f jfy

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

the World Made locAl 100 people. 100 countries. 100 reasons to travel now

Like Valeriya Gogunskaya, a longboarder from Portugal

Mexico Crete Bangkok Venice And an ode to New York City’s Chinatown

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.

Join us and discover how — with our unrivaled space at sea — we will exceed your loftiest expectations of comfort and personalized service for a truly unforgettable experience aboard The World’s Most Luxurious Fleet™.

START YOUR JOURNEY AT RSSC.COM CALL 1.844.473.4368 OR CONTACT YOUR TRAVEL ADVISOR

For the latest details on our health and safety protocols, please visit RSSC.com/HealthSafetyProtocols

EVERY

LU XURY INCLUDED

Glyka Nera, one of the many beaches along Crete’s 650mile coastline

CoNtENTS RIGHT AROUND

MEXICO NOW

AN ISLAND FOR

THE CORNER

After a most challenging year, New York City’s Chinatown looks ahead

All the reasons so many Americans can’t wait to head south of the border as travel resumes

On Crete, discovering a land of wild contrasts and pure pleasures

PAGE 82

PAGE 72

PAGE 84

4

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

PHOTOGRAPH: TOM PARKER

ALL TIMES

SHARE

Visit www.iShares.com to view a prospectus, which includes investment objectives, risks, fees, expenses and other information that you should read and consider carefully before investing. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. International investing involves risks, including risks related to foreign currency, limited liquidity, less government regulation and the possibility of substantial volatility due to adverse political, economic or other developments. These risks often are heightened for investments in emerging/developing markets and in concentrations of single countries. The iShares Funds are distributed by BlackRock Investments, LLC (together with its affiliates, “BlackRock”). ©2021 BlackRock, Inc. All rights reserved. iSHARES and BLACKROCK are registered trademarks of BlackRock, Inc., or its subsidiaries. ICRMH0721U/S-1715313

CoNtENTS

THE WORLD MADE LOCAL

The seven international editions of Condé Nast Traveler asked an array of global citizens— from an Egyptian choreographer to a Buenos Aires baker— to tell us why we should visit their countries as we return to travel PAGE 15

WORD OF MOUTH

The first hotel on the grounds of Versailles is royally impressive; a Bangkok neighborhood drawing a next-gen crowd; why multifamily rentals are pure magic; the latest and greatest in Chicago PAGE 35

WHY WE TRAVEL

PAGE 51

A TRAVELER’S TALE

The restaurant Ducasse at Airelles Château de Versailles, Le Grand Contrôle

6

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

While visiting Japan, actor Manny Jacinto finds unexpected beauty in a traditional fertility festival PAGE 94

PHOTOGRAPH: MATTHIEU SALVAING

In search of good company and even better food on a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula; a sailing adventure in the British Virgin Islands (or elsewhere) is more within reach than you think; how the pandemic is prompting Venice to chart a more sustainable future

ADVERTISEMENT

HISTORY LOVES COMPANY unforgettable

HOSPITALITY Home to an array of acclaimed hotels and historic inns along with world-class dining normally associated with cities five times its size, this idyllic destination is a vibrant playground for culinary talent.

BELMOND CHARLESTON PLACE + CHARLESTON GRILL Luring travelers since the mid-1980s, this Charleston icon includes a world-renowned spa, curated shopping corridors, and a wealth of places to dine. From the breezy Palmetto Cafe to the refined Charleston Grill to the oldschool Thoroughbred Club, the property’s restaurants and lounges serve as backdrops for all manner of occasions.

RENAISSANCE CHARLESTON HISTORIC DISTRICT + LENOIR Food with a story tastes better - and this is one of the rural, agricultural South, the second restaurant onsite by celebrity chef, Vivian Howard. Enjoy boutique-style accommodations at this four-diamond hotel, showcasing all of the pillars of Southern hospitality.

EMELINE + FRANNIE AND THE FOX A boutique hotel experience for the soulful sojourner and the adventure-seeking culinary enthusiast. Experience a wood-burning concept of shareable dishes and refined touches found only in a luxury, lifestyle hotel. Every room and nook has been curated for comfort and style.

SWEETGRASS INN AT WILD DUNES RESORT + OYSTERCATCHER RESTAURANT & BAR Elevate your experience in a contemporary hotel that balances beachy aesthetics with historic Charleston.

Rooted in local culture and tied to the island’s natural setting, enjoy a comfortable restaurant serving an array of locally inspired small plates and shareable dishes.

Representing growth and beckoning connection with natural simplicity, your quintessential beach escape awaits.

Experience the timeless charm and unrivaled aled hospitality hospitalit found only in Charleston, South Carolina. The perfect Char ect stay aawaits.

EXPLORECHARLESTON.COM E OREC ARLE ON OM

editoR’S LetteR ere are some especially vivid memories I have of travel. I remember Robert, the irrepressible Samburu bush guide who joked about all the ALTs—animal-like things—as we looked for wildlife together in northern Kenya. I remember Jaime, who gave me coca leaves for energy as we ascended the Inca Trail and said a prayer to Pachamama when we reached the summit. I remember Ayob, who captained my felucca boat on the Nile and brought me and my dad ashore to buy camel meat.

I remember the family in the Yucatán who scooped up me and my wife from a dusty highway where we were waiting for a bus and drove us back to Valladolid, and the family in Johannesburg who insisted on driving me and two friends from the airport to our hotel out of concern for our safety. I remember the father and son in fatigues who helped me get my car out of a ditch at a campground in the Adirondacks. I remember the kind woman who served me and my wife snails and bitter Cretan mountain greens at her little restaurant on a cobblestone alley in Chania. (For more on that lovely corner of Greece, see page 84.)

I am sure that if you look back over your most treasured travel memories, you will find them intertwined with people like these. As travelers all over the globe resume their journeys, the people who help us, feed us, teach us, and make us laugh matter more than ever. These are precisely the people we celebrate in “The World Made Local” (page 15), a collaboration by the seven global editions of Condé Nast Traveler in which individuals from all walks of life tell you why you should visit their country next. As travel—and Traveler—become more global, we mustn’t lose sight of the local. Because, as my colleague Divia Thani, Condé Nast Traveler’s global editorial director, puts it so well in her introduction to the project, it is “the people you meet along the way who can tell you exactly where to go.”

H

On the Cover Valeriya Gogunskaya, creator of the Longboard Camp, in Santa Cruz, Portugal.

Photographed by Daniel Espírito Santo

Follow us on Instagram @cntraveler Golden hour among the rice fields surrounding Skai Joglo villa in Bali, Indonesia. Photographed by Lily Rose (@lilyrose)

Subscribe Visit cntraveler.com/subscribe,

jesseashlock

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT © 2021 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. VOLUME 56, NO. 6, CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER (ISSN 0843-4683) is published 8 times per year by Condé Nast, which is a division of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: Condé Nast, One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. Roger Lynch, Chief Executive Officer; Pamela Drucker Mann, Global Chief Revenue Officer & President, U.S. Revenue; Jackie Marks, Chief Financial Officer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, New York, and at additional mailing offices. Canadian Goods and Services Tax Registration No. 123242885-RT0001.

POSTMASTER: SEND ALL UAA TO CFS. (SEE DMM 507.1.5.2.); NON-POSTAL AND MILITARY FACILITIES: SEND ADDRESS CORRECTIONS TO CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER, Box 37617, Boone, Iowa 37617-0617,.

FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS, ADDRESS CHANGES, ADJUSTMENTS, OR BACK ISSUE INQUIRIES: Please write to CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER, Box 37617, Boone, Iowa 37617-0617, call 800-777-0700, or email subscriptions@condenasttraveler.com. Amoco Torch Club members write to Amoco Torch Club, Box 4014, Des Moines, Iowa 50306. Please give both new and old address as printed on most recent label. Subscribers: If the Post Office alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless

10

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

email subscriptions@ condenasttraveler.com, or call 800-777-0700

we receive a corrected address within one year. If, during your subscription term or up to one year after, the magazine becomes undeliverable, or you are ever dissatisfied with your subscription, let us know. You will receive a full refund on all unmailed issues.

Address all editorial, business, and production correspondence to CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER, One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. For reprints, please email reprints@condenast.com or call Wright’s Media 877-652-5245. For reuse permissions, please email contentlicensing@condenast.com or call 800-847-8666. Visit us online at cntraveler.com. To subscribe to other Condé Nast magazines on the World Wide Web, visit condenast.com. Occasionally, we make our subscriber list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services which we believe would interest our readers. If you do not want to receive these offers and/or information, please advise us at Box 37617, Boone, Iowa 37617-0617, or call 800-777-0700.

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RETURN OR LOSS OF, OR FOR DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INJURY TO, UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS, UNSOLICITED ARTWORK (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND TRANSPARENCIES), OR ANY OTHER UNSOLICITED MATERIALS. THOSE SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, ARTWORK, OR OTHER MATERIALS FOR CONSIDERATION SHOULD NOT SEND ORIGINALS UNLESS SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO DO SO BY CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER IN WRITING. MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND OTHER MATERIALS SUBMITTED MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY A SELF-ADDRESSED STAMPED ENVELOPE.

ILLUSTRATION: ANJE JAGER

JESSE ASHLOCK U.S. EDITOR AND DEPUTY GLOBAL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

© J&JCI 2021

*percentage of subjects noticing an improvement with twice daily use

FOR PEOPLE WHO COULD USE A TRIPLE LIFT

NEW RAPID FIRMING

9 0 % S A W V I S I B LY F I R M E R S K I N I N 4 W E E K S

FOR PEOPLE WITH SKIN

LEARN MORE TM

AN EXOTIC WORLD OF FLAVOR AWAITS. © 2021 RESORTS WORLD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

ROCKIES TO THE RED ROCKS EXPERIENCE THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST LIKE NEVER BEFORE. DENVER, COLORADO

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, COLORADO

OUR NEW JOURNEY BEGINS AUGUST 2021. BE ONE OF THE FIRST TO EXPERIENCE IT.

MOAB, UTAH

the World Made locAl PHOTOGRAPH: ADRIANA IRIS BOATWRIGHT

The seven global editions of Condé Nast Traveler teamed up to ask residents of countries around the world why we should come visit them. Here’s what they told us

UNITED STATES The Gullah Geechee community descended from West African slaves. We believe right whales accompanied the slave ships, so every December when they return, I go to the Georgia coast to pay homage to them. We want visitors to learn our folkways and foodways and to hear our language.

–“SISTAH PATT” GUNN, CEO, UNDERGROUND TOURS OF SAVANNAH, GEORGIA

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

15

the World Made locAl

There’s No Place Like (Someone Else’s) Home For “The World Made Local”—the first true global collaboration between the seven editions of Condé Nast Traveler worldwide— we asked 100 locals in 100 countries what they most love about where they come from.

As the world opens up, we want you to find your own reason to travel, and we wanted the coolest people we know across the world to give it to you—people like 28-year-old Senegal-born French chef Mory Sacko and the Guatemalan actor María Mercedes Coroy.

You’ll find a taste of it all on the following pages, with more on cntraveler.com.

Consider this proof that the most compelling motivator for travel is not just the places you may end up but the people you meet along the way who can tell you exactly where to go.

SENEGAL We have teranga, which means that when you visit, everyone will welcome you and share with you.

For local art, check out Black Rock, the multidisciplinary artist-inresidence program founded in 2019 by Kehinde Wiley. For music, listen to Akon, Youssou N’Dour, Viviane Chidid, and mbalax— Senegalese dance music. There are lots of new mbalax tracks creating buzz right now.

–KHADJOU SAMBE, PROFESSIONAL SURFER

16

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

PHOTOGRAPHS: HIMANSHU LAKHWANI, GIOVANNI ASTORINO

–DIVIA THANI GLOBAL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER

Unlimited double miles.

Unlimited destinations.

With the Capital One Venture card, you can earn unlimited double miles wherever you shop and redeem them on any travel purchase.

Rebeem rewarbs for any recent purchase we ibentify as travel baseb on information provibeb by merchants. Crebit approval requireb. Offereb by Capital One Bank (USA), N.A. © 2021 Capital One.

the World Made locAl

ITALY If you have just one day in my hometown of Bergamo, in the mountainous north of the country, here’s what to do: Take a walk on the Corsarola to reach San Vigilio, the highest point in town. Coffee should be from Cavour 1880, while your aperitivo needs to be at Bar Flora in Piazza Vecchia. Dinner should be on the terrace of Baretto di San Vigilio at sunset, when the view of the whole city is incredible and the lights of Bergamo blend with the first starlight.

–ROSALBA PICCINNI, FLORIST AND JAZZ SINGER

FINLAND

SWITZERLAND I live in Zurich, which has a small but growing music scene. My friend runs jam sessions and open-mic nights at Plaza Klub, and it’s so exciting to hear upcoming electro or urban artists. If you are interested in catching local talent, come visit in March, when the music festival called M4Music is on. But summer is always a good time. Bäckeranlage park is a beautiful spot to hang out with a picnic. A few of my favorite spots in town are La Stanza for the best coffee and a great playlist—which is essential and rare. I’d take first-timers to District 1, for the Swiss National Museum. But by night we’re going to Longstreet Bar on Langstrasse in District 4 for gin and tonics and live DJ sets, then on to Moods for a soca party. On Saturdays, we’d go to the flea market in Helvetiaplatz—I found a Stevie Wonder Greatest Hits record there. Plus, my new album will be out on vinyl soon. That’s going to be a big moment!

–PRIYA RAGU, MUSICAL ARTIST

18

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

Most people don’t realize that, after Argentina, Finland is the tango capital of the world. It’s dying, but there are places in the countryside where you can still find it.

At Tanhuhovi outside Helsinki, women still come to dance in flower-print dresses.

–JASPER PÄÄKKÖNEN, ACTOR AND ENVIRONMENTALIST

NICARAGUA » Nicaragua (Nicanahuac), the land of lakes and volcanoes, is powerful, magical, and a mother. Nicaraguan pottery is extremely high-end. You must visit the village of San Juan de Oriente in Masaya, which is dedicated to pottery. Beautiful vessels, dishware, and statement pieces are in this village. » One of my favorite spots is the Museum of Archaeology and History Cihua Coatl in Sébaco, Matagalpa—a collection of locally found pottery, stones, and statuary. The Pre-Columbian Museum in Ometepe is a must-see as well. » You must visit the colorful colonial town of Granada, famous for vigorón, a dish made of chopped cabbage, yuca, and chicharron wrapped in a banana leaf.

From there head to Masaya, known as the cradle of national folklore, to shop in the Mercado Viejo for Nicaraguan gems including hammocks, leather goods, paintings, ceramics, and clothing.

PHOTOGRAPHS: PIER COSTANTINI, CAL MCINTIRE, ANTTI RASTIVO, TAHIARII YORAM PARIENTE, JOEL GAITAN

–JOEL GAITAN, ARTIST AND CERAMIST

FRENCH POLYNESIA People focus only on Tahiti. But visitors should go to the mountain islands like Huahine or Raiatea.

They should also go to one of the super-flat atolls in the Tuamotu Islands, like Fakarava, and then to an island in the Marquesas.

–TAHIARII PARIENTE, CULTURAL AMBASSADOR AND SAILOR

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

19

the World Made locAl

AUSTRALIA My favorite place to visit is Broome, Western Australia.

The traditional owners are the Yawuru people. The beaches and landscapes have the most intense visuals, from turquoise oceans and white sands to red cliffs and earth. It’s like no other place.

INDIA We have some of the greatest and most diverse flora and fauna in the world. The forests of central India have beautiful tiger-scapes that are immersed in history. East India has indigenous animals like the rhinoceros and red panda. Nagarahole Tiger Reserve in Karnataka, South India, is quickly becoming one of the most popular wildlife destinations for its high density of Asiatic wildlife.

And the elusive snow leopard roams around snow-covered valleys and rivers of ice in north India. This country has so much to offer, and I still have so much to see.

–SHAAZ JUNG, WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER AND BIG CAT SPECIALIST

20

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

PHOTOGRAPHS: ARJUN MENON, NATHAN MCGUIRE

–NATHAN M CGUIRE, MODEL AND ADVOCATE FOR INDIGENOUS REPRESENTATION IN FASHION

SEARCHING FOR THE PERFECT PIZZA? YOU’RE GETTING WARMER It’s everything you need in a home pizza oven — a powder-coated carbon steel shell, full glass oven door with ViewFlame™ technology, and a mounted digital thermometer display so you can watch it go from zero to 950°F in just 15 minutes. Pizza obsession is only natural, start with the right oven.

