On the second episode of Travel Tales by AFAR, season four, AFAR associate editor Mae Hamilton travels to Europe to explore Picasso’s life—and death.
Transcript
Aislyn Greene, host: I’m Aislyn Greene, this is Travel Tales by AFAR. In every episode we hear from a traveler about a trip that changed their life. Plus this season, I’m sitting down with each storyteller to talk about life’s big travel questions. Well, I’m not really sitting down with them because I’m recording all of this from my houseboat in Sausalito, but you know what I mean.
Today, we’re traveling with an art legend—or rather that ghost of one. Our guide is Mae Hamilton. She’s an associate editor here at AFAR where she heads up all of our art and culture coverage. So it might not be a surprise that yes, she loves art. And recently she had the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of Picasso. She traveled all over Europe, visiting the places that were meaningful in some way in his life. She started in Málaga, Spain. She ended in Nice, France. And for her, it was eye-opening. It was educational. And as you’ll soon hear, it was a little conflicting.
Hi, Mae. Welcome to Travel Tales. How are you?
Mae Hamilton, associate editor: I’m doing well, Aislyn. How are you?
Aislyn: You know, I can’t complain, especially given that we’re going to be talking about art and travel and you.
Mae: Yeah, I’m super excited.
Aislyn: All right. Well, as listeners are going to hear very shortly, you took a pretty epic art-focused trip recently. What drew you to this particular trip?
Mae: Great question. So I think it was just a really special opportunity to see the places that were important to a particular artist, Picasso. And I feel like in our globalized society, I feel like we don’t take into account how a sense of place really influences an artist’s work. Like to me, Joan Didion just, like, makes more sense in California. Uh, listening to the Ramones in New York, I mean, I think it just has a different vibe there. DJ Screw in Houston. I could go on, but even after like I saw Picasso’s work in all these different places, mostly along the Mediterranean, um, I realized how much, like, culture and yeah, just that sense of place really influenced his work.
I feel like Picasso is known for cubism, but there’s also, like, um, some of his more, like, simple sketches and drawings. There’s a lot of space in, like, his minimalist works, and it really reminded me of the Mediterranean in, like, that easy breezy vibe, you know?
Aislyn: How cool. Is there one, you had an example there of, like, his sketches in the Mediterranean, but are there other, you know, scenes or pieces that stood out to you?
Mae: I go into this a bit in the, the actual episode, but I would say, like, the biggest thing for me, the, the theme that most stuck out to me was Picasso’s bulls. I’d never been to Spain before this trip, so I didn’t really realize how big bullfighting culture is.
I mean, less so nowadays; I feel like the new generation has moved on from this sport, but it was, like, you know, that’s like what you did, like you went to the bullfighting ring to see the bulls, and I feel like Picasso really was able to see beyond the blood and gore, but he was able to see kind of the dramatic story of it—like, you know, the bull always dies. The matador is kind of making a big show. It’s like this big dance of death, right?
But also I think, I was able to see like a lot of the Roman ruins that were in a lot of these places and I think as Americans, I mean, it always boggles me going back to the motherland, how it’s just like cities built on top of cities and I think, like, Picasso is very aware of that as well.
He took the bull theme and then, like, incorporated it into, like, Greek and Roman mythology. He represents himself not as, like, a bull but as the minotaur, like a half man half bull. And I’ll get into this more, but I think that was a really fitting symbol for him to latch on to.
Aislyn: I was curious to know, because you are just drawn to art in general, right? Like, this has been a part of your life since you were a kid, as listeners are going to hear. Why is that so important to you, and why might that be important to another traveler? Like, why should they consider spending more time with art while they are on the road?
Mae: I think it depends why you feel like you should travel, whether it’s, like, you know, an introspective journey or you’re trying to broaden your horizons. I think if that’s your aim when you do travel, or if you’re just trying to have fun, that’s, that’s cool too. But I’m like, if there’s a deeper ethos behind your travel, I think art is really, like, one of the, the best ways to understand a place, [to] get a bigger sense of, like, why we do the things we do as humans.
That’s a really broad answer, but like, I think art is a distillation of, of culture. It’s a reflection of what’s happening in that person’s brain, you know, at the time that they created a piece. If the aim of your travels is to understand a place more deeply, I don’t think there’s any better way to do it than, than seeing art besides just living there. It’s kind of like a fast track to understanding a place, you know?
