wasatch

I've got to be a party pooper here. This typical SW tour is far from the ultimate SW tour. Its a good start, but the only 'ultimate SW tour is to do what me did-- 25 years ago, we retired and moved from the East Coast to the SW to go sight seeing. We have since driven tens of thousand of miles in the SW, and have not yet seen it all. What's described in the post is not the ultimate tour, it is the most popular tour which includes a number of stupid choices.

See my tip "The Istanbul Shoe Shine Scam" on how to deal with it.

Vegas is the height of extravagance. Eating healthy misses the point.

Its on an Indian Reservation. The gas station at the I-15 turn off has no sales tax on gas or smokes. Drive all the way thru + a bit to the shore of Lake Mead

More importarnt: 1] where is the restroom (WC) ? 2] Do you have a table for( x number)? 3] I don't speak French. Do you speak x (invariably English-- anglaise-- and they all do if you do it right)

Mexican food is an oxymoron.

Look up some photos of “The Iron Gates”. Check some reviews of river cruises.

Turkey has, or at least had, if the fascist dictator Erdogan has not messed that up along with everything else, the best local guides for tourists in the world. A professional tourist guide in Turkey had to graduate from the official travel guide school and be licensed as a guide by the state, and these guys are the best. Their depth of knowledge is encyclopedic, and they are, it some ways, disturbingly driven to pump the traveler full of an immense body of mostly useless info about whatever it is you are seeing. This is an a affliction common to all travel guides, the Turkey guides just know more than anybody else, and a lot of it is interesting.

Zion is also our favorite. Lucky for us, ins only 5 hrs away.

When we started traveling in the EU, a Coke cost $3 and beer $1.50 (that's inflation corrected to today's values})

Pretending that politics has no role in travel is naive or stupid. Travel always involves politics. Go to the US Sate Department travel advice page and see what trump did to keep you from travel in Cuba or Venezuela or North Korea. You can't even travel to the EU except for one country today because of trump’s political incompetence. The EU won’t let you in, and the EU is right.

We had a nice pizza in Barcelona at Chicago Pizza.

Off beat? Try the cubist houses, The High Castle, the area around Namesti Miru, St George Cathedral, and the baroque cemetery.

We discovered chlebíčky at a bakery in Washington, DC. -- great stuff .

There is a bargain unlimited 1 or 3 day metro pass that includes buses and trams. Sold at hotel desks.

Many art experts hold that Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881), by Pierre-Auguste Renoir is the world's greatest painting. Since 1920, it has been in the Philips Gallery in Washington DC, DuPont Circle Metro stop.