Category: Travel
The AI culture that is Faroe
Fed up with too much planning and decision-making on holiday? The Faroe Islands tourist board says its latest initiative taps into a trend for travellers seeking “the joy of surrender” on trips “where control is intentionally let go in favour of serendipity and spontaneity”. Their needs are answered in the nation’s fleet of “self-navigating rental cars”, launched this month, which — while they are not self-driving — will direct visitors on itineraries around the archipelago devised by locals.
Each route features between four and six destinations over the course of three to six hours, with only one section of the itinerary revealed at a time to maintain an element of surprise. Along the way, the navigation system will also share local stories tied to each place.
Here is more from Tom Robbins at the FT.
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Once a casualty of Rust Belt decline, downtown today is in remarkably good shape. I walked around for several hours, and virtually every building and storefront is spiffy. I did not see anything boarded up. Only one beggar/homeless person approached me.
The rapids and bridges and greenery view from the top of the Amway hotel is excellent.
The Grand Rapids Art Museum has a very good show of David Hockney prints on.
On the down side, I did find that too many downtown places are closed for lunch, or they close at two p.m. Overall, though, it is an interesting and much underrated place to visit. Here is o3 onthe Grand Rapids recovery.
Do not turn down a trip. I also had very good discussions at the Acton Institute and with the Cluny Institute people, for whom I was speaking, on talent. At some point the talk will be online.
Canada facts of the day
Given Canada’s vast size and low population density, I was surprised to discover that the country feels more urban than the US, with far more skyscrapers per capita. In 2024, Vancouver had 128 high rises under construction, #3 in North America. (Toronto was #1 and NYC was #2.) Even smaller Canadian cities have more tall buildings under construction than similar size US cities.
Here is more from Scott Sumner, a general essay on his trip to Canada. And analytically:
In terms of living standards, I’d guess that the bottom half of the Canadian population does as well as the bottom half of the US population (and perhaps even better if you include social indicators like drugs and crime and life expectancy.) The impression I got is that the top half of the US population is considerably richer than the top half of the Canadian population. Even so, I’d estimate that the US is perhaps 10% or at most 20% richer than Canada, not the 35.6% richer suggested by the IMF data.
Why is Canada poorer? I’m not sure. The US does have the advantage of economies of scale. But in Western Europe, smaller countries don’t seem poorer than bigger countries. Perhaps Canada is poorer because its economy is structurally similar to the European economic model. On the other hand, some of America’s richest regions (such as California and New York) have a fairly high level of taxes and regulation. So I’m puzzled.
Even the Maritimes (based on limited travel) do not seem that poor to me. Maybe it is that the American “upper upper middle class” is much richer in great numbers?
Two other points. First, higher levels of immigration into Canada can lower the per capita average, even if you think those immigrants will end up doing well.
Second, very often (too often?) we judge income flows by looking at the housing stock. And indeed the Canadian housing stock is fine (in quality, I agree they have too much NIMBY). But if we are going to judge flows by stocks, let us also look at the stock of Canadian corporations and global brands. And that is decidedly weaker. If we consider all stocks, and not just the housing stock, perhaps our picture of Canada slides closer to equilibrium once again.
The Paradox of India
Tyler often talks about cracking cultural codes. India is the hardest—and therefore the most fascinating—cultural code I’ve encountered. The superb post The Paradox of India by Samir Varma helps to unlock some of these codes. Varma is good at describing:
In 2004, something extraordinary happened that perfectly captured India’s unique nature: A Roman Catholic woman (Sonia Gandhi) voluntarily gave up the Prime Ministership to a Sikh (Manmohan Singh) in a ceremony presided over by a Muslim President (A.P.J. Abdul Kalam) in a Hindu-majority country.
And nobody commented on it.
Think about that. In how many countries could this happen without it being THE story? In India, the headlines focused on economic policy and coalition politics. The religious identities of the key players were barely mentioned because, well, what would be the point? This is how India works.