Aislyn: I mean, it’s amazing how it can also reflect a time period as well. And you talk a little bit about that throughout the piece, which is really interesting. You know, it kind of helps you inhabit maybe a time period that you’d never otherwise see or really know.
Mae: Yes, it’s a little snapshot of humanity, you know.
Aislyn: Yeah. Yeah. So if you were to recommend maybe one of the cities, you cover several throughout the piece, but if you were to recommend one for a traveler who kind of wants to spend more time with Picasso, is there one that you would highlight?
Mae: Oh gosh. Well, I would say all the cities, all of them are great but I really felt like Málaga was—maybe it was just because I’d never really considered visiting there before but that was definitely a sleeper agent in terms of destinations on my itinerary, I think. It’s just a really beautiful city, and I think they’ve done a really good job of preserving Picasso’s legacy, being his hometown.
So there’s multiple museums that you can see his works at there, and I think it’s just a little delightful destination. I would also say the south of France as well, all the different villages there. There’s not really one particular village that he touched there. He kind of did his thing all over France.
So Málaga for the beginning of his life and the south of France for the end. Maybe it’s because Málaga was his birthplace and the south of France is where he died. I really do feel like those two destinations did a great job of preserving his legacy. And also these, these destinations are are smaller, you know?
Like, Málaga is a small town. There’s Antibes, [Saint-] Valery [sur-Somme], Mougins, they’re smaller destinations, so I just feel like the vibe there is a bit more relaxed, which I like.
Aislyn: Speaking of his legacy, there’s a lot that I know you couldn’t cover. Was there anything that you left out that you struggled with?
Mae: Yes, I wanted so badly to talk about the more controversial side of Picasso, which I think has been discussed quite a bit in popular culture lately. There’s just so much to, to dig into there. Like, Picasso was a misogynist and I wanted to get into all the different mistresses and wives that he had, but honestly, it was a lot of names and I just felt like it was a lot to wrap your, your, your head around.
And honestly, the reason why I struggled with it is because I felt like that could have been its own episode, like the misogyny of Picasso. I touched on it a bit, but, actually going back to the point that I made a little bit earlier about the bulls and the minotaur.
I actually realized on this trip, he was very cognizant of the fact that he was horrible to women, and I’m not justifying his behavior, but I think it is interesting seeing how he knew that and, like, distilled that into his art. Because, if you think about the minotaur, there’s so many other, like, half human, half animal beings in Greek mythology, but they represent different things, right? Like, the satyr, half man, half goat, it’s kind of about the wild impulses of humanity, like, wanting to have a good time.
But the minotaur is a monster, right? Like, he eats people, and he’s this secret that the city has, like, “Oh, nobody knows about the minotaur, but all these young people keep disappearing, right?” But also, I think, he—this is, like, more of his depravity—but I think like I think he saw his mistreatment of women as like a way for him to be become a better artist.
I think he saw them as sacrifices in a way, kind of like how the young people were sacrifices to the minotaur to, like, keep the city running. I think like Picasso saw women being hurt as part of his art because when he was a young boy, his youngest sister, Concepcion—her nickname was Conchita—she died when she was seven years old. And he talks about how he always felt that that was his fault in some sense, but then also he became a, a better artist because of that, like having to go through that tragedy. And I think he replicated that in some sense with his relationship with women throughout.
Aislyn: And there’s that whole question about, you know, separating art from artists. And I feel like that’s been part of the conversation, but in some ways, what you’re explaining, like you almost can’t given some of his backstory and how he was using art and using women, they’re kind of one and the same.
Mae: I really don’t feel like you can separate the art from an artist is my, my opinion. I think you need to think about your personal relationship with the art. And I still think that’s valid if you like a movie or book that was created by somebody problematic.
I think having that relationship to the art is important because that’s also, like, a time capsule of your, your point in life when you, like, encountered that, right? So, I, I don’t think that makes it any less valid, but I think a person’s life experience does influence their art and, yeah, human relationships are complicated and I think human relationships to art can be complicated as well. And that’s OK.
Aislyn: And again, going back to the time period, right? Not to excuse it, but you know, these things happen within a certain timeframe. And now we’re looking at it, you know, from the point of view of 2023. And it’s good to interrogate, but still, yeah, it is complicated. Um, going back to the entire trip: Is there one moment that has stuck with you all these months later?
