Nerds Tour

08/21/2026

There's something very satisfying about making the final reservation for a trip that has been on your bucket list for decades. I did that this week when I reserved a car to drive from Heathrow to the Lake District for four days of adventuring. Decades in the making! It sometimes gets harder the longer it takes. A few years ago I saw Mt. St. Michel, a place I'd dreamed about for even longer, and it did not disappoint. What will the Lake District bring?

I am a student of literature and art, so the Lake District pops up repeatedly when you get to the 19th century, as the world looked back to nature as a reprieve from the mass industrialization and its thick fog of pollution. The poetry and paintings that came from this place are beloved respites for all eras. The Romantics arrived first, and Wordsworth never really left.

And then there's one of my fondest childhood memories — Beatrix Potter. She gave me my first paintings with Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle-Duck and the rest of her creatures. On this trip I want to learn about her as a person, to visit with this incredibly accomplished Victorian woman who defied the restrictions of her gender and thrived.

From my research I've discovered that she is yet another piece of evidence that my theory is true. Geography shapes creativity in profound ways. So, it's finally time for me to visit these places and weep. I'll be there late September into early October. I welcome recommendations.

08/06/2026

I am FINALLY doing my Lake District pilgrimage for all things Romantic. I'll be there in the beginning of October, just ahead of leading a Jane Austen tour in the south.

Please give me any and all recommendations you have for scenic drives/walks, restaurants, and sweet villages. I'll have a car so will be able to find out-of-the-way places. I can't wait to visit the world of Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter. So excited!

08/03/2026

I write a monthly newsletter for people who travel with purpose, even when a destination is where it starts. It's called The Curious Traveler: something personal, a recent trip I built for a client, one thing worth booking now, and a piece of practical advice that isn't selling anything.

This month: a college tour built around the writers a student already loved, where to catch the Northern Lights in Norway before it's overrun, and five novels worth planning a trip around.

If that sounds good, subscribe here: https://7ec37b2e.sibforms.com/serve/MUIFABlccvlFV0CiribgqWFkCprUo90bXEIXe-REEnQMSj9kH9OLSiPoUv6LUbabjWfAvMLx6dNBCjLxtCGEI1tJVPsXOxBS4rKOMTbkfDuLw0v1knIkawQTfsw9SWiJXioesbaD1xccwMkf30hUWvYRyKFTnrGDVAR7I2KGpn1wDmnG7uzK78E7ZAcyZQGaB3EtWHGoAJmqO6m7Vw==

07/08/2026

07/08/2026

There's a moment entering Oxford — right when the modern city gives way to the old one — where a thousand years fall away. The colleges look nearly the same as they did when they were built: stone worn soft by centuries of scholars, narrow lanes built for foot traffic and secrets, gates that have kept things hidden since long before anyone thought to film a mystery there.

That's exactly why I built Murders Most Oxford — six nights following the complete Morse universe across three eras: Endeavour's 1960s Oxford, Morse's 1980s Oxford, and Lewis's Oxford now. You'll sit at the Morse Bar at the Randolph and order what he ordered. You'll stand in Duke Humfrey's Library at the Bodleian, unchanged since the 15th century — the same room that shows up in Morse, in Harry Potter, in Philip Pullman. There's a five-pub Morse crawl, and one full day that's entirely yours: Tolkien's Oxford, C.S. Lewis's, or Oscar Wilde's — your choice.

I've spent a lot of time in this city — it's one of my favorite places anywhere — and I've just finished pricing this tour out. It's ready to book, solo, as a couple, or as a group.

More here: nerdstour.com/curated-trips/murders-most-oxford

07/03/2026

I grew up near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and for most of my life it meant exactly one thing to me: the Lincoln Diner, and the battlefield we drove through to get there.

What I didn't know, until a guided walking tour told me, was who was standing on that ground doing the actual work. When Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery in November 1863, the ground he was standing on had been prepared by Elizabeth Thorn — six months pregnant, left in charge of the cemetery while her husband fought, burying nearly a hundred soldiers herself in the July heat with only her elderly father to help. I'd driven past that cemetery hundreds of times. I had no idea she existed until I stood in front of her statue and a guide told me.