This wasn’t tolerance—it was something deeper. It was the lived experience of a civilization where your accountant might be Jain, your doctor Parsi, your mechanic Muslim, your teacher Christian, and your vegetable vendor Hindu. Where festival holidays meant everyone got days off for Diwali, Eid, Christmas, Guru Nanak Jayanti, and Good Friday. Where secularism isn’t the absence of religion but the presence of all religions.
But goes beyond that:
You might be thinking: “This is fascinating, but I’m not Indian. I can’t draw on 5,000 years of civilizational memory. How does any of this help me navigate my increasingly polarized world?”
Here’s what I’ve learned from watching India work its magic: The mental moves that make pluralism possible aren’t mystical—they’re learnable. Think of them as cognitive tools:
The And/And Instead of Either/Or: When faced with contradictions, resist the Western urge to resolve them. Can something be both sacred and commercial? Both ancient and modern? Both yours and mine? Indians instinctively answer yes.
Contextual Truth Over Universal Law: What’s right for a Jain isn’t right for a Bengali, and that’s okay. Truth can be plural without being relative. Multiple valid perspectives can coexist without canceling each other out.
Strategic Ambiguity as Wisdom: Not everything needs to be defined, categorized, and resolved. Sometimes the wisest response is a head waggle that means yes, no, and maybe all at once.
Code-Switching as a Life Skill: Indians don’t just switch languages—they switch entire worldviews depending on context. At work, modern. At home, traditional. With friends, fusion. This isn’t hypocrisy; it’s sophisticated social navigation.
The lesson isn’t “be more tolerant.” It’s “develop comfort with unresolved multiplicity.” In a world demanding you pick sides, the Indian model suggests a radical alternative: Don’t.
In our age of rising nationalism and cultural purism, when countries are building walls and communities are retreating into echo chambers, India stands as a glorious, maddening, inspiring mess—proof that diversity isn’t just manageable but might be the secret to civilizational immortality.
After all, it’s hard to kill something that contains multitudes. When one part struggles, another thrives. When one tradition calcifies, another innovates. When one community turns inward, another builds bridges.
It’s not a bug. It’s a feature.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s exactly what the world needs to remember right now.
Read the whole thing. Part 1 of 3.
The new Javier Cercas book
The new Cercas book is El loco de Dios en el fin del mundo. That title translates roughly as “The crazy man of God at the end of the world,” noting there are ambiguities in who that man is (Cercas? The Pope?), and whether the end of the world refers to a trip to Mongolia or the apocalypse or perhaps death.
Cercas, arguably Spain’s greatest living writer, decides to shed his purely secular perspective and accompany Pope Francis on his Mongolia visit, a country with about 1500 Catholics. Like many of Cercas’s novels, it is a mix of non-fiction and fiction, and it is also self-consciously a detective story – which truths will Cercas unlock during this journey? Most of all, he wants to know if his mother will meet her husband (Cercas’s father) when she dies.
We live in a time when an atheistic European author puts down his preoccupation with Spanish history and spends almost five hundred pages engaging with the Pope and also the possibility of God. A vibe shift if there ever was one.
Cercas reports that he came away from the trip more anti-clerical than before, but on the matter of God and the miracle of the Resurrection, I read his text as ever so ambiguous.
Do not despair, the works of Cercas usually end up translated into English in a reasonably prompt manner.
Tyler Cowen travel tips
That is my latest column in The Free Press. Here is one excerpt from the middle:
I am a fan of going places where things are happening, whether good news or bad, at least if the locales are sufficiently safe. When communism fell, I rented a car and drove around Eastern Europe for one of my most interesting and memorable trips. More recently, I visited El Salvador and Argentina (repeat visits in both cases) to see what was going on with El Salvador president Nayib Bukele’s radical imprisonment policies and the free-market reforms of Argentina’s Javier Milei. I do not pretend to completely grasp the problems of either country, but my understanding is richer than before. I also found that the locals are keen to narrate their points of view, which makes the trip more interesting.
And from the very end:
Finally, I have a radical travel suggestion. Perhaps it is not for families or for the frail, but seasoned travelers should consider it. Imagine you have been to many places, and you are wondering where to go next. Select a country (putting aside danger) where you are quite sure you do not want to go, simply because it does not interest you much. Go there.