Mae: I would probably say it was my time in Mougins and Antibes. I guess maybe it was because it was towards the end of my trip, maybe it is, you know, thinking about the end of somebody’s life. But I had been on like this journey and I started where Picasso was born and, you know, I went to Paris where he rose to superstardom and it was like this whole really huge arc of this man pretty much making himself.
I’ll go into it in the piece, but he like overcame all these things and just became like an international celebrity and it was just kind of, uh, sad, I guess, being in Mougins, in Antibes, and this guy had reached the end, towards the end of his life. You know, it was kind of like he was a bit of a shadow of himself. It, it just made me think about what it, what it means to live a life.
Mae: I’m from San Antonio, Texas, which is home to the McNay Art Museum. Cool, quiet, and set inside a Spanish colonial–style mansion, it was one of my favorite places in the city to beat the Texas heat. It was also a nice place to take a break from school and the hustle and bustle of my aunt’s Chinese restaurant, where I waited tables. I’d usually visit the museum at least once a week.
San Antonio isn’t exactly known for its museum scene. But I was obsessed with art as a young person. So for me, it was a total refuge.
Over the years, I’d gotten to know their permanent collection pretty well. Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Diego Rivera—their works in the museum are now like old friends. And then, there was—Picasso.The McNay has a pretty large catalog of his works but there are two pieces that stood out to me, even when I was a child. And I still find myself revisiting them now: Woman With a Plumed Hat and Crouching Woman.
Woman With a Plumed Hat is moody and swirling with blues and greens. A woman with a huge hat gazes directly at the viewer with a knowing half-smile. Red blush tints her cheeks. She is powerful and confident, and even though the painting has no background, it feels like Madrid’s nighttime cityscape sprawls out behind her. It’s a beautiful portrait of a woman, and the fact that she’s looking directly at the viewer, rather than looking down or off to the side, feels like a bold choice. It always makes me feel like I’ve been transported to a version of Europe that’s long since gone.
Then, there’s Crouching Woman. This painting was created during a period when Picasso was finally getting to enjoy fame and mainstream recognition for his work. And he was finally free to paint as he liked. Unlike Woman With a Plumed Hat, Crouching Woman is monochromatic and … very gray. A woman sits in frame, cross-legged. She’s naked and her private regions have been crudely exaggerated. It was grotesque and strange. It was puzzling and I was into it.
Even back then, it fascinated me to think that these two wildly different paintings came from the same artist. I mean, just across the gallery was a water lilies painting by Claude Monet. Monet is—of course—brilliant, but he basically stuck with one artistic style, impressionism, for his entire career. To me, Picasso was like a magician or an alchemist, except, instead of gold, the thing that he worked to transform was himself.
I consider myself to be a creative person. I write for a living, play the banjo, and love to bake and sew. So ever since those summers, I’ve been fascinated by Picasso. Mostly by his artistic evolution and his ability to reinvent himself over and over again.
So in May, more than 20 years after I first saw those paintings as a kid and 50 years after his death, I traveled to Europe to physically retrace the life of Picasso in the cities that were most important to him. I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of him and to see how the places he lived in influenced his art.
I started at the beginning where Picasso was born in 1881, in Málaga, Spain.
Málaga
I arrived in Málaga on a Saturday morning just as the city was beginning to wake up. Málaga is a popular cruise ship stop along the Mediterranean. The city sits against the Sierra de Mijas mountain range and its boulevards are dotted with flowering jacaranda trees.
Málaga is relatively quiet during the day, but blooms into an entirely different city at night with bouncers, techno music blaring, and hawkers shouting to lure you into night clubs.
In Picasso’s day, though, the village’s economy was fueled by the steel and fishing industries as well as local vineyards, which are famous for muscatel. But Málaga was best known for anchovies. Málaga is so famous for their anchovies that people from Málaga are called boquerones, the Spanish word for the tiny fish. In letters to his younger sister, Lola, Picasso would often refer to her as boquerona.
My hotel was located in the city’s center, which is dominated by the Cathedral of Málaga. Though he wasn’t baptized here, it’s likely Picasso would have at least visited and walked through it a few times.
