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A WORLD WHERE THE ACTION HAS NO END. | © 2021 RESORTS WORLD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

ARRIVING JUNE 24

RWL ASVEGAS.COM

UNR IVALED SPACE AT SEA™ The luxury of personal space is central to the promise of An Unrivaled Experience® with Regent Seven Seas Cruises®. It provides the extravagant freedom guests need to explore and relax to the fullest. As the preeminent luxury cruise line on the ocean, we pride ourselves in offering some of the largest balconies and most spacious suites at sea. Our wide range of specialty restaurants, al fresco and in-suite dining options, exquisite lounges, bars and expansive spaces are perfect to rest and celebrate in, knowing there is never a queue or a crowd and that every detail is taken care of and every amenity is included.

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EVERY

LUXURY INCLUDED

CONTENTS

Departments 8 10

Letter from the Editor Discoveries

Find out how out four hotels are creating their own ecosystems; see how global cities are reimagining their green spaces; road-trip in style with a clutch of luxe new itineraries; and more.

Experiences

30

THE HAPPY PLACE

Pharrell Williams and an all-star team open a South Beach hotel designed to make you smile.

34 THE LAKE EFFECT Vintners are defying expectations for Midwestern wine in northern Michigan.

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FOR THE PEOPLE, BY

Two Oregon resorts offer a blueprint for the way public works can benefit tourism.

THE PEOPLE

AGE OF INVENTION

Why Adrian Zecha, the 88-year-old founder of Aman Resorts, has no intention of slowing down.

50

Features 68

PIONEER SPIRIT

STROKE OF AMBITION

An explorer finds adventure closer to home by kayaking the length of Lake Ontario.

54

Intelligent Traveler

Using non-fungible tokens in travel, airlines bouncing back from the pandemic, supporting Black-owned businesses, and more.

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94

Cutting-edge architecture, a commitment to cultural growth, and a focus on sustainability are transforming the image of Doha, Qatar.

A tribute to trailblazing writer and transgender activist Jan Morris.

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RISING FROM THE DESERT

76

A BIGGER CANVAS

Houston’s status as America’s undercover art hub is about to change, thanks to a sprawling museum expansion and a thriving creative scene.

THE FUTURE IS FEMALE

How a new generation of female entrepreneurs is changing the face of the hotel industry.

84 PARIS MATCH The style set has flocked to Hôtel Costes for decades—so the opening of its sibling property, Castiglione, was the perfect opportunity to celebrate summer’s best fashion.

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Your Best Shot

Reader Philip Friedman photographed a futuristic subway station in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

ON THE COVER The rapidly evolving skyline of Qatar’s capital, Doha (page 68).

Photograph by Abi Green.

C L AUDI A URI BE

46

Poolside at the Goodtime Hotel, in Miami Beach (page 30).

Chief financial officer. Caregiver. Eclipse chaser.

A life well planned allows you to

While you may not be closing a business deal and taking your mother and daughter on a once-in-a-lifetime adventure — your life is just as unique. Backed by sophisticated resources and a team of specialists in every field, a Raymond James financial advisor can help you plan for the dreams you have, the way you care for those you love and how you choose to give back. So you can live your life.

C O N T RIBU TOR S

1.

4.

(P. 52)

“I finally felt fit enough to paddle entire days, from sunrise to sunset, toward the end of my journey,” says Rigby, the writeradventurer who kayaked the length of Lake Ontario over 14 days last August.

“Once I became used to the strokes and the endurance I was able to enjoy the incredible surroundings.”

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RISI NG FROM T HE DESERT (P. 6 8)

Doha, the capital of Qatar, went into lockdown just before Green, who lives in the city, was given special permission to photograph there for this issue.

“Everywhere I visited was closed or empty,” she says.

“Having the Qatar National Library to myself was surreal. I fell in love with the architecture while analyzing the details of its design without distraction.”

2.

A BIGGER CANVA S (P. 9 4 )

2

Agresta, a longtime Texan, was familiar with Houston’s cultural scene, but was still surprised by its breadth on a recent visit. “You can spend an entire week doing nothing but look at art without exhausting what the city has to offer,” he says.

“Carve out time to eat, too—the crawfish étouffée at Eunice is up there with the best in Louisiana.”

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T HE F UT URE IS FEMALE (P. 76 )

Talbot, a travel editor and writer who lives in Brooklyn, spoke with six “badass” female hoteliers for this issue.

“A boutique hotel, at its best, is a reflection of someone’s personality,” she says. “I loved hearing about the personal touches that went into creating these women’s dream properties.”

3.

6.

4

5 A BIGGER CANVA S

While photographing the Hiram Butler gallery, Turpin, a born-and-bred Houstonian, recalled seeing two people arriving to pick up their purchased artwork. “Then they sat down with the owner over some Topo Chicos and caught up on life and art,” she says. “It was refreshing to witness that friendliness in a gallery setting.”

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AGE OF I NVENT ION (P. 4 6 )

“The immaculate details at Aman properties have dazzled me since my first stay in 2003,” says the author, who interviewed the “delightfully informal” Adrian Zecha to discuss his iconic career and his latest brand, Azumi. “Even at 88, Mr. Zecha remains impressively precise.” Iyer’s latest books, Autumn Light and A Beginner’s Guide to Japan (Vintage), are available in paperback.

C LO C KW I SE F ROM TO P : Q UEENIE XU/C O URTE SY OF MARIO RIGBY; C O URTE SY OF K ATE T URPIN ; C OURTE SY OF L IN D SAY TALB OT; B RIGI T TE L AC OMB E/C OURTE SY OF PIC O I YER ; SARA AL OB A ID LY/C OURT E SY OF AB I GREEN; C O URT E SY OF MICHAEL AGRE STA

ST ROKE OF AM BI T ION

At the Nexus of Lincoln Center and Central Park An Extraordinary Array of Amenities

INTELLIGENT LIFE DELI V ERING SUMMER 2021 ON E T O FI V E BEDROOM C ON D OMI N IU MS F ROM $2.625M Discover the Model Residences | 200Amsterdam.com | 212.271.3006 THE COMPLETE OFFERING TERMS ARE IN AN OFFERING PLAN AVAILABLE FROM SPONSOR. FILE NO. CD170043. PROPERTY ADDRESS: 200 AMSTERDAM AVENUE. SPONSOR: AMSTERDAM AVENUE REDEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATES, LLC C/O SJP PROPERTIES, 11 TIMES SQUARE, 31ST FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10036. EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY. CREATIVE BY WILLIAMS NEW YORK

LE T T E R

’VE SPENT much of the past year

wondering what long-term or permanent effects the pandemic will have on travel. So far, masks on planes, temperature checks, and, now, proof of vaccination are the norm.

Let’s see where we are in 2022.

Our July issue, dedicated to innovation in our industry, comes after months of research by the editorial team. It touches on the launch of customer-service-focused airlines; NFTs as a brag-worthy splurge; subscription-based global philanthropy; hotel groups expanding into the vacation-home game; and much more. There are wellness trends to dabble in—fresh takes on traditional Chinese medicine and nonalcoholic spirits, to name just two—as well as an emphasis on tracing where our travel dollars end up.

Several stories give voice to the people who are showing us how to move about now, consciously and with intention. In this strange pandemic season, Toronto-based Black explorer Mario Rigby turns to his own province for adventure, finding solace in a 14-day kayak trip on Lake Ontario. Aman Resorts founder Adrian Zecha, profiled by Pico Iyer, shares what it is like to launch yet another hotel brand (his third), this one marrying luxury and comfort with history and a sense of place. And Lindsay Talbot meets the new generation of female entrepreneurs behind boutique properties throughout the United States. Their welcoming spirit can be felt in everything: the design, the food, the ethos behind the staffing. I call it Hotel as Home, 2.0.

Certain destinations are leading the way, too, whether it’s Houston, now a contemporary art mecca thanks to the opening of the Kinder Building at the Museum of Fine Arts; the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, an unlikely spot for bold, biodynamic wines; or Doha, Qatar, a city that, through sheer ambition, has created aweinspiring architectural treasures in the middle of the desert. We recognize that improving rights for women, the LGBTQ community, and migrant workers in that region is an ongoing struggle. On paper, these challenges may seem too great for one individual to have an effect on.

As editors, we aim to provide tools to help you navigate an increasingly complex world. For the rest of this year and beyond, here is my goal: to reach out, meet someone with a smile, and open my eyes to what the future of travel is all about. And that is empathy.

I

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FROM MY TRAVELS Recent excursions in New York City included a tram ride to Roosevelt Island to visit Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park (fdrfour freedomspark.org). This stunning, four-acre memorial designed by Louis Kahn is coming up on its 10th anniversary; a renovation, now in progress, will provide more access to those with mobility challenges.

In April, I reserved tickets at the New York Botanical Garden (nybg. org) to see the

@jacquigiff jacqui.gifford@meredith.com

magnificent Yayoi Kusama installation, “Cosmic Nature.” It was a hit, deservedly so, with visitors lining up for photos with her signature pumpkins, as well as the tulips and daffodils, all a riot of color.

The scene at the Mark Hotel (themarkhotel. com; doubles from $925) is in full swing, with restaurant tables and a seasonal hot dog stand adding life to Madison Avenue. And the newly reopened Mandarin Oriental, New York (mandarinoriental.com; doubles from $845) is drawing loyalists back to Columbus Circle— particularly because of its excellent spa, which has some of the best therapists on the East Coast. And those views!

I hadn’t been in more than a year, so looking out at Central Park from the 35th-floor MO Lounge put me on cloud nine.

C OURTE SY OF JAC Q UEL INE GIF F O RD

Jacqui snaps a selfie in front of the Manhattan skyline on a trip to the Four Freedoms State Park, on New York City’s Roosevelt Island.

c o u n t ry r oa d s ta k e m e s ta r g a z i n g .

A cozy cabin. A starlit night. Stargazing with the family is an otherworldly experience in West Virginia. The Mountain State is home to some of the clearest night skies east of the Mississippi, offering so many spots to sit back and marvel. Further proof you’ve just discovered Almost Heaven.

WVtourism.com

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The events of the past 18 months have inspired many of us to reevaluate who we buy from, where we stay, what we eat, and how we define a dream vacation. And innovators around the world are taking notice. Read on for our guide to the trends you’ll be seeing in the years to come: museums breathing new life into old spaces, hotels pushing the boundaries of sustainability, trips that actually help mitigate the impact of overtourism, and more.

EDI TED BY EL I Z AB E T H CAN T REL L AN D HAN NAH WAL HO UT

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D I S C O V E R I E S

Cities Are Getting Wilder...

NAIROBI NATIONAL PARK isn’t on

the must-see list for most travelers to Kenya, who are more likely to head straight to the vast, predatorfilled savannas of the western Masai Mara or south to Amboseli National Park to see big-tusker elephants.

Yet the relatively diminutive reserve—47 square miles of acaciadotted savanna south of the city center—has long punched well above its weight as a symbol of pride for many Kenyans.

Here, in the world’s only urban game reserve, many young Kenyans

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had their first experiences with wildlife—in the actual wild, rather than in a zoo. It’s the training ground for the country’s thriving guide industry, as well as the site of several elephanttusk burnings held in protest of the illegal wildlife trade. (Enormous ashen mounds of tusks are still on display as a sobering reminder.) During the travel bans of the COVID-19 pandemic, the park also served as a respite for thousands of locals who were ordered to stay within city limits.

Nonetheless, Nairobi National Park has struggled to survive decades

of aggressive urban expansion.

Since its founding in 1946, the area has been under constant threat of encroachment from private and public developers. Some of their efforts have been successful: in 2019, an elevated railway was constructed, and conservationists are concerned about current plans to fully enclose the park, which currently stands open on its southern border to allow for wildlife migration.

But there are glimmers of hope.

In September 2020, Kenyan officials announced the protected land

BUENA V I STA I MAGE S/GE T T Y I MAGE S. PRE V IOUS SPRE AD : PE T ER B OH LER

The Kenyan capital of Nairobi—the only metropolis where you’ll find endangered black rhinos roaming freely in their natural habitat—just doubled the size of its national park. Will other places follow suit? BY JENNIFER FLOWER S

...And Greener Expanded parks, alfresco museums, and repurposed streets are encouraging urbanites to get outside.

O S SI P VAN DUI VENB OD E/ C OURTE SY O F DEP OT B OIJ MANS VAN BEUNI NGEN

BY TO M AU ST I N

would more than double in size, thanks to a collaboration with the International Livestock Research Institute and the Swara Plains Conservancy. Together, the groups donated over 47,000 acres of park-adjacent land, which, along with another 2,000 acres from the government, expanded the habitat to 122 square miles.

The new land will connect Nairobi National Park to key migration corridors, explains Najib Balala, Kenya’s cabinet secretary for tourism and wildlife. Balala hopes to take protections a step further by developing a management plan that, if approved, could prevent the government from taking land from the park in the future. “Tourism has financed conservation and created jobs and wealth for this country,” he says. “And without conservation, we can’t have tourism.

We have had time to reflect, and we’ve had time to engage.”

For visitors willing to take a couple of hours and drive through the park, the sight of Masai giraffes grazing with the Nairobi skyline in the background is a reminder that no matter how far removed we feel from nature, we are still very much a part of it—and now, more than ever, we must find ways to coexist harmoniously.

Micato Safaris can plan custom Kenya itineraries that include a visit to Nairobi National Park. micatosafaris.com; from $950 per person per day (based on double occupancy).

WALK (OR BIKE) THE LINE Last spring, Milan launched an open-streets project, Strade Aperte (comune. milano.it), which improves car-clogged avenues by adding bicycle lanes and pedestrian-friendly widened sidewalks. And this year, the city announced a series of “parklets” carved out of decommissioned parking lanes.

Set on a quarter-mile stretch of elevated railroad track, Philadelphia’s Rail Park (therailpark.org) is the latest project from the High Line Network, the group behind Manhattan’s High Line. Sitting on a wooden swing while taking in views of steel beams and an epic Shepard Fairey mural feels like a waltz between past and present.

CAMP OUT FOR THE DAY Raleigh, North Carolina’s 308-acre Dorothea Dix Park (dixpark.org)—with its Sunflower Field and large meadows for outdoor movies and yoga classes—is making a name for itself as the Central Park of the South. Construction began in January on a new greenway

that will connect it with other downtown destinations like the North Carolina Museum of Art. In Auckland, New Zealand, Cornwall Park (cornwallpark. co.nz), which is nestled in an extinct volcano, is known for the 360-degree views from the peak at One Tree Hill. Thanks to 6,000 new plantings of native species such as New Zealand irises, locals say the lush landscape now brims with what the Maori call mauri, an essential life force that flows through the natural world.

PAUSE TO REFLECT This September, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (boijmans.nl), in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, will debut the world’s first art-storage facility that’s entirely open to the public. Visitors will be able to see the museum’s whole collection of more than 150,000 works.

In Charleston, South Carolina, the African Ancestors Memorial Garden at the International African American Museum (iaa museum.org), which opens in 2022, sits on the site of Gadsden’s Wharf, where enslaved Africans were brought after enduring the Middle Passage. Designed by MacArthur Fellowship recipient Walter Hood, the garden has “hush harbors,” echoing the secret landscapes where enslaved people gathered to celebrate their culture and keep their traditions alive.

The groundbreaking Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

D I S C O V E R I E S

Over 100 mammal species, including giraffes, leopards, and buffalo, call Nairobi National Park their home.

D I S C O V E R I E S

Road Trips Are Going Luxe High-end itineraries let you explore the world on wheels, no kitschy motor lodges involved.

BY KAREN CATCHP OLE

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THE SEARCH FOR SAFE travel during the

pandemic sparked a sustained wave of interest in traveling by car. Some people can’t wait to plot routes, research sights, and tune up their car-maintenance skills.

But if getting under the hood isn’t your idea of fun, don’t worry. Luxury travel companies are offering their own twists on the classic driving vacation—handling all those pesky practical details so you can enjoy a hassle-free journey through some of the most beautiful places on the planet.

Aman Driving Journeys (aman.com; from $9,760 for four nights) are based out of Aman hotels in destinations including southern Europe, Morocco, the western U.S., and Japan, where a stop at Amanemu, on Ago Bay, includes track time at the Suzuka Circuit Grand Prix course. You can have your own

car shipped in or choose from a stable of vehicles—including BMWs, Ferraris, and off-road-ready SUVs—then set off with a personalized itinerary preloaded on an iPhone. Break up the drive with recommended photo stops, gourmet picnics prearranged by hotel staff, or reservations at local-favorite roadside restaurants. And no need to worry about breakdowns: a support vehicle is never far away.

The Patagonia Revealed Safari from Quasar Expeditions (quasarex.com; from $6,750 for eight nights) sets you up in a new Jeep Wrangler—complete with stocked cooler, binoculars, and iPad loaded with your itinerary—to explore this mountainous region of Chile and Argentina. (You can also let a guide take the wheel.) The route includes

F RO M LEF T: C O URT E SY O F AMAN; C OURT E SY O F Q UA SAR E XPEDI T IO NS

From left: Aman’s Mountain Roads of Italy itinerary winds through the rugged Dolomites; a Jeep Wrangler from Quasar Expeditions at Paine Grande, in Chilean Patagonia.

From Asheville to Athens, neglected buildings are getting second lives as dynamic centers of culture. BY TO M AU ST I N

the massive Perito Moreno glacier and a rarely visited part of the Sierra Baguales, where you can see fossils on a guided hike, followed by a cave picnic of Patagonian meats, cheeses, and wines. Rest at some of the area’s best hotels, including Tierra Patagonia Hotel & Spa, on the edge of Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, and Eolo Lodge, in El Calafate, Argentina.

South American travel company Explora (explora.com; $1,200 per person per day, all-inclusive) has relaunched its Travesía (Spanish for “nomadic journey”) between Chile’s Atacama Desert and the 4,000-square-mile Uyuni Salt Flat in Bolivia. Two guests travel in a dedicated 4 x 4 Land Cruiser with a local driver—this route is unsigned, unpaved, and sometimes technical—plus an Explora guide with Wilderness First Responder certification. (Also included is a supply of supplemental oxygen; elevations range from 7,000 to 13,000 feet.) During the day, your job is to go hiking and biking, spot flamingos, and admire volcanoes, geyser fields, and multicolored lakes.

At night, enjoy regional cuisine cooked by personal chefs and head out for astronomy expeditions to take in the skies, which are almost entirely free of light pollution. You’ll stay in sustainably built Explora Mountain Homes along the way, plus the new Explora Uyuni Lodge at the edge of the salt flat.

I LLUSTRAT IO N BY CARIBAY MARQ UINA

TUNES IN A TOURIST COURT In 1947, Fred “Rabbit” Simpson opened Rabbit’s Motel & Café in Southside, a historically Black neighborhood in Asheville, North Carolina. It quickly became a refuge for Black travelers—including chitlin-circuit entertainers like Richard Pryor and Jackie Wilson. Now, after an 18-year closure, Rabbit’s is back for an encore. This year, Asheville musicians Claude Coleman Jr. and Brett Spivey founded SoundSpace@Rabbit’s, a community music venue that, when complete, will offer rehearsal studios, outdoor concerts, and a soul-food restaurant. According to Coleman, the new incarnation of Rabbit’s “reconnects the city with the lost history of Asheville.” soundspaceavl.com.

