AFAR

Taffy Brodesser-Akner goes to Iceland in search of relief and discovers that the island nation, with its quirky puffins and lunar landscape and crowds upon crowds of American tourists, lends itself well to the pursuit of escape.

David Farley spends a month volunteering in a refugee camp on the Greek island of Chios

To celebrate the release of the 2016 edition of Best American Travel Writing, here’s one of the essays reprinted in the anthology. In it, writer Freda Moon visits her father in Panama on the cusp of having her first child. People kept telling her “having children will change everything,” but her traveling parents taught her that parenting does not spell the end of exploration and adventure.

Colin investigates an unlikely Japanese service: the booming rent-a-friend industry.