The cathedral is maybe one of the most metal cathedrals I’ve ever seen in Europe. Rather than the usual configuration of priest and pulpit at the front, the priest gives his sermon in the middle of the church. Rows of pews radiate out from its center like a sun. It reminded me of a megachurch you might see in Texas.
Then, there are the wilted and warped paintings of saints being killed and tortured in gruesome ways scattered throughout the church. Like Saint Lucy plucking out her eyes. Dreary organ music droned on for the entire half hour that I was there. It all felt like something out of a Dario Argento film.
I wondered how everything, the imagery, the music, and the generally spooky atmosphere, might have affected a young Picasso. His family—and especially his mother—was deeply religious. Picasso, of course, was famously atheist.
After visiting the cathedral, I decided to hike to the top of Castillo de Gibralfaro, a Moorish castle and fortress from the 14th century, which overlooks the city. And the thing that immediately caught my eye? The enormous bullfighting ring.
The bullfighting ring was built in 1874, just seven years before Picasso was born. And it was one of the artist’s favorite places in the world, which he would often visit with his father.
Picasso and his father, to put it lightly, had a complicated relationship. If you see some of Picasso’s early works, it’s clear he was already extremely gifted. He painted his first piece, El Picador Amarillo, when he was just eight years old. His father, who was a painter all his life, was quick to pick up on the fact that his son was talented and he was jealous. By the time Picasso was 13, his father felt he had nothing else to teach him.
And he was never quite able to make his father, Jose Ruiz, very happy. His father wanted him to follow artistic tradition and principles—and Picasso did, for a while. But he obviously had other ideas.
All of that drama between them would melt away at the bullfighting ring though. There, they’d cheer on the matadors, the bulls, admire the costumes. Young Picasso was completely taken in by all of the action and excitement.
He once said to the French novelist André Malraux, “The life of the Spanish consists of Mass in the morning, the bullfight in the afternoon, and the whorehouse at night. What element do they have in common? Sadness.”
Bulls, matadors, the crowds—Picasso was obsessed. And these themes frequently crop up in his art. But I think Picasso more so identified with the bull than the matador. The bull is, of course, a symbol of masculinity but it’s also the most sympathetic and tragic character in a bullfight—after all, the bull always dies.
After three days in Málaga, I was sad to leave the town behind. But as I boarded my plane, I was already very excited about the next stop on my itinerary: Barcelona.
Barcelona
Barcelona reminds me a little bit of my current home in L.A. It’s surrounded by mountains and sits next to the Mediterranean.
The heart of Barcelona is the Gothic Quarter. It feels unspeakably old and medieval. It has stone buildings, cobblestone streets, and super narrow walkways. I could totally imagine someone throwing their chamberpot out the window here.
I walked around the city, past dozens of souvenir shops and restaurants with the smell of fresh paella wafting out of them. I also passed through the city’s red light district where you can find dispensaries and also the brothel that inspired one of Picasso’s most famous pieces, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. The painting features five female, naked sex workers, two of which have African-style masks for faces.
By noon, the health app on my phone let me know that I had walked over six miles of the Gothic Quarter. I figured it was probably time to get some lunch. I headed over to the Els Quatre Gats, an art nouveau–style café that was once popular with Picasso and other modern artists and, generally speaking, the cool kids of Barcelona. The name “El Quatre Gats” derives from a Catalan expression that means “just a few people.” That I think is true no more, since the restaurant is now a super popular tourist destination. And I get it. It’s impossible to not fall in love with those Moorish arches, the fanciful woodwork, and that grand piano. It’s easy to imagine yourself in the mid-20th century enjoying an absinthe in a smoky room.
Picasso moved here with his family in 1896 when he was 15 so he could attend the School of Fine Arts. And it was here in Barcelona, with its big city vibes and red light district, where he truly began to rebel. He rebelled against his father, Catholicism, and conventional artistic tradition. And he became something else entirely. Something uniquely himself.
His time in Barcelona, though brief, sparked an intense period of transformational growth. It was around this time that he stopped signing his paintings as “P.R. Picasso” or “Ruiz Picasso” and completely dropped his father’s name. Now, he signed his paintings with just “Picasso.”
It was also around this time that he met his best friend, Carles Casagemas, the man whose death would spark Picasso’s Blue Period. This was also the artistic period that would give birth to one of my favorite childhood paintings, Woman With a Plumed Hat.
