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Finally Finding a Durable Travel Hat -- In a Style that Really Fits

1/24/2020

Gear Review By Kelly McDaniel
I have a long and complicated relationship with the sun.
I'm habitually cold, so I'm naturally drawn to its warmth. But my pale skin must hide from it, otherwise I'm in for another painful sunburn.
Hats have become a necessary travel accessory, but my head causes one teensy little problem -- it's about the size of a grape. Hats typically don't fit me.
When I shop for them, I head straight to the children's section and hope that the selection won't be too glittery or cheap. Because, yes, the hat must be functional and fashionable!
So, when Tenth Street Hats offered me a chance to find my dream hat in exchange for an honest review, I was excited to check out the company's lineup of fashionable styles and colors.
I started browsing the expansive website and immediately found several that looked great. But needing a hat that could travel well, I decided to choose a hat from their "Crushable" category, knowing that would be the most practical.
Even after narrowing my choices to only the crushable hats from the hundreds they sell, I still had numerous material options to choose from -- felt, wool, polyester, raffia -- and in multiple styles including beret, rain hats, fedora, safari and more. I chose the hand-crafted "one size fits all" straw Levanzo hat by Scala. It has an adventurous look with its leather chin cord, but it is also feminine with a wide brim.

Once it arrived, I immediately tried it on. Lo and behold, it was too big on me, which I expected. Of course!
However, with every order, Tenth Street Hats includes a two-pack of sizing tape to fix this very situation. I used both pieces and the hat finally was snug enough to stay put. Next, I wanted to test the crushability factor, something I wasn't sure would work.
I've had straw hats before, and they did not bounce back when folded. Actually, they were ruined the moment they were tugged the wrong way. So, when I carefully folded the hat down, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was about the size of a shirt in my suitcase. Letting it go, it instantly went back to its original size and looked as good as new.

I deemed it ready for my next trip -- a cruise along the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. Knowing there would be days of strolling the ship's decks, spending hours at the beach, and taking walking tours through the towns and villages, this trip would test the Levanzo's durability, crushability and its sun protection.
I loved that it would be pretty darn cute, too.
In preparation for my trip, I read the Tenth Street Hats FAQ page to know how to care for my hat. I found the "How To Wear Your Hat" section extremely helpful as I had never worn a large brim hat before (shoutout to the Halo Style!). The website also gives tips on how to measure your head, what size to choose and fitting tips.

When it came time to pack, I folded the Levanzo twice and tucked it into the mesh pocket in the lid of my carry-on suitcase. I then took two flights, a shuttle bus ride and a tender boat trip before I was able to unpack the hat again. After 14 hours of travel, the hat needed a little time to adjust to its proper shape, but it snapped back as if it had never been folded at all. That's when I knew this hat was a keeper.
When I needed both hands to take pictures at the windy beachfront, I simply tightened the leather cord to my chin and the hat stay put even in strong wind gusts. And if you don't want the cord to hang down at all, just tuck it up inside the hat.

The Levanzo is a beautifully tailored and practical addition to my travel hat collection. Interested in adding a new hat to yours? You can check out the full lineup of Tenth Street travel hats to find some styles that suit you and your travel needs.
The company also offers a 30-day, hassle-free return or exchange policy as well as a one-year, craftsmanship guarantee on all hats. Which means they'll replace your damaged hat for free within the first 12 months.
Now if that's not hat happiness security, I don't know what is.

Thanks for reading and remember to always travel happy!
Kelly

Kelly and husband Ryan are the travel vlogging duo at Watch Us Wander, one of our favorite travel partners who frequently collaborate with In The Loop Travel. Check out their YouTube channel and follow their travel adventures on Twitter (@WatchUsWander) and Instagram (@watchuswander).

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We Get Our Fill During the Best Food Tour in Budapest

1/1/2020

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Our guide Gergo has a passion for food. He met the group outside the Central Market Hall in Budapest.

By John Roberts
It's a blazing hot day in the middle of summer in Budapest, and a group of 11 travelers from various parts of the world gather outside the city's iconic Central Market Hall. We come from New Jersey and Kentucky in the United States. And there is a family of four from Australia.
We're hungry to explore one of Europe's great destinations, and Gergo Csada, our guide, has just the plan to weave together the varied flavors of Hungary's cuisine and stories about the fascinating and sometimes troubled history of his hometown and country.
Gergo begins the tour exactly where you would expect. Leading us into Central Market Hall, which sits at the edge of the Danube River on the Pest side of the city just off the Liberty Bridge, he explains that the massive facility is the oldest and largest indoor market in Budapest.
The place is filled with vendors selling foods and goods brought to the market daily, and Central Market Hall is an important part of life for residents as well as a must-see destination for tourists who are interested in sampling the tastes of Hungary.