The point is that your instincts can be quite wrong about places you have not seen. What’s more, if you go with low expectations, there is a high likelihood you will be pleasantly surprised. Under my proposed method, you will not be disappointed.
When I started traveling, I thought I would love Southeast Asia most, but over time my true affections turned toward Latin America. A few years back I ended up in Baku, Azerbaijan, not because I really wanted to go, but because going through Baku was the easiest way to get to my final destination. The same was true for my trip to Pristina, Kosovo (“where can I fly direct from Zurich airport, where I have not already been?”). Both were fantastic experiences, more interesting, and also easier than I had been expecting.
So often in travel, our greatest enemies are inertia and status quo bias. Recognize that change is real, and that you need some yourself. Isn’t that why you are traveling in the first place?
Do it!
What should I ask Seamus Murphy?
Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him. An associate of his emails me this excellent description of his work:
Spent over two decades photographing in Afghanistan (12 trips between 1994–2007). Has been back since the fall of the U.S. side.
- Collaborated with P.J. Harvey on her album Let England Shake— they travelled together through Kosovo, Afghanistan, and the U.S. while she wrote songs and he filmed/photographed. This lead to P.J.’s album, and Seamus’s documentary ‘A Dog Called Money’
- Made a film on recently deceased Irish poet Pat Ingoldsby. Pat was a well known Dublin character, a former TV presenter who sold his poetry on the streets of Dublin outside Trinity college for decades.
- Published several books, including:
- A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan
- I Am the Beggar of the World (with Afghan women’s Landay poetry)
- The Hollow of the Hand (with P.J. Harvey)
- The Republic (on Ireland pre-2016 centenary)
- Won 7 work press photo awards, and has photos held in the Getty Museum and Imperial War Museum
- More recently Seamus has published Strange Love which is a photography book on visual parallels between the U.S. and Russia.
- Seamus also semi lives in India now and has photo collections on modernising/not-modernising India (https://www.seamusmurphy.com/Epic-City/2)
TC again: So what should I ask him?
p.s. Here is Murphy’s home page.
My Paris delta
I have not been here since 2019, so here are the trends I am noticing:
1. Vastly more shops are open on Sundays than before.
2. Central Paris continues to evolve into a nearly bilingual city. It is not quite Amsterdam or Stockholm, but getting there. And the Parisians do not seem to mind speaking English.
3. There are more and more non-European restaurants of many kinds. From a walking-by perusal of menus and clienteles, they seem quite good and serious on the whole.
4. It is increasingly difficult to find a gas station in the city (before returning a rental car).
5. An amazingly high percentage of young women have publicly visible tattoos. I do not understand the logic here. I do (partially) understand tattoos as an act of rebellion, differentiation, or counter-signaling. I do not understand tattoos as an act of conformity.
6. Smoking has almost disappeared here. I saw plenty of young people vaping in Reims, but not the same in Paris.
7. Paris now has Rainier cherries in June, a sign of encroaching civiliation.
8. High-quality bookshops, with beautifully displayed titles and covers, still can be found frequently.
9. I had never seen the area near the Bibliotheque National before, it is excellent. I saw this Indian guy in concert there, after o3 recommended that I go.
10. Paris is doing just fine.
Rasheed Griffith on the economics and aesthetics of Asunción
Yet, on my first visit to Asunción last week none of that was on my mind. What was striking was the total absence of any aesthetic coherence of the city.
There are some economic reasons for this:
Going back to the middle class consumption point. If only around 300,000 Paraguayans make up the domestic personal income tax base then it’s perhaps not a local middle class that is buying and renting the new modern high rise apartments in Asunción.
Indeed, 70% of the new housing supply are acquired by foreign investors as a capital preservation strategy. They are not bought by locals. These are often investors from Argentina, who according to some data account for 70% of all foreign investors. They buy the apartments and then rent them out? But to who?
Usually foreigners who go to Paraguay for work purposes or new residents who take advantage of Paraguay’s quick and easy residency scheme and citizenship program. And the fun part is that these rental contracts are usually in dollars! Not the local currency (the Guaraní, PYG). Of course, Argentines buy property in Paraguay and prefer to receive dollars in rent.
