John Henderson's Travel Adventures in Rome and Beyond

January 23, 2020

“The New Pope” a holy new experience for this film extra as an American cardinal

Eighty cardinals stared at me as I walked alone down the Sistine Chapel. I tried not to think about Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino watching my every step or the two cameras I was told not to look at or I’d be shot on sight. Instead, I walked slowly, deliberately, as if in a trance, hoping the ballot I held aloft didn’t fall from my hand […]

January 17, 2020

Heceta Lighthouse B&B a true guiding light for romance on spectacular Oregon Coast

YACHATS, Ore. — As a native Oregonian, I always find myself drawn to Oregon lighthouses, kind of like an inland sailor. It isn’t a need for safe passage to land, as so many boat captains have sought on our rough seas for 120-plus years. It’s more of an assurance of where I’m at, where I’m from, who I am. Living in Rome for 7 ½ […]

January 8, 2020

Why I love Rome: My 6th annual list why la dolce vita is as sweet as black cherry gelato

Six years ago this Saturday I retired to Rome saying I wanted to live the last third of my life in the most beautiful city in the world. Of course, I could’ve been leaping into a chasm of living hell. I had few friends, no girlfriend, a tiny cave of a flat and terrible Italian. Today I have many friends, an apartment nearly as beautiful […]

January 3, 2020

The good and the bad in the U.S. — a hardened expat home for holidays

SAN FRANCISCO — In eight days I’ll have been in Rome six years and a few signs indicate that I’ve gone native. I drink coffee on 95-degree days in July. I speak Italian before I speak English. I turn to ESPN.com’s soccer page before anything else. But as I concluded my recent nine-day holiday visit to the United States, I discovered something else about myself, […]

December 24, 2019

Christmas in Rome: Lighter on the lights but heavy on the meaning

Christmas has special meaning in the center of Christendom, but even St. Peter's Square is understated.

I grew up in the capital of the commercial world and now live in the capital of the Catholic world. It is Christmas time, a time when capitalism and religion merge into a big, sparkling Christmas ball — a green Christmas ball. Comparing Christmas in Rome to Christmas anywhere in the U.S. is like staring at the moon compared to staring at a spotlight. I […]

December 18, 2019

Christmas gifts to the world: Heads up, Washington … here comes Santa from Rome!

Did you know Santa Claus lives in Italy? It’s true. His real name is Santa Clausini. He anglicized it to be accepted in more of the world’s chimneys. He and his elves (actually a self-loathing freelance writer from Oregon) have a workshop in Rome’s Monteverde neighborhood where we think up the perfect Christmas gifts for people around the world. Mostly bad people. As the world […]

December 11, 2019

Top 10 Underrated Towns in Italy for 2020: Get off the well-trodden track

Conde Nast came out with its annual Readers Choice list for the world’s best countries and Italy came out ninth. Italy appearing in a top 10 list is like Alabama football, U.S. billionaires and Harvard. Conde Nast called Italy the “evergreen country.” It’s always there. It’s why I’m here. And I’m not leaving. Next month I will enter my seventh year in Italy, my ninth […]

December 5, 2019

World Travel Market a feast for travel junkies

LONDON — One day recently I went from Iran to South Africa, from Senegal to Bhutan. The next day I journeyed from Bolivia to Belarus, from Cyprus to Pakistan. I gazed at beautiful beaches in the Bahamas. I photographed a gorilla in Uganda. I discovered “The best kept secret in India.” And I never left a building. OK, so I didn’t rake in the airline […]

November 29, 2019

Dubai: The Middle East’s artificial sweetener left me hungry for the real Islam

A former fishing village, Dubai is now the fourth-most visited city in the world with nearly 16 million visitors last year. Dronestaram photo

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Is the Burj Khalifa really the world’s tallest building or is it a giant middle finger to the rest of the world? Yes, Dubai, I now get it. You’re more opulent, extravagant and glitzier than anyplace else on the planet. You build it because you can. It doesn’t matter that you don’t need a 70th shopping center. You have the […]

November 19, 2019

Abu Dhabi: World’s richest city per capita is more than just skyscrapers, opulence, shopping and tourists

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — I don’t believe time machines will ever exist but I came the closest to experiencing one. I just traveled from one of the oldest cities in the world to one of the newest. Flying six hours from Rome (founded 753 B.C.) to Abu Dhabi (founded 1971), I felt like I walked out of the Roman Forum to some megalopolis […]

October 23, 2019

My 5 favorite restaurants in Rome: Affordable, accessible, authentic

I’m often asked if I’d ever live anywhere in Italy besides Rome. I know what they’re getting at. If it’s a woman, she read “Under the Tuscan Sun” and thinks life in rural Italy is all Italian poetry and glasses of Chianti in gardens. If it’s a man, they hated Rome’s filth and have a postcard of Positano hanging on their computer back home. The […]

October 17, 2019

An Italian wedding: Like American weddings but with more romance and … do you have a red suit?

I sipped Prosecco Saturday in the same piazza where Benito Mussolini worked his fascist throng into a froth. I stood in Piazza Venezia, in the shadow of the gargantuan white confectionery monument called Il Vittoriano, in suit and tie, and celebrated the most Italian of Italian traditions. The Italian wedding. No, not mine. It was the daughter of our friends and it was my first. […]

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