A WORLD-CLASS MUSEUM IN A POWER PLANT Helsinki’s Suvilahti district is already brimming with galleries, vibrant street art, and artists’ studios. With the news that the coal-fired Hanasaari power plant will be decommissioned by 2024 and turned into an as-yet-unnamed museum, the Finnish capital

may soon have its very own equivalent of the Tate Modern. (The London museum is set in the former Bankside Power Station.) In an even bigger move, the Helsinki Art Museum—currently housed in the Tennispalatsi building, which was originally constructed for the 1940 Summer Olympics—is considering a city proposal to relocate to Suvilahti. If the move goes through, it will cement this once-industrial area’s place as Helsinki’s new cultural heart. suvilahti.fi.

CONTEMPORARY ART IN A TOBACCO FACTORY This year marks 200 years since Greece broke free from the Ottoman Empire. To celebrate the occasion, the Hellenic Parliament and the arts organization NEON have joined forces to turn Athens’s Lenorman Street Tobacco Factory (built by the government in 1930) into a contemporary art center. The inaugural exhibition, “Portals,” features works by 40 international artists, including American painter Glenn Ligon and visual artist Maria Loizidou, of Cyprus. neon.org.gr.

D I S C O V E R I E S

Adaptive Reuse Is the New Normal

E XQ U I SI T ELY C R A F T ED C U I SI N E . C U R AT ED T R AV EL E X PER I EN C E S . S M A LL S H IP LU X U RY. C ALL 855- OCE ANIA ( 855- 623-26 42) | VISIT OCE ANIACRUISES.COM / TL | CONTAC T YOUR TR AVEL ADVISOR

Hikers on a Royal Mountain Travel trek in Nepal.

D I S C O V E R I E S

Giving Globally Is Easier Than Ever A simple subscription helps direct cash to the causes you care about most.

BY S C OT T BAY

Interest in the Himalayas is bringing an influx of travelers to some of the most remote places on earth. As KAMAL IKA MUKH ERJ EE reports, companies there are setting an example for how to put tourism dollars to good use.

the Himalayas have seen a nearly 50 percent surge in tourism, with trekkers flocking to popular routes in India, Nepal, and Bhutan. This creates a source of income for those living in the mountains, but the negative effects can be significant: once-untouched areas are now littered with plastic waste, and development has led to deforestation, pollution, and loss of farmland. A steaming bowl of thukpa, a spicy noodle soup, against the scenic foothills might make a perfect Instagram photo—but with more and more people angling to get the shot, overtourism is a major risk.

In response, a number of hotels and tour operators in the Himalayas have embraced an approach that centers on social impact and “slow travel”—prioritizing the well-being IN THE PAST DECADE,

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of the environment and local communities. Royal Mountain Travel (royalmt.com.np), which operates adventure tours across the region, helped set up the Community Homestay Network (community homestay.com) to create employment opportunities for Nepali women in rural areas. (Plus, their Kathmandu offices are solar-powered, and the company is actively working toward carbon-neutrality.) On India and Nepal treks with Global Himalayan Expedition (ghe.co.in), travelers install solar panels and digital infrastructure in remote mountain areas to bring electricity and Internet access to whole villages. JW Marriott Mussoorie Walnut Grove Resort & Spa (marriott.com; doubles from

$250), in Uttarakhand, India, works with vendors to source staples like

initiatives, such as a plastic-recycling plant in Uganda or coastal preservation in Indonesia.

Planet Buyback vets potential recipients based on factors like leadership, scalability, and fiscal transparency. Final selections are then made by cofounder Gillian Wynn, who sits on the leadership council for Conservation International (she is also the daughter of billionaire hoteliers Steve and Elaine Wynn).

Luchaire believes Planet Buyback has strength in numbers: after all, if 1 million people give just $5 a month, it becomes a sum with a wide reach.

millet, turmeric, and basmati rice— supporting farmers across 26 nearby villages. The young Stanford grads behind Project Karuna (projectkaruna. com) organize luxury itineraries and share profits with local organizations and rural activists. And Ecosphere Spiti (spitiecosphere.com) has worked in sustainable travel in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh for nearly two decades, running homestays, planning volunteer programs like building greenhouses, and employing locals to teach workshops in traditional pottery or making churpi (yak’s-milk cheese).

“We can no longer ignore the negative impacts of travel in the Himalayas,” says Ishita Khanna, Ecosphere’s cofounder. “We need to adopt a more sustainable, responsible approach that maximizes gain for the people and places we visit.”

C O URT E SY O F ROYAL MOUNTA I N T RAVEL

Expeditions Are Making a Greater Impact

So you want to save the world (or at least make it better). Where do you start? Like many people, entrepreneur Lulu Luchaire was often frustrated at the complexity involved in choosing charitable organizations. “I never knew where to put my dollars or what projects were most urgent,” she says. “So I decided to create a very simple platform where you give monthly, and experts handle the selection of the projects.” In February, Luchaire founded Planet Buyback (planet buyback.com), which supports land and ocean conservation by funneling monthly subscriber contributions to eco-conscious

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D I S C O V E R I E S

THE ZERO-PROOF TREND IS HERE TO STAY Alcohol-free “spirits” are having a moment, as more and more people look for ways to cut down on booze. HANNAH WAL HO UT rounds up eight brands for the home bar cart.

FIGLIA Lily Geiger, who launched this aperitivo brand earlier this year, was inspired to explore zero-proof

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alternatives after losing her father to alcoholism. (Figlia means “daughter” in Italian.) Fiore, the company’s first blend, is fragrant with clove and bitter orange—and a portion of every purchase goes to support the Partnership to End Addiction. drinkfiglia.com, $43.

GNISTA When founder Erika Ollén stopped drinking, she noticed a gap in the market—clear botanical distillates were all the rage, but there was little out there for those who preferred darker, more complex aged spirits.

Gnista offers two compelling entries: Floral Wormwood, great for mixing into an aromatic cocktail, and Barreled Oak, smoky, smooth, and perfect on the rocks. gnistaspirits.com, $25.

TÖST Just because you’re cutting down doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate with something bubbly. Töst was created as a champagne alternative that feels just as special—a lightly sweet quaff rounded out with ginger and white tea. Also available: a summery sparkling rosé infused with elderberry. tostbeverages.com, $9.

P HOTO GRAP HS BY HE AM I L EE

PROP ST YL IN G BY MI AKO K ATO H

GHIA Mediterranean ingredients like fig, acacia, and lemon balm come together in this brand’s sunny crimson aperitif, which also contains a healthy dose of nervines—natural ingredients used in herbal medicine to soothe the nerves. If amaro and soda is your thing, you’ll also love Ghia’s justreleased Le Spritz, available by the can. drinkghia.com, $33.

PROMOTION

Limited Edition

While quantities last. *Taxes and shipping fees apply.

D I S C O V E R I E S

PROTEAU These batched drinks are the brainchild of John deBary, an awardwinning mixologist who served as bar director of the Momofuku restaurant group. Both bottles are named after New York City streets: Rivington Spritz is refreshingly fruity and fizzy with a hit of vinegar, while Ludlow Red is a more savory blend that’s great for pairing with food. drinkproteau.com, $20.

APLÓS Positioning itself as the first hempinfused nonalcoholic spirit on the market, Aplós aims to replicate the relaxing effects of alcohol with cannabidiol, or CBD. Mix it up in a mocktail (it plays nicely with citrus) or enjoy the cloudy, rosemaryinflected elixir on the rocks. aplos.world, $48.

OPTIMIST Three carb-free flavors fill in for liquor-cabinet essentials: Bright,

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a vodka alternative with notes of lemon and tangerine; Fresh, with botanicals like jasmine and juniper for a ginlike character; and Smokey, which goes down like mezcal with warmth from cinnamon leaf, ginger, and Lapsang souchong. optimistdrinks.com, $35.

CEDER’S This range of nonalcoholic gins nods to the roots of founders Craig Hutchison and Maria Sehlstrom—flavored with botanicals from South Africa’s Cederberg mountains and distilled in Sweden using pure spring water.

The newest in the range, Pink Rose, combines classic juniper with sweeter, more floral notes, like hibiscus. cedersdrinks.com, $22.

Many of the products featured can be found at Better Rhodes, the largest U.S. online retailer for nonalcoholic beverages. betterrhodes.com.

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The World of Fashion Is Getting Wider A new platform leverages technology to connect independent designers with luxury style lovers around the world. BY KEL SEY MARIE

curator and storyteller Nisha Kanabar founded Industrie Africa (industrieafrica. com), her mission was to challenge misconceptions about her homeland and introduce consumers to African high fashion.

Since 2018, the online store has made it possible to shop the best designs from across the continent, such as sculptural swimsuits from Nigerian label Andrea Iyamah, artful resort wear from Tanzanian designer Doreen Mashika, and head-turning hats from South African milliner Crystal Birch. But beyond creating an e-commerce site, Kanabar also wanted to provide education for shoppers and exposure for designers. That’s why Industrie recently launched IA Connect (connect.industrieafrica. com)—a platform that includes a comprehensive designer index with WHEN TANZANIAN

Clockwise from top: Lisa Folawiyo pleated coatdress, $1,080; Dapple earrings by Ami Doshi Shah, $275; Khokho Collection Lindi minaudière bag, $385.

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in-depth spotlights on more than 80 emerging and established fashion figures. These include Nigerian textile artist Lisa Folawiyo, South African designer Lukhanyo Mdingi, and Kenyan jeweler and silversmith Ami Doshi Shah; each page has a detailed overview of the creator and their brand, along with look books, contact info, accolades, and press coverage. In addition, IA Connect

Putting Hyper-Local Design on the Map TALLER MAYA To help keep heritage Mayan crafts alive, Taller Maya collaborates with 42 artisan workshops in 32 communities in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula to create pieces like baskets

and textiles— establishing sustainable sources of income in rural areas. tallermaya.org.

LOOM TO LUXURY This studio in Varanasi, India, combines age-old Banarasi silk handloom weaving with modern designs, supplying materials for international brands such as Maiyet, Cienne, and the Row. instagram. com/loomtoluxury.

SIDAI DESIGNS An accessories and homewares brand that provides training and income to Masai women in Tanzania while preserving traditional beading techniques. Customers can even create their own wall hangings or bracelets, drafting a design in collaboration with the team in Arusha. sidai designs.com.

— K.M.

Clockwise from left: KikoRomeo’s Blinky jumpsuit, $345; Tongoro Folo set, exclusive to Industrie Africa, $240; dresses by Doreen Mashika, from $200; made-to-order Loza Maleombho Koh sandals, $135; handwoven pieces from Lukhanyo Mdingi, a featured designer on IA Connect.

Beauty Is Going Back to Basics Why traditional Chinese medicine may become your next skin-care obsession.

CLO CKW ISE FRO M TOP RIGHT: JE S SICA MI LLER/ C O URT E SY OF REDMINT; C OURTE SY OF Y INA (2); C O URT E SY O F I ND UST RI E AFRICA (8)

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features the first-ever African Fashion Calendar, a lineup of the most important industry events on the continent and beyond, including South African Menswear Week (July 9–10) and African Fashion Week London (August 9–10). “IA Connect will be an authoritative resource, taking what we’re already doing and going a step further, digging a little deeper,” Kanabar says. “Industry insiders are finally able to navigate the African fashion landscape in an intuitive, professionalized way. And locally, we’re able to support the next generation of talent.”

As a child, Tina Chow Rudolf would watch her mother spend hours applying oils, masks, and creams after a long bath. “Taking care of her skin was taking care of herself,” she says. Tinctures, teas, and soups with ingredients like goji berry were used as remedies for common ailments.

Today, Rudolf honors those routines with her brand Strange Bird (strangebirdbeauty.com), which incorporates the tenets of traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM. TCM is a whole-body approach to healing that focuses on keeping one’s qi, or life force, in balance, through treatments like acupuncture, gua sha, and herbal remedies.

It has been practiced for more than 2,500 years, mostly in East Asian communities. But with the worldwide rise of “clean” beauty, it’s finding a broader audience—and Asian-womenowned brands are at the helm.

Ervina Wu knows the healing power of TCM firsthand. While undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, she turned to TCM (in which she holds a Ph.D.) to alleviate negative side effects.

She later cofounded Yina (yina. co), a beauty and wellness company built around the TCM principle of yangsheng, or “nourishing life,” which encourages small, daily actions to promote longevity, such as using different products at certain times of year. “In Chinese medicine, every two weeks there is a

shift in energy,” Wu says. “We want to be mindful about which plants we use and when.”

Helina Fan also found relief from health problems through TCM. Her skin-care and supplement line Redmint (redmint. com) follows the philosophy of jun-chen-zuo-shi, in which each botanical plays a distinct role (sea buckthorn targets dry skin, for example, while reishi mushroom helps with inflammation).

Redmint’s name also honors a core principle of TCM: balance.

“Red means fire and passion, and mint symbolizes cooling and serenity. It’s our modern way of saying yin and yang.”

All three founders emphasize that skin care is an opportunity to not only improve how you look, but also how you feel. Says Rudolf, “I want my customers to look in the mirror and release whatever is not serving them.”

Yina Recovery Body Treatment, $125, and Fortify Botanical Serum, $75. Above: Ingestible herbal extracts from Redmint, $25.

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A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP IS WORTH THE JOURNEY Each Tree House room at Post Ranch Inn has a skylight for bedtime stargazing.

After a year without precedent, travelers are looking for ways to unlock the secret of sweet, sweet slumber.

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says clinical psychologist Michael Breus, Ph.D., addressing our small group in the sun-drenched herb garden. “The more you look for it, the less it shows up.”

Breus, a.k.a. the Sleep Doctor, has come to Post Ranch Inn—the iconic cliff-top hotel and spa set amid the towering redwoods and crashing surf of Big Sur, California—to help each of us find a night of truly restorative rest. Collective anxiety has soared during the pandemic, and the quality of our sleep has been seriously affected.

Post Ranch Inn’s new sleep program aims to combat what some experts have dubbed coronasomnia with a holistic assault on insomnolence. The retreat includes carefully curated meals, handpicked spa treatments, and— most importantly—detailed coaching from the Sleep Doctor himself.

I felt at peace as soon as I arrived.

On my clock-free night table I found a neatly boxed collection of bedtime amenities: soothing sprays concocted with valerian root and magnolia bark,

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blue-light-blocking glasses, and one of the most ridiculously luxurious sleep masks I’ve ever seen.

The next two days were a crash course in sleep science. I learned about chronotypes, which

Where to Drift Off Across the Globe THE HIGH-TECH APPROACH: GERMANY Tucked away in the foothills of the picturesque Bavarian Alps, Lanserhof Tegernsee’s sleep program is part science, part Star Trek.

Using polysomnography, the hotel’s experts record all of your sleep data, from brain waves and breathing to heart rate and eye movement, to resolve even the most fiendish of

determine our bodies’ natural inclination to sleep at a certain time, and upgraded my pre-bed preparation with tart cherry juice and a hot shower. I also picked up a breathing exercise to cope with

issues. lanserhof. com; LANS Med Cure Classic program from $9,400 for seven nights with accommodation, meals, and sleep therapies.

THE HOLISTIC APPROACH: MALDIVES During the 90-minute Sleep Ritual at the palatial One&Only Reethi Rah, a trainer will identify your current sleep patterns and guide you through meditation, breathing, and visualization techniques to erode stress and anxiety. It all culminates in a deep-tissue body-and-scalp massage to clear your

mind. oneandonly resorts.com; sleep ritual from $388 per person.

THE NATURAL APPROACH: DOMINICA Secret Bay, an all-villa rain-forest resort, offers a Slept Away program in which guests can choose their own mattresses, sleep aids, and pillows before enjoying über-tranquil days beginning with sunrise treetop yoga and ending with a cup of specially brewed herbal tea. secretbay. dm; villas, including sleep program, from $833 per night.

KODI AK-GREENWO OD /C O URTE SY OF P O ST RANC H I NN

LEEP IS A LOT like love,”

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middle-of-the-night disruptions (inhale for four seconds, hold for seven, exhale for eight, repeat).

Each evening, I dined from a special sleep menu (created by Reylon Agustin, former executive chef at nearby Rosewood Sand Hill) designed to supplement the body with ingredients like magnesium, which is nature’s sleeping pill, as well as spark production of melatonin, known to encourage deeper sleep.

Meanwhile, my days were filled with treatments like yoga nidra, a form of guided meditation sometimes known as yogic sleep, and the Sound Sleep Experience, a sound bath that was said to “harmonize my brain waves.” These were combined with more hands-on activities, like blending my own bedtime tea from the herb garden.

As you’d expect from a hotel that’s frequently named among the best in the world, Post Ranch has also mastered the pillowy alchemy of the perfect bed. All the mattresses are organic (handcrafted by an artisan in nearby Monterey), and the cotton bedding is a butter-soft 600 thread count—a dream for anyone who, like me, is used to tossing and turning when traveling, like Superman under Kryptonite sheets.

So did it work? Unequivocally, yes. I floated out of Big Sur after two of the best nights of sleep I’ve had in years. Some (well-rested) people might dismiss these retreats, but I came away from Post Ranch Inn with a new set of practices I could easily apply at home. I can truthfully say I’ve been sleeping soundly ever since—even on my decidedly notartisanal mattress.

postranchinn.com; doubles from $1,425; sleep program an additional $675 per person per night.

For a more rigorous approach to sustainability, properties around the world are creating their very own ecosystems.

BY EL I Z AB E T H CAN T REL L

CLOSED-LOOP FOOD SOURCING IN THE U.K. Heckfield Place, a Georgian manor with a working farm in Hampshire, England, recently became the first hotel estate in Britain to be certified 100 percent biodynamic.

This approach to agriculture forgoes chemicals and treats the farm like a complete living system, even going so far as to determine harvests based on the cycles of the moon. Guests can tour Heckfield’s seven greenhouses; visit with the resident sheep, pigs, cows, and chickens; and enjoy a meal made using only ingredients grown on the estate and at a partner biodynamic farm nearby. heckfieldplace.com; doubles from $490.

OFF-THE-GRID ENERGY IN NORWAY Set to open late next year, Svart—a property at the foot of Svartisen, Norway’s second-largest glacier— will use solar panels to operate completely off-grid as the world’s

first energy-positive hotel. (Excess power will support projects like a greenhouse and a charging station for electric boats.) The design also pays homage to its Arctic environment: set on stilts above a glacial lake, the building mimics the architecture of traditional rorbuer, seasonal houses used by fishermen, and fiskehjeller, A-shaped structures for drying the day’s catch. svart.no; rates not available at press time.