The tour began with a look around the bustling market and several tastings of traditional Hungarian foods, such as sausages.

The first stop in the colorful and bustling market is a butcher's stand, where slabs of meats fill the glass cases and sausages hang from ropes from beams at the perimeter of the stall. We are here to sample a variety of spiced sausages. The butcher hands over a plank filled with seven types of sausages and salamis. There is pork and beef, and one row that features a distinctly darker meat. It's horse. Some in our group stifle gasps.

Gergo says that while many tourists are not used to seeing horse on the menu back home, the meat is a traditional item used in sausages and stews in Hungary.
No one appears too shocked, and many in our group give it a try. I sample one slice of all seven varieties and note that they are all very fatty but fairly delicious, each with a different level of spice or heat.
We move on to other areas of the market hall, and we watch locals chatting with vendors, ordering fruits, veggies, meats and cheeses that will be taken home and used for the family meals.

Paprika is the spice of Hungary.

Our next stop, we sample fried pork rinds and fried potato cheese bread, or pogacha. Gergo tells us about possibly the two most popular ingredients that are featured in most Hungarian dishes: sour cream and paprika.
Paprika was brought to the region by the conquering Ottoman Empire and has stuck around for centuries since. It's used to add flavor to soups, stews, breads and is universally recognized as a true Hungarian flavor.
Sour cream? Well, sour cream makes everything taste better, any Hungarian will tell you.
"I'm not going to lie and tell you this is the healthiest food in the world," Gergo says. "It's a Hungarian food tour."
He says this as he hands out a favorite treat of Hungarian youngsters. The Turo Rudi is a "healthy" snack bar. Cottage cheese coated with chocolate. We gobble these up as we leave Central Market Hall and head out for more exploration around Budapest.

An ice cream break was an ideal way to cool off on the hot day in Budapest.

Gergo suggests an ice cream stop to get a little relief from the heat. He takes us to his favorite, Levendula. Locals know this as the best ice cream in Budapest. The shop boasts dozens of unique flavors, such as Wheatbeer, Mint Raspberry, Watermelon Mojito, Sicilian pistachios and the namesake Levendula (lavender). It takes a while to order because we are dazzled by all the choices.
It's hard to believe we are just getting started because we've tried so much already.

The immersive tour included neighborhoods around the city, such as the Jewish Quarter,

The Bites and Sights Food Tour takes about four hours to unfold, and we visit the Jewish Quarter to see the Dohany Street Great Synagogue, the second-largest in the world.
It starts to rain in mid-afternoon, and Gergo has us duck quickly into a quirky bar complex just off the street.
"It's good," he says. "I wanted to show you this place, anyway."
We are standing in a courtyard within the walls of a building filled with eclectic art, murals, posters, drawings, and other bizarre decor. It resembles a flea market more than anything else.
This is one of the city's Ruin Bars. In fact, we're in Szimpla Kert, the most famous of these bars, which are housed in old buildings that are uninhabitable but well suited these days as hip urban hangouts for eating, drinking, dancing and live music.

I was pleased that we got to stop into a couple of the city's famed "ruin bars."

The rain lets up and we head out. Gergo promises that we will have a drink at a different Ruin Bar.
Indeed, Csendes is quaint and filled with only locals except for our group. Our drink order includes spritzers. White wine and rose. These are like sports drinks, Gergo says, good for cooling off in summer time. I order a Soproni IPA.
This is just the kind of place you would want to spend a few hours at when out on your own in Budapest.

The food kept coming during the four-hour tour.

We're close to the home stretch. It's Halkakas Fish Bistro for more food. Fried carp, silver carp and olive pate and fried catfish are placed in front of us. We devour it.
Then, Koleves, a quaint eatery with a pretty garden in the Jewish Quarter, for a traditional matzo ball soup and an apricot and mint soup. Finally, we cap our food fest with what every good culinary tour in Hungary must feature: goulash.
Gergo takes us to Ferenc Jozef Sorozo, a restaurant that serves traditional fare, and we plunge our spoons into bowls of hearty goulash, topping them with paprika, of course. We get a sweet finish to our tour.
The final calorie bomb is Hungarian trifle, a layered pastry with sponge cakes, syrup, walnuts, vanilla cream and chocolate sauce.
Somehow, we find room in our stomachs to finish every bite.

Thanks for reading,
JR

We have more Budapest stories:

The World's Top Rated Hotel is in Budapest

The Best Things to Do on Your Visit to Budapest

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I Was on White Island in New Zealand

12/17/2019

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White Island was one of the destinations we visited during a multi-sport adventure in New Zealand with Backroads.