The entire post is excellent There is also this:
There is a lot more that I could say about Paraguay. Like how the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) resulted in the death of 70% of adult men in Paraguay; giving the country the highest male-mortality proportion ever reliably documented for a nation-state in modern warfare.
I have yet to visit Paraguay, but someday hope to. But should this post induce me to accelerate or delay my timetable?
Chantilly destination achieved, the Limbourg brothers are amazing
Commissioned by the Duc de Berry, the enormously wealthy brother of King Charles V of France, this exquisite Book of Hours was begun by the Limbourg brothers, a trio of Netherlandish miniature painters, in around 1411. The Duc and the Limbourgs died in 1416. The manuscript was completed by other wealthy patrons and talented artists 70 years later and contains 131 full-page illuminations. Now, in a vanishingly rare opportunity, the general public has been invited to step into this world.
Until October, visitors to a special exhibition at the Condé Museum in the Château de Chantilly, 55km north of Paris, will be able to view as independent works the 12 monthly calendar pages of the Très Riches Heures, on which much of the fame of this 15th-century prayer book rests. Its importance and influence are contextualised by an exceptional display of some 100 medieval manuscripts, sculptures and paintings loaned from museums and libraries around the world.
…as the renowned scholar Christopher de Hamel, author of the 2016 book, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, explains, the Très Riches Heures are so much more than a luxury object. “The staggering originality of the design and composition is overwhelming,” he says. “The full-page calendar miniatures were the first ever made. It marks the very first moment when the Renaissance touched northern Europe.
Here is the full story. This is very likely the best and most important artistic exhibit in the world right now. It is only the third time (ever) the pages of the book have been on display for the public. In the exhibit more broadly, it is remarkable how many of the best works were created in the first decade of the fifteenth century.
All three of the brothers died before the age of thirty, possibly because of the plague.
Chantilly is about an hour north of Paris, and it is a pleasant but fairly extreme town. Think of it as a French version of Middleburg, VA? Or perhaps parts of Sonoma? It is their version of horse country, with non-spicy food to boot. The accompanying castle, by the way, also is interesting and has some wonderful art works, including by Poussin, Watteau, and Greuze. The decor and trappings give you a sense of what eighteenth century French Enlightenment nobles might have considered to be beautiful.
A major goal of this trip has been to get a better handle on the Western European medieval world, and visiting this exhibit has been a big and very successful part of that.
Reims and Amiens
Both cities have significant war histories, but they are very different to visit, even though they are only two hours apart by car.
Reims was largely destroyed in World War I, and so the central core was rebuilt in the 1920s, with a partial Art Deco look. The downtown is attractive and prosperous, the people look sharp and happy, and it is a university town. You arrive and feel the place is a wonderful success. If you had to live in a mid-sized French city, you might choose this one.
The main cathedral is one of the best in France, and arguably in the world. The lesser-known basilica also is top tier. There are scattered Roman ruins. French kings were coronated in Reims from early on, all the way up through 1825.
Amiens is on the Somme, and the 1916 Battle of the Somme, followed by a later 1918 offensive, was a turning point in WWI history. The town is a melange of architectural styles, with many half-timbered homes but also scattered works from different centuries. The town also has France’s “first skyscraper,” renowned in its time but now a rather short and out of place embarrassment. The main Amiens cathedral, however, is perhaps the best in all of France.
The town itself feels like visiting a banlieu, with large numbers of African and Muslim immigrants. It is lively, and it feels as if a revitalization is underway, though I do understand opinions on these matters differ. Real estate prices are at about 3x their 1990s levels. That to me is strong evidence that things are going well.
Restaurant Momos Tibetian has excellent Chinese and Tibetan food. The Picardy museum has some very good works by Boucher, Balthus, Picabia, El Greco, and Chavannes.
Both cities are radically undervisisted. They do attract some tourists, but for the most part you feel you have them to yourself.