ETHICAL SUPPLY CHAINS IN MOZAMBIQUE Situated on a quiet lagoon on the Nhamabue peninsula, about 500 miles north of the capital, Maputo, the six thatched-roof bungalows at Sussurro (which means “whisper” in Portuguese) are constructed entirely from native Mozambican plants and timber. Inside, everything from the stonewashed linens to the minimalist furniture— which is built and carved on site—is regionally sourced and made by local craftspeople. sussurro.co; from $489 per person, all-inclusive.

LOW-IMPACT CONSTRUCTION IN COLORADO The Pad—a 36-key property in Silverthorne, just a 30-minute drive from six major ski areas—is on track to become the first hotel in the state to achieve B-Corp certification, meaning it meets high standards for transparency and impact on workers, suppliers, community, and the environment.

Built partially from upcycled shipping containers, the Pad offers both private rooms and hostelstyle dorms with custom bunk beds made from repurposed lumber. thepadlife.com; dorms from $45.

From left: A greenhouse at Heckfield Place, in England; Svart, which is suspended over a glacial lake in Norway.

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Hotels Are Keeping House Like Never Before

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Travel has always been a refuge for those with an adventurous, inquisitive spirit. But in such a dynamic industry, making a lasting difference takes a willingness to buck the status quo. Whether it’s a groundbreaking author or an intrepid explorer, a singular hotel or a bold, creative community, these are the people and places challenging us to see the world in all its glorious potential.

EDI TED BY L IL A HARR ON BAT T I S AND SARAH B RUN I NG

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Pharrell Williams and David Grutman on the pool deck of their Goodtime Hotel, in Miami Beach.

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THE HAPPY PLACE Music man Pharrell Williams and nightclub king David Grutman are branching out with the debut of their first hotel project in Miami—a kaleidoscopic wonderland that’s reimagining the South Beach experience. BY SARAH G RE AVES-G AB BAD O N

had a soundtrack, what would it be? The question played out in my mind as I strolled into the lobby of the long-awaited Goodtime Hotel. After all, a partnership between music-world superstar Pharrell Williams and nightclub impresario David Grutman should have a suitably hip playlist, right?

I had entered the hotel on Washington Avenue, a stretch of Miami Beach that was fashionable in the 1990s. Though the neighborhood has since become decidedly gritty, it seems a renaissance may be afoot. In February, Moxy Miami South Beach debuted three blocks north. It’s the first resort-style hotel from Marriott’s millennial-focused brand and has brought a youthful energy to an area that had started to feel forgotten.

The Goodtime is set to change things even further. The minute I stepped through the door and saw light streaming through the glass roof and illuminating planters of lush greenery, “Walking on Sunshine” popped into my head. Washington Avenue already seemed a world away.

A hand-painted mural depicted a dreamy landscape of coconut palms and banana plants, making the space feel like a tropical hothouse. Puffy painted clouds presided over the front desk, which was skirted in pink and green palm-print fabric and anchored by a pair of glass lamps with fringed red shades like hula skirts. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised to hear Guns N’ Roses singing “Welcome to the Jungle.”

“Ken’s work is very eclectic, and he does it so effortlessly,” Williams said this past spring, on the eve of the hotel’s opening. “It’s the magic of making different things work together in harmony.” He was referring to Ken Fulk, the globetrotting, San Francisco–based creative force behind the property’s Alice in Wonderland–inspired style. Williams and I were sitting in the Goodtime’s sprawling poolscape, the “acre in the air” on the third floor that he told me is his favorite spot. It’s a pink and pistachio playground where Miami’s millennials have been flocking to check out the scene.

Fulk, whose recent projects include the Lake Tahoe home of Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom and the Commodore Perry Estate, Auberge Resorts Collection, in Austin, Texas, spent more than five years bringing Williams and Grutman’s dream to life. That dream began F THIS PLACE

FROM LEF T: AL IC E G AO /C OURTE SY O F T HE GO O DT I ME HOT EL ; CL AUDI A URIB E. PRE V IOUS SPRE AD : SIMON ROB ERTS

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with a vision of lifting Washington Avenue back to its heyday, when Madonna and Sean Combs (a.k.a.

P. Diddy) were neighborhood regulars. “When you come through the doors,” Fulk said, “it’s as if you’ve drunk the potion. Suddenly, you’re transported.”

Instead of a magic carpet, an elevator dressed floor-to-ceiling in a hot pink crocodile-motif wallpaper took me to the third floor, where the Goodtime’s aesthetic really started to reveal itself. The doors opened and, to the left, a life-size ceramic cheetah sat on the floor beside a seafoam rattan table, on which a pair of ivorycolored ceramic macaws and a glossy porcelain tower of bananas made their home. It was a scene that’s

Candy hues brighten a poolside cabana.

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a tiled walkway flanked by giant metal monstera “trees” functioned like a fashion-show runway, populated by a constant parade of bikini-clad guests.

Kim Kardashian, the Beckhams, and Bad Bunny had graced the grand opening, and five days later it seemed like everyone wanted to be there (helped by the fact that Florida has imposed minimal restrictions during the pandemic). Every poolside was occupied, several of them by guests speaking Portuguese and Spanish.

And cabana customers were keeping servers busy with orders for heaping fruit platters and servings of fries.

“Nothing feels better than this,” crooned Khalid from the speakers. the man behind South Beach nightclubs Story and LIV, Grutman is also a restaurateur.

His ventures include Brickell spot Komodo and Design District darlings Swan and Bar Bevy, which were his first partnerships with Williams and Fulk. “Food and the restaurant experience is my core business. And for me, of course, everything’s social,” he said. “The restaurant should always be the heartbeat of a hotel.”

In the Goodtime’s restaurant, Strawberry Moon, Fulk has taken retro Miami, Caribbean, and Latin American elements and combined them into a multilayered mash-up of color, texture, and pattern.

Wherever I looked there was something to delight the eye: Glasspetaled lamps bloomed from the ceiling. Grass-cloth-covered walls the color of the Caribbean were punctuated with orblike sconces and Art Deco–style mirrors. The palette of blue and pink and the textured rattan chairs brought to mind the fabulousness of The Golden Girls.

This is the kind of place Blanche Devereaux and Wes Anderson would go on a date.

At dinner, I tucked in to the pillowy folds of moon bread (a popover-like confection served with fig butter) and a refreshing beet and

The hotel’s library.

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as improbable, some might say, as the idea of buying an entire city block in a run-down section of South Beach, transforming it into a hotel, and then opening it during a pandemic.

“The big idea that we thought up from the very beginning,” Fulk said as we surveyed the vast pool space, “was that we wanted to bring you up from Washington Avenue into the sky and to have this celebratory moment, with an extraordinary pool club and a fantastic restaurant.” Candy-striped cabanas lined the two-tiered terrace, punctuated by a couple of bars and a DJ podium. Between twin pools,

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Sarah Greaves-Gabbadon (jetset sarah.com; @jetsetsarah) is a Miamibased writer who specializes in Caribbean travel. watermelon salad, dressed with segments of pink grapefruit that seemed chosen specifically to color-coordinate with the surroundings.

After dinner, I checked out the library, the Goodtime’s other social hub, which is framed by swaths of teal drapery. Built into salmon-pink walls, the shelves of curated books are another whimsical flourish by Fulk, displaying colorcoordinated spines and deliberately placed bookends, vases, and objets.

The library’s style contrasted with the simpler aesthetic in the hotel’s 266 rooms. “We designed them so that you have everything you need, but not a lot of extraneous stuff,” Fulk said. “A super-comfortable bed. A great shower.

But also beautiful spaces in which to come together, to celebrate, to recharge. ” To that end, beds have built-in storage, replacing side tables. Instead of using a closet, guests stash their things in a console of

A jungle-inspired mural greets guests in the lobby.

Guest rooms are decorated in the hotel’s signature colors.

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drawers, on an open rack, or on a leopard-print bench. The bathroom is utilitarian yet still has some visual winks. On the bath mat is the embroidered reminder BE GOOD. And I can imagine the darling pink cups on the bathroom shelves swiftly disappearing out the door.

The pink and green leopard-print robes (yours for $75) were another Fulk touch. “We should all be wearing them!” he proclaimed, laughing. “You put them on and you can’t be sad. Is that not a good time?”

Checking out, I still wasn’t sure what the hotel’s signature song should be. Williams, when I asked him which one of his songs he’d pick, chose “Beautiful,” the Snoop Dogg hit on which he made a guest appearance. “Happy,” I think, would also be a suitable (albeit predictable) choice. Perhaps Grutman’s suggestion, Toto’s “Africa,” fits best.

“It’s my favorite song,” he said. “It makes you want to have the best time of your life and sing along.

At the Goodtime, we want you to sing along.” thegoodtimehotel.com; doubles from $259.

THE LAKE EFFECT On the crystalline shores of Lake Michigan, vintners are embracing the character and challenges of the land—and defying expectations of Midwestern wine making. BY JEFF CHU

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husband and I sat in Adirondack chairs on a grassy hillside, glasses of crisp sparkling rosé in hand. Neat rows of grapevines trailed down the slope and toward the water. And what water! It seemed as if every blue on the color wheel had decided to mix and mingle: turquoise, cyan, deep cerulean. It was like a scene from the Mediterranean, but we were in fact at the 2 Lads Winery (2lwinery. com) on Michigan’s Old Mission Peninsula.

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The Old Mission and the neighboring Leelanau Peninsula form the pinkie of Michigan’s mitten. Eons ago, glaciers carved deep bays here, leaving behind fertile, sandy soil. For generations, the Odawa and Ojibwe farmed and fished in the area. Though the region is known for cherries and apples, those crops arrived only with missionaries after the mid 17th century.

In 1974, entrepreneur Edward O’Keefe Jr. founded the region’s first winery, Chateau Grand Traverse (cgtwines. com), planting Chardonnay, Riesling, and Merlot—the Old Mission’s first grapes. O’Keefe’s wager: the microclimate, tempered by the waters of Lake Michigan and Grand Traverse Bay, could produce decent wines. The bet paid off, and his winery was soon joined by a smattering of others. In those early days, vintners mimicked the great wines of Germany and France. Some amped up sugar and softened the astringency that can come with growing grapes in a cool climate, playing to an American palate heavily shaped by California wines.

Today, the peninsulas are certified American Viticultural Areas, and a new generation of winemakers is embracing the unique terroir. “We’ve learned to love the interplay between acid and bright red fruit. We don’t have

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Charcuterie and a bottle of the signature red blend at Chateau Grand Traverse.

big, plummy black fruit. Let your sparkling wines be as taut and tight and bracing as they should be,” 2 Lads cofounder Chris Baldyga said. “They tell a better story about our farm. They tell a better story about northern Michigan.”

We began our visit on the Leelanau, the larger of the peninsulas, staying at Black Star Farms (blackstar farms.com; doubles from $375), which has a lovely inn and produces an award-winning Riesling. Leelanau County has just 20,000 residents spread across 347 square miles of land. Its villages all have idiosyncratic charms. In Leland (population 400), old fishing shanties now house boutiques, galleries, and one remaining commercial fishery, Carlson’s Fish (carlsonsfish.com), which makes smoked whitefish and fish sausage. The shops in Suttons Bay (population 600) include MI Market (mimarketsuttonsbay.com), where you can buy local flour, maple syrup, and dried cherries. And in Northport (population 500), we delighted in fresh doughnuts from Barb’s Bakery (barbsbakery.com).

Leelanau has tremendous natural beauty. We spent our pre-tasting hours at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (nps.gov/slbe), at the peninsula’s southwestern edge. Anishanaabe legends say a bear and her cubs fled into the lake from what’s now Wisconsin—one version blames a fire, another a famine. The bears swam east, but the weary cubs drowned before reaching land. Mother Bear hauled herself onto a bluff, where she died of grief.

In sympathy, the Great Spirit created North Manitou and South Manitou Islands on the spots where the cubs drowned, and shrouded the mother’s body with sand. That place is now Sleeping Bear, where we skipped the popular and often crowded Dune Climb and Empire Bluff Trail in favor of the 2.8-mile Sleeping Bear Point Trail. Every dune ascent was rewarded with Lake Michigan vistas.

Our favorite Leelanau winery was Green Bird Organic Cellars & Farm (greenbirdcellars.com), which is tucked into a valley near Northport. Traverse City native Betsy Sedlar and her husband, Tim Hearin, grow all their grapes on these 15 acres. Of Leelanau’s 25 wineries, only Green Bird uses fully sustainable, biodynamic methods. Sheep mow between the vines and chickens fertilize. We bought not just wine but also fresh eggs.

“Our wine is very small-batch,” Sedlar said. The couple never bottles more than 1,000 cases a year, and all are sold online or at the tasting room—a glorified barn with a patio from which we could see young Blaufränkisch vines and Sedlar’s vegetable garden. They grow just four rows of Traminette, a Gewürztraminer hybrid developed at the University of Illinois, and three rows of Vignoles, another hardy variety that thrives in the Midwest. Last year, those vines produced 14 cases of bright, crisp Traminette Vignoles, which partners beautifully with oysters.

We also tasted Green Bird’s unusual ciders, which nod to the history of this valley, which was once all apple

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From far left: Sparkling wine at 2 Lads Winery; the vineyards of Chateau Grand Traverse.

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The grounds of Mari Vineyards, on the Old Mission Peninsula.

orchards. Its Ciderye ages in rye barrels for two years.

There’s also Cin (cider + gin), aged for three years with botanicals, which gets a touch of sweetness from local wildflower honey. “We’re trying to capture the flavors of Leelanau,” Sedlar said. It’s also smart business. One bad winter can wreak havoc even on resilient vines: “Cider makes sure that, no matter the growing season for grapes, we’ll always have a beautiful product.”

More Leelanau flavors are on the menu a 30-minute drive south at Farm Club (farmclubtc. com; entrées $11–$23), which abuts a bike path to downtown Traverse City, seven miles away. “We’re not farm-to-table,” co-owner Nic Theisen said. “We’re a farm with a restaurant on it. The menu is guided by the farm.” That means they serve arugula only in spring and fall. Their own heirloom corn goes into the tortillas. Any chili sauces on the winter menu are mementos of the previous summer’s pepper harvest.

Farm Club emphasizes its sense of place by collaborating with Leelanau producers—Mawby Vineyards (mawby.wine), which bottles only sparkling wine; Brengman Brothers (brengman brothers.com) for Pinot Gris, dry Riesling, and the red and white house blends—to make wines exclusive to the restaurant. All beers are brewed on site. There’s always a Belgian-style brew on draft, made with wild

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The Maritime Museum at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Empire Beach, near Sleeping Bear Dunes.

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Baldyga means no disrespect to the area’s winemaking pioneers. “To be recognized as legitimate, they had to draw on those old-world styles, names, and even techniques. And they made a name for the area,” he said.

“We get to be the second wave. We can make wines that are less tied to old styles.”

The soil at 2 Lads has unusually high gravel and clay content. “It forces the vines to work harder. We get less fruit but greater intensity,” Baldyga said. That translates, for instance, to a bracing sparkling rosé made entirely with Pinot Noir. And the hiring of a new winemaker, Thomas Houseman, previously at Anne Amie Vineyards in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, signals a full embrace of cool-climate styles.

At first glance, we wouldn’t have guessed that our next stop, Mari Vineyards (marivineyards.com), shared that philosophy. Mari’s building could be a Tuscan transplant— warm stone, terra-cotta roof, a tower worthy of a Benedictine abbey. “But it’s not like we’re in Siena,” said head winemaker Sean O’Keefe, the son of Chateau Grand Traverse’s Edward, as we sat around a patio firepit.

The younger O’Keefe, who joined Mari in 2015, has drawn inspiration from other cold-climate wine-making

yeast that brewer Corey Valdez, a chemist, collected from underneath a pear tree on the property.

Another experimental beer uses lemon verbena grown on the farm.

The loveliest place to stay on the Old Mission Peninsula might be Chateau Chantal (chateau chantal.com; doubles from $234). From our airy, many-windowed room, we could see Grand Traverse Bay’s sparkling waters to both the east and the west.

Owners Robert and Nadine Begin first planted vines on 60 acres of a former cherry orchard in the mid 1980s. Their story is a doozy: He was a priest. She was a nun. They fell in love, and they traded one set of vows for another. Nadine died in 2018, but Bob still works daily, rising before 6 a.m. to brew coffee and make the rounds pouring orange juice for Chateau guests.

After a post-breakfast stroll through the vineyards, we drove 10 minutes north to 2 Lads. If Chateau Chantal embodies old-world charm, 2 Lads shouts brash modernity—all gray steel and floor-toceiling windows. We took in sweeping vineyard and bay views as we sipped wine. “We didn’t want it to look like Chateau von Old Guy,” Baldyga said. “My favorite description I heard was ‘It looks like an evil villain’s lair from a Bond movie.’ ”

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Leelanau Peninsula

LAKE HURON

Old Mission Peninsula

Traverse City LAKE MICHIGAN

Detroit

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A view of Glen Lake from the Dunes Trail at Sleeping Bear Dunes.

regions, including Austria, Italy’s Südtirol, and Istria, a part of Croatia from which Mari founder Marty Lagina’s grandmother came. “I’m not so vain to think that I’ve come up with things that are entirely new,” O’Keefe said. Yet he insists on wines that taste like Michigan: “We shouldn’t apologize for being here anymore. We have harsh conditions. That’s part of our terroir.”

Instead of making the standard white Pinot Grigio, O’Keefe ferments those grapes with skin contact to create a coppery Ramato “with no residual sugar to make things more approachable,” he said.

“We don’t want ketchup wine. I don’t use sugar or oak to gussy anything up.”

For dinner, we went to the Cooks’ House (cookshousetc.com; tasting menus from $70), in Traverse City. Chefs Eric Patterson and Jen Blakeslee, who met while cooking under Andre Rochat in Las Vegas, offer five- and seven-course tasting menus that emphasize local ingredients, and pair them largely with wines from nearby producers. That night, walleye with kimchi butter, miso cabbage, and carrot slaw was accompanied by Mari’s 2017 Bestiary Ramato. The Ramato glows golden and tastes slightly spicy and a little earthy, as if someone had bottled the sunset.

“This is not the Michigan wine that people scoffed at in the eighties,” Patterson said. Since the Cooks’ House opened in 2008, “we’ve seen the vineyards get better and better.” Blakeslee, who grew up in

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Leelanau, said the produce has improved tremendously, too: “You’re starting to see the resurgence of small farms.”

After our chat, I pondered the French term terroir, which refers to the soil but more holistically means the context in which something is grown. The soil matters.

So does the water and the wind, the fauna and the flora.

Maybe confidence matters, too. Every winemaker, every farmer, every chef I talked with brimmed with pride.

I could hear it; I could taste it. It was beautiful.

Jeff Chu (byjeffchu.com; @byjeffchu) is a Michigan-based writer and an editor at large for Travel + Leisure.

Naturally fermented sparkling wines are the focus at Mawby Vineyards.

