We’ve been friends with Maria since our days at Traveler, and are so thrilled that she is taking the reins today for our last OOO week! Here, she gives her take on one of her favorite couples in hospitality—the acclaimed owners of Bell’s in Los Alamos and Bar Le Côte in Los Olivos, both in California’s Santa Ynez Valley—plus mini-guides to both of those towns that they, and she, know so well. Over to Maria…

“Do you ever deliberately not write about things you really love?” goes the question I get a lot, possibly the one I’m most asked. The off-the-cuff response I often want to give: “Of course I do [heavily inferred speech bubble above my head: Duh].” But in truth, that’s a rare occurrence. First, because it’s my job to write about what’s worth people’s time and money, so most things will out, eventually. But also, because I realized somewhere along the way that some people work very hard to make their hospitality meaningful, thoughtful and memorable, and when what they do is really good, they merit the opposite of refraining (which in our world is kind of hoarding something that wasn’t made for you and you only).

This brings us to Companion Hospitality, in the Santa Ynez Valley, about a half-hour north and inland from Santa Barbara, where I’m spending some of these last days of August. It’s far, far from a secret, but equally could be a place I love that I chose to keep to myself (because one more voice, etc.). Some of you know about Bell’s already; I’ve sung its praises across every title I write for, and Yolanda and Matt love it, too. In a world of endless high-and-low, fine dining-versus-comfort food arithmetic, Bell’s Restaurant is one of the most accurate, and dazzling, such equations of those things I know, with the added fillip that it also nails the food-that’s-of-its-place brief.

A short backstory: Two restaurant professionals, one a chef and one front-of-house, make their bones at some of Manhattan’s finest (Tribeca Grill, Per Se, Gramercy Tavern). After several years they leave New York: first for LA, where they open the very cool Line Hotel, then in 2018 to this magic part of the Golden State, where one of them grew up. There’s an empty storefront on the corner of Bell Street in Los Alamos, a town that not so long ago was actually more of an exaggerated crossroads—until a wave of Angelenos forsaking their city for a more rural lifestyle (a phenomenon compounded by Covid) dovetailed with a quiet explosion of awareness, and popularity, of the Valley’s excellent oenoculture, and things started picking up. The Ryans sign a lease, leaving the original linoleum floors and sash windows intact, and installing an open kitchen that’s conspicuously devoid of La Cornue flourishes and toques. The food is “Franch”— a hybrid of haute continentale and California country goodness (French and Ranch, ha, get it?). In 2021, Bell’s gets a Michelin Star. And Greg and Daisy Ryan, its owners — she’s the local/chef — are, as far as the world is concerned, off and running.

Cut to 2026, and it’s safe to say that Companion Hospitality, the Ryans’ expanded restaurant enterprise, has played a huge role in redefining this entire area, and been a catalyst for its growth as a destination and a community. These days, Companion comprises five eating venues and one very cool community initiative, Feed The Valley, which mobilizes local restaurants to support getting healthy, nutritious meals to the area’s most underserved people (some of whom underpin the agricultural economy of the whole Valley with their daily elbow grease).

When I fly home to California to see family and friends, I always go into LA and out of San Fran, or vice versa. This means taking the 101, which now presents a conundrum: Bell’s or Bar Le Côte for lunch?

Bar Le Côte, Bell’s sister destination in Los Olivos, across the freeway, is a Spanish-Basque seafood outfit whose high-low is equally deft; do not consider yourselves above chef Brad Mathews’ fried fish sandwich, which is like the Fish Filet of our highest adult-gourmet avatars’ wildest dreams. There are two tables out front, which for lots of people (and parents of fur babies, as Californians are wont to describe themselves) are the ones to get. But a seat at the bar in the cheery green room here — or at Bell’s, actually — chatting with the chefs, your server, your neighbor, is, in my world, the platonic ideal of the real definition of Luxury©: time well spent.