My Conversation with the excellent Chris Arnade
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is part of the episode summary:
Tyler and Chris discuss how Beijing and Shanghai reveal different forms of authoritarian control through urban design, why Seoul’s functional dysfunction makes it more appealing than Tokyo’s efficiency, favorite McDonald’s locations around the world, the dimensions for properly assessing a city’s walkability, what Chris packs for long urban jaunts, why he’s not interested in walking the countryside, what travel has taught him about people and culture, what makes the Faroe Islands and El Paso so special, where he has no desire to go, the good and bad of working on Wall Street, the role of pigeons and snapping turtles in his life, finding his 1,000 true fans on Substack, whether museums are interesting, what set him on this current journey, and more.
COWEN: That’s okay. What’s your nomination for the least walkable city?
ARNADE: Phoenix is pretty bad. In the rest of the world, what was the lowest ranked of mine?
COWEN: I think Dakar is your lowest ranked.
ARNADE: Dakar is low.
COWEN: I don’t find that so bad.
ARNADE: [laughs] It was partially the heat. Also, there was a safety issue, which is not actual violence. It’s just the risk of a miscommunication going very badly because when you’re in a neighborhood where they have a slum basically, where you’re one of few white people, it’s not that I feel threatened by being robbed. I feel threatened that there can be miscommunication, like, “Why are you here? What are you doing here?” That can spiral out of control if you don’t speak the language. Dakar was really tough. Kampala was really tough to walk.
COWEN: Why’s that? I’ve never been there.
ARNADE: Again, these are cities that are not meant to be walked. Locals don’t walk them. People would look at me like I’m crazy. Part of the reason, first of all, you can jump on a hack bus, so why would you walk? The boda-bodas, which are . . . you just jump on the back of a motorcycle, which I won’t do. I did it once, and I’m like, “I’m not doing this. This is a really dumb risk.”
COWEN: Yes, I wouldn’t do that.
ARNADE: I almost got killed the first time I did it, but they do it. Consequently, there’s no walking infrastructure and when you do walk, you’re at risk of being hit by a boda-boda. People will walk out of necessity but there’s just no infrastructure. Absolutely none. Then you can get hit by a car. You can get hit by a car or a motorcycle.
COWEN: Rio, for me, would be the least walkable. It’s very dangerous but on top of that, there are so many places where walks end. There’re mountains, there’re tunnels.
And this:
COWEN: What is it you think you learn least well traveling the way you do?
ARNADE: It’s interesting. I used to be a macro-type trader. I used to be very top-down. I think I, in some sense, have thrown too much of that away. I’ve gone in too blind. I could do a little bit more background reading in terms of the political situation.
One of the things I’ve learned from my project is, most people don’t talk about politics. It’s because I only talk about what other people want to talk about. No one talks about politics. Being in Beijing and Shanghai — maybe it’s not the best example because people would say there’s a reason they don’t want to talk about it. I don’t think that’s it.
COWEN: No, I agree. Most of the world. Even Idaho.
ARNADE: Yes, 98 percent of the people aren’t political and they don’t talk about politics. I got beat up on social media when people were talking about, “Oh my God, Trump’s going to be elected. The world hates us.” No, they don’t. [laughs] When that person said that, I was actually in a bar in Kampala with a woman telling me how much she loved Trump. That was a rare political conversation. Most people don’t talk about politics.
In that sense, I could probably do more reading outside of the conversations about politics because I go to a lot of these countries, I don’t know what’s going on politically because people don’t talk about it.
COWEN: What other macro views of the world have you revised due to your walking, visiting, traveling? Obviously, particular views about any individual place, but on the whole, humanity.
And I am very happy to recommend Chris’s Substack, which covers his fascinating travels around the world.
Bordeaux observations
The central core is one of the most consistent eighteenth century cities you will find in Europe. Until the visit, my first there, I had not realized how much of the town’s growth came during that time, in part because of some special trade privileges, and in part because of the slave trade. Here is some 18th century economic history of Bordeaux. The central plazas and radiating streets are splendid, as is the large Girondins monument nearby.
The main museum is subpar, with some good Redons (he is from there), and the main church is pretty good but excelled by other locales. In this sense there is not much to do in Bordeaux. There is, however, some good modern and also brutalist architecture near and across the main river bank. Check out this bridge. I enjoyed these creations, as they injected some element of surprise into my visit.