(855) 886-4824 | firstrepublic.com | New York Stock Exchange symbol: FRC MEMBER FDIC AND EQUAL HOUSING LENDER

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FOR THE PEOPLE,

BY THE PEOPLE Could two bucolic Oregon lodges, originally built at the height of the New Deal, offer a glimpse of America’s future? BY SIERRA CRAN E MURD O CH

NE DAY LAST spring, I drove from

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my home on the Columbia River in Oregon to the slopes of Mount Hood, an hour south. The day was sunny and warm, and the glaciers that fan out from the summit were dotted with hundreds of hikers. I affixed skins to the bottoms of my skis and climbed the mountain’s treeless, glittering southern slope.

Reaching the start of my off-piste run, I stopped to take in the view of a chain of snowcapped volcanoes to the south, then descended a broad apron called the Zigzag Glacier, heading for Timberline Lodge (timberlinelodge.com; doubles from $175).

I had heard the hotel, which was built in 1936, referred to as the crown jewel of the Works Progress Administration. The WPA, along with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and other New Deal agencies, developed thousands of public projects across the country, including more than a hundred in Oregon, as part of a federal effort to boost the economy and wrench the country out of the Great Depression. Some of these economic revitalization schemes provided essential services: government buildings, including the post office in my town on the Columbia River, and the Bonneville Dam, which, while it wreaked ecological havoc and harmed Indigenous communities, generates energy for almost half a million homes.

But a majority of the projects were recreational sites, including the campgrounds, trailheads, and ranger outposts in the region’s national forests, as well as roads and other infrastructure that provided access to Oregon’s most popular natural wonders, such as Crater Lake and the Columbia River Gorge.

Since the spring of 2020, public land across the U.S. has seen record numbers of visitors.

I wondered if President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when he dedicated Timberline Lodge in 1936, could have imagined how essential these public places would become to a nation in lockdown. In a speech, FDR called the lodge

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CLO CKW ISE F RO M TOP LEF T: JAKE STANGEL ; CAN DAC E MO L ATO RE/ @HE Y.CANDACE; C O URT E SY OF T I MBERL INE (2)

Clockwise from top left: A vintage record player at the Suttle Lodge, in central Oregon; the Suttle Lodge’s terrace; the main lounge at Timberline Lodge, on Mount Hood; Timberline’s exterior, which was used in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie The Shining.

a test of the feasibility of recreational facilities developed by the federal government. Now it occurred to me how many of the places where I’ve spent time during the pandemic were created by the New Deal, which arose from a distant but in some ways familiar moment of economic and social desperation.

In February, I returned to Timberline Lodge, this time to stay a few nights. The entrance to the lodge is a metal portal shielding the old wooden doors from snow and wind. Once inside, I had the impression of having burrowed underground.

Guests warmed themselves by the stone fireplace at the center of the lobby. I was given a key to a room on the top floor—cozy, small, with a whitetiled bathroom, a desk and chair, and a window looking west over Zigzag Canyon.

The lodge was built in just 18 months, the Works Progress Administration employing between 200 and 470 women and men every day, among them stonemasons, timber framers, blacksmiths, weavers, and painters. Despite the pace of the project, the lodge’s artistry is breathtaking. One midweek afternoon, I sat on the balcony overlooking the main room, peering up at colossal posts and beams hewn from whole old-growth fir and hemlock, then down at the hexagonal central chimney, which I was told weighed 800,000 pounds.

The andirons in the chimney’s three fireplaces were made from old train rails, each bent into a whimsical spiral. The newel posts of the stairways were fashioned from old cedar telephone poles, and their tops had been carved into bears, birds and other wildlife.

In my room, the watercolor florals on the wall had been painted by a German immigrant who, prior to joining the lodge’s workforce, had resorted to living in a piano box during the Great Depression. The man had artistic skill, his employers learned, so flowers were collected from the vicinity of the lodge, and he was hired to paint pictures of them.

I marveled at the scale—not at the size of the lodge or its components, but rather at the extent of its detail. It was clear this project had not been about efficiency, but about employing as

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Living History More New Deal–era lodges that offer outdoor adventure and classic comforts.

Portland M o u n t Timberline Lodge

The Suttle Lodge

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H o o d

A lunchtime feast at the Suttle Lodge.

new structure in 1931. Five years later, under FDR, the CCC built the resort’s water system, along with a community kitchen and bathhouses for campers.

Fire destroyed the lodge two more times, in 1939 and 1974; the current structure was completed in 2005.

While not as grand as Timberline, it is constructed with heavy wooden doors and whole-tree beams.

Scattered along the lake are seven Deluxe Cabins in the same rustic-chic style as the lodge, each outfitted with a bathroom, a kitchenette, a fireplace, and beds for eight guests. At the airy dining room in the main lodge, I drank a cocktail with a light taste of Douglas fir one night while a vintage turntable played folk records.

On my last day, I walked around the lake, past the stone walls, campgrounds, and picnic shelters erected by the CCC. Soon summer would arrive and, perhaps, the end of the pandemic. There would be boats on the water, a band playing in the gazebo, the docks crowded with sunbathers. What had emerged from one crisis had carried us through another, and I wondered what might emerge to carry us through the next.

GIANT CITY LODGE, ILLINOIS Hike through the 4,000 acres of Shawnee National Forest and note the towering sandstone bluffs; the same light-colored rock was used to build the lodge in 1936. giantcitylodge.com; cabins from $85.

DUPONT LODGE, KENTUCKY This 51-room property is right next to the 65-foot cascade that gave Cumberland Falls State Resort Park its name. Though the lodge was rebuilt after a fire in 1940, several cabins, two gazebos, and a picnic shelter are original CCC constructions. parks.ky.gov; doubles from $125.

— ELIZABETH CANTRELL JAKE STAN GEL

many Americans as possible to create something beautiful and lasting for the public good.

A few weeks later, I drove past Mount Hood to the town of Sisters to stay at another recreational site built during the New Deal, the Suttle Lodge (thesuttlelodge.com; doubles from $325), which sits on an alpine lake.

Suttle Lake was named for the developer John Settle, who stumbled across it during a hunting trip in 1866—11 years after the U.S. government forced the Tenino band of the Walla Walla tribe to give up the surrounding land by treaty. Early survey maps misspelled Settle’s name, and they were never corrected. The area was already a popular camping resort when entrepreneurs Jack Lloyd and Carl Craig built the first lodge there in 1926. It burned down and was replaced with a

KEWEENAW MOUNTAIN LODGE, MICHIGAN Spend your days kayaking on Lake Superior before retiring for a night of stargazing on the deck of one of 24 cedar-and-pine cabins, many built by the CCC in the 1930s, at the tip of the Upper Peninsula. keweenawmountain lodge.com; cabins from $325.

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AGE OF INVENTION At 88 years old, Adrian Zecha shows no sign of stepping back from his role as a hotel industry innovator. PIC O IYER meets the man behind Aman, Azerai, and now Azumi—a new brand that takes the traditional Japanese ryokan to the next level.

N FEBRUARY 26, Adrian Zecha, the

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Indonesian visionary who founded Aman Resorts, turned 88. Three days later, he opened the first property of a new brand, Azumi, on the little-known island of Ikuchijima, in Japan’s Inland Sea. Yet when I enjoyed a virtual chat with him, later that same week, from my home in Nara, Japan, I was greeted by a chuckling man in a short-sleeved white shirt, alone in his office, who seemed to have all the time in the world. “This is my modest boardroom,” he explained, referring to the spotless blond-wood conference table at the head of which he sat; behind him, through a window, I could see tropical ferns, red roofs, and the blue-glass towers of Singapore.

I could still remember, as I told him, the day the brochure for the first Aman property arrived in my mailbox 34 years ago. I was already a regular guest at the chain of airy, uncluttered Regent International Hotels Zecha partly owned,

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but Amanpuri—a minimalist, open-walled vision of private villas on an empty beach—was like nothing any traveler had seen. As Zecha reminded me, “We opened on December 15, 1987, and it was amazing, because Phuket was totally remote!” Guests had to board a sixpassenger plane in Bangkok to get there, and the runway on the island was grass. Thus was born the model for a new kind of luxury in which the fortunate could fly to some undiscovered location and feel as if they were staying at a friend’s cool, unhurried country house.

Aman properties are in many ways exquisite international versions of ryokan, the traditional inns. So it only makes sense that Zecha has now, with two Japanese partners, turned a 140-yearold merchant’s house into a fresh, though classic, take on the format. On this sleepy, lemongrowing island of nearly 9,000 people, the flagship of his new brand, Azumi—named for an ancient seafaring tribe—consists of just 22 rooms, plus a traditional bathhouse across the street.

“I arrived in Japan in September 1956,” Zecha told me—he was a 23-year-old correspondent for Time magazine—and “I loved it. It’s my favorite country.” He relishes the fact that a Japanese inn is “always run by the family” and offers the intimacy and warmth of a homestay.

The minute I stepped into Azumi Setoda, three weeks after our talk, I caught many of the grace notes the world has come to associate

F RO M LEF T: C O URT E SY O F AD RI AN ZECHA ; MAX H OUTZ AGER

Adrian Zecha, photographed in 2018.

Azumi Setoda, Zecha’s newest property, on the Japanese island of Ikuchijima.

TO MO HI RO SAK A SH I TA/C OURTE SY O F A ZUMI

The Yubune bathhouse, part of the Azumi Setoda complex.

off the high cedar fences while the shadows of lanterns deepened a rich indigo cloth at the woody entrance: a constant play of light and shade put together by the Kyoto architect Shiro Miura.

Just across the tiny lane of mom-and-pop stores, mostly selling lemons, another cool structure called Yubune offers an annex of sorts, and contains some modest guest rooms and an old-style neighborhood bathhouse inside a sleek new shell. A few steps away are two cafés that offer views of the water, where slowmoving boats drift toward nearby islands.

In life, as in his properties, I came to realize, Zecha’s signature is a rich awareness of international taste spiced with a commitment to the deeply local. He was born in Indonesia, to a partly Chinese and partly Czech family, and his father was said to have been the first nativeborn Indonesian to graduate from an American university in 1923 (Zecha himself got a master’s in political science from Columbia). In 1960, after four years with Time, the 27-year-old launched

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with Zecha’s understated luxe. In the highroofed, timbered old mansion that is now a gleamingly reborn villa, he and his Japanese partners have created a light-filled dream of shoji screens and cypress wood.

Chairs look out onto a garden with a cherry tree for spring blossoms and a maple for autumn foliage. Tables in the open dining area beckon with impeccable asymmetry, and even a hand-sanitizer station is a high-tech, blondwood pillar. In the middle is a near-empty glass pavilion ideal for doing nothing.

“You need those moments when you can feel the scent, the wind—when you basically can experience a void in your mind,” explained Yuta Oka, the relaxed 35-year-old who is one of Zecha’s partners, as he showed me around the pavilion I came to think of as a 21st-century teahouse. Azumi, he stressed, is not just about “hotel building” but about “town building— putting a local place on the global map.”

Seated in one of the property’s many contemplative corners, I watched the sun glint

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A traditional garden among the guest rooms at Azumi Setoda.

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Bamboo shoots, dumplings, octopus sashimi, and other small plates at Azumi Setoda.

no matter how old you are, if you love what you do, you would decide to give it up. And do what? Sit down and stare into space?

No! Obviously you will continue to do what you enjoy doing!”

Eighty-eight, as it happens, is a highly auspicious age in Japan. And true to the luck the scrupulously humble Zecha kept referring to, last fall he chanced to read in a newspaper that he could visit Japan for three days without having to quarantine. In November, he jumped on a plane to oversee the final details of the “first one in my new family.” Then he spent the rest of his allotted 72 hours scouting locations for a second property. Simplicity and elegance, he might be telling us, are two graces that never grow old.

azumi.co; doubles from $671.

F RO M TO P : TO MO HI RO SAK A SH I TA/C OURT E SY O F A ZUMI; MAX HO UTZ AGER

his own magazine, Asia, which was distributed with newspapers in 14 countries across the continent—much as he’d seen Parade slipped into Sunday papers in the United States. In those days, he reminded me, an educated Thai might recognize an allusion to Shakespeare but know little of Myanmar. “There was no connection,” he said. So he worked at stitching together the people of Asia’s often newly independent nations with a magazine about culture. (As we spoke, he casually reeled off the population figures for each of the 10 nations in Southeast Asia.)

Yet for all his precision, I’ve seldom encountered a CEO who seems less corporate or business-minded. Zecha referred casually during our talk to people he’d known— President Sukarno of Indonesia, Bill Marriott of the American hotel chain—but his command of the global seems to have deepened his sense of what is unique to Asia. Take Zecha creations like the Setai in Miami or the Chedi Muscat in Oman: the names alone evoke a sense of delicacy, even of mystery, not so easily found in the words “Sheraton” or “Westin.”

Zecha also maintains a long-term sense of history. When people ask him about a “new normal” after the COVID-19 lockdown, he says, “ ‘New normal’? You mean people are going to forget how they lived well, what they enjoyed, where they ate, just a year ago? I doubt it.”

We’ve had viruses before, he pointed out; indomitable as ever, he opened a new Vietnam property for his Azerai brand last November.

Again and again, as we spoke, Zecha leaned forward in his enthusiasm; four times he used the word “fantastic.” How does he keep such energy alive? “I love what I do!” came the unhesitant answer. “I can’t imagine that,

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T O E X P L O R E M O R E , V I S I T T R AV E L A N D L E I S U R E . C O M / C H E C K - I N

Jan Morris, who died last year, wrote about travel with the same verve and clarity that she brought to explorations of gender and selfhood.

BY RACHEL D O NADIO

book, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, Jan Morris describes how the northern Italian city always evoked in her a vague but powerful yearning. “My acquaintance with the city spans the whole of my adult life, but like my life it still gives me a waiting feeling, as if something big but unspecified is always about to happen,” she writes.

A twilight book, published the year Morris turned 75, it is about how the port city’s essence lies in its long and layered history as a generally felicitous meeting of cultures and peoples, languages and empires. But it is also a book about returning to places we knew in the past, and how travel lets us take the measure of ourselves as well as of our destinations. “The allure of lost consequence and faded power is seducing me, the passing of time, the passing of friends, the scrapping of great ships!” she writes of the city.

“It is as though I have been taken, for a brief sententious glimpse, out of time to nowhere.”

That description is pure Morris. So is the exclamation mark. There’s nothing mournful or lugubrious here, but exuberance, vivacity, a piercing clarity of vision that characterizes all of her work. I also can’t help reading Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere as somewhat autobiographical—an account of a city that, like Morris herself, contains multitudes and layers and does so with dignity, clarity, and self-awareness.

Morris—named James at birth—sang in the choir at Christ Church, Oxford; served in the British Army; scaled three-quarters of Mount Everest to report on Sir Edmund Hillary’s triumphant ascent to the summit in 1953; became a foreign correspondent who broke news of French involvement in the Suez Crisis in 1956; wrote dozens of brilliant works of history and travel reportage—and then, after years of hormone treatments, became Jan after undergoing gender-confirmation surgery in Casablanca at age 46. She died in late November 2020, age 94.

Her 1974 memoir, Conundrum, begins, “I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl.”

The book is notable for its matter-of-fact lucidity. “I never did think that my own conundrum was a matter either of science or of social convention,” Morris writes in a 2001 introduction to the book’s reissue. “What was important was the liberty of us all to live as we wished to live, to love however we wanted to love, and to know N HER MASTERFUL 2001

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ourselves, however peculiar, disconcerting, or unclassifiable, at one with the gods and angels.”

That same spirit informs the works in which Morris captured the soul of a place with a few seemingly effortless brushstrokes.

Deeply learned, Morris was more a student of history than a teacher—always an enthusiast, never a pedant. I particularly love the portraits of cities she wrote for Rolling Stone in the 1970s. (They were collected in a 1980 volume, Destinations.)

On Johannesburg in 1977, after the Soweto uprising that helped bring down South Africa’s apartheid regime: “There it stands ringed by its yellow mine dumps, like stacks of its own excreta, the richest city in Africa but altogether without responsibility.” And Istanbul in 1978: “There can never be a fresh start in Istanbul. It is too late. Its successive pasts are ineradicable and inescapable.”

Morris was fascinated by what makes cities work—their geographies, the source of their wealth. “London is hard as nails, and it is opportunism that has carried this city of moneymakers so brilliantly through revolution and holocaust, blitz and slump, in and out of empire and through countless such periods of uncertainty as seem to blunt its assurance now,” she wrote in 1978. In 1976, she visited Los Angeles, stayed at the Chateau Marmont, and captured the city’s celebrity industry. Of New York in 1979, Morris observed: “Analysis, I sometimes think, is the principal occupation of Manhattan—analysis of trends, analysis of options, analysis of style, analysis of statistics, analysis above all of self.” Her dispatch from Washington, D.C., in 1974 is cutting: “Nowhere in the world, I think, do people take themselves more seriously than they do in Washington, or seem so indifferent to other perceptions than their own.” In her visits to all three American metropolises, she was struck by their peculiar combination of global power and extreme provincialism.

In this era of Instagram stories and this pandemic season of armchair travels, I have found great pleasure in reading Morris’s dispatches. They offer rich, complex pictures, not individual pixels. But it’s still her Trieste book that hits me deepest. It is a vision of a city fully aware of itself and its historical obsolescence, but one that nevertheless endures. “To my mind this is an existentialist sort of place,” she writes, “and its purpose is to be itself.” So was Morris’s. Her work lives on.

PE TER KE V IN S OLNE S S /FA I RFAX MEDI A/GE T T Y I MAGE S

PIONEER SPIRIT

A 1988 portrait of Jan Morris by Peter Kevin Solness.

Highlights from a storied partnership, which saw the travel writer cross continents for the pages of this magazine.

“Order is the first characteristic of Bath, and order came first with the Romans. To understand the continuity of this heritage one has only to go down to the Roman baths, sunken among their pillars beside the Abbey, and enter the big bronze doors behind which the springs of Aquae Sulis still issue from the rock. By any standards of travel this is a profoundly moving experience, for men have been restoring themselves with these waters without a break for at least 2,000 years. The dark glistening grotto, hot and steamy, seems crowded with the shades of many generations.”

— “Bath: The Glory of Serenity,” January 1975 “[Marseilles] is not, I suppose, a conventionally beautiful city. It is not a place of languorous nights and mimosa.

But it pulsates with the true Mediterranean meaning: the zest, the variety, the braggadocio of it all, the oily and vinous mixture of smells, the sense of immemorial vigor, the whisper of anarchy—like salt in a stew—and the splendor of sheer survival.”

— “Lusty Cities,” April 1979 “There is a babel of haggle and chatter up and down the narrow streets that debouch upon the market square—a smell of mingled spice, dust, and raw meat—a dazzle of sunshine tempered by deep shadow. Here the fruiterers have piled their oranges in virtuoso pyramids; there an old man sells sugarcane flutes from his handbarrow; black-robed women huddle intently around a butcher’s stall, and on the ground beside them an ox head, shrouded in straw and leaves, reclines resignedly in the grime.”

