Travel journalism often falls into one of two camps - the highly didactic and servicey piece, "go here, stay there, see that," or the long-winded narrative in which the writer has the experience and we are meant to be satisfied by the first-person blow-by-blow he or she has brought back for us: "the road into town was dusty and unpaved and the driver kept getting lost." The former is best served up by the Internet on demand. You can find all of our hotel and restaurant suggestions for the stories in this issue at tmagazine.com. And the pure version of the latter is perhaps best left to brilliant writers who promise to reward you for coming along (Edith Wharton, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Evelyn Waugh, Jan Morris). There are of course also intellectual and cultural histories of locales, in which the writer seeks to tease out the influences - historical, economic, social, stylistic, culinary and political - that make the place uniquely what it is (V. S. Naipaul, Bruce Chatwin, Ryszard Kapuscinski). The type we favor at T is a hybrid of the three, in which great writing and personal narrative is done in the service of not just traipsing along with the writer who got to go on an amazing journey that we didn't, but of bringing you back a new understanding of a place that is enlightening and satisfying regardless of whether you ever plan to visit. And yet, if you do choose to go, we're there to guide you. In this issue, Gideon Lewis-Kraus susses out the world of Airbnb, a travel phenomenon made possible by the Web, in which one can affordably stay in strangers" homes across the globe, bypassing the polar choices of the impersonal hotel room or the too-personal B&B. As you're dealing with real people and real abodes, not hospitality professionals and rooms spit polished by uniformed maids, there is a quirky, happenstance quality that makes for experiences that at times can be annoying and pretty weird, but also rather great, and even magical - depending on your point of view. In his Yes, Please column, Andrew O'Hagan expounds on the profound sensory pleasures of traveling solo, without dealing with others who might whinge at your proclivity to walk everywhere or force-march you to all the sights when you really just feel like sleeping in. To support his life's work at the Roden Crater near Flagstaff, Ariz., the artist James Turrell does a fair number of private commissions around the world, on sites as diverse as glass houses in the desert and epic estates in the English countryside. Edward Helmore takes us on a vicarious visit to several of these open-to-the-heavens installations, and uncovers a fascinating dynamic between the artist and his patrons - and a body of work as varied as the sky itself. And finally, Adam Sachs profiles the strange and beautiful utopia that is Marin County, which happens to be populated by people defined by their liberal tolerance (so long as no one disagrees with them), their love of nature and open space (despite a serious case of nimbyism), and their defense of free speech (so long as no one is talking about where they live). Their contradictions mirror that of our writer's: "I always sort of want to hate Marin," he says. Of course, "I always fall in love and want to stay." Travel, and travel writing, should be able to open our minds - and even to change them.