternative for the towering peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park. But if your passion is wildlife spotting — a major draw for some of the Rockies’ 4 million visitors in 2022 — Point Reyes is a fitting choice. The seashore received half as many visitors as the National Park last year and is home to a Tule Elk Preserve, along with elephant seals, extensive bird species and, in certain seasons, migratory gray whales.

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This spring, the chef Molly Levine began serving seasonal cuisine from a refurbished 1971 Airstream trailer parked on a former dairy farm in the Hudson Valley. Westerly Canteen’s trailer holds a compact kitchen with cream-painted walls and blond wood counters. “I had this wild idea, like, ‘What if we took the food truck concept and put it in a space that is still mobile but feels beautiful and welcoming?’” Levine said as she stirred a pot of golden-hued stock, fragrant with spring onion and green garlic. Levine, who previously worked at the Berkeley, Calif., restaurant Chez Panisse, founded Westerly with her partner, Alex Kaindl, a farmer who tends half an acre in Sharon, Conn. Nearly all of their ingredients are sourced from farms nearby. (Starting this month, Kaindl’s crops will also be incorporated.) Developing the weekly menu is a puzzle that requires maximizing limited space and resources. “A lot of our decisions are very creative and passion driven but also very practical,” Kaindl said as Levine ladled the stock over a plate of nettle-stuffed ravioli. “We slice up the spring onions that go into the dish, and the tops are made into the broth,” Levine said. “We’re using every piece of the onion.” The founders hope to engage the surrounding community while also drawing diners from afar. They’ve partnered with Tenmile Distillery, which offers cocktails made with local ingredients to go alongside Westerly’s menu (their take on a Negroni includes Faccia Brutto bitters from Brooklyn, Method sweet vermouth from Romulus and gin made on-site at Tenmile). “We really want people to sit here and stay a while,” Levine said. westerlycanteen.com.

Visit This

A Quilter Reclaims His Image

Over seven years after his release from Angola State Prison in Louisiana, where he was wrongfully imprisoned for 41½ years, Gary Tyler will celebrate his first solo exhibition of quilts on July 8 at the Library Street Collective in Detroit, the same city where Rosa Parks and Tyler’s mother campaigned for his freedom in 1976. Tyler’s practice began after he started volunteering at Angola’s hospice program. In addition to gifting quilts to the families of late patients, volunteers would sell them at the prison’s rodeo for funding. When the group needed extra hands for an upcoming show, they recruited Tyler. “Doing my work made me realize that I have something to offer, that my greatest asset is myself,” Tyler says of revisiting quilting after his release. “I’m exhibiting to people what I’ve been through and who I am today.” The show’s title, “We Are the Willing,” is the motto of Angola’s drama club, which Tyler served as president of for 28 years. The 11 quilts on display feature symbols that relate to how Tyler sees his own evolution, like the butterfly, and self-portraits sourced from photos that were taken of Tyler while he was incarcerated. “It’s an opportunity for Gary to reproduce an image of himself at a particular moment in time, allowing him to develop agency over his story by reclaiming this mediated imagery,” the exhibition’s curator, Allison Glenn, says. Also on display is a vitrine of those sourced photographs alongside memorabilia that was circulated in the fight for Tyler’s freedom. “We Are the Willing” will be on view from July 8 through Sept. 6, lscgallery.com.

The fashion designer Ulla Johnson, known for her botanical prints and artisanal fabrics, is teaming up with the Italian lifestyle brand Cabana for her home décor debut. The capsule collection, launching July 12, includes an array of pieces that fans of her clothes might find familiar: the kaleidoscopic Hibiscus pattern that was on a dress in her pre-fall 2023 ready-to-wear collection now adorns poufs and hand-dyed napkins, while her plates are decorated with a bird print similar to those on the fabrics she uses every season. Johnson’s foray into interiors is a natural next step for the mother of three, who often hosts at her Montauk and Brooklyn homes. “I love to lay a beautiful table and arrange flowers and make everything very welcoming and convivial,” she says. The capsule offers options for everyday use and special occasions, with daisy-printed Murano glasses, antiques-inspired plates and place mats that have a delicate hand-embroidered trim. From $75, ullajohnson.com.