That's what a good guide gives you that a textbook never quite manages: not just the speech, but the woman who dug the ground it was given on.

This is exactly why I believe in being a tourist in your own backyard. There is almost certainly something in your town that a good walking tour would show you that you've never known. If you don't know where to start, search your city on Viator and see what comes up.

Happy 250th to all of us. I hope you spend it pursuing happiness, however you define it.
https://www.nerdstour.com/blog/be-a-tourist-in-your-own-backyard

Photo Credit: The Gettysburg Civil War Women's Memorial, likeness of Elizabeth Thorn. Sculptor: Ron Tunison. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

07/01/2026

I was eleven years old during the bicentennial in July 1976, and I was, without exaggeration, a bicentennial ju**ie. I knew exactly what we were marking and why. I watched the tall ships sail into New York Harbor on television like it was the moon landing. It is one of the last times I can remember the whole country seeming to pause and look at its own history together, on purpose, at the same time.

I have spent a strange amount of my adult life standing in other people's history — Roman ruins, the volcanic black sand of the Canary Islands, the old medina streets of Casablanca. There is something that happens when you do that long enough. You start to notice your own country differently when you come home. You start to feel the weight of the thing that made it possible for you to leave and come back at all.

Happy 250th birthday to all of us. I hope you spend it pursuing happiness, however you define it.

If you'd like to travel with intention and come home seeing things differently, this is what I do. The Curious Traveler is my monthly newsletter — sign up here: https://7ec37b2e.sibforms.com/serve/MUIFABlccvlFV0CiribgqWFkCprUo90bXEIXe-REEnQMSj9kH9OLSiPoUv6LUbabjWfAvMLx6dNBCjLxtCGEI1tJVPsXOxBS4rKOMTbkfDuLw0v1knIkawQTfsw9SWiJXioesbaD1xccwMkf30hUWvYRyKFTnrGDVAR7I2KGpn1wDmnG7uzK78E7ZAcyZQGaB3EtWHGoAJmqO6m7Vw==

06/28/2026

This is the room where Shakespeare learned to read.

King Edward VI School in Stratford-upon-Avon has been operating continuously since the 1400s, and the schoolroom where a boy named William Shakespeare sat and learned Latin, rhetoric, and the classical texts that would eventually become the raw material of every play he ever wrote looks almost exactly as it did then. You can stand in it. The desk at the front belonged to the schoolmaster. The worn wood is the same worn wood. (When you visit, make sure to do fun re-enactments of how schools were run.)

I designed the Shakespeare Adventure as a self-guided tour because Shakespeare's world rewards wandering at your own pace. It begins in Stratford — the schoolroom, the birthplace on Henley Street, Anne Hathaway's cottage just outside town — and then follows him to London the way he would have traveled it himself, with a night in Oxford. That stop is not incidental. The road from Stratford to London ran through Oxford in Shakespeare's time, and the university town that shaped so much of English intellectual life sits waiting between the two, entirely worth a day of anyone's attention.

The tour ends in London, where the Globe Theatre stands on the South Bank of the Thames within yards of where the original stood in 1599.

Most people know Shakespeare the monument. This tour is about Shakespeare the person — where he came from, what shaped him, where he worked, and what is left of all of it, which is considerably more than you might expect.

If you'd like to know more, I'm at [email protected] or you can start here: https://www.nerdstour.com/curated-trips/a-shakespeare-adventure

All photos my own.

06/19/2026

The New York Times is calling it "book-cations" this week — trips built around the places where favorite books are set, where authors lived, or where the conditions are simply right for reading. I have been doing this for a while now, and I have to say it is nice to see the concept get its moment.

If you have been curious about Nerds Tour and what I actually do, this article is a good introduction to the idea. And if it makes you want to talk about where your favorite book would take you, I am right here and I already have some ideas. (Check out the curated tours I've already created.)

Gift link below — no subscription needed.

Resort book clubs, tour companies, hotel libraries and a growing number of literary festivals are offering readers new ways to indulge their interests.