No one knows a place like the journalists who call it home.

I could’ve sworn I was close enough to touch the cupola of Florence’s Santa Maria del Fiore. In reality, I was perched at an open-air café table, cappuccino in hand, surrounded not by tourists, but by locals on their lunch break. The catch? The café was tucked on the third floor of a library. And that jaw-dropping view of the Duomo? It is arguably Florence’s best-kept secret, which I’d uncovered the old-fashioned way: by reading the local paper.

In our “always online” era, it’s easy to forget that some of the best travel intel still lives in print, especially in the publications that report on the places we’re desperate to explore. But I’ve learned I’m something of an outlier; a current-events junkie who prefers to find her way

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