You can still get an excellent meal at the nearby country chateaus, but if you just stop for normal French food in the town it is pretty mediocre, not better than say WDC. The classic French food traditions are moving more and more into corners of the country, and away from everyday life.
Typically I am surprised by how normal France feels. People want to say “The French this, the French that…” but to me they are fairly Americanized, often speak good English, and have few truly unique cultural habits these days. They also seem reasonably well adjusted, normal mostly in the good sense, and thus of course somewhat boring too.
Walking and driving through the less salubrious parts of town is a useful corrective, but I do not feel the place is falling apart. And the best estimates are that six to nine percent of the city is Muslim, hardly an overwhelming number.
I learned just before leaving that Kevin Bryan was in town too, here are his observations. Bordeaux is certainly worth visiting, but I also am not surprised it is the last major French city I have been to in my life.
Some northern parts of Spain
Salamanca still feels part of the orbit of Madrid, but León does not. Many of the faces are more Celtic, and the mood of the city can be drab in an eastern European way. Deindustrialization can be observed. It is a real city, not much dependent on tourism, though the cathedral is one of the most beautiful in Europe.
Santander, a beach town, was much nicer than expected. There is not much to do there, but it reminds me of how perhaps Nice might have been in 1974. Fully for tourists, but somehow not very touristy? And thus extremely pleasant and charming. Places like that barely exist any more. They are either quite obscure, such as Durango, Mexico, or they are overwhelmed by tourists. Seafood was excellent, and it is a much larger city than I was expecting. Nice promenades on the water.
Hondarribia is a Basque town and fishing village that feels like it should be its own country. The half-timbered homes and unusual colors set it apart from anywhere else in Europe I have been. Small, one day there is fine, but one of Europe’s best undervisited locales?
Supersonics Takeoff!
In Lift the Ban on Supersonics I wrote:
Civilian supersonic aircraft have been banned in the United States for over 50 years! In case that wasn’t clear, we didn’t ban noisy aircraft we banned supersonic aircraft. Thus, even quiet supersonic aircraft are banned today. This was a serious mistake. Aside from the fact that the noise was exaggerated, technological development is endogenous.
If you ban supersonic aircraft, the money, experience and learning by doing needed to develop quieter supersonic aircraft won’t exist. A ban will make technological developments in the industry much slower and dependent upon exogeneous progress in other industries.
When we ban a new technology we have to think not just about the costs and benefits of a ban today but about the costs and benefits on the entire glide path of the technology
In short, we must build to build better. We stopped building and so it has taken more than 50 years to get better. Not learning, by not doing.
… I’d like to see the new administration move forthwith to lift the ban on supersonic aircraft. We have been moving too slow.
Thus, I am pleased to note that President Trump has issued an executive order to lift the ban on supersonics!
The United States stands at the threshold of a bold new chapter in aerospace innovation. For more than 50 years, outdated and overly restrictive regulations have grounded the promise of supersonic flight over land, stifling American ingenuity, weakening our global competitiveness, and ceding leadership to foreign adversaries. Advances in aerospace engineering, materials science, and noise reduction now make supersonic flight not just possible, but safe, sustainable, and commercially viable. This order begins a historic national effort to reestablish the United States as the undisputed leader in high-speed aviation. By updating obsolete standards and embracing the technologies of today and tomorrow, we will empower our engineers, entrepreneurs, and visionaries to deliver the next generation of air travel, which will be faster, quieter, safer, and more efficient than ever before.
…The Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shall take the necessary steps, including through rulemaking, to repeal the prohibition on overland supersonic flight in 14 CFR 91.817 within 180 days of the date of this order and establish an interim noise-based certification standard, making any modifications to 14 CFR 91.818 as necessary, as consistent with applicable law. The Administrator of the FAA shall also take immediate steps to repeal 14 CFR 91.819 and 91.821, which will remove additional regulatory barriers that hinder the advancement of supersonic aviation technology in the United States.
Congratulations to Eli Dourado who has been pushing this issue for more than a decade.