— “Luxor: Where the Centuries Mingle,” November 1981

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When Jan Morris Met T+L

STROKE OF AMBITION Canadian adventurer MARIO RIGBY may have traveled the world promoting diversity in the outdoors, but a kayaking trip across Lake Ontario reminded him that exploring our own backyards can be equally fulfilling.

I’VE ALWAYS HAD A desire to push boundaries, whether that

means redefining what an adventurer looks like or testing my own physical limits. Black explorers are still few and far between, so I see every expedition as an opportunity to challenge expectations and demonstrate the importance of equity in the outdoors.

I’ve done expeditions around the world, from swimming, cycling, and kayaking around my native Turks and Caicos to a two-year walk from Cape Town to Cairo. But with international travel under tight regulation, I’ve been seeking out new excursions around the province of Ontario, Canada, where I’ve lived for 20 years. Most recently, I spent two weeks kayaking the length of Lake Ontario. Not everyone will be able to take as much time as I did, but it’s easy to divide the journey into a few day trips—each revealing a different landscape, as well as cultural sights and great places to eat and drink. Read on for my five favorite stops along the way.

1 Whitby

Toronto

1. WHITBY About an hour east of Toronto by car, this quiet town has wide stretches of shoreline that are ideal for kayaking. I enjoyed stopping at Iroquois Beach and Kiwanis Heydenshore Park (whitby.ca) to picnic, but the Lake Grill (thelake grill.com; entrées $15–$30) is a great option if you want to have more of a fine-dining experience.

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2. BRIGHTON Paddling among the tall grasses in the tranquil water near Presqu’ile Provincial Park (ontarioparks.com), I could imagine I was far from civilization. In reality, the park is only a 20-minute drive from downtown Brighton. I also like to explore the area on foot. Several trails pass through marshes and meadows that are havens for migrating birds.

3. PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY After a day of kayaking around Sandbanks Provincial Park (ontario parks.com), which has big, beachy dunes and incredible panoramic views, one of my favorite places to stay is the Edward (theedward.ca; from $223). It’s mainly a B&B, but the owners also rent out a stargazing cabin (above) when resources allow.

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F ROM LEF T: MARIO RIGBY; JUST EN S OULE/C O URTE SY OF N ORT HUMB ERL AND TOURISM; BRO OKE ST EPHENS ON @F O UND MY TH RI LL

LAKE ONTARIO

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Rigby pauses for a selfie on the rocky shoreline of Lake Ontario near Whitby.

Kayaking in choppy waters was a key part of Rigby’s trip preparations.

S t . L aw ren c e River

Brighton

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The Thousand Islands

Kingston

4 Prince Edward County

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4. KINGSTON Kingston is a paradise for casual kayakers. In the morning, pick up your gear from Ahoy Rentals (ahoy rentals.com) and head onto the lake from An Gorta Mór Park. Grab lunch in town at Dianne’s Fish Shack & Smokehouse (above; diannes kingston.com; entrées $13–$26). It’s known for barbecue, but I also loved the steak and blackened shrimp.

5. THE THOUSAND ISLANDS Most visitors see this area on small cruise ships, but I think experiencing it is even better from a kayak. 1000 Islands Kayaking (1000islandskayaking.com) rents equipment for independent travel and offers guided tours that can be tailored to any skill level. Either way, the islands—covered with hardy pine trees that are reflected in the crystal-clear waters—are stunning. Architecture fans should stop by Heart Island’s historic Boldt Castle (boldtcastle.com), which is technically on the United States side of the St. Lawrence River (passport required!) and only accessible by water.

Mario Rigby (mariorigby.com; @mariorigby) is a member of the Explorers Club and focuses on human-powered travel.

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Whatever the new normal turns out to be, one thing’s for certain: the way we travel will never be the same.

Some trends, like longer vacations and more time spent in nature, are already well established. But more changes are coming, as travelers yearn for destinations they’d never previously considered—and expect to experience them in the utmost privacy. How we explore will improve, with a stronger focus on making a meaningful economic impact and on reducing our environmental footprint.

Even our keepsakes will be different: blockchain-backed souvenirs that represent our memories could, like us, be about to take off.

EDI TED BY PAUL BRADY

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Intellıgent Traveler

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If They Build It, Will We Come?

In a rarely visited corner of Saudi Arabia, a new destination is rising up around ancient cultural wonders. PAUL BRADY reports on the Kingdom’s efforts to convince the world to make the trip.

THERE’S A PLACE in the Arabian

Desert that holds 7,000 years of history, more than 100 megalithic tombs that rival anything at Petra, Jordan, and an oasis of 2.3 million date palms. Yet even the most welltraveled adventurers may struggle to find Al Ula (experiencealula.com) on a map. That could be about to change, as the government of Saudi Arabia embarks on an ambitious plan to make this destination world-famous.

Located on ancient trade and pilgrimage routes in the northwest of the country, the region of Al Ula spans more than 8,700 square miles, making it about the size of New Jersey.

Until recently, its most noteworthy

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attractions were 111 remarkable tombs carved into mountainsides and stone outcrops more than 2,000 years ago by the Nabataeans, an ancient people who settled this stretch of the Arabian Peninsula.

These showstoppers were named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2008, but they’re hardly alone. So far, more than 27,000 distinct archaeological sites have been identified in Al Ula. Ongoing excavations are expected to reveal other secrets in the coming years, according to Rebecca Foote, director of archaeology and cultural heritage research for the Royal Commission for Al Ula (RCU), a Saudi government

ERIC L AF F ORGUE/G AMMA- RAPH O V I A GE T T Y I MAGE S. O PP O SI TE , F ROM TO P : C OURTE SY OF HAB I TA S ALUL A ; C O URT E SY O F AMAN . PRE V IO US SPRE AD : SI VAN A SK AYO

From left: Plans for a Habitas resort in Al Ula, Saudi Arabia, call for elaborate guest suites; touring archaeological sites in the region.

entity established to develop the area. “Rather than building with stone, the Nabataeans carved their tombs straight from the rock, responding to the landscape and how it inspired them,” Foote says.

The RCU has set a goal of bringing more than 2 million visitors to the region annually by 2035. But travelers may face a dilemma in choosing whether to go, given Saudi Arabia’s human-rights record. What’s more, the U.S. State Department maintains a Level 4: Do Not Travel warning on the country not only because of COVID-19 but also for the risk of terror attacks.

Events and attractions featuring boldfaced names are helping advance the goal, which got a boost from

Jabal al-Fil, or Elephant Rock, is one of Al Ula’s star geological formations.

the fall 2019 launch of tourist visas.

This spring saw the arrival of the first Extreme E-series Desert X Prix, a rallystyle race featuring electric SUVs, plus an open-air concert by Andrea Bocelli.

A film, music, and food festival, Azimuth, brought international pop acts, including the Chainsmokers, and an outpost of Annabel’s, the London private members’ club. British chef Jason Atherton is planning to open a restaurant, Maraya Social, in October 2021, a sister to his buzzy Social restaurants in Dubai, London, Shanghai, and St. Moritz, Switzerland.

There’s also a new focus on wellness. Riyadh-based Alaa Abanomi, a former investment banker turned well-being entrepreneur, created Urban Wellness House, a temporary retreat at Al Ula this winter that offered outdoor yoga, meditation, drum circles, and healing sound baths.

“To have men and women practicing together in a really respectful space

with everyone accepting of each other was a beautiful thing,” she says. Participants spanned a broad age range and arrived in everything from traditional garments to shorts and yoga gear. “We even had a camel herder arrive on his camel asking to join—and he really enjoyed it,” Abanomi adds.

Global travel brands are taking note. “I’m wildly enthusiastic about Saudi Arabia,” says Geoffrey Kent, the founder of luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent (abercrombie kent.com). “The magnificent sand dunes and breathtaking views are the perfect backdrops for the desert adventures we are planning.” His long-term vision? A series of ecolodges across the Kingdom.

A&K will have company: Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts (banyantree. com), the wellness-focused hotel company, is planning to open an Al Ula resort later this year, as is the new brand Habitas (ourhabitas. com), which already has hotels in Namibia and Tulum, Mexico. Aman has announced its intention to open three properties in Al Ula over the next few years. And an independent resort, Sharaan (rcu.gov.sa), designed by the architect Jean Nouvel and slated for 2023, will be carved out of sandstone, in an echo of the Nabataean tombs.

Meanwhile, the RCU is building a global hub for archaeological research in partnership with the government of France and a 29-mile tram line connecting the biggest attractions in Al Ula. Including one that’s sure to remain in demand for years: miles of vast, unspoiled desert, where there’s still plenty to discover.

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Ready for Anything After years of planning—and some last-minute pivots—Bermuda is emerging from the pandemic as one of the world’s most easy-to-visit destinations. BY DAV I D L AHUTA

BACK IN MARCH, my wife and I enjoyed a

private five-course tasting menu aboard the Azalea, a 40-foot catamaran operated

by True Bermuda Charters (truebermuda. com). Aside from the captain, first mate, and chef, there wasn’t another soul in sight as we cruised around Hamilton Harbour.

Co-owner Nicole Patracuolla had watched demand for her charters dwindle during the pandemic, so she shifted from group excursions and corporate events to more intimate sails like ours. “Switching gears to bespoke dinners has definitely helped attract

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new clients,” Patracuolla told me.

You’ll find that same mindset most places you look in Bermuda, where existing businesses are reinventing themselves and new projects are bolstering the tourism economy. Taken together, these innovations have helped turn a small Atlantic nation known for its relaxed vibes, candy-colored cottages, and palm-lined islets into a forwardthinking destination—one that’s ready for whatever the future holds.

“The key is to stay nimble,” Patracuolla says. Here’s how Bermuda is doing it.

IL LUSTRAT ION BY MAX -O-MAT IC

to regulations approved by the government in March.

GOING TO SEA

This British territory has been a cruise destination for decades, but of the 196 ships scheduled to arrive in 2020, only four made it to Bermuda before sailings were paused. Partly in response to the loss of that industry, which brings in $167 million a year, the island has persuaded major lines to make the country their home port for the first time. Royal Caribbean (royalcaribbean.com; from $938 per person) will offer seven-night cruises from Bermuda to the Bahamas and back in July and August, while Viking (vikingcruises.com; from $1,799 per person) has planned eight-day voyages that circumnavigate the island this summer.

GENERATING BUZZ

TAKING OFF

L. F. Wade International Airport (bermudaairport.

com) has a brand-new $400 million terminal that opened in December.

Featuring a number of firsts for Bermuda, including six covered Jetways, automated immigration gates, and free on-site COVID testing, the 288,000-square-foot facility is served by

two-hour flights from numerous East Coast cities.

Airlines have recently added new nonstops to and from Charlotte, North Carolina; London Heathrow; and Ponta Delgada, in the Azores.

BUILDING BIGGER

Just a 10-minute taxi ride from the airport, the St. Regis Bermuda (marriott.com; doubles

from $910) is a 120-room luxury resort that opened in May. Home to the country’s first casino and flanked by a powdery pink-sand beach, the hotel is also selling 30 two- and three-bedroom residences, starting at $1.6 million. In another first for Bermuda, owners of the St. Regis condos will also be entitled to permanently live and work on the island, thanks

Other innovations are making it easier and more convenient to get around on land. Visitors can now hop behind the wheel of a variety of electric vehicles, including two-door cars with sunroofs from Localmotion (localmotion bda.com) and drop-top electric Hummer HXT SUVs from Rugged Rentals (ruggedrentalsbda.com).

Two sections of the 18-mile Bermuda Railway Trail have been linked by a new bridge over Flatts Inlet, creating a continuous biking route between Shelly Bay Beach and Palmetto Park, near Hamilton.

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Soaring Higher Airlines just endured the worst year on record. Now they’re turning to the future with new jets, new routes, and new competition. BY ERIC R O S EN

ONE DAY IN April 2020, just 87,500

passengers passed through TSA checkpoints across America, a jaw-dropping low that represented a roughly 95 percent dip from 2019. By this spring, air travel had bounced much of the way back: TSA screeners were checking more than 1.5 million people a day in April 2021, with the trend line pointing sharply upward. That lift hints at a bright future for flying in the U.S. and beyond. Here’s a closer look at what’s in store.

ENJOYING NEW PLANES

Delta Air Lines (delta.com), JetBlue (jetblue.com), and Southwest Airlines

(southwest.com) are all flying two new aircraft types, the Airbus A220 and Boeing 737 Max; United Airlines (united.com) has the Max, too. (The Boeing jets are flying again after a nearly two-year safety review by the FAA.) Both models are more fuel-efficient than older jets, making it economically feasible for carriers to open up new routes that would

Southwest Airlines has a growing fleet of brand-new Boeing 737 Max jets.

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otherwise go unserved. The onboard experience has also improved: these planes have larger overhead bins and better entertainment systems, and they deliver smoother rides.

FLYING FOR FUN

New jets aren’t the only thing prompting airlines to take another look at route networks. Because we’re taking fewer business trips, American Airlines (aa.com) has added flights to vacation destinations like Orlando from cities including Birmingham, Alabama; Dayton, Ohio; and Indianapolis. American has also increased service to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Kalispell, Montana—both gateways to national parks. United, meanwhile, launched 26 new domestic routes, linking many Midwestern cities, including Milwaukee and Columbus, Ohio, to coastal escapes such as Hilton Head, South Carolina, and Portland, Maine.

JetBlue announced expanded service from its Boston and New York hubs to locations including Puerto

JetBlue founder David Neeleman is back with a new vision.

Vallarta, Mexico; San Antonio, Texas; and, in 2022, Vancouver.

and its flights between Seattle and Bangalore, India, are slated to start in the second half of 2021.

CLO CKW ISE FROM LEF T: A SHLEE DUN CAN /C OURTE SY OF S OUTHW E ST A IRL IN E S ; GE T T Y I MAGE S ; C OURT E SY OF B REE ZE A IR WAYS

GOING FARTHER

Qatar Airways (qatarairways.com)

TAKING ON THE COMPETITION

was one international airline that actually broadened its footprint in the U.S. during the pandemic, adding new flights between Doha and both Seattle and San Francisco.

The airline also forged a partnership with Alaska Airlines (alaskaair.com): customers can now make a seamless single booking that starts with an Alaska flight and connects to an international trip operated by Qatar.

JetBlue has announced its firstever transatlantic flights, with service to London Heathrow from both Boston and New York. The airline will have 24 brand-new Mint businessclass suites aboard the Airbus A321LR jets on that route. (Seats in the first row, known as Mint Studios, give passengers even more space.)

Two carriers are betting on an uptick in “diaspora travel,” where people in the U.S. travel specifically because of family or ancestral connections. Last fall, United launched nonstops from Washington, D.C., to both Accra, Ghana, and Lagos, Nigeria. American will link Miami and Paramaribo, Suriname, this summer,

The pandemic saw the end of some struggling low-cost carriers, including Norwegian and Wow Air, but newcomers are ready to take on the biggies. Avelo Airlines (aveloair. com) debuted in April with flights from Burbank, California, to various cities in the western U.S. “Honestly, there could not be a better time for us to launch,” says Andrew Levy, the airline’s founder, chairman, and CEO. He promises that Avelo’s flights to smaller airports within major markets will be cheaper than those offered by legacy carriers. Breeze Airways (flybreeze.com), from JetBlue founder David Neeleman, is also coming soon, with a similar bangfor-your-buck model (see The Even Friendlier Skies, right).

New low-cost airlines are taking off in Europe, too. Italy-based Ego Airways (egoairways.com) launched in March with flights serving 11 cities, including Bari, Catania, and Florence.

And this summer, the Norwegian upstart Flyr (flyr.no) plans to expand from its home country with flights to Spain and France.

The Even Friendlier Skies A brand-new U.S. airline is promising to make flying nice.

Seriously. BY PAUL B RADY It’s a bold entrepreneur who would claim to be running “the world’s nicest airline,” but according to Breeze Airways founder and CEO David Neeleman, that’s exactly what travelers are looking for these days. “We just want to be nice,” says the air-travel pioneer, who previously launched JetBlue and Brazil’s Azul, among other airlines. “There’s too much nastiness out there on the Internet and everywhere else.

It costs us nothing to be nice.”

Neeleman is betting that warm service—plus ultra-low fares starting at $39 each way—will bring passengers back to America’s skies this summer. Breeze is also hoping to fill a gap in the domestic market: major carriers funnel fliers through hubs like Chicago, Dallas, or New York City, but Breeze offers point-to-point trips between midsize cities that haven’t historically been well served. Prime examples include Charleston, South Carolina; Louisville, Kentucky; and Norfolk, Virginia.

Breeze is flying a mix of smaller jets, including brand-new Airbus A220s and late-model Embraer 195s. Both aircraft deliver high levels of fuel efficiency, helping to keep costs down, Neeleman explains.

“We’re going to pass that along to our customers,” he promises.

Now that’s nice.

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Making a Difference, Made Easier Many travelers have put a new focus on spending their money with Blackowned hotels, restaurants, and attractions. Thankfully, innovative tools and services are making it easier than ever. BY K IMBERLY W I L S O N

“WE ARE ALL finally beginning to see

the light at the end of the tunnel,” says Shari Munroe. The entrepreneur founded Aristo Kat Tours (aristokat tours.com) with her father, Garfield Munroe, and today the company runs catamaran tours around Montego Bay and Negril, Jamaica. “We’re proud to be one of the few Black-owned tourism entities in the country,” Shari says, “but our continued survival depends on the strong support of visitors.”

To that end, the Munroes have partnered with GetMyBoat (getmyboat. com), an online platform for charter adventures that helps Aristo Kat reach

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a wider audience. “They’ve helped us tremendously,” Shari says. “These days, about twenty percent of our bookings come through GetMyBoat.”

Listing on a major digital platform is just one way Blackowned businesses are reaching new markets. Broadening their reach could be critical: the pandemic has had an outsize impact on Black entrepreneurs. An average of two out of every five Black-owned firms in the U.S. were forced to close in the spring of 2020, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research—more than twice the rate seen by whiteowned companies.

The good news is, travelers are keen to make the impact of their dollars more meaningful. Google says searches for “Black-owned businesses” surged sixfold last year.

To help meet the demand, the Web giant has added new search filters and badges denoting businesses whose owners self-identify as Black.

Yelp has introduced a similar search tool. Meanwhile, American Express has an interactive map of Blackowned businesses through its Shop Small initiative.

Consumers can also call on travel advisors and home-rental firms to make sure their trips benefit communities of color.

Getaway Society (getawaysociety. com), for instance, is a vacationrental company with properties in destinations such as Hilton Head, South Carolina; Orlando; and Virginia Beach. The company’s cofounder,

IL LUSTRAT ION BY N E IL W EBB

Carrington M. Carter, makes a point of working with other Black entrepreneurs. “When you spend money with a Black-owned business like ours, you’re also supporting an ecosystem that benefits the entire Black community,” Carter says.

