Francesca Street - Writer and digital producer, CNN Travel
Francesca Street
Writer and digital producer, CNN Travel
Francesca Street is an award-winning, London-based digital journalist at CNN Travel.
Latest
She threw three coins in the Trevi Fountain and immediately met the man she would marry
Jun 27, 2025
American Catherine Tondelli won a trip to Rome, Italy in the summer of 1999. On her first night, she threw three coins in the city’s Trevi Fountain and came to face-to-face with her future husband, local Fausto Mezzana.
She left her home in California to live on a cruise ship for 15 years
Jun 26, 2025
Sharon Lane, 77, has left California behind to live on board Villa Vie Odyssey a residential cruise ship circumnavigating the globe. She says it was the fulfilment of a dream a long time coming.
Her boyfriend fell asleep on the train. Then she spent the six-hour journey talking to her future husband
May 30, 2025
New Zealander Maire Clifford met Edinburgh resident Andy Bain on the train from London to the Scottish capital in the year 2000. Maire and Andy became fast friends and stayed in touch, and then the friendship turned into something more.
Southwest Airlines places new restrictions on portable chargers in carry-on
May 22, 2025
Portable chargers and power banks might be useful additions to your carry-on luggage, but they’re also a potential fire risk. Now Southwest Airlines is tightening rules around their use on board aircraft.
Two strangers met on a train. Then they decided to travel the world together
May 9, 2025
American Savery Moore and Canadian Giselle Ruemke were strangers on a train who bonded over the shared loss of their spouses. Then they became friends and started traveling together.
She took her mother’s old film camera on vacation to recreate her vintage travel photos. Here’s how they turned out
May 5, 2025
When British photographer Rosie Lugg went traveling around Southeast Asia, she decided to recreate her mother’s 1990s travel photos in the process.
He danced in the airport and missed his flight. Then he inspired a TikTok travel trend
May 2, 2025
Here’s why airport dancing has become the latest viral travel trend, with travelers across the world spinning through baggage claim and twirling through terminals, getting millions of views in the process.
They had a teen summer romance. 26 years later, they reunited
Apr 25, 2025
American Kerri Cunningham fell for Brit Dirk Stevens when they met as teenagers on vacation. They were each other’s first love, but lived on opposite sides of Atlantic. Then almost three decades later, they unexpectedly reunited.
She was in a candlelit hut in the Himalayas. Then her future husband walked through the door
Apr 11, 2025
When Jason O’Sullivan walked through the door of Jenny McGowan’s accommodation in Nangi, a tiny village deep in the mountains of Nepal, she couldn’t believe it. This moment was the start of an unexpected love story.
Norovirus outbreak hits more than 240 people on luxury cruise ship
Apr 2, 2025
The infectious gastrointestinal virus has swept through the Queen Mary 2, flagship vessel of Cunard Line, affecting more than 240 people during a return voyage across the Atlantic.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the man she’d glimpsed when her ship visited a remote island. Then he wrote her a letter
Mar 29, 2025
When Alfredo Ovalle and Paula Susarte crossed paths in the Chilean fishing village of Melinka in 1986, they never exchanged a word. In the days, weeks and months that followed, they kept thinking about each other. Here’s how they unexpectedly reunited.
Two sisters with no hospitality experience bought a century-old inn. Here’s how it worked out
Mar 26, 2025
Kristen and Kathryn Groom opened the Rose Manor in Welland, in Ontario, Canada in 2022. Now they welcome guests from across the globe, while their avid social media fans live vicariously through them.
Airline staff ‘were as shocked as we were.’ The passengers caught up in the flight chaos
Mar 21, 2025
Midair turnarounds, last-minute diversions to other countries, boarding planes that didn’t take off — passengers caught up in the global disruption caused by a fire at London’s Heathrow Airport tell their stories.
She asked a stranger for directions on vacation. Two weeks later they were engaged
Mar 17, 2025
Rachel Décoste landed in West Africa’s Republic of Benin in August 2018, anticipating an important journey of self-discovery, but not predicting just the extent to which the trip would change her life.
About
Francesca Street is a London-based digital journalist at CNN Travel. Francesca oversees CNN Travel’s Chance Encounters series, as well as interviewing travelers from across the world about their experiences and exploring travel news. Francesca also reports, hosts and writes CNN’s Chance Encounters podcast series.
In recognition of her work for CNN, Francesca was awarded an MHP 30 under 30 Young Journalists Gold Award in 2019. She also won the Breaking Travel News award at the Travel Media Awards in 2019 and 2020, and picked up Business Travel Journalism Awards in 2020 and 2023.
Five of Francesca’s 2023 articles and four of Francesca’s 2024 articles appeared in audience monitor Chartbeat’s round-up of the most read articles of the year. Francesca’s also been profiled in the Washington Post and was interviewed about her work on CNN’s This Morning show.