By John Roberts
People around the world are hearing about New Zealand's White Island, perhaps for the very first time, and for an extremely sad reason.
At least 18 people were killed and many others injured when the volcano erupted while dozens of tourists were visiting this fascinating natural attraction.
White Island is located in the Bay of Plenty off the coast of the country's North Island and is New Zealand's most-active volcano. The privately owned island is a destination for tourists and scenic helicopter flights. The island is owned by the Buttle Family Trust and operates as a scenic reserve, which is open to tourism with access granted to designated tour operators.
The island is monitored closely by a government agency that puts out bulletins that warn of increased volcanic activity.
According to an article in Afar, the agency GeoNet "had reported increased activity at the volcano for several weeks, raising the warning level to 2 out of 5, but still reported that the island was safe for visitors. (A level 2 alert means moderate volcanic unrest.) Currently, Krakatoa in Indonesia is also a level 2, as are two famous volcanoes in Italy, Mount Etna and Stromboli."
In the same article, volcanologists said the deadly eruption that happened December 9, 2019, was "the worst kind of freak accident."
This tragedy has stirred emotional reactions for me -- because I spent time exploring during my time in New Zealand early this year. It was an amazing visit, and I considered a highlight of my first time in this beautiful country.
When 17 fellow adventurers and I stepped ashore as a group at White Island, we were traveling with Backroads on a wonderful multisport expedition. We shared a whole range of magical experiences over the course of 10 days during which we went to both the North Island and South Island. Our morning stop at White Island, also known by its Maori name Whakaari, was a low-impact walk and offered a thrilling way to take a bit of a rest from our daily long hikes, bike rides and kayaking activities.
Thousands of visitors come to White Island every year because it is a stunning formation. About 70 percent is under the water, with the cone and crater popped above the surface and easy to reach by small boats.
We landed by Zodiac from our cruise ship, Ponant's Le Laperouse, and wandered ashore to grab gas masks and helmets. Sulphur gasses hung like a mist over the moonscape-like surface, and mustard-yellow colors mixed with the browns, reds and grays in the rocky walls. Small streams of water spilled down the trail, and the waters grew warmer and revealed more colors as we got closer to the crater area. Nearing the crater, the sulfur mists were thicker, requiring those of us who hadn't already done so to place the masks over our mouths and to suck on hard candies to keep from coughing.
We learned that the island is a nesting and breeding ground for thousands of gannet birds and that a number of attempts to build a profitable sulfur-mining enterprise on the island had failed, with the last mining operations ended in the 1930s.
Remnants of the mining operations are still visible on the island, and we saw a few helicopters landing, bringing tourists and scientists.

We got this close to the rim of the crater.

I am glad I got to see such an amazing natural formation. I look at these photos you see here in this post, and I am struck by the fact that the tourists who perished were much like us and probably tracing our footsteps and discussing the same aspects and geological features of White Island, asking some of the same questions that we had of our guides. In short, it could have happened to me and my group of new friends while we were there.
But it didn't.
It happened to them. Why?
Life is mysterious.
Questions arise as to whether tourism should be allowed in such a place. I have also visited Mount Etna in Sicily, Pacaya in Guatemala and volcanos in the Philippines and Hawaii. Hiking in the wilds of Alaska comes with the risk of bear encounters. Scuba diving offers risks, as do helicopter rides over the Grand Canyon and bus journeys on sketchy roads in poorly developed countries.
Many things we do to go out and experience life come with an inherent level of risk.
It's not something many of us typically worry about (too much), or we learn how to suppress our apprehension by weighing it against the rewards of a thrilling new experience.
A stop at White Island was just another in a series of adventures for me, with no concern that this was a dangerous activity, despite it being an active volcano. I'm sure the people who arrived on the day of the fateful eruption also were focused on their visit, excited to see the small island, learn about the history of the volcano, snap pictures and create new memories. Sadly, that visit ended horribly.
I heard that a guide who we had met on our trip was among those who died. My heart aches for his family and all the families who have been affected by this.
Stories are coming out discussing whether volcano tourism is safe. This is always the reaction to such events. As travelers, we have to research and understand the risks of any activities that we choose.
The only way to remove all risk is to shut down and do nothing.
Tour companies and guides must always be transparent with information about an attraction and vigilant in making them as safe as possible. Then, we can make an informed decision about whether it's still something we want to undertake.
The tragedy on White Island reinforces the fact that life is precious and to be enjoyed. We should live it to the fullest while we have the chance.
I'll choose to go forward with the memory of these lost adventurers in my heart. That is the best way I can honor them and make sense of this horrible misfortune.
Thanks for reading,
JR

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Finally Finding a Durable Travel Hat -- In a Style that Really Fits

We Get Our Fill During the Best Food Tour in Budapest

I Was on White Island in New Zealand

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