DISCOVER THE JOY OF GREAT PIZZA WITH THE OONI KARU® 16

ooni.com

the World Made locAl The kingdom is one of the last remaining natural undiscovered gems on planet Earth. The people are so hospitable, the topography is so vast, and there’s such a unique, diverse culture. We have the Red Sea, and it is just so spectacular. I love the wildness and the freeing feeling. Then there is Jeddah, my hometown, with beautiful mountains and amazing art and culture.

–RAHA MOHARRAK, ADVENTURER AND MOUNTAINEER

EGYPT You have to give the local food—ful, koshary, ta’ameya—a try. There are a few places near the Pyramids that are really authentic, and in my opinion, Khan El-Khalili, Cairo’s sprawling bazaar, is a great start. It also sells a lot of traditional jewelry and accessories. You can then find an ahwa and pause to smoke shisha and peoplewatch. And both the Citadel of Saladin and Al-Azhar Mosque are nearby. I also recommend taking a felucca ride on the Nile to see Cairo by night—you won’t get any sleep, of course.

–YARA SALEH, DANCEHALL CHOREOGRAPHER

SINGAPORE For street food, try bak chor mee (noodles with minced meat) at Block 58 New Upper Changi Road, fried kway teow at Hill Street Fried Kway Teow in Chinatown Complex, appom at Madras New Woodlands Restaurant on Upper Dickson Road, and Indian mixed rice at Barakath Restaurant on Dalhousie Lane. I like Zai Shun Curry Fish Head at Jurong East Street 24, but it can be crowded.

I don’t really eat at fine-dining restaurants in Singapore, but if I had to choose, I’d pick Naked Finn, Le Bon Funk, and Nicolas Le Restaurant.

–DAMIAN D’SILVA CHEF AND ADVOCATE FOR HERITAGE CUISINE IN SINGAPORE

PHOTOGRAPHS: MOHAMED BARGHASH,MAHDI MESSOULI, KIN, MELISSA ALCENA, CLARA STEPHANIE SCHIEBER LORENESI

SAUDI ARABIA

BAHAMAS The National Art Gallery of the Bahamas opened in 2003 and totally changed the cultural landscape, because it finally gave us a space dedicated to local art and to letting travelers appreciate it. It is inside the former home of our chief justice. Though if you are wanting something more natural, the island of Eleuthera is fantastic for cycling. It has rolling hills and the Queen’s Highway, which runs north to south. You can rent a bike for a day and explore. The Bahamas isn’t sold as a bikers’ haven, but it should be!

–JOHN COX EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF ARTS AND CULTURE, BAHA MAR

GUATEMALA » Mayan ceremonies in Guatemala are worth checking out.

For example, where I live, in Santa María de Jesús, we do a “rain request” from each of the four hills here. It is a way to ask Mother Nature to protect and sustain us. » Our singer-songwriters are able to capture the beauty of Guatemala, like Sara Curruchich, an Indigenous Kaqchikel musician. I love her song “Junam” (a word that means “together”) for its reference to the unity of the people and the struggle in community. » The essence of Guatemala will always be the smell of coffee and sweets like roscas. But also wet land—those dirt streets that are not paved, and when the rain falls, the rising steam, a musty smell, and a total feeling of relaxation.

–MARÍA MERCEDES COROY, ACTOR

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

23

the World Made locAl

There is so much more diversity in Paris’s food scene now than before. A few years ago Asian cuisine was mainly Chinese, but now you can get Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai food very easily. Parisians are much more informed about what they are eating. My favorite area to eat in has to be Canal Saint-Martin, in the 10th arrondissement. There is a small Asian-fusion canteen called Siseng, where I’m a regular, and right next door to it is Le Comptoir Général, which is a fun place to go for drinks. They also sometimes serve street food like bokit, a Guadeloupean fried sandwich, and accras de morue, salt-cod fritters, which are a great late-night snack. A bit farther up is Candide, where chef Alessandro Candido serves the most delicious roast chicken on Sundays, and on the other side of the canal is Early June, which has a great wine cellar.

–MORY SACKO, CHEF, MOSUKE, PARIS

24

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

PHOTOGRAPHS: CAMILA FALQUEZ, QUENTIN TOURBEZ

FRANCE

SPAIN » I live in Madrid, but my bond to my hometown of Granada, where you can find flamenco everywhere, is magical. When I go there and need to relax, I head straight to Arab Baths of Bañuelo in the Carrera del Darro, which have such amazing history. » Definitely visit the neighborhood of Sacromonte, which is full of caves where people live and shows are performed.

It has a very narrow road leading to a very beautiful church. Opposite, across the Darro River, is the Alhambra. » Nowhere in Spain does tapas better than Granada—your beer will come with fried fish, a hamburger. Head to Albaicín, the oldest neighborhood in Granada, for the best of it all.

–MANUEL LIÑÁN, FLAMENCO DANCER (THIRD FROM RIGHT)

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

25

the World Made locAl ARGENTINA » The best way to see Buenos Aires is to rent a free bike and cycle the Calles Gorriti-Superí lane from south to north. Starting at Billinghurst, the route captures plenty of barrio eclecticism through Palermo, Colegiales, and Coghlan before ending at leafy Parque Saavedra. » For unique finds, head to the flea market at Parque Centenario, where I pick up vintage teapots and metal milk jugs. Guacha Textiles is where to go for fair trade baby-alpaca sweaters (I wear mine on chilly mornings when I bake). Oh, and Buenos Aires has a fantastic craft beer scene; pioneering bar Strange Brewing makes a refreshing saison. » When I need a break from B.A., I go home to Cañuelas, a rural Pampas district in Buenos Aires Province, for asado. It’s also home to La Dolfina Polo Club, led by 10-goal-handicap player Adolfo Cambiaso. A must is Pueblo Escondido’s outstanding charcuterie and cheese.

–FRANCISCO SEUBERT, OWNER, ATELIER FUERZA BAKERY, BUENOS AIRES

There is a renaissance happening right now in Bermuda: Bermudians have fallen in love with their island and are coming up with creative ways to showcase it to one another and to visitors. A talented young artist, Gherdai Hassell, just had her first solo show at the Bermuda National Gallery, where she created collages inspired by the Bermuda Slave Registers and historic photographs in the Bermuda Archives. There are also so many emerging young writers. I’m excited about this new generation of artists because they are going to be what helps the world to better understand Bermuda, not just as a tourism destination but as a living, breathing, vibrant place. The magic of Bermuda is found when you get out of the resorts and get into places like Drew’s Bay, the Dragon’s Lair Gallery, and, of course, Mama Angie’s Coffee Shop for a fish cake sandwich!

–KRISTIN WHITE, COMMUNITY ACTIVIST AND OWNER, LONG STORY SHORT BOOKSTORE, ST. GEORGE’S

PHOTOGRAPHS: ESTEFANIA ISELLI @TEFAII, MEREDITH ANDREWS

BERMUDA

No one can tour Egypt like Archaeological Paths.

With them, you’ll visit many ancient sites that very few people have the opportunity to see.

You’ll be treated like royalty!

– Dr. Zahi Hawass, World’s Most Famous Archaeologist

E X P E R I E N C E S E XC E E D I N G E X P E C TAT I O N S

EGYPT TRAVEL COLLECTION 2022/2023 TOURS STARTING AT

Discover the Land of the Pharaohs with the most eminent Egyptologists and gain beyond-the-guidebook insight into Egypt’s history. Learn firsthand about the latest discoveries from Dr. Zahi Hawass, the world’s most famous archaeologist, and Dr. Mostafa Waziri, Egypt’s Head of Antiquities. Enrich your experience by meeting with renowned scholars, museum directors, high-profile ministers, and even members of a former president’s family.

Archaeological Paths is really the best company to come with to visit my country.

– Dr. Jehan Sadat, Former First Lady of Egypt

From ancient monuments and active excavation sites to modern museums and presidential palaces, our guests have unparalleled access to the wonders of ancient Egypt. Imagine having the Great Pyramid to yourself or standing between the paws of the Great Sphinx. Take a VIP tour of the Grand Egyptian Museum, and survey the Valley of the Kings – including King Tut’s tomb – privately. These and other experiences typically reserved for VIPs are now within your reach.

You will never forget these tours.

– Dr. Mostafa Waziri, Egypt’s Head of Antiquities

7 DAYS

BEST OF EGYPT 10 DAYS

ROYAL EGYPT TOUR – THE ESSENCE 14 DAYS

ROYAL EGYPT TOUR 14 DAYS

INSIDE EGYPT 14 DAYS

KING TUT & CLEOPATRA 20 DAYS

LONG NILE CRUISE & LAKE NASSER

TOUR DATES AND MORE INFORMATION:

www.archaeologicalpaths.com contact@archaeologicalpaths.com 917-724-2772

Paris Magnolia Admire the City of Love

the World Made locAl

Provence Lavender

Enjoy the French Countryside

French Alps Globe

Reach the Pinnacle of Beauty

For some nature in the bustle of London, we do Beckenham Place Park and Oxleas woods for long walks and fresh air. The greenhouses at Kew Gardens are worth hours of your time too, and Peckham Rye has some beautiful planted gardens.

–ROMY ST. CLAIR AND IONA MATHIESON, FLORISTS AND OWNERS, SAGE FLOWERS, LONDON

Designs also available in Oui Dairy Free.

PHOTOGRAPH: LUCY ALEX MAC

UNITED KINGDOM

INTRODUCING

The French F lorals Collection Same

great

taste, three

new limited edition designs.

INSPIRED BY OUR AUTHENTIC FRENCH RECIPE

Yoplait and Oui are trademarks of YOPL AIT MARQUES (France) used under license. © Yoplait USA, Inc.

the World Made locAl

CANADA I strongly encourage people to attend our powwows.

They’re places where you can get authentic literature, crafts, jewelry, clothing, and food. You really get a great taste of Indigenous culture.

SOUTH AFRICA » Johannesburg has such a buzzing art scene. Visit Botho Project Space for contemporary work and BKHZ, a Black-owned gallery that is home to young South African talent. If you’re into exploring local music, then give Zoë Modiga, Muneyi, Yanga YaYa, and Major League DJz a listen. » For breakfast, hit up Arbour Cafe, a cute little restaurant with a courtyard tucked away in the Melrose area of Johannesburg.

Have lunch at Kolonaki Greek Kouzina in Parkhurst, pre-dinner drinks at Saint Restaurant in Sandton, and dinner at Les Creatif

by Wandile Mabaso. » The neighborhoods, too, are something to explore: Maboneng, Parkhurst, and Melville for good vibes, and Kramerville for home and deco shopping. When I want to relax, I head to Nirox Sculpture Park, a historic area that is recognized as the cradle of humankind, a short drive from the city.

–TREVOR STUURMAN, PHOTOGRAPHER

30

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

QATAR Qatari women, like Her Excellency Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, are the driving force behind the art and cultural movement in the Arab world right now.

–FATMA HASSAN AL REMAIHI, CEO, DOHA FILM INSTITUTE

PHOTOGRAPHS: JUSTIN ARANHA, TREVOR STUURMAN, DOHA FILM INSTITUTE/TIM P. WHITBY/GETTY IMAGES,DANIEL ESPIRITO SANTO/TWOTHIRDS.COM, TJOK ADI KERTHYASA

–SAGE PAUL, COFOUNDER AND ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF INDIGENOUS FASHION WEEK TORONTO

PORTUGAL I live in a small village called Póvoa de Penafirme in Praia de Santa Cruz, near the famous surfing hubs of Ericeira and Peniche. It’s called the Silver Coast and is loaded with charming beaches and traditional fishing towns. You’ll want a car to explore them all. In Praia de Santa Cruz itself, go on a hike on top of the cliffs, check out Porto Novo in the valley by the river, and book a surf lesson.

My favorite secret beaches, each with its own personality, are all up and down this coastline. For a unique view of the area, go to the local aerodrome and book a 20-minute flight on a vintage plane.

It’s just 60 euro for three people!

–VALERIYA GOGUNSKAYA CREATOR, THE LONGBOARD CAMP, SANTA CRUZ

INDONESIA I call the region of Tabanan the real Bali. Its iconic rice terraces, called jatiluwih, are UNESCO protected, and there are some beautiful rivers and volcanic hot springs. It’s cooler and wetter up there, making everything green and emerald. There are little villages too.

–TJOK GDE KERTHYASA HOMEOPATH AND NATURAL-MEDICINE PRACTITIONER

the World Made locAl

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

THE PHILIPPINES Come here to learn from the beautiful culture, heritage, struggles, and resistance. Come to see the coastal communities like Sitio Kinse in Barangay Taliptip, Bulacan, where fisherfolk have made houses on stilts with solar panels and care for the mangroves as the mangroves care for them.

–MITZI JONELLE TAN CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVIST

32

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

» If there’s one thing we Trinibagonians do love, it’s a good party. If you come around Christmastime or Carnival celebrations, there’s a party every weekend—that’s where you see our true identity.

It’s our history! » You have to go to Queen’s Park Savannah, a big expanse of land with coconut vendors and what we call the Magnificent Seven: great houses with old architecture. At certain times of year the poui trees blossom, leaving a carpet of flowers on the ground.

There’s a lot of history there— the main stage for our Carnival festival originated out of the Savannah. » The dish to eat is called a doubles, from the East Indian settlers in Trinidad. It’s a lightly fried pastry with chickpeas and fresh pepper, or sweetened with tamarind. My spot is Das Doubles Factory, on El Socorro Road.

–KEES DIEFFENTHALLER, SOCA MUSICIAN

BRAZIL In Rio de Janeiro, stay at the Chez George Airbnb. It’s a beautiful house with a great view of Santa Teresa, and the breakfast is delicious. Then do Horto waterfalls, which give off so much natural energy. After that, go biking by the Lagoa and finish up at Ipanema.

–JOÃO INCERTI, PAINTER

CHINA A few tips for traveling around Shanghai: Good luck trying to hail a taxi when the weather is bad; always carry an extra phone charger; watch out for scooter-delivery people; and you don’t ever need to carry cash around in the city center as long as mobile payment options are set up on your phone! It is a truly captivating city with endless amounts of ambition and opportunity.

PHOTOGRAPHS: ANGELA DE CASTRO, NAVINDRA HARBUKHAN, KIM ÖHRLING, JOAO INCERTI

–DEAILLE TAM, CHEF, OBSCURA, SHANGHAI

Let Them Show You Around Want recommendations for can’t-miss Stockholm watering holes from the team behind Tjorget, the top bar in Sweden?

How about the secret island in Phnom Penh where Cambodian street artist Fonki heads for inspiration?

Or the go-to Bogotá restaurant for Colombian fashion designer Kika Vargas?

For tips and insights from locals in 72 additional countries, plus more from the folks featured across these pages, go to cntraveler.com/ theworldmadelocal.

Think of this as your insider’s guide to everywhere you want to go next.

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

33

Costa Rica Welcomes Back Americans

Where Luxury Meets Nature From the majestic wonder of our towering waterfalls located on 500 acres of private reserve to the miraculous flight of tiny hummingbirds, El Silencio’s 26 intimate luxury casitas provide guests with accommodations and a gastronomic experience second to none in Costa Rica. Our promise at El Silencio is to keep your mind and body at ease, offering unforgettable activities from hiking to horseback riding, mountain biking to birdwatching, restorative treatments in our rainforest spa, or a private yoga session on our yoga platform. El Silencio Lodge and Spa will refresh your spirit and cultivate the inner peace Costa Rica’s cloud forest has to offer, and all just one hour from San Jose International Airport.

Word ºf mouth the people, pl aces & ideas we're talking about right now

PHOTOGRAPH: MATTHIEU SALVAING

The Madame de Fouquet Room at Le Grand Contrôle

ROYAL THRILL A stay at the new Le Grand Contrôle hotel gives guests after-hours access to Versailles’s hidden corners →

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

35

› Word ºf mouth

checking in

here is nothing new except what has been forgotten.” The words of Marie Antoinette still seem to echo within the gilded halls of Le Grand Contrôle. Her point is proved by the transformation of this historic building—set inside the gates of the Palace of Versailles—into France’s most anticipated new hotel. All traces of a pre– French Revolution world have been preserved.

Classical music lilts throughout imposing salons lined with portraits of well-coiffed luminaries, some of them former guests. Each chair, mirror, and velvet chaise, all dated to 1788—the last time the property’s furniture was inventoried—and tracked down at auction, looks like it belongs. And while many corners of Paris, from the celebrated palace hotels to the Louvre, read like a page from history, none so eloquently sets a scene that can make you feel as if you’re entering an 18th-century fairy tale.

Architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, acclaimed for completing the Palace of Versailles, designed Le Grand Contrôle in 1681. Initially it was a private home for Paul de Beauvilliers, a government official under King Louis XIV. It went on to become the home of France’s ministry of finance during the reigns of both Louis XV and Louis XVI and briefly served as a hospital before Napoleon stationed his army there. Its last function before being left to

T

36

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

become a dusty empty space was as a catering hall for Versailles officers.