Stay Here

A Minorcan Farm Hotel With a Swimming Cove Next Door

Near the Camí de Cavalls coastal walking trail and within easy reach of the palm-lined swimming cove of Cala Son Vell is an 18th-century Venetian-style manor house, the latest boutique property to open on the Spanish island of Minorca. Also called Son Vell, it was renovated by the hotel group Vestige Collection and the Madrid-based firm EDM Arquitectura, which retained the building’s original structure made of sandstone, olive wood and lime-soaked clay. Most of the 34 rooms, spread between the main house and former barns and annexes, come with a private garden or terrace with views of the property’s nearly 450 acres, which include a working farm with citrus trees, olive groves and an organic vegetable and herb garden. Films are screened twice a week at an outdoor cinema area near a pétanque pitch, while yoga can be done on a platform overlooking the limestone mountains. At Vermell and Sa Clara, the property’s restaurants, Minorcan cuisine is the focus with locally produced olive oil, cheese and wine among the highlights. From $845 a night, vestigecollection.com.

See This

An Exhibition Celebrating Dorothy Liebes’s Distinct Weavings

In the middle decades of the 20th century, trained eyes were alert to something called the Liebes Look. Colorful, textured and shot through with shimmering, synthetic fibers like Lurex, the woven textiles of Dorothy Liebes were a signature feature of some of the most glamorous postwar interiors in America: Doris Duke’s Shangri La, the Delegates Dining Room at the United Nations, the cabin of the American Airlines flagship 747, the set of the 1949 Barbara Stanwyck film noir “Eastside, Westside” and the inside of the 1957 Chrysler Plymouth Fury, to name just a few. Opening July 7 at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, an exhibition called “A Dark, a Light, a Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes,” celebrates her work and role as a tastemaker. Celebrity weaver may seem like the fulfillment of an impossible Instagram dream but, in her lifetime, Liebes was exactly that. She was a high-profile consultant to DuPont’s Textile Fibers Department, collaborated with the likes of the industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss and the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and was declared “the greatest weaver alive today” in the pages of House Beautiful. A publicity photograph of Liebes in her studio shows her overseeing a team of artisans working at their looms against a backdrop of an enviable yarn wall. Her biography has all the elements of a 20th-century design legend, but she isn’t a household name yet. This exhibition, and its handsome accompanying monograph, now available from Yale University Press and the Cooper Hewitt, will surely change that. “A Dark, a Light, a Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” will be on view through Feb. 4, 2024, cooperhewitt.org.

When Joey Valenti was an architecture graduate student on Oahu, he set out to prove that the invasive albizia tree, imported to Hawaii from Indonesia and destructive to native ecosystems, could also make beautiful and functional structures. He made his case: clients, including the Patagonia store in Honolulu and the 1 Hotel in Princeville, on Kauai, commissioned his designs using the wood once considered trash. Now, he’s taken albizia to the water in the shape of surfboards, a throwback to the original wooden boards once made in Hawaii but built for modern performance. In May, he opened the Bizia Surf shop in Wahiawa, a town in central Oahu, offering longboard and fish models made entirely out of albizia. Each board showcases the light wood grain, some speckled like vanilla bean ice cream and striking enough to hang on the wall. But they are made for riding. Not much heavier than an average fish or log and surprisingly lively on a wave, the boards are made of hollowed-out wood planks to keep them light while still preserving strength. In the water, you might hear the surfboards creak like a floor because of the dynamic nature of wood, “almost like it’s breathing — it’s a living material,” Valenti says. From $1,465, biziasurf.com.

From T’s Instagram

Will Children Save Us at the End of the World?

Paris has recovered its scents, and the city is suddenly ravenous. The whiffs of shallots sautéing in butter, bread baking, meat roasting and bouillon simmering that invisibly punctuate any stroll in this food-loving city are back. In fact, the French capital is in the midst of a restaurant boom.

“I think it’s a carpe diem thing,” said Ezéchiel Zérah, the Paris-based editor of two popular French food publications. “After Covid, everyone has a keen appetite and wants a good time.”

Encouraged by pent-up local demand and a dramatic revival of the city’s tourist trade, young chefs and restaurateurs are hanging out their first shingles in Paris, and the most popular idiom is the beloved Parisian bistro. Some of them are pointedly traditional — the delightful Bistrot des Tournelles in the Marais, for example — while others offer a refined contemporary take on bistro cooking, notably the just opened Géosmine in the 11th Arrondissement.

What all of them have in common is chefs with a refreshingly simple culinary style. “No wants tweezer cooking anymore,” said Thibault Sizun, the owner of Janine, an excellent new modern bistro in Les Batignolles, a neighborhood in the 17th Arrondissement.

Here, six restaurants to try in Paris now (prices are approximate).

Bistrot des Tournelles

When you arrive at the long, narrow dining room of the Bistrot des Tournelles for the second seating (from 9:15 p.m. onward; you don’t want to have dinner with an invisible hourglass on your table), odds are you’ll politely be informed that it’ll be another 10 to 15 minutes. It’ll be longer than that, so go across the street for a drink at the Le Vanart cocktail bar instead of milling around on the sidewalk and getting cranky.