“Property managers, private chefs, interior designers, the list goes on.

That has a multiplier effect.”

Other experts are sharing their finds online. Ashlee Tuck is a cocktail writer in Baltimore who chronicles Black-owned restaurants and spirit brands on her site Will Drink for Travel (willdrinkfortravel.com). “As a Black traveler, it was only natural for me to amplify these businesses,” Tuck says. She has written about more than 100 Black-owned restaurants in her hometown, plus favorites in locations ranging from Chicago to Martha’s Vineyard. “When our communities are supported, jobs and opportunities are created.”

A striking mural of a winged doctor wearing boxing gloves watches over Denver’s East Colfax Avenue. Healthcare Hero was painted in April 2020 by local artist Austin Zucchini-Fowler.

This spring, he put the image up for auction backed by a nonfungible token, or NFT, giving anyone in the world the chance to own the work, whether or not they’d ever laid eyes on the real thing. Presently listed at around $1,700, Zucchini-Fowler’s NFT has yet to find a buyer—but the auction has generated plenty of buzz for the artist, who has also sold a number of prints of the image.

NFTs have suddenly become the talk of the art world, in part because these unique files authenticate ownership of an asset. The tokens, which are purchased with a cryptocurrency like Flow or Ether and are recorded in an online blockchain ledger, hit the mainstream this spring, when Christie’s sold an NFT-backed digital collage by the graphic designer and artist Beeple for $69.3 million.

The idea of using an NFT to validate an owner’s claim to something valuable has yet to take off in the travel industry.

But experts predict it’s only a matter of time before the new technology is integrated into border crossings, itinerary planning, conservation efforts, and even drink menus.

For travelers, the most important application for NFTs might be making international trips smoother. “If passports could be backed by blockchain, that would be a huge change when it comes to security and identity theft,” says Dustin York, associate professor of communication at Maryville University in St. Louis. Tying

proof of vaccination to a digital token is another possibility, says Juliette Levy, an expert in credit markets and a professor at the University of California, Riverside.

“Vaccine-passport NFTs may make this technology much more prevalent,” she says.

Airports, airlines, and sporting events including the Kentucky Derby are already exploring the idea of NFTs as digital keepsakes. Destinations could be next. “If you travel to a particular beach,” York explains, “you could receive an NFT as a bit of memorabilia that you could show off on Instagram or in a digital album.”

For Matthew Bailey, a photographer and founder of the travel site Must Do Canada (must docanada.com), the tokens are a way to support wildlife rehabilitation. After visiting Bolivia’s Senda Verde refuge, Bailey decided to contribute to its work by offering NFTs for Viento, a spider monkey, and Canelo, a howler monkey, on Opensea, a popular site for token commerce. Each digital file representing an animal is listed at .10 Ether, worth about $420 at press time; Bailey says half the purchase price will go to the refuge.

Restaurants are also exploring the technology. Quality Eats, which has two locations in New York City, created an NFTbacked cocktail this spring called Into the Ether. In March an anonymous buyer, Opensea username 7AA335, purchased the drink’s secret recipe as well as the rights to a free round on every visit for .75 Ether, or about $2,000. The exclusive cocktail may be a bellwether for more innovation to come, York says: “Really just about anything can be made into an NFT.”

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The one-of-a-kind digital files known as non-fungible tokens upended the art world this year. Next up? The travel industry, which may soon use cryptocurrencybacked NFTs to quantify the value of our vacations. BY C HARU S URI

I N T E L L I G E N T

How NFTs May Change the Way We Travel

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What’s Better Than the Suite Life?

More hotels are getting into the real estate game, selling private vacation homes that come with all the bells and whistles. BY PAUL BRADY

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An Ocean Cliff villa at One&Only Mandarina, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast.

Villa Alba, at Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco, near Siena, Italy.

WHEN THE Waldorf Astoria

C O URT E SY O F RO SE WO O D H OTEL S & RE S ORTS. OPP O SI TE: C O URTE SY OF ONE &ON LY MAN DARINA

Residences Miami (waldorfresidences

miami.com) opens in a 100-story tower on Biscayne Bay sometime in the mid 2020s, it’ll be one of the tallest hotels in the United States.

The downtown skyscraper will turn heads for another reason, too: around 60 percent of the hotel will be private residences that each start at $1 million. That’s quite a hotel bill, even for a Waldorf Astoria.

But the iconic brand, owned

by Hilton, is hardly alone in selling rarefied real estate. As the pandemic has prompted travelers to increasingly seek out privacy and exclusivity—and a roaring stock market has padded portfolios—hotels around the world are building more and more residences into their plans.

In fact, nearly 200 branded residential projects have launched since 2018, according to the real estate firm Savills. “The sector will continue to grow over the coming years as travel restrictions ease and the allure of a retreat remains at an all-time high,” says Riyan Itani, director of global residential development at the firm. Numerous hotel groups are joining established players like Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts (fourseasons.com) and the Ritz-Carlton (ritzcarlton.com), which already have dozens of properties with residences. One striking example is Accor (group.accor.com), which has 80 such hotels and resorts in the works, including the Fairmont Century Plaza, in Los Angeles, Raffles Boston, and SLS Residences Dubai.

Rosewood Hotels & Resorts

(rosewood.com) has villas and apartments at 11 of its properties, including Rosewood Baha Mar and Rosewood Little Dix Bay, both in the Caribbean, and Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco, in Tuscany.

In the next three years, the brand

plans to add real estate at seven new hotels, opening in places like Doha, Qatar; Hoi An, Vietnam; and São Paulo, Brazil. Owners get access to a dedicated hotel staff and all resort amenities, plus discounts and perks like free upgrades at all Rosewood properties.

One&Only (oneandonlyresorts. com) is also adding residences, including 54 homes at the newly opened One&Only Mandarina resort on Mexico’s Riviera Nayarit. They’ll range in size from four to eight bedrooms, with pools and terraces overlooking the ocean or the rain forest. At the One&Only Portonovi, in Montenegro, each of the 10 villas has an infinity pool and its own private slice of beach.

Smaller brands aren’t standing on the sidelines. Rancho La Puerta (rancholapuerta.com), the Baja California, Mexico, resort that’s a reader favorite in Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Awards, announced last year it would add 108 new villas by 2022. Owners of the two- to four-bedroom homes will get access to residents-only amenities

like tennis and pickleball courts, a pool, a restaurant, and meditation rooms, as well as access to all the resort’s fitness and wellness services, including classes, spa treatments, and mindfulness sessions.

Montage Hotels & Resorts

(montagehotels.com) may well be laying the most ambitious bets on the ownership model. At Montage Residences Big Sky, slated to open in Montana in November, 39 homes will range in size from two to six bedrooms; all have ski-in, ski-out access, plus all the amenities of the adjoining 150-room Montage Big Sky resort. The company’s spinoff brand Pendry will bring 24 homes, starting at 2,900 square feet, to New Jersey’s horse country with the Pendry Residences Natirar.

Meanwhile, construction is now under way on Montage Cay, the company’s first-ever private-island resort in the Bahamas. It will have 48 villas for sale, plus 50 suites, all with access to seven beaches, a marina, and plenty of watersports like sailing and diving. Get ’em while they’re hot.

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Rising from the Desert

With its cutting-edge architecture, commitment to arts and culture, and focus on sustainability, could Doha, Qatar, offer cities across the world a blueprint for the future?

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The Future Is Female

When it comes to running hotels, men have traditionally ruled. But a new generation of female entrepreneurs is shaking things up— and changing the face of the industry.

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Paris Match

For decades, Hôtel Costes was the French capital’s coolest address. Now the property has a sophisticated sibling, Castiglione. Think of it as classic Paris, but with a twist—just the place to show off this season’s most stylish looks.

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A Bigger Canvas

The dazzling new Kinder Building at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston confirms the city’s status as a cosmopolitan art mecca.

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The National Museum of Qatar, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel.

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The I. M. Pei– designed Museum of Islamic Art.

Clockwise from top: A view of Doha’s skyline, seen from Doha Bay; the grounds of the Banyan Tree Doha, in the Mushaireb district; Education City’s Ceremonial Court.

way our cities were created needs reexamining— and even, in some cases, reimagining.

As we ask ourselves what cities of the future should look like, we naturally look around for examples. Places like Shanghai, Tokyo, and New York City seem to fit the description on paper: each has vast neon-tinged skylines, sprawling (albeit sometimes out-of-date) public-transportation infrastructures, and a renewed focus on the pedestrian experience, thanks to forward-thinking projects like the High Line—an elevated park on an abandoned railway line that brought a little bit of nature to Manhattan’s far west side.

But to me, the designation “futuristic city” isn’t a formula—it’s an ever-changing experiment that evolves to meet the needs of the people. And I’d argue that no city better encapsulates that definition than Doha, the capital of Qatar. (pronounced kah-tahr) occupies an oval-shaped peninsula jutting into the Persian Gulf from Saudi Arabia, with Iran across the sea. (The name of the news network Al Jazeera, which is headquartered in Doha, comes from the Arabic for “The Peninsula.”) For centuries, the territory was a fishing and pearl-trading center, ruled by various Arab tribes until the Ottoman Empire expanded its reach there in 1871. The Ottomans left at the beginning of World War I; Qatar’s modern history dates from 1916, when the then sheikhdom became a British protectorate. The discovery of oil in 1938 was a turning point, too, as it was for many of Qatar’s neighbors, bringing a swell in revenue that led to an expanded government and increased public services.

The sheikhdom declared independence in 1971, when Britain pulled out of the Gulf, citing financial constraints. But the 1980s and early 90s saw a languishing economy, resulting, in 1995, in a shake-up of the country’s leadership.

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (known as “Father Emir”) laid the plans for a modern state after overthrowing his father, Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani, who had ruled since independence. One of the younger Al Thani’s most significant reforms was known as National Vision 2030, a grand blueprint for the country.

QATAR

During my time as editor in chief of Elle Decor, my colleagues and I talked a lot about the future. Conversations about everything from architecture and building materials to inclusive, universal design would make us consider how these elements might influence our collective tomorrow. And, inevitably, these conversations would focus on the trajectory of cities. What would they look like? How sustainable would they be? Would there still be cars? Would humans figure out a way to coexist more harmoniously?

Today, these questions are more pressing than ever as the effect of the pandemic on our urban centers is furiously analyzed. In the COVID-19 age, it seems everything about the

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Now, under the current emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Qatar is the richest state per capita in the world, thanks to its reserves of oil and natural gas. This wealth has allowed the government—especially in the past two decades—to heavily invest in everything from art to medical research and education, with the nation achieving a 94 percent literacy rate. it feel like to be in Doha, this prosperous city of the future? Does everyone drive a Ferrari and shop all day? Well, yes and no. I’ve been lucky enough to visit Qatar a couple times a year for the past 15 years as part of my work as an editor and design consultant, and a few things always stand out. Qataris get up early, with the first call to prayer at around 5 a.m. The desert sun rises fast and blazes hot.

(It can be 110 degrees in the shade in summer, but from October to February, it’s a pleasant 75 degrees on average—similar to L.A., if a little more humid.)

Malls are plentiful, and are popular places to hang out. Outposts of high-end restaurants, like Nobu and Dani García’s BiBo, abound.

Meanwhile, there’s been a movement led by young Qataris to promote fresh produce

SO WHAT DOES

and organic food, and healthy juice bars and eateries—like Torba Café in Education City, which serves an amazing buckwheat-andmushroom pizza—have followed.

But what makes Doha so fascinating are its incredible contradictions. One day I might be meeting expat English friends at the old Souq Waqif, where many of the wealthiest locals still do their market shopping, after wiping their hands clean from digging into fresh Yemenite cuisine at Bandar Aden restaurant (I always order the fahsa, a lamb stew). The next day I’ll find myself riding in the back of a Qatari friend’s souped-up Mercedes G-Wagon (or Rolls-Royce, or Ferrari, often painted in signature Qatari burgundy) to full-moon yoga, a nighttime ritual held on the edge of the Persian Gulf, with amazing views of the water. to understand Qatar’s extraordinary growth and modernization is through its architecture, and no building is more emblematic of modern Doha than the National Museum of Qatar, or NMoQ, which sits along the city’s Corniche. The work of Pritzker Prize–winning French architect Jean Nouvel, the building is designed to resemble a natural

THE BEST WAY

SAUDI ARABIA

American sculptor Richard Serra stretches over two miles. qm.org.qa.

Education City Designed by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, this citywithin-a-city is home to multiple cultural and research institutions, branches of eight universities, and the Qatar National Library. qf.org.qa.

Discovering Doha What to See

Graphic interiors at Culture Pass Club.

From far left: An exterior mural at Culture Pass Club; a Louise Bourgeois sculpture in the Qatar National Convention Centre.

Culture Pass Club A members-only arts club and collaborative space that will have houses available to the public for short-term stays. culturepass club.com.

East-West/West-East In the middle of the desert, two hours west of Doha, a series of four steel monoliths created by

I LLUSTRAT IO N BY L ARA C O STAF REDA

Fire Station Artist in Residence This former civildefense building now functions as a contemporary art space committed to supporting artists through residence programs and public shows. firestation. org.qa.

M7 An artistic hub in Msheireb Downtown Doha that incubates local talent, especially in fashion, and hosts regular exhibitions. m7.org.qa.

Museum of Islamic Art On the city’s fourmile Corniche along Doha Bay, the I. M. Pei–designed MIA holds a collection that spans 14 centuries. mia.org.qa.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

National Museum of Qatar Designed by Jean Nouvel in the form of the desert rose crystal, this monumental 560,000-square-foot gallery examines Qatar’s past, present, and future. nmoq.org.qa.

Place Vendôme Inspired by the 18th-century square in Paris, this vast mixed-use project in the neighboring city of Lusail opens next month and will feature more than 500 retail outlets, restaurants, hotels, and entertainment venues. place vendomeqatar.com.

OMAN

the roof of the Sheraton Grand Doha Resort in West Bay. emsherif. com; prix fixe $82.

Nourlaya Contemporary Try the Sri Lankan cuisine at this lively corner restaurant in Msheireb Downtown Doha. instagram.com/ nourlaya.qa; entrées $13–$65.

Torba Farmers Market A sustainabilityminded vendor and café in Education City selling organic meals and produce. farmersmarket.qa.

Where to Stay

Qatar National Convention Centre Arata Isozaki designed this LEEDcertified building in Education City that houses Maman, a giant spider sculpture by Louise Bourgeois. qncc.qa.

Banyan Tree Doha Parisian designer Jacques Garcia created the interiors of this property in Mushaireb—including Vertigo, a 28th-floor bar overlooking the city. banyantree. com; doubles from $330.

Where to Eat

Mandarin Oriental Located in Msheireb Downtown Doha, this David Collins Studio–designed hotel is within walking distance of both MIA and NMoQ. mandarin oriental.com; doubles from $630.

Damasca One Syrian comfort food in Souq Waqif. damascarestaurant. com; entrées $8–$35.

Em Sherif Authentic regional dishes are served on

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The dome of the Place Vendôme complex in Lusail, currently under construction.

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mineral formation known as the desert rose.

More than 250,000 different steel elements are covered in glass-fiber-reinforced concrete and fused together over 560,000 square feet of gallery space (the primary exhibit hall is nearly a mile long). “It’s not just an art museum,” Jean Nouvel told me on the eve of its opening in 2018. “It is the work of the wind, of the sand, for millennia,” he explained of his inspiration for the building.

He’s not kidding. Over the past decade, I’ve watched the museum morph from a giant construction zone to an undulating biomorphic beauty. It’s a building with no bad angle, and one that elicits fervent hyperbole. When it debuted, the New York Times published an opinion piece with the headline “Skip the Vatican Museum. Go to the National Museum of Qatar Instead.” While the main exhibition space tells the story of Qatar’s past, present, and future, a new exhibition, “Seagrass Tales, Dugong Trails,” is designed especially for children (family outings are a

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big part of the culture here). The aim is to educate young people about these manateelike mammals, which have lived in the Persian Gulf for more than 7,500 years and are now threatened with extinction.

The museum is the brainchild of the emir’s sister, Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani, the chairperson of Qatar Museums, the umbrella organization for the city’s arts-and-culture institutions. Since she graduated from Duke University in 2005, she has become a major force in the international art market and is now in charge of much of the cultural life of the country.

(She and I were classmates at Duke, and I now advise on design projects for Qatar Museums.)

In a TED Talk she gave in 2010, Al Mayassa emphasized “globalizing the local, localizing the global” (paraphrasing anthropologist Richard Wilk). “We are changing our culture from within,” she said, “but at the same time we are reconnecting with our traditions. We know that modernization is happening. Qatar (Continued on page 103) wants to be a modern

Clockwise from above: The Msheireb subway station; the Qatar National Library, which holds more than 800,000 books; the library’s façade.

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When it comes to running hotels, men have traditionally ruled.

But a new generation of female entrepreneurs is shaking things up— and changing the face of the industry.

BY L I N D SAY TALB OT

WHEN LIZ LAMBERT opened the Hotel

San José in Austin, Texas, just over 20 years ago, it felt like something radical: a motorcycle-riding female attorney from the Manhattan D.A.’s office leaves her job, returns to her home state, and finds success in an industry that’s always been dominated by men.

Lambert set up the Bunkhouse Group, a company that now operates 10 hotels in Texas, California, and Mexico. More importantly, she paved the way for future women hoteliers—visionaries behind some of our favorite independent properties around the country.

Like Lambert (who left Bunkhouse in 2019), few of this new class have traditional backgrounds in hospitality. That didn’t stop them from pursuing ambitious projects— none of which had the backing of a big real estate developer or a corporate chain. These six women have used hotels as platforms for their passions, from interior design and architecture to food and the great outdoors.

Hotelier and chef Jamila Ross at the Copper Door B&B, in Miami. Above, from left: Sara Combs at the Joshua Tree House, in California; one of the property’s desertinspired guest rooms.

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C LO C KW I SE F ROM B OT TO M LEF T: MARY BE TH KOE TH ; NOLWEN CIF UEN TE S (2); JE S SICA SAMPLE (2)

THE FUTURE IS FEMALE

Emma Goodwin on the roof of a vintage Land Rover that belongs to her Malibu hotel, the Surfrider.

The Surfrider’s sign sits high above the Pacific Coast Highway.

to express their idea of the good life. “We approached the process as if we were guests expecting our fantasy of the perfect hotel,” Emma explains.

This meant filling the place with all of their favorite things: custom four-poster beds covered in soft Bellino linens, waffled bathrobes from Parachute Home, and organic bath products from Grown Alchemist. Guests can use a quiver of surfboards by local shaper Wax Surf Co., and hammocks are strung on every balcony. The couple added personal touches, too, like their own Le Corbusier drawings from the 60s, which hang in the library.

“A hotel isn’t just about design but about an entire sensory experience,” Goodwin says. “It’s something I think women are very good at.” Among her favorite hotels in the world? Hotel Il Pellicano, in Italy, and Raes on Wategos and the Atlantic Byron Bay, in Australia— all of which are run by women. “I think the industry would be so much better if there were more females in it.” thesurfrider malibu.com; doubles from $400.