From the dozens of hospitality brands and venture-capital firms that sought to reimagine Le Grand Contrôle, LOV Group (the parent company of the luxury hotel brand Airelles) was selected. General manager Julien Révah attributes this success to LOV’s proposed approach of classic styling and sympathetic reconditioning rather than a complete overhaul. While it’s not surprising that a jaw-dropping figure—more than $48 million, excluding the decoration— was spent on the almost five-year remodel, much of it was heavily invested in specialists, including a team of art historians and restoration experts who advised LOV Group.

Elegant but not ostentatious, the 14 regal rooms and apartments, each named for a notable figure from the past, take their cues from the noble family houses of the 1700s. The whimsical upholstery by Pierre Frey plays on the green spaces of the estate, with flowers blooming along the fabric-lined walls, while the Necker Suite, one of the largest at nearly 1,300 square feet, is a nod to 18th-century finance minister and statesman Jacques Necker.

It’s fitting that Alain Ducasse, known for his Michelin-starred restaurants in London and Paris, was brought on board, as he would have undoubtedly pleased the royal court with his extravagant five-course dinners and theatrics. (All meals here begin, as Louis XIV’s would, with a glass of warm vegetable broth.) To add

PHOTOGRAPHS: MATTHIEU SALVAING

The Necker Suite, named for Louis XVI’s finance minister

to the pomp, the subterranean spa not only has hand-painted frescoes and a checkerboard Carrara-marble floor but also a 50-foot swimming pool. More than 100 staffers, all passionate about Versailles, wear bespoke matching waistcoats and breeches by Marie-France Croyeau of Terre et Ciel, which also designed uniforms for La Mamounia and Royal Mansour in Marrakech. Every employee was plucked from the very best hotels in France— the general manager from L’Hotel in Saint-Germain, a butler from the Peninsula Paris. Several butlers are part-time actors, ready to entertain at a moment’s notice. Their enthusiasm for this roleplay is evident as they explain the most minute details of palatial life.

But what takes the cake (preferably a gâteau au chocolat by Ducasse) is the unprecedented access the hotel offers to the palace. Every evening, after the imperial doors are closed to visitors, guests can go on guided tours and explore corners like the off-

limits dressing rooms connected to the king and queen’s apartments. Even more thrilling is a moment to reflect in an empty Hall of Mirrors, the impressive gallery where some of the grandest royal fêtes occurred and where the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919. Entry to certain parts of the estate, including the labyrinth of gardens by landscape architect André Le Nôtreis, is also allowed before Versailles opens for the day to the general public.

A stay here is like being given an after-hours all-access pass. With the entire grounds of Versailles at your disposal, you could disappear for a clandestine picnic along the Grand Canal or lie back on an antique daybed while feasting on Ladurée macarons or ring a bell for a candlelit dinner in your private chambers. However you choose to spend your time reliving history, returning to reality will be an adjustment. ktsit dietz Doubles from about $2,000; airelles.com

The 17thcentury Orangerie of Versailles

Lunch on the terrace at the Alain Ducasse– helmed restaurant

A bust watches over the hotel library

The hotel’s elegant Salon d’Audience

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

37

› Word ºf moutH

walk this block

Chubby Dough, a purveyor of milkshakes and doughnuts

Just beyond central Bangkok, the laid-back enclave of Ari is pulling in a cool new crowd

> Where to grab breakfast— or a nightcap Though you’re better off staying close to the Chao Phraya for easy sight­ seeing, you should still hit up the Wes Anderson– esque Josh Hotel, if only for the carbs: Volks makes excellent bagels (try the activated char­ coal and black sesame varieties) slathered with wasabi or wild­raspberry cream cheese. If you visit after dark, ask for the key to room 72: It leads to a speakeasy­style cocktail den. joshhotel.com

> Art for all Having also lived in Melbourne and London, creative director Rom Sangkavatana sees Ari as Bangkok’s analog to buzzy, community­mind­ ed neighborhoods like Fitzroy or South Kensing­ ton. At his year­old gallery and retail space Townhouse, he aims to channel the area’s creative energy with flower­arranging workshops and coffee cupping­courses, plus exhibitions

by Thai artists. townhousespace.com

> Thai style The city’s indie fashion scene is loaded with treasures, but it can be tricky to navigate without language skills and insider intel. The industry vets behind concept store HIDE. (who go by Tao and Fang) have made everything easy for you, stocking the shelves with Thai­designed shirts, shorts, and dresses in natural hues and breezy silhouettes, plus a range of mono­ chrome basics from their own collection, H. by HIDE. hide-selected.com

he midcentury villas and affordable apartments in Ari, an area just south of Bangkok’s riotously fun Chatuchak Weekend Market, have long drawn artsy types who have moved there to open art galleries and beer gardens along its leafy roads. But in recent years, a younger generation has arrived, adding photogenic matcha bars and burger joints in pastel-hued next-gen concept spaces like Gump’s. Now, mobile som tum vendors hawking plates of crunchy green papaya salad share corners with stamp-size espresso bars, and visitors can find artisanal doughnuts (try the ones at Chubby Dough) alongside syrupy khanom, or traditional Thai sweets. Wander down the low-key streets Soi Ari 4 and 5 for a taste of what’s seduced so many locals and expats. chris schalkx

> Not just any old cup of joe What sets Nana Coffee Roasters apart from the myriad other hip cafés nearby is its tree­lined garden. A hot spot for digital nomads, the second outpost of this local favorite has more than 30 single­origin beans in its arsenal, which baristas prepare at the slow bar, the siphon brewer, or in sweet espresso­based concoc­ tions with coconut foam and yuzu soda. nanacoffeeroasters.com

> Restaurant mainstay While neighboring busi­ nesses have come and gone, the glass­and­ concrete exterior of Salt has been a constant in Ari’s social scene since 2010. Clued­in locals stop by for casual dinners that fuse Italian, Japanese, and French flavors and techniques— think duck confit and scallop noodles—and to sip organic wine in the cactus­studded court­ yard. Dinner for two from $40; saltbangkok.com

> Local spirits When the sun sets, the neon lights flick on at quirky Oh! Vacoda Café, where avocado appears in all of the dishes (and some of the drinks); the change signals its trans­ formation into Fruit Bar, a dive­y social club with mismatched furnishings and scribbly patterns on the walls. You’ll find more than 40 types of umeshu (plum wine) and home brews made with SangSom Rum and plums grown by hill tribes in Northern Thailand.

OUTSIDE INFLUENCE

T

38

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

PHOTOGRAPHS: CHRIS SCHALKX

Fruit Bar’s homemade umeshu

Townhouse, a retail space, gallery, and community hangout

ENGINEERED TO A HIGHER STANDARD —THE HUMAN STANDARD

Tiffany Pham CEO of Mogul & Speaker Invests in her team members by giving each employee equity.

The Lexus LS Invests in Tiffany’s well-being with up to seven available shiatsu massage functions and enhanced driving stability with reduced vibration.

THE LEXUS LS lexus.com/LS | #LexusLS

Options shown. 2021 LS vs. 2020/2021 competitors. Information from manufacturers’ websites as of 10/8/2020. ©2021 Lexus

› Word ºf moutH

Group Travel

FAMILY STYLE For scattered clans longing to reunite, nothing’s better than renting a great big compound with ample space to entertain bout a decade ago, my wife and I started spending a week in the Hamptons each June with a group of other families at a charmingly run-down collection of converted farm buildings. The place is like a little pocket of the Catskills that got lost in chichi eastern Long Island: It’s pleasingly rustic and disheveled, but the neighbors own professional sports teams and keep Serra sculptures on lawns large enough for their players to scrimmage. It’s one of those word-of-mouth rentals (I’ve been asked not to name it), passed around through the years among like-minded NYC creatives. Days have a pleasing sameness, revolving around the divine

A

40

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

local beaches and cooking communal alfresco meals utilizing the compound’s multiple kitchens and barbecues before sitting by the fire with a glass of whatever’s being poured while the june bugs twinkle.

I dug this getaway when I was younger and childless, but as our group of friends has aged and had babies and migrated out of New York City to the suburbs or California, it has come to mean so much more—particularly now that my kids are old enough to look forward to going each summer. The pandemic took it from us last year, so it was especially sweet this summer to see my little ones reunited with friends who’d grown a head since the last time we saw them and showed up with new haircuts, new books, new lingo. And it was sweet for me, too, to have a dear chef friend tutor me on my knife skills as we worked together prepping larb and bun for the Southeast Asian–themed night or to sit up till midnight under the stars talking about late-’70s Dylan and the Brooklyn Nets with a couple of dudes.

And it was sweet for all of us to come together and see that we’d all made it through this dark time in the world and know that we could keep coming together like this as our children grow taller and the lines around our eyes grow deeper.

So sweet, in fact, that a bunch of us plan to do it again soon, at a converted boys camp on Lake Pemaquid in MidCoast Maine, where we’ll once again cook and swim and sit by the fire. In my life so far, outside of the those weeks in the Hamptons, I’ve really only taken part in these kinds of big group rentals for

PHOTOGRAPHS: AIMEE MAZZENGA, BOB COSCARELLI

Clockwise from left: Summertime fun at Camp Wandawega in Elkhorn, Wisconsin; the camp’s tree house, in the middle of the grounds; a lunch spread at Wandawega

J U S T T H E R I G H T A M O U N T of W R O N G

A unique luxury resort & casino

Word ºf moutH destination weddings. But our cohort has pretty much aged out of weddings, and our lives have taken us farther and farther apart from one another, so we need weeks like these to come back together, to eat, to check up on each other. There are email threads going right now about Taos, Andros, Mallorca. Who knows where we’ll meet up next. jesse ashlock Wandawega’s A-frame tent cabins have cots and lounge chairs

Camp Wandawega Elkhorn, Wisconsin First opened as a speakeasy two hours north of Chicago and later reopened as a resort in the ’50s, Camp Wandawega has threebedroom lakefront cabins, rustic bunkhouses that sleep up to 24, or the modern two-bedroom Hillhouse.

All include access to summercamp go-tos like fishing, canoeing, hiking, archery, and more. Cabins from $650 per night; wandawega.com Scarp Ridge Lodge Crested Butte, Colorado Find relaxing mountain elegance behind a former saloon storefront in this six-bedroom getaway from Eleven Experience. They’ve thought of everything, from the seven-bunk dorm room for the kids to the oxygen-enriched air system to help you adjust to the nearly 9,000-foot altitude.

Wind down after exploring

Crested Butte’s summer hiking trails and winter slopes in the indoor saltwater pool, steam room, or rooftop hot tub. $19,900 per night based on 10 people (maximum occupancy is 14); elevenexperience.com Eleanthi Pirgos, Greece Set on one of the highest points in Pirgos, just a few minutes from the beach on the Mani Peninsula and just over three hours southwest of Athens, this former 19th-century monastery turned five-bedroom vacation home split between two semidetached builldings has incredible views from its private rooftop balcony.

There’s room for everyone to spread out, between the main kitchen, airy courtyard, olive garden, and multiple living areas with original stonework. From $450 per night for up to 13 guests; eleanthi.com Outside the historic Old Bunkhouse at Wandawega

La Selva Giardino del Belvedere Montegonzi, Italy This luxe 17th-century estate with three villas, about an hour’s drive from Florence, has something for everyone: a private saltwater pool, 45 acres of olive trees, pizza ovens (yes, more than one!), views of the Tuscan countryside from every angle, and even a stone amphitheater. Be sure to coordinate a chef-prepared dinner (or at the very least a private pasta-making lesson) during your stay. From $980 per night for up to 10 guests; chianti-farm.com Casa Blue Tamarindo, Costa Rica Whether you’re in the infinity pool, standing on one of the balconies, or inside the light-filled living room, this five-bedroom cliffside Airbnb has prime views over Tamarindo Bay on the west coast and the surrounding rain forest. But the best perspectives come from the two wooden pagoda-style bungalows—each with its own bedroom, en suite bathroom, and outdoor shower—just a few steps from the main villa, all set on one and a half acres, which feel like a complete escape from reality. From $1,100 for up to 10 guests; airbnb.com MEREDITH CAREY

PHOTOGRAPHS: JENNIFER LAWRENCE, KATE BERRY

5 AMAZING RENTALS FOR MULTIFAMILY RETREATS

› Word ºf moutH

on the ground

t might be called the Windy City, but Chicago never blows its own horn. And yet America’s thirdlargest metropolis has plenty to brag about, from its cultural legacy and historic architecture to its influential food scene (whether you’re talking about the Obamas’ date-night fave Spiaggia or Polish-sausage subs the length of your arm). As Chicago enters its next chapter, its strength, beauty, and get-her-done attitude are more evident than ever. Throughout the city center, a clutch of sophisticated hotels is welcoming back travelers, while top chefs are rolling out restaurants that showcase globally minded but neighborhood-driven fine dining. Of course, if it’s a beer and a burger you’re after, you’re in luck there too, thanks to a slew of craft-beer bars elevating a beloved local classic.

But it isn’t just hot openings that make the Paris of the Prairie so exciting right now—it’s also the spirit of community. You’ll see it in the latest edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, opening in September, which tasked star designers from around the world with permanently reimagining abandoned public spaces.

Construction is also set to begin on the 19-acre Obama Presidential Center, with a museum, a branch of the public library, and gardens. When it opens in 2025, it’ll usher in a new era for the South Side—home to the University of Chicago and the traditional nexus of Black life in the city.

“Chicago has a civically engaged spirit that’s only been bolstered by the pandemic,” says Louise Bernard, director of the Museum of the Obama Presidential Center, who shares her area picks here. “People are eager to reengage.” With so much going on, there has never been a better time to visit. andrew sessa

The iconic Willis Tower, still called Sears Tower by many

CHICAGO HOPE With its many openings and new experiences, the Midwestern giant embodies the sense of optimism beginning to take hold again in America 44

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

PHOTOGRAPH: NIKOLAS KOENIG/OTTO

I

WEDNESDAY in the #1 Friendliest City in the U.S.

BOO K TO DAY VisitGreenvilleSC.com

› Word ºf moutH

on the ground

NO SECOND CITY

The Art Deco exterior of Pendry Chicago in the Loop

Best Beds in Town Like the city itself, Chicago’s newest hotels are playful and sophisticated Classic Chi-Town hotels like the Drake and Palmer House became icons by being great places to stay and social hubs for perfectly poured cocktails and celebratory meals. The new crop extends this legacy. After stepping into the four-month-old Pendry Chicago, in a gold-crowned Art Deco landmark building in the Loop, you’ll want to go everywhere at once: the clubby lobby bar for a cocktail, the French brasserie for oysters and steak tartare, and the reservations-only rooftop for sushi and rosé. Wherever you start, the high-ceilinged, midcentury-style rooms are a nice place to end up. At Adorn, up the Magnificent Mile, James Beard Award–winner Jonathon Sawyer’s charred-tomato tartlet is a can’t-miss at the just-renovated Four Seasons Hotel Chicago, as are the Lake Michigan Terrace Suites, whose block-long water-view verandas were previously open only to longer-stay guests. Set on the restaurant row called Fulton Market, super-chef Nobu Matsuhisa’s Nobu Hotel is a hushed reprieve from the crowds outside: Rooms are a relaxing combo of Japanese minimalism and the neighborhood’s industrial vibe. Of course you’ll want to eat at the golden-hued Nobu restaurant, but don’t skip the rooftop bar. Set to open by the end of the year is the Financial District’s LaSalle Chicago, Autograph Collection, an urban aerie occupying the top five floors of one of Chicago’s first skyscrapers, a 22-story Classic Revival landmark.

46

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

For the fourth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, dubbed the Available City, organizers paired community groups with big-ticket international designers to permanently rethink abandoned urban spaces. A particular highlight is a new entry plaza, designed by Tokyo-based Atelier Bow-Wow in partnership with local artists, architects, and community groups, for a 1.7-mile High Line–style elevated park being developed in the Englewood neighborhood, on the South Side. The multi-site Toward Common Cause, a presentation from the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art in conjunction with the Chicago-based MacArthur Fellows Program, which turns 40 this year, explores the idea of the commons through works by 29 artists who have received “genius grants” since the program’s inception.

Finally, in November, the legendary Steppenwolf Theater unveils a $54 million expansion and renovation, including a theater in the round.

Leading the blockbuster lineup on the main stage is King James, a Steppenwolf original about basketball icon LeBron James.