This noisy bistro is absolutely worth the wait for the charm of its friendly grace-under-pressure staff, the contagiousness of its high-spirits atmosphere and the deliciousness of a menu that reads like a primer of French bistro cooking. It also looks like a place that the famed French photographer Robert Doisneau might have photographed many years ago, with a marble-topped oak bar just inside the front door, flea-market bric-a-brac on the walls, a stenciled tile floor, bentwood chairs at bare tables and moleskin banquettes.

The porcine richness of the rillettes (potted pork) from the Perche region of Normandy accompanied by glasses of a brilliantly flinty Alsatian Riesling is reason alone to fall in love, and then the sautéed oyster mushrooms in a veil of finely chopped garlic and parsley and the plump ivory asparagus in an Xeres-vinegar-spiked dressing deliver the simple pleasure of impeccably cooked and perfectly seasoned produce.

For main dishes, the juicy chicken with morel mushrooms in cream sauce embodies the gastronomic riches of Paris, or try the andouillette, a bulging sausage made from pig intestines, pepper, wine, onions and seasonings. These dishes are served with a heaping platter of hot homemade frites and spinach that is a sink of butter. Dessert might seem improbable, but go ahead and share a dark chocolate mousse with a bracing shadow of bitterness (6 Rue des Tournelles, Fourth Arrondissement, tel. (33) 01-57-40-99-96; starters from 7 euros, or about $7.50, entrees from 27 euros).

Janine

Once a country village where Édouard Manet painted, Les Batignolles is now a lively younger district of the 17th Arrondissement that’s little known to tourists. “I chose this neighborhood, because it’s happy, inclusive and without hipster pretensions,” said the Breton restaurateur Thibault Sizun, who named Janine, his first restaurant, after his adored grandmother.

The restaurant has a great-looking dining room with a zinc-topped service bar, bare wood tables, tile floors, and oil paintings, mirrors and flea-market finds on the walls. The superb slice of pâté de campagne du Grand-Père Jean with pickled red onions, cauliflower sprigs, carrots and celery pairs perfectly with glasses of chardonnay from the Jura region. From the expertly seasoned mixture of ground meat bound in caul fat, you might expect an old-fashioned French chef in the kitchen.

But the chef at Janine is Soda Thiam, a talented young Senegalese woman who grew up in Italy and whose cooking is an inventive mixture of traditional French bistro and Italian trattoria dishes updated with shrewd garnishes and seasonings and a sparing use of dairy.

First courses include an excellent celery rémoulade garnished with mussels, squid and grilled leeks, and a luscious vitello tonnato that might be unexpected if you didn’t know Ms. Thiam’s background.

The menu here evolves regularly, but if the braised pig cheek with creamy polenta and Treviso or roasted cockerel with an herbal pesto sauce and baby vegetables in a shallow bath of ruddy bouillon are on the menu, don’t miss them. Desserts are excellent, too, especially the buckwheat brownie with bread ice cream (90 Rue des Dames, 17th Arrondissement, tel. (33) 01-42-93-33-94; starters from 11 euros, entrees from 28 euros).

Les Parisiens

Les Parisiens is a beautifully low-lit bistro with globe lamps, plump banquettes and a slate-and-gray Art Deco-style mosaic floor in the Pavillon Faubourg St.-Germain hotel in the heart of St.-Germain-des-Prés, one of the city’s most fashionable neighborhoods.

The chef Thibault Sombardier trained with several three-Michelin-starred chefs, which explains the steely haute-cuisine technique he brings to contemporary French bistro cooking. His langoustines quenelles are featherweight but fully flavored dumplings, and they come to the table in a luscious ivory-colored puddle of velvety cauliflower velouté. The ris de veau (veal sweetbreads) are beautifully browned but still custardy inside and come with a bright Provençal sauce of tomatoes, capers and onions sautéed in olive oil.

For those who aren’t keen on offal, the menu offers many other options, including saddle of lamb in pastry with a tangy mustard-and-tarragon condiment and a whole sea bream for two with voluptuous Hollandaise sabayon. For dessert, it’s your call between the vanilla soufflé and the warm chocolate mousse with buckwheat ice cream (1 Rue du Pré aux Clercs, Seventh Arrondissement, tel. (33) 01-42-96-65-43; starters from 12 euros, entrees from 22 euros).

Parcelles

One of the best trends at the new Paris bistros is their really excellent wine lists, because many bistros of yore were pretty much content to pour cheerful plonk. Parcelles, a popular bistrot à vins, or wine-oriented bistro, near the Pompidou Center in the Upper Marais is an on-point example.