Casagemas’s death is romanticized quite a bit by Picasso historians—and wrongly, in my opinion. The usual story that’s told is that he killed himself because he was rejected by a girl. The truth, though, is much uglier. In 1901, he attempted to murder a woman named Florentin who refused to take a stack of love letters that he had written her. He shot at her at a café with a pistol, and thinking he’d killed her—thankfully, he had missed—he turned the gun on himself in front of his actual girlfriend at the time.
After Casagemas’s death, Picasso devoted canvas after canvas to his friend and plunged headfirst into his Blue Period. Poet Guillame Apollinaire said the paintings from this time were “wet and blue like the humid depths of the abyss.”
During my time in the city, I made my way to Barcelona’s Picasso Museum, where I saw one of his portraits of Casagemas. In the painting, Casagemas looks directly at the viewer with intense, beady eyes. It’s an unsettling piece and the darkness of the painting’s background seems like it’s about to swallow him whole. As I stood there in the gallery, I could feel the air of angst and tragedy that seemed to follow Casagemas. But also I wondered how much of his attitude towards women Picasso shared. History says he was not kind to any of the women he was involved with—but that’s a whole other episode.
The next stop on my itinerary was the City of Light. Paris. That’s where Picasso became an international art superstar.
Paris
Paris is one of my favorite cities. I love its Hausmann-style buildings, the art nouveau architecture, and its hundreds of museums. The fact that it’s home to more than one thousand bakeries and patisseries filled with baguettes, macarons, and unbearably cute pastries does not hurt either.
But I think one of the things that truly makes Paris so special is its ever-evolving art scene and its artists. One of its most famous artsy neighborhoods is Montmartre, which has attracted artists like Langston Hughes, Jim Morrison, and, of course, Picasso, over the years. It’s now splattered with graffiti and you’re more likely to see someone in a mesh T-shirt than a cravat nowadays.
Picasso left Spain permanently for France in 1904. He felt like he’d outgrown Barcelona and thought he’d be able to get more recognition—and money—in Paris. But Picasso’s rise to fame in Paris was far from instantaneous. He initially lived there in squalor in a tiny studio apartment in Montmartre with his girlfriend at the time, Fernande Olivier. It was flea-ridden and covered in peeling wallpaper. There were times that he had nothing to paint on except cardboard because he couldn’t afford canvas.
During this time, Picasso was also having political troubles as well. For years, he was monitored by the French police under the suspicion of being an anarchist and communist. It was because, well, he hung out with anarchists and communists. In 1940, Picasso put in a request to become a naturalized citizen of France. He was denied. He never tried again.
But Paris, in time, was good to Picasso. It was here that he became friends with people like Henri Rousseau, Apollinaire, and Gertrude Stein. He rubbed shoulders with the crème de la crème of Parisian society, and saw some of the best years of his artistic career. He created his most famous painting, Guernica, here and showed it at the 1937 Paris Exposition. And through his friendship with poet and director Jean Cocteau, Picasso met his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, a Russian ballet dancer. That relationship, of course, did not last.
One afternoon, I walked around Montparnasse, another neighborhood that was once popular with the bohemian crowd. I passed by La Rotonde, one of the most famous cafes in Paris. It used to be one of Picasso’s favorite places to hang out along with other artists like Cocteau, Paul Gauguin, and Anaïs Nin.
The café is also a favorite of French President Emanuel Macron. Just a month before I arrived, the café had been set on fire by protestors demonstrating against France’s decision to raise the minimum age of retirement to 64.
Today, you can see a huge collection of Picasso’s works at the Musée Picasso in Paris. The museum was founded after Picasso’s death to memorialize his legacy—and also to help his heirs avoid paying a huge inheritance tax. But walking through the museum, I wondered what it would have been like for him to see France devote an entire museum to his work after being rejected by the state—and monitored—for so many years.
Now onto the last leg of my journey to the place where Picasso decided to live out the last years of his life: the south of France.
Antibes and Mougins
The flight into Nice is dramatic. When you land, you can see the tail end of the Alps hugging the French coastline and the Cote D’Azur’s famously blue waters below. Driving through the south of France, it’s easy to see why Picasso decided to retire here in 1955 with his second wife, Jacqueline Roque. It looks quite a lot like Málaga.