Emma Goodwin T HE SURFRID ER HOT EL Ma libu, C a li for nia

UCKED AMONG the oleanders and verbenas

T on the cliffs of Malibu, California, there’s a rooftop bar that now serves as a gathering

place for style-conscious visitors. Flickering firepits, overstuffed sofas, and a cinematic view of the ocean make it the place to be for a sundowner or après-surf cocktail. This dreamy scene was created by Emma Goodwin, the force behind a 20-room boutique hotel that takes its name from the iconic Surfrider Beach across the Pacific Coast Highway.

A Brisbane, Australia, native with a Zen sensibility when it comes to interior design, Goodwin and her architect husband, California native Matthew Goodwin, had not worked on a hotel project before. But when they heard that a run-down 1950s motel was for sale on a prime stretch of the PCH, something clicked, and the couple realized it was the ultimate opportunity

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From top: Emma Goodwin in the hotel’s library; a piece by local artist Ali Beletic in the lobby.

The rooftop overlooks Surfrider Beach.

Photographs by J ES SICA SAM P LE

Jamila Ross

From left: Guest rooms at the Copper Door B&B feature custom wallpaper; breakfast at Rosie’s; co-owner Jamila Ross in front of a mural on the property.

THE C OPPER D O O R B & B Mia mi

Y VISION was a modern take on a

M grandma’s bed-and-breakfast,” says Jamila Ross, who opened the Copper Door B&B in the Overtown enclave of Miami in 2018. “I wanted the vintage vibe, individually designed rooms, homestyle breakfasts, great conversations around a communal table—but elevated, with a feeling of cool.”

Ross, originally from Yonkers, New York, first established herself in the food world after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in the Hudson Valley. She then spent a decade working for chefs and hotels in New York State, Los Angeles, Kuwait, and Dubai.

After arriving in Miami, she met her future husband, Akino West (he’s also a chef and has a stint at Copenhagen’s Noma under his belt).

They planned to start a restaurant of their own.

Instead, the couple fell in love with an Art Deco hotel that had been boarded up for nearly 20 years. Ross and West soon got to work on transforming the 1940s building into a one-of-a-kind small hotel, with custom botanical wallpaper, bamboo furniture, and rotating installations by local artists. In response

Photographs by MARY B E T H KO E T H

to the pandemic, last spring they added Rosie’s, an outdoor pop-up breakfast spot, which is now one of the hottest brunch reservations in town.

Ross lives with West on site at Copper Door to oversee the day-to-day operations, and she’s keenly aware of the uniqueness of her position. “In American culture specifically, the owners of hospitality businesses tend to not be present, and they’re certainly not a twentysomething woman, let alone a Black woman,” she says.

“I hope our culture gets to a place where the idea that anyone can be an entrepreneur on this scale is normalized.” copperdoorbnb.com; doubles from $115.

Sara Combs

Clockwise from top: Sara Combs in the Joshua Tree House’s Hacienda; the swimming pool; the dining room at the Hacienda.

T HE JO S HUA TREE H O USE Jo shua Tre e, C a li for nia

OT MANY HOTEL projects start with a

N Craigslist ad. But the Joshua Tree House is far from a typical hotel, and its co-owner, Sara Combs, is far from a typical hotelier. It all started in 2014, when Combs and her husband, Rich, were craving time away from the hustle of their San Francisco tech jobs. They headed south on a road trip and wound up in Joshua Tree, about 45 minutes outside Palm Springs.

They were so taken by the otherworldly desert vibes that they began looking for real estate—and fell hard for a 1949 hacienda they saw posted for sale on Craigslist. To help pay off the mortgage, they put their new digs on Airbnb, naming it the Joshua Tree House.

Images of the place soon went viral, thanks to Sara’s natural eye for interiors. “There weren’t many properties like this—surrounded by nature but also focused on elevated design,” she says. She grew up in Connecticut and studied environmental design at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Buoyed by this success, the Combses began searching for another renovation project nearby, eventually adding a mid-century casita to the original property.

“There’s something really feminine and personal about these spaces,” notes Combs, who selected every element of the décor. “It’s about creating an entire mood.”

In 2019, the couple decided to branch out and open another desert property—this one outside Tucson, Arizona, bordering Saguaro National Park. A five-bedroom inn on 38 acres, the Posada by the Joshua Tree House reflects Arizona’s adobe vernacular and is furnished with pieces that conform with Combs’s signature spare, boho look.

“I’m passionate about offering an experience for other people to reflect, reset, and recharge,” she says. thejoshuatreehouse.com; doubles from $285.

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Photographs by NOLWEN CI F UENT ES

The check-in lounge of the Roundtree’s Main House. Below: The building’s classic shingled façade.

Sylvia Wong THE RO UNDT REE Amaga n s et t , New Yor k

O Sylvia Wong, owner of the Roundtree.

PENING A HOTEL in the summer of 2020

may not have been ideal timing, but if ever a property was made for social distancing, it’s the Roundtree. On two idyllic acres stand a series of shingled buildings—a classic style that has become synonymous with the East End of Long Island. Rolling lawns are dotted with Ping-Pong tables, firepits, and lounge chairs, and interiors have a soothing palette of natural wood and slate.

Photographs by AMAN DA V IL L ARO SA

“I want guests to feel like they’re staying at their second home,” says owner Sylvia Wong, who opened the Roundtree as a 180-degree career move after working at Manhattan tech and investment firms. Her story is one of passion for place: the first-time hotelier fell in love with the history and bucolic charm of the Hamptons—and with Amagansett, specifically.

Like many busy New Yorkers looking to get out of the sweltering city, Wong escaped to the Hamptons every summer weekend for years.

“One of those weekends I hopped on the Jitney shuttle to view a property I had seen online, and I immediately felt inspired,” she says. One of the hotel’s cottages is more than 250 years old, a barn is a century old, and the whole place previously belonged to one of the town’s oldest families.

Guests who walk to Amagansett’s small commercial center or to Indian Wells Beach will realize Wong has created a world that offers a unique experience in this rarefied corner of America: the feeling of living like a local. theroundtreehotels.com; doubles from $1,095.

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Jen Turner THE CARPENTER HOT EL Au s t in, Texa s

AM A DEEP believer in the idea that the

I preservation of funky old buildings helps maintain the character and continuity of a place,”

From left: Jen Turner at the Carpenter Hotel; vintage chairs in the lobby.

says architect Jen Turner. “They’re kind of like folk songs.” A Houstonian and University of Texas at Austin graduate, she worked in Manhattan for 11 years before moving back to Texas.

Turner and her husband, Jack Barron, opened the Carpenter Hotel in Austin’s Zilker

A guest room at the Carpenter Hotel.

Photographs by MIRAN DA BAR N ES

neighborhood in 2018. The hotel is centered on a 1948 Modernist landmark that was once the home of the carpenters’ trade union. The singlestory building, as well as the four-story annex that houses the 93 guest rooms, was a canvas for Turner to display her skills. The property is characterized by strong, clean lines with a Bauhaus influence and details that range from industrial concrete staircases to a 40-foot metal sign above the pool that reads simply HOTEL. There are touches of old Texas, too: vintage bowling-alley banquettes found at the famed Round Top antiques fair are used as seating in the restaurant; recycled oil pipes around the ground-floor parking area add a rustic patina; and terra-cotta blocks from San Antonio’s century-old D’Hanis Brick & Tile Co. line the hotel’s exterior.

“One thing people have always said about the Carpenter is that we thought of everything.

Maybe that’s something women do—not necessarily better, but more often,” she says.

“How do you move about a space, what do you need on a bedside table? Those are all things that I really put thought into.” The Carpenter has been such a hit that Turner—who had no previous hotel experience—has several more hospitality projects in the works, including Wo Fat Hotel & Restaurant, a 23-room hotel above the oldest dim sum restaurant in Honolulu. carpenterhotel.com; doubles from $225.

Nathalie Jordi HOTEL PE TER & PAUL New O r le a n s

Clockwise from above: Nathalie Jordi at Hotel Peter & Paul; a guest room in a former convent; the entrance to the old schoolhouse.

OOKBOOK WRITER, Uber driver, ice-

C pop entrepreneur, bicycle-tour guide, London cheesemonger: Nathalie Jordi’s path to becoming a hotelier has been a winding one.

But after moving from New York to New Orleans in 2009 and later spending a year working the front desk at a hotel in the city’s French Quarter, the Miami native found her calling.

At the time, Jordi was living in the Marigny district, known for its jazz clubs and cafés. “I felt like there wasn’t a place in New Orleans that I was enthusiastic about, in a neighborhood I’d want to be in. I was excited to create that,” explains the developer behind Hotel Peter & Paul. Then she discovered, just four blocks from her home, a group of 1860s buildings consisting of a Catholic schoolhouse, a church, a rectory, and a convent. The complex sat abandoned for 13 years until Jordi took an interest and found out it was for sale.

She approached the New York–based design firm ASH NYC about a site visit.

They all agreed it was a dream project.

After all, where else could you build an entire hotel from the grounds of a 19th-century religious compound?

Five years of zoning headaches and painstaking construction later, Peter &

Photographs by EM FERRETTI

Paul opened its doors in 2018—thanks in part to the committed group of women Jordi hired to work on the project.

“During construction, our architect, construction manager, interior designer, and historic consultant were all women,” Jordi says. The 71 guest rooms are furnished with canopy beds and gingham sofas, while the former rectory houses a neighborhood bar and restaurant—plus an ivy-covered sunroom inspired by Monet’s house in Giverny, France.

“A hotel is a living thing,” Jordi says of her hospitality philosophy. “We are just continuing a conversation the neighborhood has been having for hundreds of years. These buildings have seen so much—epidemics, wars and heartbreak, progress and joy—and we’re just the latest custodians. We wanted the layers and patina to be palpable.” hotelpeterandpaul.com; doubles from $139.

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Paris Match For decades, Hôtel Costes was the French capital’s coolest address. Now the property has a sophisticated sibling, Castiglione. Think of it as classic Paris, but with a twist— just the place to show off this season’s most stylish looks.

By ALEXANDRA MARSHALL Photographs by CERRUTI & DRAIME Styled by EWA KLUCZENKO

Rooftops don’t get more romantic than this—the view from a Castiglione guest room.

Below: Louis Vuitton knit tank,

$950; louisvuitton.com. Chanel cotton-drill jacket, $6,550, and shorts, $1,650; 800-550-0005.

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Making an entrance—a staircase at Castiglione.

Opposite: Fendi cotton trompe l’oeil knit dress, $1,640; fendi. com. Salvatore Ferragamo printed canvas trench, $2,700; ferragamo.com.

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ôtel Costes was the center of attention when it opened on a particularly tony stretch of Rue St.-Honoré in 1995, and the spotlight hasn’t really moved on since.

Bordello-styled by interiors guru Jacques Garcia when everyone else was doing minimalism, the property is warren-like, with small rooms, and shouldn’t have lasted. Especially given the competition in Paris, where palatial hotels proliferate like rabbits.

And especially among fashion people, Costes’s core clientele.

Their attention spans are not long and their tastes are, by definition, fickle. But many of them—the entire press and design team at Valentino, for example—won’t go anywhere else. If there is an address in Paris that people are bursting to return to for some good old-fashioned rubbernecking, it is this one.

“The first thing everyone told me when I was new in fashion was, ‘The camel craps and the caravan moves on.’ But it never moved on from the Costes,” says David Downton, a British illustrator who has worked for countless fashion houses and magazines. (Those are his portraits of the Costes staff in the hallway on the second floor.) Downton describes his stays for the haute couture shows in January and July as “habit-forming.”

He loves the voluptuous rooms lined with Pierre Frey silk and scented with just-cut red roses—even if they’re too small for him to draw in. “You can smoke on the restaurant patio, and you’ll always see someone there. You know when the Chanel show is happening because people pile in wearing Chanel, then go back out in Schiaparelli. It’s a parade.”

Before owner Jean-Louis Costes opened the hotel, he and his brother, Gilbert, were already masters of scene-setting, having made their name supplanting Parisian checked-tablecloth bistros with slick, design-forward sheds that served vaguely Thai-influenced fare in waistline-friendly portions. They understood the power of mood lighting and how best to show off clients, who included Monica Bellucci and Yves Saint Laurent, whether at Café Costes (designed by a young Philippe Starck); Le Café Marly, inside the Louvre; or, later, L’Avenue, a post-shopping stopover for the nipped and tucked just down the street from Hôtel Plaza Athénée. The brothers also understood the weirdly seductive sadism of restaurant service in Paris and carried it over to the hotel—to the consternation of many, and the delight of some. Building on

Top: The portico at Castiglione.

Above: Dolce & Gabbana strapless dress, $2,370; dolce gabbana.com. Nina Ricci pumps in semi-patent leather, $700; ninaricci.com. Opposite: Y/Project Contraband coat, $1,755; yproject.fr. Brunello

Cucinelli blouse, $1,875, and leather trousers, $5,095; 136 Greene St., N.Y.C.; 212-3341010. Salvatore Ferragamo F Heel slingbacks, $850; ferragamo.com. Vanessa Schindler chain earrings, $213; vanessa-schindler.com.

that prestige, Costes created a global brand, with a series of CDs compiled by the resident DJ that sold 6 million copies, and collaborations with brands such Eres swimwear and Essie nail polish.

But after all this magnificent intransigence, there is now a place for minimalism and daylight at the Costes. Yes, the hotel is changing.

Radically. (Not the restaurant—don’t panic, fans of the spicy beef salad known, somewhat unpronounceably, as le tigre qui pleure.) A new wing is opening around the corner, in what was formerly the Hôtel Lotti on the Rue de Castiglione, with an entirely different architecture and look. It’s not really an extension of the original, which is staying much the same as it ever was. Castiglione, as the new property is called, is its own separate universe, save for its elegant lobby and check-in area, which will be used by guests of both properties.

Jean-Louis Costes has described Castiglione as “mature” in that, for the first time, he approached a project as an established hotelier and hired an established designer.

Legendary minimalist Christian Liaigre completed his plans for the property shortly before his death in 2020, and his signature style is very grown-up. The look is visible everywhere—from the liberal use of wood paneling and carved brass door handles to the clean lines of the jewel-toned furniture and the eye-catching Calacatta marble that dominates the oversize bathrooms.

In contrast to the Costes, even the smallest rooms are nearly 500 square feet. More deluxe suites have rowing machines in the bathrooms. One suite contains a massive private terrace with a view of Le Secret, a gold David Altmejd sculpture of a figure with a giant ear located in a small courtyard. A private elevator and private VIP entrance are on the way, because Kanye doesn’t need people taking pictures when he arrives. Castiglione has a general manager—something Costes never

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The hotel’s interior staircase.

Right: Vejas side-split dress, $795; shop.vejas-k.com.

Burberry leather hoop earrings, $490; us.burberry. com. Opposite: Lemaire trench coat, $1,088, Ramirez shirt, $839, and asymmetrical Bermuda shorts, $632; us.lemaire.fr. Salvatore Ferragamo slingbacks (see above). Vanessa Schindler chain earrings (see above).

had. Naomi Campbell did a hard-hat tour earlier this year (the opening was scheduled for June) and said simply, “It’s beyond.”

Part of the traditional Costes experience was knowing that you couldn’t have everything you wanted, not even a club sandwich without mayonnaise—believe me, I’ve tried—but finding a place for the hotel in your heart regardless. If the new property doesn’t convert St.-Honoré partisans, well, it doesn’t have to. How radically flexible. Vive la différence.

hotelcostes.com; doubles at Castiglione from $1,450.

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goatskin-suede shoes, $1,200; 800-550-0005.

Opposite: Chanel cashmere cardigan, $4,250. Dolce & Gabbana strapless dress (see above).

HA IR BY OL I V IER N ORA Z . MAKEUP BY ANI A GR ZE S ZCZUK AT CALL I STE . MANICURE BY JUL IE V ILL AN OVA AT ARTL IST. MODEL : N ELLY HERIN AT GIRL MGMT. PRODUCT ION BY HORTEN SE B ERNARDIN

Velvet complements the hotel’s spare interiors. Below: Fifi Chachnil cardigan, $435; fifi chachnil.paris. Lou de Bètoly bra, price upon request; loude betoly.com. Chanel cottonjacquard pants, $1,950, and

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The dazzling new Kinder Building at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston confirms the city’s status as a cosmopolitan art mecca. Visiting groundbreaking galleries, mind-expanding installations, and under-theradar incubators nurturing homegrown talent, Michael Agresta opens his eyes to a world of possibilities.

Photographs by KATE ZIMMERMAN TURPIN

James Turrell’s The Light Inside, at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Opposite: Works by, from left, Tay Butler, Karen Navarro, B. Anele, and Jimmy Castillo at an exhibition in the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

a busy avenue to stand under the bright, spacious I N rotunda of the new Nancy F R O M and Rich Kinder Building at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston on a March morning, I felt a sense of grace descend. Sunlight filtered through the cloud-inspired ceiling, and the harsh Texas glare softened into something like a beneficent aura.

Surrounding me were doorways leading to full-room installations by the likes of James Turrell, Yayoi Kusama, and Gyula Kosice. Beyond the circular, Guggenheimesque balconies above me, a maze of galleries contained, among other things, the country’s most important collection of Latin American modernist art.

The Kinder, which opened to the public in November, houses more than 1,200 works of modern and contemporary art, almost all of which were not previously on permanent display.

These range from international treasures, like a pair of fireplace murals painted by Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger for Nelson Rockefeller, to masterworks by local legends Robert Rauschenberg, who was born in nearby Port Arthur, and Jesse Lott, who has lived in Houston since his childhood.

The story of how Houston became home to such wonders begins in the 1940s, when the French-born oil-industry aristocrats John and Dominique de Menil began spending most of their time in the city C O M I N G

Gyula Kosice’s La Ciudad Hidroespecial, an installation at the Kinder Building.

where they would eventually establish themselves as major art patrons. Friends from Paris and New York couldn’t understand how they could move to such a cultural desert. John responded with a biblical joke: “It’s in the desert that miracles happen.”

Seven decades later, I’m amazed to hear that some still think of Houston as part of “flyover country” when it has become one of the world’s great art cities. What would it take to wake people up to all that diverse, sophisticated Houston has to offer? The answer might be something like the Kinder.

Hiram Butler, a longtime Houston art dealer who represents Lott, Turrell, and others, sees the Kinder’s unveiling as a defining moment for his city. “Suddenly you’re walking into an encyclopedic museum that could only have been experienced in New York, Washington, Chicago, or Los Angeles,” he says.

“It’s the great reveal.”

My hotel, the ZaZa Museum District, was just a couple of blocks away, and later that day I found myself walking past the Kinder again, this time after dark. In tribute to the Texas-size clouds over Houston, architect Steven Holl jacketed the exterior with rounded, incandescent ribs, giving the threestory building the soft, puffy feel of a cumulous white nightlight. I began to think of the Kinder as a stellar nebula—the genesis, perhaps, of a new polestar for the U.S. art world.