In French wine terminology a parcelle is a small plot of land with distinctive geographical and geological characteristics that explain the quality and character of the grapes grown on it. Here, it refers to the seriousness of the restaurant’s wine list and the way the menu is designed to create memorable food and wine pairings.

The exigent and very knowledgeable young sommelier Bastien Fidelin works with the chef Julien Chevallier and the owner, Sarah Michielsen, to sync his mostly organic and natural wines to the regularly changing menu. The bistro itself dates to 1936. This team took it over a year ago and wisely left the décor almost untouched, since it has an effortless Gallic chic that comes from the copper-clad bar, cracked tile floor and lace curtains in the front windows.

Expect dishes like earthy homemade headcheese with the punctuation of puckery pickles and a bracing herbal slash of peppery mustard greens and scallops in a parsley-garlic butter with guanciale to start. That might be followed by mains like pan-roasted brill in a sauce of baby clams with spinach and veal sweetbreads with fried sage leaves and potato purée. The chocolate tart with caramelized pecans and whipped cream is excellent, but keep your fingers crossed that the crème caramel, maybe the best in Paris, will be on the menu when you come for a meal (13 Rue Chapon, Third Arrondissement, tel. (33) 01-43-37-91-64; starters from 12 euros, entrees from 25 euros).

Géosmine

Bistros can also be chic and their cooking intense, precise and refined. A perfect example is the young chef Maxime Bouttier’s just-opened restaurant Géosmine in the Oberkampf quarter of the 11th Arrondissement in eastern Paris.

In French, the word géosmine means “odor of the soil,” as in a freshly plowed field. Mr. Bouttier’s cooking at this stylish two-story restaurant with recycled wood tables and white cement floors in a former textile factory seduces by being earthy but elegant.

Starters of green asparagus with a sauce of pistachios and ramps and morel mushrooms stuffed with ground veal and garnished with baby peas are vivid with freshness, contrasts of texture and unexpected flavors. A main course of sirloin with a tangy mahogany puddle of homemade barbecue sauce and wilted radicchio and turbot with friar’s beard, a wild herb, further display the chef’s well-honed culinary skills. Proof Mr. Bouttier likes to provoke is a dish very rarely seen on Paris menus: cow’s udder with caviar, cream and seaweed. With his sinewy talent and lyrical gastronomic creativity, Mr. Bouttier is one of the most impressive young chefs in Paris right now (71 Rue de la Folie Méricourt, 11th Arrondissement, tel. (33) 09-78-80-48-59; à la carte lunch, dishes from 11 euros to 49 euros; dinner, prix fixe 109 euros or 139 euros).

Des Terres

Being on a budget in Paris doesn’t mean you can’t go for a meal at one of the city’s best new restaurants. Des Terres, a corner bistro in Belleville, a formerly working-class but now rapidly gentrifying district of the 20th Arrondissement in northeastern Paris, is an amiable neighborhood place with an avid following of local regulars. They love sampling the latest wine finds of the hugely knowledgeable Matthieu Hernandez and other oenophile staff members and chatting about the highlights of the chalkboard menu, which changes daily and is vegetarian-friendly.

With its exposed red brick walls and bare wood tables, Des Terres could just as easily be in Astoria or Ridgewood, Queens, as in Paris were it not for the big Formica-clad bar just inside the front door crowded with natural and organic wines from small producers all over France and obscure Gallic liqueurs and tinctures.

Starters of a terrine of veal sweetbreads and morel mushrooms and a ruddy lentil soup garnished with toasted pumpkin seeds and freshly grated horseradish are so beautifully made they could easily grace the table of some wallet-busting Michelin-anointed place incentral Paris. Main courses are outstanding, too, including pan-roasted cod with fresh white coco beans from Paimpol in Brittany and golden domed pithiviers (short-crust pastry) filled with layered celeriac, mushrooms and potatoes. The latter, a resonantly earthy dish, was deeply satisfying, as was the intriguing dessert, a fluffy chestnut mousse with quince slices stewed in lemon verbena with crushed pecan praline.

Complimented on his recommendation of a Patrimonio wine from Corsica and also on the inventiveness and precision of the kitchen, Mr. Hernandez grinned and said, “It’s the pleasure that counts.”

That phrase could equally be the motto and motivation of the chefs at all of these excellent new Paris spots (82 Rue Alexandre Dumas, 20th Arrondissement, tel. (33) 01-43-48-42-49; starters from 12 euros; entrees from 24 euros, lunch menu, 18 euros or 21 euros).

Alexander Lobrano is a food and travel writer who’s lived in France for more than 35 years. His latest book is “My Place at the Table: A Recipe for a Delicious Life in Paris.”