PHOTOGRAPHS: SANDY NOTO/ESME, KATHLEEN ROBINSON/CHIKATANA, MATT HAAS/ROSE MARY, STEVE HALL/HEDRICH BLESSING

This fall Chicago showcases the breadth and diversity of its culture-scape

Inside the Seminary Co-op Bookstore

Food Matters At the city’s buzziest new restaurants, the theme is Midwest meets the world MY NEIGHBORHOOD Louise Bernard, director of the Museum of the Obama Presidential Center, which breaks ground this fall on the South Side, shares her top spots in the area

Think of month-old New American.style Esmé in Lincoln Park as Chicago on a plate.

Owners Jenner Tomaska, formerly of Michelin-starred Next, and Katrina Bravo source everything locally, from the Tarbais bean masa steamed in leeks to the crockery.

Chicago-born Guillermo Reyes honors both his Mexican heritage and his hometown with plates like American Wag yu carne asada and seasonal caulif lower “chorizo” at new Chikatana in Fulton Market.

But the mezcal, agave, and tequila-heavy cocktails feel decidedly south-of-the-border.

> “The 61st Street Farmers Market at the nonprofit community space Experimental Station is devoted to community and urban farms around the city, with a special focus on Black farmers. I’m partial to savory pies from Pleasant House Bakery and cheese from Stamper Cheese Company.” > “Located by the University of Chicago campus, the Seminary Co-op Bookstore—and its satellite, 57th Street Books—is a favorite haunt. I often go in for something specific but then find something else too, because the curation is so wonderful.” > “Chicago artist Theaster Gates and his Rebuild Foundation transformed an old bank into the Stony Island Arts Bank. It has exhibitions, music, yoga, outdoor programming, and a film series.”

Expectations were understandably high for the Adriatic-inspired Rose Mary, the f irst solo spot from ex-Spiaggia executive chef and Top Chef champ Joe Flamm, in Fulton Market. The g raceful tuna crudo and hearty lamb rag u show he has more than met them.

WHEN IT’S BEER O’ CLOCK Stop in at these epic new craft-brew hubs

Chef Zubair Mohajir’s Indian pop-up Wazwan Supper Club earned a cult following for its impeccable chicken ballotine, which is wrapped in its own skin and cooked sous v ide for two hours. This summer, Mohajir opened the brick-and-mortar Amăn, in lively West Town.

> Bitter Pops Hood: Lakeview Don’t miss: the local Hop Butcher for the World Pro tip: Pull your own to-go brews at the adjacent craft-beer shop

> Solemn Oath Brewery Hood: Logan Square Don’t miss: Lü Kolsch Pro tip: Check out bathroom murals by the artist of the beers’ labels

> “I love Virtue, from local chef Erick Williams, who brought this corridor of 51st Street to life. The food has a Southern slant (the gumbo with a side of cornbread is maybe my favorite). He’s friends with many artists, so there’s great art on walls.” > “In Burnham Park, Promontory Point has bike trails and wonderful lake views. I love to walk and run here. There’s also the restaurant and jazz spot The Promontory, which has the best chickpea fries.”

> Ravinia Brewing Co. Hood: Logan Square Don’t miss: the Steep Ravine IPA Pro tip: Hit up the taco truck out back for asada

> Life on Marz Community Club Hood: Bucktown Don’t miss: American Pale wheat Jungle Boogie Pro tip: Watch for killer pop-ups from local chefs

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

47

IT’S YOUR HEART THAT TAKES YOU PLACES We make your travels to the world’s most magical destinations possible.

But it’s your endless passion for discovery that leads you there. #sailonpassion 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 /CNT | CONTAC T YOUR TR AVEL ADVISOR

From legendary beaches and vibrant downtown districts to quaint hideaways in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, South Carolina has a destination to suit every traveler. Start planning your Palmetto State vacation today at DiscoverSouthCarolina.com

Why wE trAVel the experiences that change how we see the world

Into the Woods Surrounded by fellow foodies in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Ashlea Halpern rediscovers the joy of getting really, really far away from it all or 452 days, I fantasized about what it would be like to travel again. I imagined diving into the turquoise sea in Turks and Caicos or stuffing myself silly at a Taiwanese night market. What I didn’t picture was sitting around a campfire in the backwoods of Michigan on an early June night, trading tips on pig butchery.

And yet here I am, having scored a last-minute reservation at Milkweed Inn, the latest venture of the lauded Chicago chef Iliana Regan. In early 2019, fed up with the churn and burn of the restaurant industry, Iliana and her sommelier wife, Anna, bought a four-

PHOTOGRAPH: KENDRA STANLEY MILLS

F

bedroom hunting lodge, sight unseen, on 150 acres in Hiawatha National Forest, seven and a half hours north → Chef Iliana Regan prepares a meal in a Dutch oven at Milkweed Inn

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

51

of Detroit. The yard is carpeted with wild strawberries and fiddlehead ferns, its perimeter ringed with elderberry bushes. The place is so remote, and the old logging road to reach it so rutted, the women often pick up their guests at a gas station 28 miles away and bring them out in a four-wheel drive. Even those with the gears to make the trek aren’t allowed to attempt it alone, instead trailing Anna on the winding, cell-service-free road that leads to the compound.

The couple hosted their first guests that summer while simultaneously running the Michelin-starred restaurant Elizabeth in Chicago. Thanks to early media attention, a cap of 10 guests per weekend (six in the lodge; four more split between a canvas-walled tent and a silver Airstream), and a season that spans only May through October, Milkweed was quickly booked solid for the next two years. Then the pandemic forced the pair to push all their reservations back a year. On a whim last spring I joined the waiting list (like Sweden’s now-shuttered Fäviken, Milkweed is the kind of forest-to-fork destination where you book the table first and worry about getting there later), and by some miracle of the calendar gods immediately landed a spot.

After 50 minutes bumping through corridors of sun-dappled pines, dust billowing in our tracks, we arrive. Immediately, four dogs bound out of a modest pine log cabin, barking their fool heads off; there’s George, a fluffy Newfoundland with a graybeard’s tired face; Bunny, an Old English sheepdog; and Shih Tzus Clementine and Bear, the latter of whom cannot and will not be befriended.

Iliana is out back when we pull up, stoking the fire beneath an enormous lake trout. She wears her pants tucked into her hiking socks and is so soft-spoken I have to lean in to hear her. It’s not what I expect from someone whose viscerally

52

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

Carrots charred over an open fire

raw, hard-partying 2019 memoir, Burn the Place, opens with a fantasy of torching her own restaurant.

Raised on a 10-acre farm in rural Indiana, the selftaught cook battled countless demons—alcohol, gender dysphoria, the death of a beloved sister—on her rise to the top of Chicago’s restaurant scene. The one thing that kept her grounded was cooking.

Watching her pinball between the kitchen and firepit, unfurling sheets of fresh pasta, scoring sourdough in a Dutch oven, and rhythmically cracking eggs on the rims of metal bowls, you sense a steadiness beneath all of the movement.

Despite her success (industry hotshots René Redzepi and David Chang are fanboys), her decision to slow down was a long time coming. The exhaustion of running Elizabeth—as well as the critically acclaimed Kitsune and the micro-bakery Bunny, both of which shuttered in 2019—consumed her.

Milkweed was a ticket out. “My dream was to have something small, where I was foraging and growing my own food and using extremely local ingredients,” says Iliana. “This was everything I ever wanted and beyond my wildest dreams.”

Anna ushers us onto the porch, where we ex-

PHOTOGRAPHS: KENDRA STANLEY MILLS, SARA STATHAS

› Why wE trAVel

Pilgrimage

From top: A guest room in the main cabin; a 16-foot Airstream, one of the accommodations; Bunny, the Regans’ Old English sheepdog

change pleasantries with other guests over fruit leather and cashew cheese. We lavish attention on the dogs, because they’re the easiest thing to talk about when everyone’s social skills have spent the last year rusting on concrete blocks. Still, it’s a good warm-up for what will effectively be a threeday dinner party.

The night’s inaugural meal offers a taste of things to come: smoked trout with pesto, pierogi stuffed with sauerkraut and mushrooms, a wild-strawberry sorbet laced with tender young spruce shoots. After dinner, Anna cracks open a bottle of Two James Spirits J. Riddle peated bourbon, and the ice begins to splinter. I look around at my dining companions, including a gym teacher and an orthopedic surgeon, and think of how a love of good food and the outdoors unites us. It feels nice, almost natural even, to break bread with strangers and leave as friends, though it helps that Milkweed is self-selecting. “Our guests know what they’re getting into here,” says Iliana. “They’re ready for this experience.”

By that, she means a real-deal, off-the-grid lodge: solar panels, well water, no Wi-Fi. The cabin is too secluded to wander off-property, so guests busy themselves with activities. With her tips, I scour the forest floor for ramps and yarrow, and rumble down back roads in an ATV, pausing at a pond dotted with butteryellow lilies. Thunder ripples across the sky as I try my hand at archery, steadying the bow exactly as Anna showed me and squealing when my arrow zips through the air with a satisfying snap. Other guests curl up with a book on the lodge’s covered deck or pick Iliana’s giant brain about foraging and fermentation. Over

the next two days, we feast on the fruits of her labor: five extraordinary meals, including an epic tasting menu on Saturday night. In Iliana’s world, a salad is never just a salad. It’s mustard greens, violet leaves, spruce shoots plucked from the forest, and koji-fermented black beans tossed in a wild-blackberry vinaigrette. Ramp pasta is just that—plus trout lily, stinging nettle, marsh marigold, cattail shoots, egg-yolk amino acids, and a “shit ton of butter.”

Four hours pass like this, with an exquisite parade of creative dishes, but I’m too lost in merry banter to notice the time. Like riding a bicycle, the old rhythms of confabulation come roaring back, and all the anxiety I’ve been hanging on to falls away. Belly laughs echo through the rafters as the dogs run maniacal circles through the house. Iliana wipes down the counters, and Anna checks and rechecks that our glasses are full. And indeed they are.

Milkweed Inn hosts guests weekends from May through October. Rates from $1,750 for two for a two-night stay, all meals and activities included; milkweedinn.com

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

53

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

THE GOLDEN ISLES: NATURAL BLISS YOU CAN’T MISS

Along Georgia’s pristine coast, there are endless ways to appreciate nature’s gifts.

For nature enthusiasts, the Golden Isles makes for a heavenly pilgrimage any time of year.

Throughout St. Simons Island, Sea Island, Jekyll Island, Little St. Simons Island, and the port town of Brunswick, outdoor experiences abound in a wild setting unlike anywhere else on the Atlantic coast.

Despite having just 90 miles of coastline, Georgia is home to around one-third of the wild marshland found along the Eastern Seaboard. It’s this unique distinction that blesses the Golden Isles with incredibly diverse habitats, from sprawling old-growth maritime forests to sandy beaches and tidal creeks, all teeming with marine animals and birds. It’s no wonder this swath of paradise also serves as a major migratory stop for all kinds of wildlife, especially turtles.

or go on an evening beach stroll to trail flipper tracks by moonlight. May also marks the return of Turtle Days on Little St. Simons Island, a cherished tradition that spotlights a wealth of nature-focused programming, including

The month of May is when loggerhead sea

educational presentations and post-hatch

turtles nest along Georgia’s picturesque

nest inventories.

shoreline; for visitors, this borderline-spiritual encounter can be experienced in many thrilling ways. Rise early on Sea Island to join naturalists on a beach patrol to monitor active nesting sites,

Visit during the mild fall months to catch some of the most stunning views of the Golden Isles from the ocean and waterways that course through the region. Charter a stately yacht or climb aboard the Tall Ship Lynx, a historic schooner that offers an interactive tour of early American maritime history. For more up-close encounters with marine life, embark on a guided wildlife kayak tour through rivers and remote uninhabited barrier islands with Southeast Adventure Outfitters.

through untamed marshland and ancient maritime forests. From the 600-acre Cannon’s Point Preserve on St. Simons Island to a day trip hiking Little St. Simons Island (and an overnight stay at The Lodge on Little St. Simons Island!), the Golden Isles’ awe-inspiring landscape beckons outdoor lovers to return for generations.

Chances are you’ll become one of them, too.

When you’re on land, it’s not only the miles of golden-sand beaches that spark wonderment.

During the temperate winter months, pack your hiking boots and binoculars and explore dozens of hiking trails and wooden pathways that wind

EXPERIENCE NATURE IN ITS TRUEST FORM BY PLANNING YOUR TRIP TO THE GOLDEN ISLES. LEARN MORE AT GOLDENISLES.COM

St. Simons Island

•

Sea Island

•

Jekyll Island

•

Little St. Simons Island

Goldenisles.com | (800) 933-2627

•

Brunswick

Chart Your Own Course

56

y family and I have just boarded our 50-foot chartered catamaran, and the wind is whipping through our hair as we enter Sir Francis Drake Channel, a deep blustery strait that connects much of the British Virgin Islands. Our captain, a scruffy, bearded Texan named Tyrone LaRue, points out Dead Chest Island, an uninhabited knob where the pirate Blackbeard marooned his crew with nothing but a saber and a bottle of rum. The legend inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s song “Dead Man’s Chest,” which appeared in Treasure Island.

According to local lore, only a handful of the crew made it. We sing the sea chantey, or at least the “yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum” part, and imagine what these waters were like then.

Geographically speaking, not much has changed. Sailors know that the over 50 isles in this British Overseas Territory east of Puerto Rico still provide calm, protected coves, and that the trade winds, which consistently move from east to west, make this archipelago one of the finest boating destinations in the world.

M

Aboard a yacht in the British Virgin Islands, David LaHuta finds the next great (and affordable) family vacation

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

One of charter company The Mooring’s yachts, near Sandy Cay in the British Virgin Islands

PHOTOGRAPHS: THE MOORINGS, CRAIG FORDHAM

› Why wE trAVel

On Board

What is less common knowledge is that chartering a yacht here, as well as in many vacation spots around the globe, can cost less than a luxury resort.

This is a relatively new phenomenon. When The Moorings, the company my family worked with, began operations in the British Virgin Islands in 1969, it had six 75-foot Pearson yachts, tight-quartered, two-cabin monohulls that required extensive sailing know-how and deep pockets. Back then, The Moorings was the sole charter company in the region. These days, its diversified fleet is more than 400 strong in more than 20 destinations—a success story that has encouraged tech-savvy newcomers like GetMyBoat and Yachtico to get in on the charter game and try to appeal to Gen X and millennial travelers. Like The Moorings, they offer crewed yachts where a captain and first mate do the work, as well as “bareboat” charters, where guests with certified licenses can take the helm, significantly lowering costs. With thousands of ultra-modern vessels available to book, some of which sleep 12 comfortably, charter companies are courting younger generations who crave not only the freedom granted by a sailing vacation but also the value it can provide.

Charter yachts are also great options for families with young kids, like mine.

The yacht we picked up in Road Town, Tortola, the largest and most populated of the BVI, was more like a fully kitted-out floating home than a traditional sailboat. In addition to the high-tech extras (solar-powered water makers and push-button winches), it had modern bathrooms, air-conditioning, spacious seating, and luxe amenities like a bow trampoline with plush beanbag chairs, a teak swimming platform, and a 12-foot dinghy. And, of course, we could take it wherever we wished. Unlike cruise ships, which have set itineraries and designated ports, charter boats let you choose your own adventure. This flexibility is particularly apparent in the BVI, since unlike other popular sailing archipelagos (such as French Polynesia), all of the islands are within sight, which means you don’t have full days of sailing to reach your next stop. You basically wake up, decide where you want to go next, and arrive within an hour or so of active sailing.

Back on the water, Tyrone is busy tacking and jibbing through the whitecapped sea when my young sons, Jackson and Tyler, ask to sit at the helm. Once they’re installed behind the wheel, Tyrone resumes his geography lesson. We learn that the Virgin Islands were named by Christopher Columbus in honor of Saint Ursula, a fourthcentury Catholic saint, and the alleged 11,000 virgins who were martyred alongside her. Tyrone also tells us where we’re headed: the tiny 1,779-acre Peter Island.

From Tortola it takes about 45 minutes to reach Peter Island, where we anchor in a calm bay where there’s not much more than

the setting sun and a handful of other boats. About an hour later, savory smells waft through the galley and out to the aft deck, where my wife, Joy, and I are relaxing with cold glasses of Minuty rosé. Tyrone is grilling pork tenderloin; Jess, his first mate and wife, is busy whipping up asparagus tips with a brandy cream sauce and a sweet potato mash.

The following morning, we awake to poached eggs on avocado toast. It’s time for the captain’s daily briefing. “The plan is to circumnavigate the BVI,” says Tyrone, holding a colorful map for us all to see. He quizzes the boys on where we’ve been and tells us that our next stop will be Cooper Island.