Kinder’s unveiling is not the first time that a new era for Houston has arrived in the form of a cloud.

In 1900, a major hurricane destroyed nearby Galveston and left Houston, which is farther inland, as the primary seaport for the region. The next year brought another historic plume—of oil, this time, from a well 90 miles east at Spindletop. The discovery T H E

The lobby of the MFAH’s new Kinder Building.

A painting by Joan Miró and a mobile

by Alexander Calder at the Menil Collection.

transformed this part of Texas into an economic powerhouse.

One of the first things you notice when exploring Houston’s art world is the importance of patronage that is both visionary and very rich. Thanks to the unquenchable market for oil and gas, Houston has rarely been short of benefactors eager to turn petrodollars into cultural treasures. Fortunately, they have often been tasteful and forward-thinking, with an eye for talent and an understanding of art history.

For that, much credit goes to the de Menils, whom the New York Times Magazine once described as “the Medici of modern art.” The couple played key roles in the development of both the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH), as well as the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Several of the works they acquired are on view in the Kinder Building, including the 16-foot Alexander Calder mobile that dominates the rotunda.

But the best way to delve deep into their legacy is by visiting the Menil Collection, a charming 1987 Renzo Piano building in the Montrose neighborhood. (The mellow park alongside the museum is also the best spot in the city for a picnic. Grab lunch at the on-site Bistro Menil or one of Montrose’s many great restaurants, such as Eunice and One Fifth.)

The museum contains numerous objects of fascination, from the prehistoric to the up-to-the-minute, but what I love most is the way the curators have put works by European modernists in conversation with traditional and ceremonial art from Africa, the South Pacific, and Indigenous America. I was struck by the resonance between the Picassos, Mirós, Ernsts, and Magrittes and, for instance, the elegantly exaggerated human forms of the Dogon wood sculptures of West Africa. A visitor can see how Surrealists and Cubists of prewar Europe were inspired by anthropological art and artifacts to develop (and borrow) new languages of representation.

This idea of cross-cultural pollination is crucial to the imprint that the de Menils left on Houston. In 1959, after visiting a Menil-funded exhibition that stressed the value of Indigenous sculpture as high art—in Houston, in the middle of the Civil Rights movement—architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller dashed off an excited telegram to influential curator Jermayne MacAgy with a sentiment that I think still rings true today. “You bring honor to Houston,” Fuller wrote, as the first city leading the way in building a new world around the “fundamentality of art.” the 1950s, Houston was still highly segregated.

Jesse Lott has spoken of how, in his Jim Crow Era youth, Black people were only allowed inside the MFAH one day per week.

The Kinder Building showcases how far the city and the museum have come. A playful papier-mâché-and-wire sculpture by Lott of a 1986 NBA Finals game between the Houston Rockets and the Boston Celtics features prominently on the third floor. (Those who want to see more of Lott’s sculptures and line drawings can find a stunning survey of his career at the nearby Station Museum, on display until the end I N

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Travis Whitfield’s Shotgun House Kitchen, an installation at the Station Museum. Opposite: The Kinder Building.

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of the summer.) The Kinder also does a laudable job of contextualizing other key Houston artists within the broader art world. The muralist John Biggers, whose epic subject was Black life and struggle, is displayed next to Diego Rivera, and a painting from a Vincent Valdez series depicting lynchings of Mexican Americans shows up next to a print by Kara Walker.

Houston is the most racially diverse city in the U.S., a fact that has received significant media attention in recent years, including from Anthony Bourdain, who explored the intersecting global food cultures here in a 2016 episode of Parts Unknown. As I explored Houston’s contemporary art scene, it became clear that the contributions of people of color are likewise absolutely central. Nowhere is this more apparent than at Project Row Houses (PRH), an artists’ residency and exhibition space in the historically Black Third Ward.

Conceived by MacArthur fellow Rick Lowe—in collaboration with Lott, Biggers, painter Bert Long, and others—PRH began with the 1993 purchase of 22 shotgun-style homes. Since then, those houses have played host to 50 biannual rounds, in which artists are invited to respond to a theme (such as, recently, “Race, Health, and Motherhood”) and fill a house with a short-term installation that becomes part of a block-wide show.

For visitors, the PRH experience means going from row house to row house and absorbing a different artist’s vision inside each one. Sometimes, the artists will even be at work inside, ready to discuss their installations.

Often, projects spill out beyond the row houses themselves and into some form of broader engagement with the local community, like an artist-run late-night hot dog stand with board games at a Chevron station. PRH works can be moving, inspiring, and often biting in their interventions and critiques of social problems.

Because of the pandemic, PRH was closed to visitors, but I dropped by to talk to multimedia artist Rabéa Ballin and photographer Brian Ellison in their private studio space. They spoke about the importance of PRH as an incubator of young talent, rattling off an impressive list of artists who had worked in the same studio before them, including Robert L. Hodge, who also curates buzzy exhibitions in empty retail spaces, and Robert Pruitt, the mastermind of the hot-dog-stand project. Pruitt’s portraits have been credited by the musician Solange Knowles—sister of pop megastar Beyoncé

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Clockwise from right: The stainlesssteel exterior of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; a mural at Sawyer Yards; artwork by Jasmine Zelaya at Project Row Houses.

and, like her, a daughter of the Third Ward—for inspiring her Afrofuturist aesthetic.

Ballin had photographs up at an exhibition at the CAMH celebrating the life and work of the iconic local hip-hop artist DJ Screw, who died in 2000. Ellison credits CAMH, which is across the street from MFAH, for a growing local interest in reaching beyond the race and class guardrails of highbrow culture. “There were people there who probably never would have gone to a museum,” Ellison said of the show’s opening.

CAMH has a long-term partnership with DJ Screw’s Southside store, Screwed Up Records & Tapes, a site of pilgrimage for hiphop fans. Screw’s impact on Houston’s creative culture can’t be overstated. His slowed-down, sonically altered style speaks to the willfully unhurried rhythm of life in the humid metropolis, Janice Bond, CAMH’s deputy director, told me. “What he represents is a tone and texture of the city—a culture, a way of being, a way of experiencing sound and art.” through my visit, I moved to the Post Oak Hotel. Owned by billionaire mogul Tilman Fertitta (who also owns the Landry’s restaurant chain and the Houston Rockets), it features an impressive private art collection. As I admired the seven-figure Frank Stella sculpture in the lobby, then walked a few yards down the hall to the on-site Rolls-Royce dealership, I mused on the great wealth and power at play in Houston and how the value we ascribe to art is so often tied to investments and displays of status.

In search of a different vision, I drove across town to the other end of the art world’s economic spectrum: the (Continued on page 102) grassroots Harrisburg Art Museum H A L F W A Y

Art Lover’s Houston Where to Stay Hotel ZaZa Museum District Located footsteps from the MFAH, this 315-room property boasts a pool area with Neoclassical charm. hotelzaza. com; doubles from $249.

Post Oak Hotel at Uptown Houston Restaurateur Tilman Fertitta built the Post Oak as a global luxelife mecca and showcase for his own art collection. thepostoakhotel. com; doubles from $477.

Where to Eat Bludorn Chef Aaron Bludorn arrives via Manhattan’s Michelin-

starred Café Boulud.

Each dish is a work of art. bludorn restaurant.com; entrées $30–$50.

Eunice This restaurant is named for chef Drake Leonards’s Louisiana hometown, from where he still sources his specialty: crawfish.

Don’t miss out on the corn bread and raw bar, either. eunice restaurant.com; entrées $18–$35.

Nancy’s Hustle The coolest spot in the gentrifying East Downtown area is home to the famous Nancy cakes— Southern-style corn-based blini with cultured butter and smoked trout roe. nancyshustle. com; entrées $14–$26.

One Fifth Southern Comfort This innovative culinary project, a fiveyear series of five new restaurants in the same Montrose space, won’t be around for long— the lease is up in September. Try the oxtail ragoût over crispy gnocchi before it’s all gone. onefifthhouston. com; entrées $18–$32.

Xin Chao At this VietnameseTexan fusion joint, budget-minded gourmands can sample co-chef Christine Ha’s braised pork and crispy rice with pickled greens and egg, a Master Chef– winning dish, for just $18. xinchao tx.com; entrées $11–$35.

What to See Contemporary Arts Museum Houston This shimmering building doesn’t house a permanent collection, but has hosted exhibitions of major artists since the 1950s. camh.org.

Harrisburg Art Museum Rotating works of graffiti art are showcased on the exterior of a warehouse space in the East End neighborhood. fb.com/theham houston.

Menil Collection A world-class private collection that blends smoothly into the Montrose neighborhood. Related buildings nearby include the Rothko Chapel, Cy Twombly and Dan Flavin installations, and the sparkling Menil Drawing Institute. menil.org.

Museum of Fine Arts Houston The city’s encyclopedic museum features major exhibitions and three stories of modern and contemporary art in the new destination Kinder Building. mfah.org.

Project Row Houses These Third Ward shotgun shacks have been incubating Houston artists of color for nearly three decades. projectrow houses.org.

Station Museum of Contemporary Art Art and activism mix at this museum in the Third Ward. Through the end of summer, catch a magnificent survey of sculptor Jesse Lott and Texas and Louisiana photographer Travis Whitfield. station museum.com. — M.A.

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(Houston, continued from page 100)

(HAM) in the city’s historically Mexican American East End. The museum is actually a large warehouse that graffiti artist Daniel Anguilu and collaborators have repurposed as a rotating showcase for street artists—one painter per loading-dock door.

“I come from the culture of having spaces for people to express themselves, without having marketing behind them,” said Anguilu, who is also a driver on Houston’s Green Line metro rail, which runs nearby. “HAM is one of the last ones that is still truly free.”

Active in the local graffiti scene since he moved from Mexico City as a teenager, Anguilu often references his Indigenous heritage in his work.

He has shown at more traditional museums in the past but feels most comfortable in DIY environments, both legal and illegal, he told me. I noticed worry in his voice as he told me that HAM has lately come under threat as Amazon has begun to use the surrounding parking lot. does it feel like to stand inside a miracle? It’s a vital question raised by great immersive works of art, the sort that rearrange our perception and make us aware of the wonder that can be found in the everyday.

W H A T

Houston seems to me to specialize in this type of artwork.

Walking underground between the Kinder and the adjoining MFAH buildings, I passed through two playful tunnels featuring light installations by Carlos Cruz-Diez and Olafur Eliasson. Inspired by an older tunnel in the museum by James Turrell, they changed the way my eyes experience color—a ritual cleansing of vision as I moved from building to building. “No one can enter the Kinder without being transformed in one way or another,” MFAH director Gary Tinterow later told me, noting that, at the two street-level entrances, sculptures that reflect the sky have a similar effect.

The California-born Turrell’s presence looms large in Houston, a city that offers the light and space his works require. His Skyspaces have open-roofed portals through which viewers can watch the dusk or dawn sky change color, usually accentuated by a subtle light program around the edges of the aperture. During my stay, I visited four of his creations, including Twilight Epiphany, a magnificent Skyspace on the Rice University campus, where music students often play concerts at sunset (though not during the pandemic).

My favorite Turrell was the elegant One Accord, completed in 2001 and set in the ceiling of a Quaker meeting hall on the edge of Houston’s Heights neighborhood.

I found great peace sitting there quietly through the sunset, watching the sky turn from blue to deep indigo as the interior’s slowly intensifying white light gave the sense of a ghostly community gathering. One may not think of ever-booming, traffic-laden Houston as a place to seek out restorative, meditative experiences, but Turrell’s works offer

Content in this issue was produced with assistance from Azumi; Goodtime Hotel; Post Ranch Inn; Travel Oregon; and Visit Houston.

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just that—especially for an art tourist like myself, who needed his senses refreshed after long days of looking.

The Menil also operates a few satellite spaces, including buildings dedicated to installations by Cy Twombly and Dan Flavin. My favorite of these, by far, is the oldest: the Rothko Chapel. Completed in 1971, the building is home to 14 enormous black paintings Mark Rothko created just before his suicide in 1970. It’s also an ecumenical religious space, open to followers of all traditions, and an institution that supports peace activists worldwide.

The Rothko Chapel recently unveiled a new visitors’ center, as well as a skylight that addresses the challenge of lighting the main room naturally while protecting the canvases from sun damage.

In a space devoted to darkness, mourning, and what lies behind the blackness of the paint, the sun’s light should be diffuse, not glaring.

In some of the Rothko Chapel canvases, the blackness washes downward in watery forms, while in others it is more solid, contained by dark purple borders and giving onto unsounded depths. Sitting for my allotted half-hour with the paintings, I was quickly and unexpectedly moved to tears. The space gave context to a grief that I suppose I have carried with me, as we all have, through the pandemic. For those of us who connect as much or more to art than to organized religion, the chapel can feel like a long-sought venue to make peace with buried feelings.

As I left the chapel, I realized that I was, in a sense, back at the beginning of my Houston journey. Once again, I felt brushed by an uncanny grace, though more somberly than during my visit to the Kinder. The clear connection between these two transformative buildings, opened 50 years apart, speaks to what makes the city such an unmissable art destination. Both are born of a bold yet sensitive vision of Houston as a place where miracles can happen.

(Doha, continued from page 75)

nation. But at the same time, we are reconnecting and reasserting our Arab heritage.”

At Qatar Museums, Al Mayassa oversees a diverse portfolio that includes the I. M. Pei–designed Museum of Islamic Art, known as the MIA, now undergoing its first gallery rehang since opening in 2006; Fire Station Artist in Residence, a former civil defense building turned studio and gallery spaces; and the Culture Pass Club, a soon-to-open members-only arts club and collaborative space that will include town houses designed by the likes of Diane von Furstenberg, Ralph Lauren, and young Qataris Wadha and Aisha Al Sowaidi.

CP Club, as it’s known, is located in Msheireb Downtown Doha, which is billed by its developers as the “world’s first sustainable downtown regeneration project” and is helmed

by Al Mayassa’s glamorous mother, Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Thani.

In this neighborhood you’ll find Baharat Square, the largest covered, open-air plaza in the Middle East; Crystallation, an interactive tunnel of light; and M7, a new design, fashion, and tech incubator for Qataris interested in careers in the arts.

Recently, Al Mayassa has shifted her focus to the topic of

sustainability—a change that some may find surprising in a nation that owes much of its wealth to fossil fuels. For the past several months, Al Mayassa has been documenting her outings to clean up Qatar’s beaches with her five children on her Instagram page, @almayassabinthamad. Over Zoom, she told me about the idea behind sharing these trips.

“I am trying to encourage people to find solutions to the problems that, collectively, we have created.

The fact that Qatar is surrounded by water on three sides has made it a magnet for plastic pollution,” she said, adding that she was wearing an abaya made of recycled plastic, the work of Wit Noiz, a young Qatari label. Qatar Museums is now the official partner of Milanese gallerist Rosanna Orlandi’s Ro Plastic Prize, which recognizes those in the design community making an effort to reuse the material. Next month, the third edition will be awarded at the Salone del Mobile in Milan.

Twenty minutes west of Msheireb Downtown Doha via a subway system that looks straight out of Blade Runner, you’ll find Education City, the physical heart of the Qatar Foundation. Another project headed by Sheikha Mozah, the foundation was established in 1995 to advance education, philanthropy, and science for both Qataris and international students.

The 3,700-acre campus is home to eight universities, including branches of Northwestern, Georgetown, and Carnegie Mellon. Japanese architect and urban planner Arata Isozaki created the architectural master plan.

Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi designed the cube-shaped Qatar Foundation headquarters, and Dutch

architect Rem Koolhaas designed the spaceship-like National Library, which houses a collection of more than 800,000 books. There’s also Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha’s primary space for contemporary works, and Sidra Medicine, a 400-bed women and children’s hospital, which has a remarkable Damien Hirst installation called The Miraculous Journey—a series of 14 giant bronze sculptures depicting the development of a fetus—on its campus grounds. came to Doha in 2006, I immediately felt at home.

In the 15 years since, I have been amazed to see a city being built from scratch. That pioneer spirit was, and still is, intoxicating. And yet, despite the cutting-edge nature of it all, it seems that Qatar, and the Middle East at large, is a place that is deeply misunderstood by many in the West. It’s my great hope that little by little, more people will begin to change their perceptions, because there is much to learn from Doha’s example.

Often, that understanding starts with travel. And the first thing travelers experience is normally the airport—especially in Doha, which has become an important global transit hub. It’s the first glimpse of the country that 39 million people a year get. In the middle of Hamad International is a giant sculpture of a teddy bear holding a lamp, the work of Swiss artist Urs Fischer.

According to Al Mayassa, Lamp Bear celebrates the idea of travel—the kind of childhood wonder it can inspire that so many of us long to recapture.

And just like in childhood, there is a sense here that anything is possible.

Welcome to the future.

WHEN I FIRST

Travel + Leisure (ISSN 0041-2007) July 2021, Vol. 51, No. 7, is published monthly by TI Inc. Affluent Media Group, a subsidiary of Meredith Corporation, Principal Office: 225 Liberty St., New York, NY 10281-1008. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster Send all UAA to CFS. (See DMM 507.1.5.2.) Non-Postal and Military Facilities: Send address corrections to Travel + Leisure, PO Box 37508, Boone, IA 50037-0508. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement #40069223. BN #129480364RT. Copyright ©2021 TI Inc. Affluent Media Group, a subsidiary of Meredith Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Customer Service and Subscriptions For 24/7 service, please use our website: www.travelandleisure.com/myaccount. You can also call 800-888-8728 or write to Travel + Leisure, PO Box 37508, Boone, IA 50037-0508. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited. Your bank may provide updates to the card information we have on file. You may opt out of this service at any time. Member of the Alliance for Audited Media. Mailing List We may make a portion of our mailing list available to reputable firms. If you prefer we not include your name, please call or write us at the customer service information above. The magazine assumes no responsibility for the safekeeping or return of unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, artwork, or other material. To order back issues, call 800-270-3053. To order article reprints of 500 or more, call 212-221-9595.

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YOUR BE ST SH OT

a new subway network was built in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

The stations were designed to double as nuclear fallout shelters, so photography was strictly banned. But when the ban was lifted, I was eager to travel halfway around the world to shoot these terminals. The Kosmonavtlar station was mind-blowing. Medallions depicting Soviet cosmonauts were inlaid in walls covered in blue mosaic tiles that gradually fade to black. I set up my camera to capture the color and movement of the trains as they whizzed through the station. The result was this whimsical, futuristic scene.”

“D UR ING THE S OVIE T ERA ,

— R E AD ER P H I L I P F RI ED MAN O N HI S PHOTO G RAPH, S HOT W I TH A N IKON 750, S EPT EM BER 2019

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Philip Friedman was an entrant in our ongoing Photo of the Day contest. Submit your best pictures at travelandleisure. com/photos/photoof-the-day for the chance to be featured on this page in a future issue.

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