There’s also Priedite, if barbecue is your thing, or the diner-style NaNa Thai in Buellton (if after all that sugary pastry you ate in nearby Solvang you need a spicy-savory moment). Their latest venue, a block down the road from Bell’s, is Bodega, a hybrid shop-café-bar shaded by massive oak trees and strategically-placed awnings, which is adjacent to Priedite. The shop has pottery produced by Daisy’s father, Brent Freitas, who owns the charming and ever-so-slightly ramshackle (he seems like the kind of guy who’d probably like that description) garden center, Eye of the Day, right next door. There are also mini-collabs with Chandelier Creative and Made In, some rather astonishingly cool kitchen knives, and a nice edit of cookbooks.

All this by way of saying: I’d never keep something this good — to, and for, me, because it’s good for a place and its locals — to myself. On the contrary; I intend to keep blowing Companion’s, and the Santa Ynez Valley’s, horn. The real estate’s already too expensive for me, anyway.

BEST OF THE REST OF THE VALLEY

Stay

Inn at Mattei’s Tavern- Auberge Resorts arrived to redo this old-school tavern-with-rooms a few years ago, and it’s the “luxurious” option, but with many of its original bells, whistles and goodness intact. The cottages are the cutest.

Skyview Hotel - Just across the 101 from Bell’s — you can walk under the bridge in 15 minutes — this upcycled motel is part of a local micro-chain that also includes Hotel Ynez in Solvang.

Bodega House - The Ryans’ own little rental, in a 1920s one-bedroom farmhouse just behind Bodega, renovated with all the trimmings (cooks’ kitchen included, natch). Sleeps 2.

Drink/Taste (you’re in wine country!)

A Tribute to Grace - The Los Alamos tasting room for this local producer of 100-percent organic Grenache wines is a sweet corner-store space with outdoor tables to sip and watch the world go by.

Lo-Fi is much the same, an original shopfront-turned-enoteca featuring biodynamic minimal-intervention wines.

Solminer - The Austrian co-owner’s roots inform the varietals on offer: Gruner Veltliner, Blaufränkisch, a sparkling Riesling. There are occasional farm tours, and the cozy-contemporary tasting room has nice outdoor seating.

Draughtsman Aleworks in Solvang is a favorite of Team Companion, a celebration of beer culture in a California bungalow.

Maverick Saloon - Brings the full Silverado/Fistful of Dollars vibes to real-time Santa Ynez — beer, wine, cocktails, line dancing, karaoke, live music (by acts with names like Tex Pistols), plus proper saloon decor. Sign us up.

Lefty’s Coffee Co., on a sleepy Los Olivos side street, gives you everything your local should: faultless brews, of course, and some lovely things to eat — pastries sweet and savory, house-made granola — along with a small but impeccably assembled bookstore.

Shop

Eye of the Day, next door to Bodega, is Brent Freitas’ landscape-design and garden center. With goods imported from Italy, France, Greece and beyond — as well as made on site, by Freitas — there are fountains and water features, flowerpots and containers, tableware and more.

Sisters Antiques fills a pretty house on Los Alamos’ main drag, its multiple rooms filled with brocante, found treasures, framed prints and more, including a great selection of table linens and vintage china.

Wendy Foster is where you go to get dressed if minimalist western city-country is where you land on the style scale. Understated linen, great denim, subtle jewelry and accessories with Xirena, Janessa Leone, Current Elliott and The Great among the brands in stock. (Also Levi’s. Of course.)

Santa Ynez General, which is actually in Los Olivos, is much the same proposition but a step up; think Cali style as interpreted by Massimo Alba, Officine Générale, Proenza Schouler, Altuzarra, Suzanne Kaufmann and Cire Trudon in the apothecary, and more.

This summer, I decided to do something new and a bit bold.