After Jackson feeds a school of blue runners from the swim platform and we’ve begun sipping our first round of pineapple mimosas, we’re off. Forty minutes later we drop anchor in a quiet cove called Manchioneel Bay and swim the 70 yards to shore. We beachcomb for sea whips and intact urchin tests— the creatures’ spiny exoskeletons—then hike up a steep brush-lined slope to Cooper’s highest point.

From atop the breezy hill we have a bird’s-eye view of Virgin Gorda—a voluptuous volcanic island so named because Columbus thought its profile looked like an overweight woman lying on her side.

The next morning we’re there, and our excitement builds as we anchor near its most impressive natural attraction, a national park called the Baths where massive granite boulders form grottoes you can wade into. It’s a magical morning that gets even better when Tyrone arranges for a taxi driver to escort us to Hog Heaven, a mountaintop barbecue spot where the fall-offthe-bone ribs are almost as epic as the panoramic view.

The rest of the week follows a similar cadence of exploration and relaxation. We visit Anegada, a pancake-flat atoll where feral donkeys and goats roam free, flocks of flamingos splash in muddy marshlands, and visitors explore dusty roads in Mokes, the classic British open-air vehicle. Eventually, we end up at Cow Wreck Beach Bar, on the island’s northern tip, where we mix our own rum cocktails and tally our tab on a notepad. The joint, perched on a white sand beach with license

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

57

› Why wE trAVel

on board

5 charter yachts to check out > Sailing Collective Travel Co. This NYC-based sailing specialist plans private charters (as well as group journeys bookable by the cabin) on 45-to-65-foot monohulls and catamarans that visit over 40 archipelagos and coastlines around the world, including Belize, Sicily, and French Polynesia. Depending on dates, a 57-foot monohull that sleeps eight for a week in Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast will run between $15,000 and $32,000. Sailingcollective.com

plates and faded flags nailed to its wooden rafters, is as close to a Kenny Chesney song as you can get. Other days we follow Tyrone on underand above-water adventures. One afternoon we snorkel through schools of blue-striped grunt near Monkey Point, off the southern tip of Guana Island; on another we explore Norman Island’s water-level caves, where we swim past blooms of moon jellyfish. On the 163-acre isle of Little Jost Van Dyke, we trail Tyrone down a narrow goat path to the Bubbly Pool, where crashing waves fill a small rock pool with frothy seawater, creating a sort of natural jacuzzi. And one afternoon we make the near-mandatory swim to the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke, wet cash in hand, and order painkillers (a cousin of the piña colada) while the boys play ring toss in the sand.

Our last day is one for the family annals. We have some of the best snorkeling of the trip near the unfortunately dubbed Indians, a group of rocky outcroppings shaped like tipis, where we snorkel over kaleidoscopic coral and through schools of reef fish so thick we have to part them with our hands. Then Tyrone takes us to Pirates Bight, a peaceful cove that’s home to a retrofitted tanker-cum-bar called the Willy T, where locals and visitors jump into the water from its second-floor deck, despite clearly posted signs advising to the contrary. Before we know it, Tyler, our youngest, jumps, and the rest of us follow. That night we have a fantastic last meal back on the boat. The thought of leaving is hanging heavy in the air as Joy and I put the kids to sleep in their cabin and then head to the top deck for one final nightcap under the stars.

The breeze is warm, the sky is black, and we watch as Orion’s Belt slowly rises across the Milky Way. In the BVI, a crewed four-cabin catamaran starts at $2,500 per person per week, including meals and alcohol; without a crew, rates start at $1,375 per person. Moorings.com

58

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

> EYOS Expeditions Since 2008, EYOS has been crafting trips to far-flung places like Antarctica and Papua New Guinea on kitted-out superyachts.

Expect serious bells and whistles: helicopter hangars (for heli-ski excursions), ice-class hulls (to break polar ice beds), and Triton submarines, which safely bring guests more than 3,000 feet below the ocean’s surface. Taking over a 156-foot expedition yacht that sleeps 12 for approximately eight days in Antarctica comes in at $212,000. Eyos-expeditions.com > Kontiki Expeditions In August, this newcomer to the charter scene launched two Ecuadorian itineraries on a pair of 128-foot luxury yachts; a third yacht is coming in early 2022. Each has nine staterooms and visits largely unexplored ports along five of the country’s coastal regions. For $152,800, you and 17 of your friends can have a yacht all to yourselves for seven nights. Kontikiexpeditions.com > Yachtico With an inventory of more than 16,000 yachts in sought-after sailing regions (the Caribbean, Thailand, the Mediterranean), this digital platform connects vacationers with professionally maintained boats of all types and sizes. Prices start around $1,000 per week for a houseboat on a canal in Europe and top $280,000 per week for a 154-foot superyacht in the Caribbean. Yachtico.com > GetMyBoat Like an Airbnb for watercraft, this San Francisco–based company offers some 140,000 boats in over 9,300 locations worldwide.

For a seven-day charter around Mykonos, aboard a catamaran that sleeps 12, you can expect to pay around $11,130. Getmyboat.com. D.L.

PHOTOGRAPH: SANAE UEYOSHI

Long Bay Beach on Tortola, the largest of the BVI

PROMOTION

P O S T 2021

NEWS, UPDATES, AND EVENTS FROM THE PUBLISHER OF C O N D É NAS T T R AV E L E R

“

— Divia Thani

INTRODUCING OUI’S FRENCH FLORALS COLLECTION

y y g piece of France, served up by the spoonful. Made with simple, all-natural ingredients, each petite glass pot of Oui is individually poured and set for eight hours to create a satisfyingly thick, subtly sweet, and fresh-tasting yogurt. And now, for a limited time only, Oui French style yogurt is available in designed glass jars inspired by the flowers of France. Tour the City of Love with the Parisian Magnolias pot, frolic through lavender fields with the Provence Lavender pot, or ascend to the pinnacle of beauty with the French Alps Globeflower pot. Each design is its own adventure. Go ahead—give your tastebuds the vacation they deserve. A world of French beauty awaits.

Learn more at OuiByYoplait.com

C N T R AV E L E R .C O M

The World Made Local™

› Why wE trAVel

Perspective

Piazza San Marco, on a morning during lockdown

Venice has long been the poster child for the global overtourism crisis.

Could a year without visitors prove to be a turning point?

By Jackie Caradonio n May, at the opening of the rescheduled Venice Biennale of Architecture—pandemic edition— banners hung from every doorway in the Arsenal emblazoned with the question “How will we live together?,” the theme of this year’s show. As I explored photographer Marco Cappelletti’s hauntingly beautiful City to Dust, a collection of images depicting an empty Palazzo San Marco and a shuttered Rialto Bridge, every step I took made an unsettling crunch.

The floor was constructed of terrazzo tiles in the

I Casa Bortoli, a stately home on the Grand Canal

60

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

PHOTOGRAPHS: MARCO VALMARANA/FAI FONDO PER L’AMBIENTE ITALIANO

Changing Tide

shape of Venice, suggesting the damage crowds do to the city. “Because the tourists trample her soul...” the narrator of an accompanying video stated grimly. “Every single step is, for every single visitor, a physical confrontation with his or her potentially harmful impact on the environment.”

Bemoaning the perils of Venice—the cruise ships and dwindling population; the fact that it’s more a theme park than a place where people live and thrive; and, don’t forget, it’s sinking!—is nothing new. Observers have lamented the city’s overexposure since at least 1909, when Henry James wrote in Italian Hours, “The Venice of today is a vast museum...and you march through the institution with a herd of fellow-gazers. There is nothing left to discover or describe....” But this was hardly the Venice I encountered when my architect-husband, John, and I arrived a few weeks before the Biennale—when tourism was still banned in Italy—to build an installation for the exhibition. What we found was a city grappling with how to move forward with the world paused.

All those quiet days and empty streets gave Venetians precious time to ponder real-life solutions to their overtourism problem. The government has attempted for years to alleviate the issue, passing measures from installing turnstiles to keep a head count to taxing day-trippers, but some of the biggest initiatives in decades gained traction while the city was in lockdown. In March, the government decreed that it would ban cruise ships weighing more than 40,000 tons from the Venetian lagoon. That same month, the mayors Without of Venice and Florence teamed up on travelers, the vaporetti a manifesto demanding that the ran empty Italian government impose tighter last May restrictions on the thousands of short-term rentals contributing to the cities’ housing crisis. And following pressure from local activist groups, Venice mayor Luigi Brugnero recently announced his administration is working on a booking system that will establish quotas on tourist access to the city’s historical center.

“It feels a bit like the beginning of a new era,” says Valeria Duflot, cofounder of the Venice-based think tank Overtourism Solution. “The crisis catapulted tourism to the top of the political agenda, providing a historic opportunity to transform the industry at the root.” For Venice, that transformation will come when the old extractive tourism model—in which travelers focus solely on what they can take away from a destination—is replaced with a regenerative model that also helps sustain local communities. Duflot is helping to nudge that shift through her website Venezia Autentica, which provides a veritable how-to guide to conscientious tourism, listing locally owned businesses and certified tour guides, and suggesting itineraries that take travelers off the beaten track by showcasing places like the neoclassical Museo Correr and artisan workshops making authentic Carnival masks. “The return of tourism at the level it used to be is expected for 2024,” Duflot says, “and we aim by then to have created a dynamic of transformation that renders going back to the old normal obsolete.”

The great COVID-19 reset also underpinned the need not just for fewer

tourists but for more Venetians. “The pandemic made absolutely clear the total dependence on tourism to survive,” says Fabio Carrera, a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute Massachusetts, who teaches part-time in Venice and for 30 years has studied solutions to improve local life through his WPI Venice Project Center. “The real problem is not tourism—it’s that there are no alternatives to tourism.” At least half the working population is in travel, giving the industry outsize power over everything from the types of businesses that survive (souvenir shops, not grocery stores) to the funding of public transportation (which runs more regularly to tourist locales). Carrera argues that developing tech and other entrepreneurial industries independent of tourism will create a more livable Venice— and a more attractive home base for new residents.

To that end, this fall, his incubator on the island of Giudecca, across from San Marco, will launch a new partnership with MIT that aims to help Venetian start-ups get off the ground.

Of course, Venice can’t be fixed overnight. Both Carrera and Duflot say their missions are focused on the long term. “It’s going to take 10, 20, maybe 30 years to get where we want to be,” Carrera says. This became especially obvious on June 3, when the first cruise ship in more than a year sailed past Piazza San Marco. Soon after, in response to UNESCO advisers’ recommendation that the organization list Venice as an endangered site, the Italian government said it would begin enforcing its ban on August 1, also lowering the weight limit to 25,000 tons.

On our last night in Venice, the city was quiet, save for a few Biennale-goers, as John and I sat at our usual table at La Zucca, a neighborhood spot that seemed to draw enough locals to remain busy even without tourists. I watched an older couple to my left order without looking at the menu. But it was the table of four to my right that was interested in us.

When we told them we were American, their disappointment was palpable. I knew they’d already begun to miss their hushed little city.

I wanted to tell them that over the past three weeks, John and I had slowly soaked in Venice rather than gulping it all up in a day like most tourists. We’d become regulars at restaurants owned by locals and skipped many of the standard attractions for visits to family-run squeri, or boatyards on the lagoon.

Instead, though, I just raised my glass.

“To Venice!” I said earnestly.

“To Venice,” they echoed back.

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

61

after a year of hardship for new york city’s chinatown, a younger generation is writing the neighborhood’s next chapter

By Francis Lam Photographs by Andrew Bui

right around the corner 62

A tenement building on East Broadway Opposite: Sweet and savory tofu puddings with plenty of toppings at Fong On

my mother cried when I got a job in Chinatown. “Twenty years we worked there so you wouldn’t have to,” she said, sobbing. She shopped there, she worshipped there, she ate there, but for her, the point was to get out of there: To be somewhere else meant you’d made it. Eventually she calmed down enough to say, “Fine. But if you hear gunshots, don’t be a hero.”

It was 1999, and Chinatown had become plenty safe. It had always been always delicious. And even though I never told her this, it had always felt like home. Not in a comforting way, in a place-of-lovingobligation way. You see, I’m the son of immigrants from Hong Kong, and I spent my entire youth blowing off my parents’ every attempt to assimilate me into their culture. Now I can never feel Chinese enough.

For years I would take visitors to Chinatown and play tour guide with expert, practiced lines. I’d tell them that Mott Street General Store opened in the 1800s to sell groceries to Chinese men forced to cook for themselves because America forbade them to bring their wives. I’d take them to Fong Inn Too, a fresh tofu shop, where, standing on the always-wet floors and eating over a garbage can, we’d devour warm bowls of silky soy pudding, barely set, quivering on our spoons under a veil of brown sugar syrup. I’d see them stop and stare when they turned the corner of Doyers Street to glimpse the pictureperfect, movie-set Chinatown view, and I’d know it was the right moment to drop the bit about how this used to be called the Bloody Angle because of all the triad killings on This. Very. Spot. (No, Mom, really, that hasn’t happened in decades.) If I couldn’t grow up in Hong Kong like my mother did, then at least I could feel like I had a place in Chinatown.

Chinatown has always occupied an uneasy spot in the life of New York City. Starting in the 1870s, Chinese men who’d been harassed out of California by that era’s anti-Chinese movement started settling into a corner of the infamous Five Points slum and turned to work that wouldn’t threaten white men, like cooking and laundry. Soon after, the

64

Clockwise from top left: The aftermath of a meal at Hop Kee; Sophia Ng Tsao (seated), who runs the specialty market Po Wing Hong with her father, Patrick Ng, and her mom, Nancy; a mural on Division Street Opposite from top: The corner of Mott and Canal, the heart of Chinatown; dishware at K.K. Discount Store

65

restaurants they opened began attracting bohemians; today, of course, every Chinatown in America is basically a playground for foodies. But because it is situated next door to SoHo and Nolita, the inexorable creep of gentrification makes New York’s Chinatown a precarious home to dumplings that go five for a dollar. And the neighborhood faces other crises, most recently the anti-Asian attacks brought on by the pandemic. Even so, Chinatown today, just as it was a century and a half ago when it got its start as a refuge from racism, is no less driven by its will to live.

A few months ago, I turned that corner on Doyers Street and got a cup of steaming ginger-lemon tea at Mee Sum Cafe with Grace Young, an unassuming titan of Chinese food writing. “Hop Shing, 47 years old, gone,” Grace said, beginning to list the old-line businesses that didn’t make it through the pandemic, each utterance a paying of respects. “69 Bayard Restaurant, 61 years. Hoy Wong, 42 years. Lung Moon Bakery, over 50 years.” We sat in the middle of a street empty but for a row of dining tables set with tablecloths, waiting for soup-dumpling eaters to emerge. “I don’t want a Chinatown that’s all trendy stuff, like bouncy cheesecakes and mochi doughnuts,” she said. “If you lose the classics, they will go away forever.” (I agree, but for the record, bouncy cheesecake and mochi doughnuts are phenomenal.)

That afternoon, I walked around the neighborhood for hours, my first visit after a COVID-19 year away. I saw the rolled-down security shutters that break Grace’s heart: one for every three or four doors, it seemed. But this, also, has been a fact of life in this neighborhood, even before the pandemic and the hate crimes bared their teeth. That tofu shop

see the sights, try the food 66

> the greatest hits On the corner of Mott and Mosco, down a dark flight of stairs, unassuming neighborhood stalwart Hop Kee has been serving up no-frills Cantonese fare since 1968—but the lack of fuss is

exactly why you go (and why Anthony Bourdain loved it).

Slide into a booth and order the crabs Cantonese style, served in a rich brown sauce, and the salted squid with spicy green pepper. Over on East Broadway, Hwa Yuan

Szechuan’s white tablecloths are great for a dressed-up family dinner or a Friday night on the town; for something more low-key, Noodle Village on Mott is the perfect casual spot to roll into around 4 p.m. on a Saturday for

Clockwise from top: Gary Lum at his family’s china shop, Wing On Wo & Co., run by his daughter, Mei Lum, the fifth-generation owner; chewy mochi doughnuts at Alimama Tea, a Chinatown newcomer; the menu at Fong On Opposite: Nom Wah Tea Parlor, a Chinatown staple for dim sum for more than a century

steaming bowls of pork wonton noodle soup. On Doyers, Nom Wah Tea Parlor has been open since 1920, making it the oldest continuously running restaurant in Chinatown—and it’s still buzzing today, with locals and visi-

tors who pack in each weekend for dim sum staples like shrimp shumai and Shanghainese soup dumplings. By contrast, Mee Sum Cafe on Pell Street feels like a place that time forgot, with hulking duncolored cash registers

and metal barstools crowned with burntorange leather. Order one of the bananaleaf-encased sticky rice bundles, which sit by the dozens in trays on the counter, and a whole fish, marinated in soy sauce and scallions, if it’s available.

