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Sign up with them using this special link and you’ll get a free £10 top-up to spend on your next trip - as well as 3 months of Revolut Premium, completely for free.

This offer expires on 31st March 2022, so don’t delay (you’ll need to have a UK residency address and complete at least one outbound transaction to receive your top-up, and it’s for new Revolut customers only). Here’s that link again.

The A-Z Of Amazing Cities: G is for Guadalajara

Today, we’re shining a much-deserved light on gorgeous Guadalajara, Western Mexico - the traditional home of mariachi music, tequila, and, as Culture Trip has argued, a stunning, multi-faceted metropolis that should definitely make it onto your bucket list alongside Mexico City.

What’s the COVID situation?

Mexico remains open to travellers, with no need to provide a test or quarantine - as of March 2022, you’ll no longer need to complete a health declaration form, either.

However, with cases climbing, the state of Jalico has just now in January imposed new internal restrictions. Visitors are now required to show evidence of a negative PCR test or proof of vaccination to attend bars, clubs, or mass events, so do bear that in mind if you plan on heading to any of Guadalajara’s epic yearly festivals (we’ll get to those in a sec).

What should I see?

After you’ve seen the sights of the city’s historic centre, you’re going to want to head to the nearby Chapultepec Avenue - a trendy, bar-filled district packed with sights, sounds, hipsters and global cuisine. For more genuinely local food, take a right turn off the street and head to Bruna, which offers funky twists on traditional Mexican cuisine.

For more relaxed vibes, head south to the town of Tlaquepaque, with its famous craft markets, and Instagram-friendly 'umbrella street'. (Twice a month on a Friday, things liven up as the town's squares are filled with music and dancing.)

Head west out of the city and you can visit Bosque La Primavera, a stunning 35,000-hectare nature reserve beloved by mountain bikers - just keep an eye out for the occasional local puma wandering about on the trail.

North-west is the town of Tequila, which is a gorgeous sight and well worth a visit even if you don’t fancy sinking a glass or two. (If you do visit the town’s many distilleries and agave fields, just remember that in Mexico, salt and lime are a no-no.)

For a truly Tequila experience, you may even want to stay a night at the extraordinary five-star Matices Hotel de Barricas - its guests all stay in one-room buildings shaped like tequila barrels.

It's all awesome stuff, but we’d argue the real draw of Guadalajara is its ludicrously packed annual calendar.

Choose your flight plan carefully, because throughout the year, the city hosts jazzfests, fashion shows, tequila parties, the world’s largest Mariachi festival - while the entire month of October is dedicated to Fiestas de Octubre, a 31-day city-wide party which culminates in the Day of the Dead celebrations.

Anything else I should know?

The city’s ‘low season’ for tourists is June through to September. This is when the city will see high temperatures and a lot of rain, leaving it less than hospitable.

Guadalajara is a big city, although with a lower crime rate than Mexico City, and crime is a risk. Just be sensible and take the usual precautions for your safety - Travel Safe Abroad has some helpful recommendations about what to look out for.

Our Pick of the Clicks

All the important (or silly, or strange) travel news from across the web this week.

• Interrail turns 50 this year! To celebrate, the Guardian has been taking a look at some of the best cheap train journeys across Europe.
• Architectural Digest is showcasing the coolest rooftop bars that have opened around the world.
• Agree with London Stansted’s mediocre reviews? The airport is trying to change that - with £12 million of improvements in its departure lounge which should be rolled out in time for the summer.
• Backpacker has been debunking that old myth - no, you won’t be warmer if you sleep naked in your sleeping-bag while you’re camping.
• If you're arachnophobic, you may want to cancel your plans to visit New York or DC this spring, as a 3-inch species of giant spider is apparently going to swarm across the East Coast from May. (They’re harmless, just very big.)
• Oh, hey - someone’s found the wreck of Ernest Shackleton’s long-lost ship, The Endurance. (An inaccurate name, as it turns out, since it was crushed by pack ice in the Antarctic.)

Follow In Their Footsteps: Nellie Bly

We’re fascinated by the wanderers here at JFC. The travellers, the misfits, the adventurers - and the incredible journeys they undertake.

So we're going to take a look at a few of the most interesting travellers in history, and show how you can follow in their footsteps. Starting with...