Before his move in 1955, he’d previously lived in the south of France, in Antibes, with Francoise Gilot. He also used to frequently vacation in the area when he lived in Paris. Gilot, who was an artist in her own right, left Picasso in 1953. She was the only woman to ever do so. This time around though Picasso decided to stay in the area for good.
Antibes is an adorable little town. Its layout is dominated by Fort Carré, a star-shaped fort from the 16th century. After making a necessary stop to refuel on pastries at a local bakery, I headed over to the town’s Musée Picasso, which is devoted to the latter years of his life.
During his seventies and eighties, Picasso experienced a sort of artistic regression. Not that he declined as an artist—he just began revisiting themes from his youth, like matadors, bulls, and harlequin clowns. He even began painting on cardboard again, even though he didn’t need to financially at this point.
Picasso’s life and legacy dots the entirety of the south of France. In nearby Vallauris, you can find the first statue Picasso donated to the public. It depicts a man holding a lamb. Vallauris is also where he met his second wife, Jacqueline Roque, at a ceramics studio and he also took up pottery there.
Ultimately, Picasso chose to live out the rest of his life in the village of Mougins. It was close to his doctor’s office and he lived there in a 35-room villa. It was a far cry from the flea-ridden Paris apartment he once had.
Mougins is a beautiful town which dates back to Medieval times and spirals up along a hillside. From the top, you can see views of the French countryside, including the nearby town of Grasse. That’s where some of the ingredients for the most expensive perfumes in the world are grown. It’s a very cute place, and today, a large statue of Picasso’s head dominates the road that leads into Mougins.
Sadly, Picasso was never able to return to Spain. I don’t think he planned to leave forever when he did. But he refused to go home while Francisco Franco, who was the dictator of Spain at the time, was in power. Franco passed away only two years after Picasso died on April 8, 1973.
As I walked through the cobblestone streets of Mougins nursing a bag of macarons, I thought about what it might feel like to be homesick for most of your life and to never be able to go home. Before Picasso died, he requested to be buried in a matador’s hat and cape, a callback to happier times at the bullfighting ring in Málaga—it was a detail that I hadn’t known before and I found out on this trip. I found myself tearing up a little.
I also thought about how accurately the different periods of his work reflected Picasso’s life. The traditionally trained years of his youth with his father, the poverty and punk rock–esque rebellion of his Blue Period in Barcelona and Paris, and the eccentricity of his cubist period in France. His works are like a geological record of a human experience.
During my last day, as I continued my walk along Mougins’s quiet streets, I thought about the last 10 days I’d spent in Spain and France trying to understand an artist who’d passed away more than half a century ago. What is it about Picasso’s art that resonates with people to this day?
To me, at least, it was his ability to unabashedly live his life out on canvas with no holds barred. I think back to the very first Picasso’s I ever saw at the McNay museum in San Antonio, Woman With a Plumed Hat and Crouching Woman. They’re like snapshots of his life: one made when he was 20 years old, full of life and rebellion. The other created when he was 77 pushing the limits of what people thought art could be. Despite their aesthetic differences, both paintings are honest, totally unique, and full of emotion—and that’s exactly what I think good art should be.
Aislyn: For more of Mae’s missives on art, culture, and life, including a fantastic essay on what it was like for her growing up in Texas, follow her on afar.com or Instagram—we’ll link to some of our favorite stories from her, including that essay in our show notes, as well as her social media handles. Thank you for listening. Next week, we’ll be back with a story about traveling in Mumbai, India, after a life-changing loss.
Ready for more Travel Tales? Visit afar.com/podcast, and be sure to follow us on Instagram and X. We’re @afarmedia. If you enjoyed today’s exploration, I hope you’ll come back for more great stories. Subscribing makes this easy! You can find Travel Tales by AFAR on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. And be sure to rate and review the show. It helps other travelers find it.
This has been Travel Tales, a production of AFAR Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland. Music composed and produced by Strike Audio.
Everyone has a travel tale. What’s yours?
Ready for more Travel Tales? Visit afar.com/podcast, and be sure to follow us on Instagram and X. We’re @afarmedia. If you enjoyed today’s exploration, I hope you’ll come back for more great stories. Subscribing makes this easy! You can find Travel Tales by AFAR on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. And be sure to rate and review the show. It helps other travelers find it.
This has been Travel Tales, a production of AFAR Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland. Music composed and produced by Strike Audio.
Everyone has a travel tale. What’s yours?