> new kids on the block Though Koreatown is technically three miles north, some of the best KFC—Korean fried chicken, that is—is on Pell Street, where Boka Korean Fried Chicken opened in 2019.

Do a 10-piece order, along with a gutbusting helping of bulgogi French fries and a watermelon soju cocktail—served straight from a mini melon. Tonii’s Fresh Rice Noodle on Bayard opened in October of 2019, →

67

I brought chefs to? Opened in 1933, it closed four years ago. The Mott Street General Store shut its doors in 2003. I don’t remember when the roast duck at Big Wong started to taste different to me, but that flavor, too, is gone. And I remembered September 11, standing on these blocks, looking up in the sky and seeing an attack on America whose aftermath shut down lower Manhattan for months and bled so many of Chinatown’s businesses dry.

I remember getting back here for the first time after the smell of smoke started to finally go away and seeing American flags in the windows of the businesses that made it.

As I ambled these once-again quiet streets, my memory filled in the sights I used to see: vendors grilling cumin-dusted kebabs like they do in western China; a woman with skin like leather selling 100 spears of sugarcane. I didn’t have to rely on memory, though, to see the familiar lady who could have been

my auntie coming down the block in a red tracksuit, carrying a bag of leafy greens the size of her torso.

And then, in the shadow of the roaring overpass of the Manhattan Bridge, I spotted a curious sign: “Fong On, Family Tofu Shop, Established 1933.”

Could it be? The floors and walls were immaculate white subway tile, the ceiling festooned with highly Instagrammable red lanterns. I ordered a bowl of the tofu pudding and asked for a spoon; there is nothing quite like eating it fresh and warm—tasting the bean as it slides down the back of your tongue.

As I left, a group of 20-somethings came in and said, I swear, “Look at this aesthetic,” the word sounding like an award.

Paul Eng, the owner, laughed when I told him that.

“When I was living in Russia, people told me that if my photography didn’t work out, I should just come home to the family business and sell tofu to hipsters.”

When Paul was a child, his father would tell him he would carry the shop on one day, so he did what any American kid raised on rock and roll would do—he got as far away as he could. He studied architecture, played in bands, became an artist, and moved to Moscow. Only after his father passed and the shop closed did he think about trying to run it, on his terms: making it younger, cooler, carrying on the recipes but presenting them to people who didn’t grow up with them. “I’m grateful for those customers because that says there’s a future,” he said.

A future. Maybe this is it? The answer to Grace Young’s lament about losing the classics. What about all the classics that are being reborn? I started to ask around: Where else is there a new generation of old-school Chinatown businesses?

At 125 years old or so, the china shop Wing On

though with its scuffed white floors, random stoner art, and half-empty boxes of supplies, it looks more like it’s moving out than in. But the young crew behind the counter makes you forget all that—as do the pillowy rice

and dried shrimp, are worth the squeeze.

Fong On, the nextgen incarnation of the shuttered neighborhood staple Fong Inn Too, sits on a quiet stretch of Division, with red floors and white tiles that feel unimposing but cool.

68

noodles, with fresh shrimp and roasted duck. Tucked beneath the Manhattan Bridge, Hak Box is a sliver of a store at all of 200 square feet, but its namesake Hak Rolls, rice noodles stuffed with scallions and coated in bits of Spam

> indulge your sweet tooth Traditionally, Chinese meals end with something light, like a platter of seasonal fruit; full-fledged dessert items are typically reserved for snack time, and in

Chinatown there is no shortage of snacks to be had. Start at Keki Modern Cakes on Mott Street, where the sweet scent of baked sugar hits you the second you step inside. The shop is known for its “bouncy cheesecake,” but the

20 years later Artist Andrew Kuo on Chinatown Since 9/11 “I grew up in Westchester County, but my parents had ties to the Taiwanese community, so we spent a lot of time below Canal Street. I was crashing in a studio on Baxter on 9/11. The Chinese community is private, but 9/11 exposed them because Chinatown is an artery for everything else. The community delivered, and then, when enough time passed, the city forgot about it. Not unlike the beginning of COVID-19, the shops weren’t doing any business, they were just helping people—but rents were due. Many were doomed immediately, but they held on for a few months. When COVID hit, it felt like Chinatown had a better idea what to do because of 9/11 and SARS. Still, the neighborhood is so reliant on people coming down and having something nice to eat, to have that lifeline cut off was terrifying.

But the community rallied. It’s standing. In quarantine the vibe was bleak; now, though, people are eating food and waiting for tables. I no longer have any connection to Westchester, so if anything happens to me, scatter my ashes on Mott Street.” Andrew Kuo is represented by Broadway Gallery.

The Joy of Basketball, his new book with Ben Detrick, is out October 19.

Clockwise from left: Fresh produce on Grand Street; Alimama Tea owner Janie Wang inside her café; K.K. Discount Store Opposite: Steamed Shanghai pork soup dumplings from Noodle Village

fluffy cream puffs, loaded with fillings like bright purple ube and delicate matcha, are every bit as memorable. Continue down Mott to Pinklady Cheese Tart, a tiny four-stool joint that sells exquisite tartlets (be sure to sample

the nutty black sesame), delicately packaged in individual boxes, before backtracking to Alimama Tea, a hip café on Bayard with polished concrete floors, exposed brick walls, and a jumble of fairy lights hanging in the

window that will delight Instagram influencers. Both the cartoonishly pink lychee rose tea and Onyx mochi doughnut, dredged in a shiny chocolate lacquer with flecks of gold and silver, taste as good as they’ll look in

your feed. But on a hot summer’s day, there’s nothing better than heading a block west on Bayard for red-bean scoops (ideally in an M&Mstudded sugar cone) from the Original Chinatown Ice Cream Factory.

> DO Try this at home To re-create the flavors of Chinatown in your own kitchen, hit Po Wing Hong, whose ruby-red awning—and the shopping attendant who diligently parks customers’ rolling →

69

Wo & Co. has never been younger, thanks to its 30-year-old fifth-generation owner, Mei Lum, who makes memes of her grandmother and educates customers on the craftwork of Chinese porcelain.

In the ’80s, the legendary chef Shorty Tang was credited with introducing New York to cold sesame noodles, the dish that launched a thousand takeout ships. His son, chef Chen Lien Tang, and grandson, James Tierney Tang, resurrected the long-gone Hwa Yuan in 2017. It’s probably the finest fine-dining restaurant in Chinatown. Even while customers ate on the street in an ersatz sidewalk dining room, a server presented the cold sesame noodles— the sauce more delicate than you’d expect, splitting the difference between rich and tart—by expertly coiling them out of a tureen and placing them, like a bird’s nest, on my plate. The gesture was dignified, a symbol of pride.

And when strolling the aisles of Po Wing Hong, a 41-year-old grocery store, I felt a peculiar pang, a visitation from the ghost of bean curds past. There, past the jars of $1,400-per-pound dried abalone, the wall of ginseng, and the trillion flavors of instant ramen, I stared at jars of chili-fermented bean curd.

It’s something my mother always kept in our fridge, a condiment that my cousin once called Chinese cheese. Growing up I used to scoff at the glorious, yellow slices of salt-flavored soy cream. But there, in the store, I could taste in my mind their pungent, saline, familiar funk.

Sophia Ng Tsao grew up in this store, the little kid behind the counter who would get your cigarettes for you. She never thought she’d be at the helm alongside her parents one day. “Even though I was working at the shop, I didn’t feel a connection to the products,”

carts outside—makes visits feel like a trip to the theater. Inside, the space opens up to reveal long aisles stocked with everything from bottled sauces and bagged noodles to purplish dried sausages and slick jellyfish slices.

70

(You can also pick up dried goods like plums and sea cucumbers, sold by weight.) Aqua Best, on Grand, sells glistening fluke, branzino, and sea bass, all propped up on ice. If your day starts early, swing by the fruit

stands flanking both sides of Mulberry Street near the intersection of Grand: Vendors hawk fresh oranges and justripe cherries, prickly dragon fruit, and unwieldy durian beneath multicolored beach umbrellas.

> shop till you drop CT Seafood Mart, on the corner of Grand and Chrystie, is a clearinghouse for everything from fresh produce and seafood to pastel-colored bedspreads and bamboo-tile car-seat

covers. On Mott, K.K. Discount Store is packed with silverware, rolling pins, and mocha pots of every size; there’s also plenty to covet at the tiny Ting Yu Hong Co., including wooden sandals, delicately wrapped soap bars,

she told me. But after she went to business school, the customers of her parents’ generation finally got to her. “They kept saying, ‘Please take the store over, or I won’t have anywhere to buy my ginseng!’ ” So she stayed, and learned about the products, and is now finding customers her age coming in to ask about them. “I think the younger generation is going through a major identity crisis, and missing out on Chinatown hits so close to home,” she said.

“And they’re compelled to do something about it.”

The thought made me smile, as did the fact that I had time for one last bite before going home. When I was a kid spending summers in Hong Kong, wonton mein—a bowl of wontons, noodles, and soup—was my ur-snack. I learned how to use the subway there so I could get to my favorite wonton noodle stall. For years, my brother had told me that the Chinatown restaurant Noodle Village has a good one. It’s not self-referential enough to be either new school or old school. But you can taste what they care about.

I took my bowl across the street to an empty set of dining tents. You have to eat it right away, while the noodles still snap back, so springy they almost crunch. While the broth is still scalding hot, the steam carrying the aroma of the flecks of garlic chive on its surface. The smooth wontons earned their translation of “swallowed clouds,” with skins so smooth and soft, enveloping a filling that tasted of pork fat, sesame oil, and toasted shrimp roe.

I used to spend the longest time looking for wonton mein that would remind me of my time spent in Hong Kong. But eating this, in the strange, hopeful, liminal moment of a neighborhood reawakening after a pandemic, I found a bowl that will T always remind me of Chinatown.

and (in a nod to its 1950s origins) the occasional cigarette holder. Now five generations in, Wing on Wo & Co. is Chinatown’s oldest store; make an appointment to browse its exquisite porcelain goods, suitable for everyday

use (a turquoise soy bottle) and special occasions (a jadehandle mirror). Beauty haven oo35mm stocks slather-worthy tinctures like Beauty of Joseon Radiance Cleansing Balm. Other noteworthies include Chen’s Watch Inc.,

Clockwise from top left: Inside Hwa Yuan Szechuan, which serves spicy upscale dishes; the hard-to-miss entrance to the porcelain shop Wing On Wo & Co. Opposite: K.K. Discount owners Ken and Vicki Li with their daughter, Norina

a spot that deals in shiny vintage pocket watches and grandfather clocks from the likes of Le Coultre, and Bok Lei Po Trading Inc., a martialarts supply store with a trove of Feiyue shoes and Jing Wu three-button shirts.

> walk it off Head to Columbus Park’s Dr. Sun Yat-sen Plaza to watch elders play card games for a crowd, or stop at the Chinatown Fair Family Fun Center, a pitchdark arcade on Mott, for a few rounds of ice ball. Don’t miss the

Maya Lin–designed Museum of Chinese in America on Centre, which traces the history of the diaspora.

Recently reopened after a devastating fire in January 2020, it’s free for all through September 19.

BETSY BLUMENTHAL

71

Concrete and local parota wood create a sleek, minimalist retreat at Casa Tiny, a mini vacation rental 18 miles northwest of Puerto Escondido in Oaxaca

PHOTOGRAPHS: CAMILA COSSIO, LEILA ASHTARI

Opposite: Structure VIII at Becán, an impressive Mayan ruin outside the village of Xpujil in Campeche

72

MeNico NoW Both fresh and familiar, away from home but not too far, our neighbor to the south has perennial appeal. As we begin traveling internationally again, this country’s pristine Baja beaches, out-of-the-way Mayan ruins, modernist hotels, and rich culinary scene are calling our name

BLUE HORIZON The next hot spot on the east coast could set an example for ecotourism going forward y first impression as I glide on a Hobie Cat is how much Bacalar looks like the Caribbean. This 31-mile lagoon near the border of Belize is known for its many shades of aquamarine. Travelers like me come expressly for these glowing waters, which have none of the crowds of Tulum and Cancún.

But more visitors (200,000 in 2019) are venturing into this region of tangled mangroves and dense jungle, and a clutch of considerate, design-focused hotels have opened to serve them—most recently, the sustainably minded Habitas, which opened 35 A-frame-style tented rooms last month. Yet those building Bacalar as a destination have seen the consequences of overtourism in Mexico, including in Tulum, about two hours to the north, and are determined to prevent the same from happening here.

“There has been profound damage done to the ecosystem in the Tulum area, and it’s a vivid example of what to avoid and reverse if economic interests manage to take precedence over ecologic needs once again,” says Sofia Lynch, co-owner of the boutique hotel Casa Hormiga, another new arrival.

M

74

Clockwise from bottom: The many shades of blue on display at the tranquil Laguna de Bacalar; a quiet balcony at hotel Casa Hormiga; the hotel’s entrance

Capital Eats

PHOTOGRAPHS: CASA HORMIGA BACALAR, HABITAS BACALAR. ILLUSTRATION BY DOMINIC TREVETT

Despite the past year’s challenges, Mexico City’s culinary scene has never tasted better, with exciting concepts from names old and new

Stromatolites, spongy microorganisms that are millions of years old, lurk below the lagoon’s shallow waters, giving them their color and stabilizing this ecosystem. But these fragile reeflike formations are easily destroyed and will take millennia to grow back. The area follows a low-impact development policy that limits the number of hotel rooms allowed per square foot, and prohibits large builds on the shoreline. Signs warn visitors not to touch the stromatolites, and boat usage is heavily restricted.

Even more pressing than capping the number of visitors, Lynch suggests, is ensuring that business owners properly inform their guests how to interact with the environment. She and her husband settled in Bacalar in 2009, when there were only a few businesses and foreigners in town, and opened a small café which expanded into a beach club before becoming Casa Hormiga last year. By working with tour operators, such as Bacalar Sailing, who share ecological best practices, as well as encouraging guests to be conscious about how they use air-conditioning and water, the couple hopes to create a more responsible environment. The same goes for Habitas.

“Educating guests on the importance and fragility of the stromatolites is crucial for their preservation,” says cofounder and CEO Oliver Ripley.

As part of its conservation strategy, the hotel has collaborated with local NGO Agua Claro to support lagoon monitoring, as well as Ejido Noh-Bec community and One Tree Planted to make a local reforestation program. At Macario Bacalar, a restaurant set in an open courtyard, chef Ricardo Méndez (formerly of Mexico City’s Pujol) serves zesty nopal tostadas.

Méndez is working to launch a sustainable food festival to raise awareness and support the town.

On the Hobie Cat, we cruise along the blue, milky water for three hours, passing gnarled mangroves, sucking on lychee, marveling at the stromatolites, and stopping for a dip where we press our toes into the squelchy white limestone soil, with no other tourists in sight. It’s magnificent, but back at the shore, the water is temporarily brown from sediment swept in by recent floods. It’s a reminder of the lagoon’s fragility. But also that, we, as travelers, have the chance to protect it. mary holland

LaMari Chef David Castro Hussong’s neighborhood spot in Lomas de Chapultepec is all about Mediterraneanstyle dishes with a twist. The squash blossom with hummus and octopus tostadas with matcha and avocado are two of the more inventive combinations.

Dinner for two, about $150; lamari.mx Mi Compa “Chava” Inspired by Sinaloa’s seafood carts, chef Salvador Orozco (Chava is his nickname) highlights straight-from-thePacific ingredients.

Order the Señora Torres, a tower of raw and cooked shrimp, tuna, octopus, and scallops, topped with a bright salsa. Lunch for two, about $80

Makan After working in kitchens across Asia (including Bangkok’s esteemed Gaggan), chefs Maryann Yong and Mario Malvaez opened this tuckedaway space in Roma last year, where they sling casual Singaporean dishes like chicken rice and noodles with duck breast. Dinner for two, about $60; makanrestaurante-singaporefood.negocio.site Casa Prunes From acclaimed bartenders Mafer Tejada and Mica Rousseau, this boîte’s creative cocktails and fruit wines (try the banana one, seriously) are as impressive as the Art Nouveau building it calls home.

Dinner and drinks for two, about $100 PEDRO REYES

Habitas Bacalar, doubles from $400, ourhabitas.com; Casa Hormiga, doubles from $166, casahormiga.com

75

THE NEW BAJA ROAD TRIP or decades, Cabo San Lucas has been the magnet of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, luring sybarites and adventurers to the peninsula’s southernmost tip with its high-end resorts and worldclass sportfishing and surf breaks. But those who seek a smaller, sleepier Baja town have begun heading north to Loreto. With increased direct flights from Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Dallas, the little colonial city is a great jumping-off point for a drive exploring the state’s untrodden beaches, wildlife-rich marine parks, and artsy desert towns.