Nellie Bly (1864-1922)

Born in Pittsburgh in the mid-19th century, Nellie Bly was a skilled investigative journalist, a world traveller - and a writer who spent her entire life pushing back against the sexist norms of the time.

Bly started her career at the age of 20, when she read a column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch called ‘What Girls Are Good For’, complaining about women who were working rather than focusing on marriage and child-rearing.

Bly wrote a furious, anonymous rebuttal to the paper - and shortly afterwards, found herself hired as a journalist.

She’d spend the next four years trying to write about real social problems (divorce law reform, the lives of female factory workers, conditions in mental asylums) as her editors repeatedly pushed her back towards more ‘womanly’ topics such as gardening, society and fashion.

In 1888, Bly had a master-stroke. She’d travel across the entire world alone, and try and beat the record of Phileas Fogg, the main character in Jules Verne’s famous novel ‘Around The World In Eighty Days.’

Her New York editor (you might be sensing a theme here) refused to let a woman take on this adventure, as “even if it were possible for you to travel alone, you would need to carry so much baggage that it would detain you.”

Bly insisted, and eventually got her way. On November 14th, 1889, she set out alone from New York on an epic eastwards journey that took in Italy, Egypt, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong and Japan.

She returned home by steamship on January 25th, completing her journey in 72 days, beating both Fogg’s time and defeating Elizabeth Bisland, a rival journalist who’d been sent on the same journey by Cosmo Magazine (yes, that one) to try and compete for the title.

Bly was now a record-breaker - the fastest person to travel around the world.

Want to follow in Bly’s footsteps?

We’ve mapped out Bly’s epic journey for you on Google Maps. Thanks to the miracle of air travel, you should be able to manage it in 7 days rather than 72, but here are some of our favourite highlights:

🇫🇷 Amiens, France: This medieval city in northern France was one of Bly’s first stops, where she met up with Jules Verne himself.

You can still visit Verne's house today, but there’s a ton of other sights, from the glorious 13th-century cathedral to the nearby Somme battlefield and the city’s floating gardens.

🇮🇹 Puglia, Italy: Bly was whisked from the train to a Mediterranean steamboat as soon as she arrived in the Italian port city of Brindisi, leading her to wonder “if people always passed through Brindisi without stopping.”

The same is very much true today - travellers tend to pass in and out of Brindisi’s airport in order to visit the prettier towns of Puglia nearby.

Rather than sticking around in town, we’d probably make the 30-minute drive south to Lecce, which boasts both a gorgeous historic city centre and ‘Vincent City’, a brilliantly eccentric and colourful artist’s mansion.

🇪🇬 Port Said, Egypt: Bly’s steamboat passed through Port Said and down the Suez Canal, completed just 20 years previously by the Suez Canal Company.

In her writings, Bly expressed her shock at the brutality of the canal’s construction - while the true numbers were never admitted, over 100,000 Egyptian labourers were estimated to have died during the canal’s construction, working in horrific conditions while being promised payment that never arrived.

The long and tragic history of the canal features in a number of Port Said’s most fascinating historical sights: in between the shops and beaches of the city, you can check out the toppled statue base of the Suez Canal Company’s founder, and a monument to the Egyptians who died in the 1956 Suez Crisis.

🇾🇪 Aden, Yemen: The Foreign Office currently advises against international travel to Yemen - but we couldn't pass up a chance to highlight the ancient and fascinating city of Aden, supposedly as old as humanity itself, where Bly stopped off to admire the local divers.

🇯🇵 Kamakura, Japan: Bly fell in love with the progressiveness of Japan, which she described as “Eden”: she stayed in the Grand Hotel in the city of Yokohama (the Grand collapsed in an earthquake in 1923, but you can book yourself into its 4-star successor, uninventively named the New Grand).

While you’re there, follow Bly’s final footsteps and take a trip to Kamakura, where the journalist was wowed by the coastal city’s colossal bronze Buddha statue and pristine beaches.

Want to learn more about Nellie Bly's travels? We hugely recommend the gripping Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elisabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around The World by Matthew Goodman.

In the sulphuric springs of Tochigi, Japan, a 1,000-year-old ‘killing’ stone has split open - which according to local tradition, will release the ancient fox demon who’s been trapped inside.

Great. That’s just what we need.

(Although murderous fox demon or no murderous fox demon, the hot springs of Tochigi are stunning. Add them to your next travel plans.)

Thanks for reading!