F

Days 1 and 2 With the Sierra de la Giganta mountain range to the northwest, Loreto has a Sedona-meets-the-sea vibe.

You’re not there for the hotels, but Villa del Palmar Beach Resort & Spa is a good home base and has an excellent wellness center. Devote two days to exploring the Pueblo Mágico–designated town (a title granted by the Mexican government to small cities that stand out for their beauty or history) and the islands of Loreto Bay National Marine Park. Dubbed the Galápagos of Mexico, the bay is home to some 100 species, including dolphins, manta rays, and, in the winter months, six species of whales. A kayak trip among the islands is the best way to access the park’s pristine coastline. Back in town, don’t miss homemade tamales at Canipole, a charming openair restaurant tucked away near the 17th-century Mission Loreto, the first Jesuit mission in Baja.

Day 3 You can’t visit Loreto without trying the local delicacy, almejas chocolatas—large, meaty clams with chocolate-hued shells. On your way out of town, stop at Vista al Mar, a no-frills beach hut just off of Highway 1, then drive four hours south to La Paz. There, check in at Baja Club, the newest property from the homegrown brand Grupo Habita. It overlooks the Malecón, the town’s iconic promenade, and is a convenient starting point for a day trip to the empty beaches of Espíritu Santo Island. Book an excursion to snorkel with the resident sea lions off craggy Los Islotes or, between October and February, to swim with gentle whale sharks. For classic Baja cooking, Tacos de Pescado y Camaron El Estadio is the best. For avant-garde riffs like bone-marrow tacos, try Tatanka Baja Fish and Steakhouse.

PHOTOGRAPHS: ILAN RABCHINSKEY, LEILA ASHTARI, CÉSAR BEJAR/GRUPO HABITA. ILLUSTRATION BY DOMINIC TREVETT

A meander through the less-explored central peninsula shows a different side of the region

Day 4 Wake up with a potent cold brew from Doce Cuarenta café, then hit the road early to enjoy the calm, Caribbean-esque waters of Playa Balandra, 10 minutes outside of La Paz. When the sun heats up, get on Highway 1 and drive two hours south to Los Barriles, a fishing village and kitesurfing mecca on windswept Las Palmas Bay. Hire ATVs and bump along dusty roads past the mango and guava groves surrounding the village of San Bartolo—be sure to stop at the roadside stands to sample the town’s famed sweets, like dulce de pitaya. The Four Seasons Resort Los Cabos at Costa Palmas—the only luxury stay on the East Cape—is 15 minutes southeast.

Given that cardon cacti still outnumber people, the staff don’t frown upon dust-covered arrivals.

Ecológico Sol de Mayo, in the town of Santiago.

The ranch owners will prepare a breakfast of eggs and machaca (spicy shredded beef), then point you to a trail that leads to a lush, palmshaded oasis. Wear a swimsuit—the falls here double as natural waterslides. With the car windows down, your hair will be dry long before you reach El Pescadero, two hours away.

This farming hamlet has replaced neighboring Todos Santos as Baja’s new boho hot spot.

Stay in one of the desert-sleek villas at newcomer El Perdido. In the evening, catch a show at Teatro Pescadero (a pandemic project from a Broadway veteran) or have a cocktail and hear a DJ set at Pura Playa beach club. If you’re feeling remiss about skipping Cabo, stop for breakfast at Flora Farms before heading to the Los Cabos airport for your flight home. jen murphy

Clockwise from top left: A cardon cactus on the uninhabited island of Espíritu Santo; poolside at the new Baja Club hotel in La Paz; the tiny Isla San Francisco in the Sea of Cortez

77

COME TOGETHER Past and present, traditional and cutting edge, all have a place in Guadalajara’s vibrant design community

Clockwise from bottom: José Noé Suro of Cerámica Suro; the store Chamula Hecho a Mano; graphic artist Luis César Cantú Della Rocca (a.k.a. Rocca); a pile of woven rugs at Estudio Pomelo

78

PHOTOGRAPHS: CHAMULA, JULIO REY, AGUSTÍN ELIZALDE, MAJ LINDSTROM. ILLUSTRATION BY DOMINIC TREVETT

I

n 2006, the industrial designer Laura Noriega left her hometown of Guadalajara to study in Milan, intending never to come back. The art scene in Mexico’s second-largest metropolitan area had been growing for a decade, but Noriega found the design community stagnant, disconnected from the rich artisanal traditions still practiced throughout the region. Two years later, though, she changed her mind. “I started visiting markets and workshops and realized I didn’t know Mexico,” she says. Noriega ended up forging a new professional path by approaching her culture with a curiosity and desire for knowledge she didn’t have when she left.

Noriega is one of many artists and architects, designers and illustrators, who returned home around that time after leaving to pursue their trades elsewhere, tapping into the wealth of craft they had, for years, overlooked. Today, she and her brand Tributo, which produces housewares with craftspeople scattered throughout central Mexico, is part of an expanding community of makers transforming Guadalajara into a hub for design.

Throughout the 20th century, Guadalajara produced some of the leading lights of Mexican art, from the muralist José Clemente Orozco, whose fiery work makes Rivera look mannered, to Luís Barragán, whose architectural style became shorthand for the country’s modernist aesthetic. But most left Guadalajara to advance their careers. In the early 2000s, many of the city’s young creatives did the same, though there were exceptions: The sisters Julia and Renata Franco started their fashion line, Julia y Renata, out of their parents’ garage in 1993, around the same time that José Noe Suro started to produce work for contemporary artists at his family’s ceramic studio, Cerámica Suro. Still, says the designer and artist Aldo Álvarez Tostado, who moved to Guadalajara in 2005, “the boom you see now, that didn’t exist 15 years ago.”

In 2013, Álvarez Tostado created a cooperative called Occidente to bring together the homegrown talent. That year, the cooperative’s 12 design firms mounted a stall at the first Abierto Mexicano de Diseño design fair in Mexico City, challenging perceptions of Guadalajara as a provincial place.

Yet it’s precisely that small-town atmosphere—despite a metro-area population pushing six million—that’s made Guadalajara so attractive to creatives who have returned. Within a few hours of the city, Álvarez Tostado works with stonemasons to carve bold, graphic skull pots for his brand Piedrafuego, products he sells from a workshop in the city’s historic center.

Noriega, who keeps an elegant showroom in the leafy Colonia Lafayette, works with the ceramist Ángel Santos in the village of Tonalá to produce burnished-clay mezcaleros, while Luis Cárdenas and Melissa Aldrete create experimental ceramics for their brand Popdots using techniques they’ve learned in traditional workshops.

“What interested us about being here was doing instead of just designing,” says Cárdenas. Guadalajara, he says, “lets you live at the pace the materials demand.” Access to traditions and the time to understand them, says the graphic artist Rocca Luis César, “opens a space for experimentation.”

Ultimately, it’s collaboration that sets Guadalajara’s design scene apart.

Many creatives open their workspaces to visitors who contact them via Instagram. Frequent pop-ups bring together curated collections from the city’s best designers. And shops like Viento México and Chamu Hecho a Mano blur the lines between craft, design, and art, disciplines that have been artificially siloed for too long. “At the end of the day, these boundaries are porous,” says Álvarez Tostado. “We’re the same community.” michael snyder

The under-the-radar state—and Mayan capital—has crafts, food, and nature unlike anywhere else in the country San Cristóbal de Las Casas Head to this city in the central highlands, flanked by mountains, for the colonial architecture and the food. Even with the cobblestones, this is a walking town, and you’ll pass the neoclassical Templo de Santo Domingo and Catedral de San Cristóbal before picking up handwoven rugs and ponchos at the fair-trade emporium Táabal. For dinner, get Vok ich ta alak’, an Indigenous masaand-epazote stew, from Kokonó, helmed

by Tzotzil chef Claudia Ruíz Sántiz, before settling in for the night at the contemporary Hotel Bo, in the heart of the city.

Tuxtla Gutiérrez The capital of Chiapas is an ideal base for exploring the state’s diverse nature. Tour

the Sumidero Canyon, located on a river full of crocodiles and flanked by sandy shores. Don’t miss the Templo Sumergido de Quechula, a church engulfed by the Grijalva River. Be sure to stop, too, at carver Jorge Alberto González Moreno’s workshop to browse wooden and amber masks.

Tapachula Closer to the coast, check in to the eco-friendly Hotel Argovia Finca Resort, on a working coffee farm. From there, take a day trip to the lagoons at the UNESCO-protected La Encrucijada Biosphere Reserve.

You’ll want to make a detour to the nearby town of Tuxtla Chico for the legendary tamales chiapanecos from Tamales Doña Petra—thought by many to be the best tamales in Mexico.

BILL ESPARZA

79

COAST LINES One of the world’s great architectural playgrounds is emerging along the shores of Oaxaca uests at the creative complex Casa Wabi find its thatched-roof, open-air lounge down a long, rectangular slab of cement with a sparkling infinity pool at its center. They arrive to a burst of brightness caused by the sun’s reflection off the silvery surface. This effect is one reason Casa Wabi’s founder, the Mexican contemporary artist Bosco Sodi, commissioned the Japanese architect Tadao Ando to design this foundation and artists’ residency by the sea: for the way Ando uses concrete to capture light.

“My entire philosophy is to not compete with the landscape,” says Sodi. “I believe we must adapt to it and use materials that get even better with time, like wood, concrete, and bricks.”

Five years ago, the site of Casa Wabi, along Oaxaca’s Pacific Coast, 45 minutes west of the legendary Playa Zicatela surf break, was a wilderness— a spread of succulents spilling into a palm oasis ahead of the Sierra Madre del Sur mountain range.

But Sodi had a vision: a laboratory for the world’s most influential architects, similar to the Benesse Art Site in Naoshima, Japan. After Casa Wabi’s opening in 2014, he acquired an adjacent, mile-long

G

Clockwise from bottom: Casa Tiny, a petite vacation rental with an outsize visual impact; the pool deck at the Tadao Ando–designed artist retreat Casa Wabi; an installation

by Bosco Sodi at Casa Wabi

80

PHOTOGRAPHS: CAMILA COSSIO, ILAN RABCHINSKE. ILLUSTRATION BY DOMINIC TREVETT

strip of earth where a natural rock barrier spills into the sea, and secured the area’s official designation as Punta Pájaros, an ecological and regenerative development that blends hospitality and art. Sodi views Punta Pájaros as a blank canvas for creativity to flourish, a place where artists and architects are encouraged to let their ideas run as wild as the landscape.

This part of Oaxaca has fast become a destination for those seeking a different type of vacation on Mexico’s Pacific Coast. When Sodi built Casa Wabi, he had the good sense to commission the 16-room Hotel Escondido from designer Mexican hoteliers Grupo Habita. Not far away is the stylish Casitas by the Sea, eight independent villas for travelers from legendary architect Alberto Kalach— who also led the area’s reforestation efforts, including the recovery of the native forest and the addition of 20,000 endemic plants. In the past few years, a number of high-design, bookable villas have followed, including the aptly named oneroom Casa Tiny, by architect Aranza de Ariño and Casa Volta, and a collection of three vaulted terracotta brick villas symmetrically separated by a central waterway and hugged by the dense tropical vegetation, for larger groups. Though these dwellings differ in style and aesthetic, all use local materials and glass-free, open-concept layouts. “We want people to feel connected with nature, to feel the air coming off the ocean,” says Sodi. “What is the point of windows if you can’t hear the sound of the waves?”

The aesthetic extends beyond hotels. Down a dusty dirt path from Hotel Escondido is the de Ariño–designed mezcal bar Cobarde. Farther on still is Kakurega Omakase, a 12-seat, open-air eatery created by Kalach and Sodi and his cousin Luis Urrutia. Inspired by traditional Japanese architecture, with a Oaxacan twist,

the restaurant’s thatched-roof palapa is made from brick, concrete, and burnt pinewood that was charred according to the principles of shou sugi ban, an 18th-century Japanese weatherproofing technique.

Though Punta Pájaros’s international flavor is hard to miss, one of its goals is to support Mexico’s architects. The area’s latest project is the work of Carlos Matos and Lucas Cantú of Tezontle, a young creative studio that blends Mexico’s pre-Hispanic heritage with the abstract work of the country’s modernists. Inspired by the ancient cultures of Mexico and the temascal, a traditional Mexican sweat lodge, the project, called Papelillo, is a sauna and bathhouse built with prefabricated, sand-cast concrete panels oxidized with water from the Punta Pájaros aquifer. The heavy iron content of the water gives the panels a deep red hue similar in color to the bark of the local papelillo tree, which continuously sheds its skin in a process of regeneration, like the experience intended by a temascal. In addition to Papelillo, there are two new properties this year: Casona Sforza, a Kalach-designed boutique hotel with 11 arched-and-vaulted guest suites set in the serene La Barra de Colotepec river delta, and, at press time, a yet-unnamed wellness-focused design hotel by Grupo Habita and Kalach.

Sodi hopes the success of this architectural community in Oaxaca can be a model for other parts of Mexico, especially with the demand for sustainable architecture increasing in coastal areas like Cabo San Lucas. “Architecture can revolutionize an area and create a regenerative movement that adds to the environment and melds with what exists,” says Sodi.

“With this type of impact, we can change the future of Mexican development forever.” michaela trimble

81

Day 1

CAMPECHE

BY CAR A drive is the best way to see the range of natural and cultural riches in this Gulf of Mexico state f the three states that make up the Yucatán Peninsula, Campeche is both the largest and the least visited. It is home to one of Mexico’s most beautiful colonial cities, exceptional food, and endless swaths of inland tropical forest studded with Mayan ruins. Good roads and a well-earned reputation for safety make it one of the best states in the country for a road trip, with ample opportunities for detours and pit stops at ancient temples half-consumed by the jungle.

O 82

Any visit to Campeche should begin with a stay at Hacienda Puerta Campeche, a Luxury Collection Hotel, in the 481-year-old capital city that gives the state its name. Set within centuries-old fortifications, the tidy streets of the old town are lined with pastelhued houses whose windows are thrown open to draw in breezes off the electric-blue sea. Inside the city walls, the barrios of Santa Ana and San Francisco are home to some of Campeche’s best food. Have lunch by Parque de Santa Ana: tacos of cochinita pibil at Taquería Hecelchakán, or tortas de lechon (roasted-pork sandwiches) at Taquería del Parque.

For dinner, La Pigua, in Barrio de Guadalupe, specializes in seafood, while the simple fondas under the arches at the Portales de San Martín are ideal for late-night tamales and icy coconut horchata.

Day 2 Start early, driving southeast from the capital to the archaeological site of Edzna, where iguanas skitter across grassy plazas framed by meticulously restored pyramids. From there, continue south for about three hours to the community of Conhuas, and check in to the Hotel Puerta Calakmul ecolodge, a cluster of cabins at the edge of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve.

After lunch at the hotel’s restaurant, visit Balamku, a small archaeological site just northwest of Conhuas, to see one of the best-preserved Mayan friezes. Time and energy permitting, use the remainder of the day to explore the ruins of Becán, where covered passageways and a tight urban layout give the rare sense of what Mayan daily life was like, and nearby Chicanná, famous for its ornate façades.

Day 4

PHOTOGRAPHS: ILAN RABCHINSKEY. ILLUSTRATION BY DOMINIC TREVETT

Day 3 Wake before dawn to the sound of howler monkeys and drive 90 minutes south through virgin forest to Calakmul, once a rival to Tikal in Guatemala and among the mightiest cities of the classical Mayan world. At the archaeological site, a vast network of pathways winds through the jungle between plazas and soaring pyramids, whose peaks rise like mountains above the canopy. Spend a few hours here before returning, invigorated and exhausted, to your room at Hotel Puerta Calakmul for a siesta. Then, as the sun dips low, drive four and a half miles east to a cave hidden just off the road and watch millions of bats spiral into the evening sky.

There are several routes back toward the capital, the most interesting of which passes a half-dozen Mayan sites where you’ll encounter few other visitors. Stop at Xpujil, with its magnificent three-towered temple, before turning north off the main road and cutting through nearly 90 miles of virtually uninterrupted greenery. (If you have a couple of extra days, look into staying at Indigenous villages that are a part of the peninsula’s community-tourism network). The road eventually turns west through the town of Dzibalchen, passing the marvelous ruins at Hochob, whose elaborate geometric carvings are among the finest examples of the Rio Bec architectural style, sometimes dubbed Mayan Baroque. By evening, you’ll arrive at one of the Yucatán’s best hotels, the Hacienda Uayamón, located a short distance outside the capital. Set in a former plantation for henequén, the agave fiber that powered the peninsula’s formidable economic engine until the 20th century, it makes for a refined and peaceful last stop. m.s.

This page: The historic plantation turned hotel Hacienda Uayamón Opposite, clockwise from top left: An ancient ceiba tree at Hacienda Uayamón; a vibrant scarlet macaw, a common sight in the Yucatán; chile peppers for sale at a market in the capital city Campeche

83

an island for

84

In Crete’s honeyed west, urban creativity coexists with a raw wilderness of rocky ravines and empty coves

all times

By Rachel Howard Photographs by Tom Parker

The white sands of Balos Beach are accessible only by boat or by foot

w

hen Marianna Leivaditaki offered to cook me fish soup, I knew it would be good. Marianna is head chef at Morito, the GrecoMoorish mezze bar in London that is one of my favorite restaurants. But I didn’t expect to be eating her silky, briny broth for breakfast in northwestern Crete on a green bay wedged between granite cliffs.

We had never met before she picked me up earlier that morning in her brother Antonis’s motorboat.

I squeezed on board beside Antonis’s young son, Orpheus, whose blond curls floated in the breeze.

We glided past the craggy shoreline, pocked with caves and coves, until we found the perfect spot.

Antonis tipped a mighty fish he’d caught a few hours earlier onto a cracked white stone. Marianna roughly chopped potatoes and tomatoes into a saucepan and tucked the fish on top. She scraped some salt from the rocks, tossed it in, and covered the contents with water and glugs of peppery olive oil, then lit a gas canister and left the soup to bubble vigorously under the sun.

“Cretan food is so simple,” she told me. “There are no recipes or rules, apart from family traditions.

What’s important is to know exactly where your ingredients come from.” Marianna grew up gutting fish and waiting tables at her family’s taverna outside Chania, the surprisingly metropolitan capital of western Crete. Her father, a fisherman, taught her how to make kakavia, a fortifying soup eaten after a long night at work. While we waited for it to cook, Antonis and Orpheus pried sea urchins and limpets from the rocks. Knee-deep in the water, we slurped them from their shells to whet our appetite. “What I love most about Crete is that you might be here, in an empty bay, feasting on urchins,” Marianna said.

“Then, half an hour later, you’re up in the mountains in a different world, with guys in black shirts and big mustaches talking about hunting and eating game.”

Crete is a vast island of contrasts and contradictions, with a 650-mile coastline that rears up to misty summits more than 8,000 feet high. The kindness of strangers is what unifies and defines the island for me. I’ve been coming here since the early

86

1990s, but I’ll be honest: At first it didn’t rock my boat. The soulless resorts concentrated on the northeast coast, slapdash cities, and boring motorways were nothing like the Greek islands of my imagination. The corkscrew roads twisting through the highlands made me queasy; driving two hours to find an empty bay felt like too much effort. But that effort brought rich rewards: hospitable locals, incredible food, powerful landscapes, magnificent beaches for every mood.

Slowly, stealthily, Crete got under my skin. Our relationship deepens every time I return, and yet the island still feels unknowable, infinite, mysterious.

Crete was only united with mainland Greece in 1913—after a bitter and bloody independence struggle—and Cretans often refer to their homeland as a continent.

Divided by the snow-flecked White Mountains, the Chania prefecture, which covers the western quarter, is a different destination at every turn. The legacy of Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, and Ottoman rule ripples through the fortified city of Chania, but there’s a contemporary edge to this spirited town of merchants and students. Over the past decade, a new generation of ambitious islanders have returned to their roots after studying and working abroad to refresh tired family businesses, renovate historic properties, and set up sustainably minded ventures.

Ceramic artist Alexandra Manousakis left a marketing career in Manhattan to take over Manousakis Winery with her Swedish-Iranian sommelier husband, Afshin Molavi, who co-owns the phenomenally popular Salis restaurant on the

Clockwise from left: A guest room at Metohi Kindelis; Chania’s old Venetian harbor; gathering sea urchins; Danai Kindeli, owner of the organic farm and hotel Metohi Kindelis

87

In this lonely wilderness you feel the visceral pulse of nature—rasping cicadas, circling eagles, chanting bees

The Lefka Ori, or White Mountains, of western Crete, named for the color of the limestone that forms them

88

harbor front. Stylish environmentalist Danai Kindeli returned from Madrid to help her uncle Manolis run Metohi Kindelis, a 400-year-old organic farm and guesthouse. And curator Sofia Mavroudis and artist Antonis Houladakis have built two raw-concrete cabins in the middle of his family’s ancestral olive groves that offer a refreshingly modern immersion into the wilderness.

b

eyond the urban chatter of Chania, hillside villages, pink sands, and stands of silver olive trees give way to sudden ravines and soaring peaks. In his novel Zorba the Greek, Cretan literary giant Nikos Kazantzakis compared the countryside to “good prose, carefully ordered. It said what it had to say with a manly austerity. But between the severe lines one could discern an unexpected sensitiveness and tenderness; in the sheltered hollows the lemon and orange trees perfumed the air, and from the vastness of the sea emanated an inexhaustible poetry.”

This chafing of rugged machismo and soulful sensibility is embodied in Kazantzakis’s antihero—an archetypal Cretan, with a defiant, devil-may-care attitude and an insatiable appetite for life. In many ways, the landscapes and people of western Crete are just as Kazantzakis described them: immense, intense, exhilarating. But you need on-the-ground intel to cut through the noise. My go-to is Nikos Tsepetis, the owner of Ammos, a feel-good hotel on Chania’s sandy fringes filled with contemporary art and design. An irreverent perfectionist, he embodies a generosity of spirit that is as essential to the local identity as olive oil and tsikoudia, a fiery eau-de-vie-like brandy locals down at every opportunity. You don’t say no to a Cretan, and you definitely don’t say no to Nikos. When he tells you a place is worth visiting, you don’t ask any questions.

You just hop in the car and go.

On this trip, Nikos dispatched me to Polirinia, an ancient citadel, surrounded by silent valleys and ridges, that has collapsed into the earth. His friend Manousos Chalkiadakis, a ceramic artist with wise hands and gentle eyes, cooked me the most delicious take on eggs and potatoes at his 17th-century home (the secret: Fry both in olive oil). We hiked from Meskla to Zourva, through a miniature canyon and forests vibrating with birdsong—far less strenuous than the famous Samaria gorge, with not a soul in sight. At Kedrodasos—less crowded than the shallow lagoons of Balos and Elafonisi—I floated in the fluorescent sea and snoozed in the shade of a twisted juniper tree. “If California were an island, it would be Crete,” Nikos declared as we shared battered and fried zucchini, blush-pink tarama, and a little too much rosé on the seaside terrace at Ammos.

“Both have sprawling, imperfect cities, a beautiful coastline, amazing food, and great hikes. And you need a car to explore the mountains, which is where you’ll find the soul.”

In these highlands, road signs are pockmarked with bullets, and heavily armed statues of revolutionary heroes dominate village squares where whiskery men in black monitor passing vehicles with a flick of their cigarette or a flip of their worry beads. The toughest natives are from Sfakia, a hardscrabble mass of peaks cracked by deep gorges that lead to electric-blue bays. Until the islanders laid the hairpin roads, stone by stubborn stone, this isolated region was a perfect refuge for bandits,

89

rustlers, and resistance fighters. All of the independence struggles began here.

“The locals always had an enemy, whether they were Venetians, Turks, Germans, or Greek royalty. If there was nobody else to fight, they turned on each other,” confided Maria Mylonaki, the supremely competent founder of Crete travel specialist Diktynna, as we drove deeper into the White Mountains. Vendettas are still rampant in this unforgiving terrain. An argument over a goat bell was enough to spark a bloody feud in Aradena in the 1950s. After seven people were killed, the remaining residents fled. The village is a beautiful, melancholy relic teetering above the forbidding gorge. Disembodied saints stare from the faded frescoes of the 14th-century church.

In this lonely wilderness you feel the visceral pulse of nature—rasping cicadas, circling eagles, chanting bees. But the only human presence was a pair of tiny figures walking along the rocky bed of the gorge below. Several hours later, I feasted on slow-roasted lamb, freshly churned goat cheese, and puffy little doughnuts drenched in thyme honey at Chrisostomos, a heavenly taverna on a headland jutting into the Libyan Sea. Gazing at the horizon, I recalled the narrator’s words in T Zorba the Greek: “I’m all right here. May this minute last for years.”

90

Above: Renata Leitão and Alexis Aplada, owners of the Chania bistro Ginger Concept Right: A lush corner in Chania

TRIP PLANNER > where to STAY Ammos Like jazz improv, the elements of this seaside hotel come together in wonderfully clashing harmony: uplifting interiors, great food, punchy cocktails— and good-natured staffers who don’t flinch when a toddler smears tomato sauce on one of the designer chairs— all delivered with a dash of humor and genuine Cretan hospitality. Rooms from about $150; ammoshotel.com Metohi Kindelis Stories of Venetian dukes and Ottoman pashas rustle in the avocado and mango trees of this magnificent 17th-century estate on the outskirts of Chania.

Behind the rose-pink

walls there’s an organic farm, a family home, and three self-contained guesthouses. Each has a private pool, a garden, and a dining terrace for sampling homegrown produce and delicacies that are replenished daily— figs, persimmons, lychees, and strawberries; nutty graviera cheese; and smoky heather honey.

Guesthouses from about $235 for up to four; metohi-kindelis.gr Cabanon Concrete Retreat Two tiny cabins with glass façades peep out of a silver haze of olive groves.

Midcentury furniture, raw-concrete walls, and a modular, minimal living space with maximum comfort pay homage to Le Corbusier’s ideal of Mediterranean balance. It’s a proper immersion in nature for those with a sharp eye for modern design. Cabins from about $110 for two; cabanonconcrete retreat.com →

91

TRIP PLANNER > the best tables in chania Evgonia Nektarios Chalakatevakis and his wife, Sofia, run the best taverna in town.

Order fish and chips, Cretan-style: whole grilled cod, french fries crisped up in olive oil, and the colorful house salad. Set in a residential neighborhood, the restaurant is where the locals eat—for a fraction of what you’d pay on the waterfront. Dinner for two, about $50 Salis This harborside restaurant pulls off a tricky balancing act, combining a distinct sense of place with an of-the-moment vibe. Sommelier turned chef Afshin Molavi’s seasonal menu offers reimagined Greek standards (taramosalata blended with avocado and topped with bottarga crumbs) and avant-garde flourishes (tuna belly with burntgrape molasses and pickled watermelon rind). An exceptional wine list invites slow drinking alongside the parade of sharing plates. Dinner for two, about $55; salischania.com

92

Ginger Concept For brunch, an earlyevening spritz, or a relaxed dinner date, this Bali-inspired bistro on a pedestrian alley in the Splantzia quarter hits the mark.

There’s nothing traditional about the pickand-mix menu (tuna tartare, chicken and mozzarella coxinha croquettes, burrata with toasted almonds and asparagus) or the interior (rattan armchairs, retro tiles, Amazonian headdresses). Be careful with your cocktail consumption or you’ll leave with a Ghanaian basket full of caftans from the on-site store. Renata Leitão, the glamorous Brazilian owner, is also behind Just Brazil, the best boutique in town. Dinner for two, about $60; gingerconcept.gr Periplous Fresh seafood and pasta are prepared with finesse at this smart new restaurant, which is helping lead the revival of Tabakaria, a district of crumbling leather tanneries on the outskirts of town. Dinner for two, about $70; periplousrestaurant.gr

Clockwise from above: The seaside restaurant Thalassino Ageri, in Chania’s Tabakaria district; hanging herbs and produce; mezze at the harbor-front restaurant Salis

> off-thegrid KITCHENS Emilia’s A winding drive up to the high-altitude hamlet of Zourva, in the foothills of the White Mountains, leads to this lovely lunch spot with panoramic views.

It serves hearty hunter’s fare: braised goat, fried eggs in a puddle of staka (clarified sheep’s-milk butter), and marathopita, a wild-fennel pie that’s more like an anise-flavored pancake—a perfect foil for ice-cold shots of tsikoudia. Lunch for two, about $25

Acropolis At this flower-filled shack wedged into the walls of ancient Polirinia, up in the olive-green hills of Kissamos, Vasiliki Sfakianaki and her daughter turn out humble classics while the sheep-rearing patriarch, Yannis, delivers a running commentary on Greek politics. Try dakos (grated tomato, capers, olives, and a fluffy cloud of goat cheese piled onto brittle barley rusk), boureki (a baked stack of minty zucchini, potatoes, and cheese), and stamnagathi, bitter greens dressed in bright olive oil. Simple but sublime. Dinner for two, about $30 Milia Crete’s first eco-lodge has been around since 1994, long before “farm to fork” became a popular expression.

Everything served at this mountain retreat (once seasonal lodging for chestnut farmers) is organic, with familiar ingredients providing surprisingly sophisticated flavors: There’s beef brisket in a Greek-coffee crust, squash blossoms filled with bulgur and cheese, and snails with vinegar, rosemary, and bee pollen.

For dessert, order the satisfyingly sticky goat’s-milk ice cream.

Dinner for two, about $45; milia.gr O Dris Kostas Boundourakis’s kafenion in the scrappy village of Maza, in the White Mountains, is one of those insider secrets you can hardly bear to share. There’s no menu, just a few dishes of the day to be savored beneath the sprawling bougainvillea. In the evening, Kostas grills pork chops on a barbecue in the square, fragrant smoke wafting over the 13th-century chapel of Saint Nicholas. Always, always get the Greek salad. Prices vary Chrisostomos Accessible only by boat or by foot, this taverna (also known by the name Dialiskari) sits on a thatched terrace above a turquoise cove. Waiters bring dish after delicious dish: lamb that falls off the bone, roast potatoes, and eggplant with a feta crust, all slow-cooked in a wood-fired oven.

Finish with sfakiani pita, bubbly dough stuffed with cheese and drizzled with honey. Dinner for two, about $35 R.H.

93

Actor MANNY JACINTO on

japan

I went to Japan for the first time, in 2017, to visit my sister and her husband, who were trying to have their first child. My sister had heard about the Hōnen Matsuri, a fertility festival that happens every year on March 15 in the town of Komaki, northeast of Kyoto, from a friend of hers, and she jokingly mentioned that maybe this would help them have a kid. She had the day off, and it sounded interesting, so we took the train north from Nagoya to attend. It’s a really nice ride: You go past these beautiful green plains, and every once in a while, you would see women in kimonos getting on and off. Then you finally find yourself in this little town, which is very simple. As you walk toward the festival area, there are stalls of food and shops selling souvenirs—but when you look closely, you see that everything, from key chains to desserts, is penis shaped. It’s like a little Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade: a dozen men in traditional uniforms carry this large, elaborately decorated wooden phallus, which is probably six feet long and weighs 600 pounds, around on their shoulders while a huge crowd of people watches. Luckily, I was perched on top of a rock and had a panoramic view of everything. Before the men took a left toward the shrine, they turned this massive thing around all together and started yelling and chanting, and the crowd just went crazy. Afterward, they carried the wooden penis toward the shrine, where people lined up to say a prayer or make a wish. The great thing about the festival is that it’s for everyone; kids and grandparents were there, too, because it’s also to celebrate prosperity within the family. It was definitely surprising, but something about it being in Japan, and the spirit of it all, made it so beautiful. About a week after I got back to Los Angeles, I found out that my sister was pregnant. Maybe it’s purely coincidence, but I’d like to think that the festival had something to do with it.” as told to betsy blumenthal manny jacinto stars in the limited series NINE PERFECT now streaming on hulu and amazon prime video.

94

CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

STRANGERS ,

ILLUSTRATION BY GAYLE KABAKER

A trAVeler’s tale

READY TO SLEEP ORGANIC? Avocado organic certified mattresses are handmade in sunny Los Angeles using the finest natural latex, wool and cotton from our own farms. With trusted organic, non-toxic, ethical and ecological certifications, our products are as good for the planet as they are for you. Now offering a personalized video retail experience!

Start your 1-year organic mattress trial* at AvocadoGreenMattress.com.

CU 861640

CU 861640

* Restrictions apply.

CT AVO-1368

Millennium Park

©2 20 02 211 Illllin l noiss Depa D Dep rtme rtme m ntt of C Co ommer me me errc ce e and nd Ec cono co no om mic c Op Oppo O po ortunity, rtun tun nity, i yy,, Off ity Offic ice c of ce of Tou ouri o our urriism u sm, m, TT m TTY: T TY Y:: 11-8 Y -8 80 00-7 0000 0-785 85 85-6 5-6 --6 6055 55

Find yourself in the middle of world-class art and legendary music, surrounded by awe-inspiring architecture. And that’s just the park.

Learn more at enjoyillinois.com