My life as a brand development expert across luxury, hospitality, retail, and partnerships takes me to many interesting places. My curiosity and love of travel in my personal life usually adds an additional set of trips for the year… I can find myself on the road so often, I’d started noticing a pattern where I never have time to just be. When I’m back home in L.A., life is a lot quieter. I live at the beach, and it’s mostly work, and then relaxing and recovering at home.

So, last winter, when it was time to start visioning my travel for the year ahead, I decided to make the space to take myself away to Greece for a month. Not for a vacation, a visit, or an escape, but to linger.

I came to Greece with a question, rather than a plan. What would it feel like to live and to work somewhere else for a month?

This island experiment was fueled by a love of travel, yes. But it’s also fueled by curiosity, and the questions that I’ve been asking lately. What would it feel like to live and work from a few places during the year rather than just one? Could I be lucky enough to have a home base in Europe someday? If so, where would that be? How does it feel to be away to live rather than to just holiday?

I’m a seeker. I’ve come to accept that. Part of that nature is asking the questions. And part of that nature is developing the courage to simply be quiet and sit with myself and see what comes up.

It’s funny, this duality, this study in contrast that continually comes up in my life. Recently, I’ve been back and forth between the desire to settle down, and the longing for adventure and for finding someplace new. So, for the summer, I chose to get away in order to stand still. Lean into the duality, and hopefully emerge with a new perspective on it all.

In this spirit of curiosity and play, I picked a place on the map and decided to be there for a month. Just to see what would happen.

Of course, I couldn’t be in *just* one place, so before I kicked off my month, I took a slight detour to a new (inconvenient) island.

This part of the trip started like any other: a text thread between adventurous, curious friends debating which difficult island we should go to this year. You see, I have a thing for difficult islands, and I have a wonderful cohort of adventurous friends around the world who agree. When island curiosity strikes, I know one of my first calls is always going to be my friend Zoe. She has the same craving I do to experience new tiny, inconvenient islands. After living in Athens for a decade, we like to joke that she is a Greek island matchmaker and can accurately put your personality with its ideal island match. Somewhere in the air, on a flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco last year, I convinced her to come to Greece this summer and check out Folegandros with me.

FOLEGANDROS

There are few things as fun as a really good adventure, and Folegandros was exactly that.

A small, dramatic Cycladic island, wedged next to Milos. It has a landscape of cliffs, terraced rocky hillsides and a classic chora at the heart of the island. There’s a small (often photographed, and showing up in my algorithm constantly now) church perched high above the town, accessible by walking up a meandering path.

We decided to rent a little house high on a hill above Agali beach. Usually the two of us relish finding our favorite new simple island hotel, but the view of the sea from atop the hill and being stationed on one of the few directly accessible beaches got us. (For what it’s worth, staying in the chora looked really delightful too, and Anemomilos seemed cute… but if you want to be able to walk to a swim, Agali is your place… I’d try Blue Sand Hotel or their villas.)

Living in a cove on the top of this hill was one of the highlights of my year. We got into our daily rhythm quickly: coffee at Panorama Terrace, a bowl of yogurt with fruit and honey, and a morning swim. Long languid afternoons, a stroll over the hills or a drive into town for a change of scene. The beach at Agali is ‘sandy’ by Greek standards, and a very BYO setup. The charm for me was exactly that. There’s nothing too overly ‘done’ here. The swimmable coves nearby lent plenty of places to enjoy climbing out of the water, scurrying up and stretching out on the warm, flat, smooth rocks to sun ourselves. (We ate dinner at every restaurant in the cove, O Psaromiligkas was a favorite, and the simple Taverna Agali.)

From Agali, you can take a boat to a few other small beaches, which are primarily accessible by water.

The adventurous can scramble by foot over a large hill, hiking up and down buffered by the incredible blue expanse of the Mediterranean glittering below, to a small cove with one little hostel that has rooms for rent (and no electricity, fyi) and a tiny little pebble (clothing optional) beach that is perhaps one of the most special places I’ve ever spent a day. Very few people, families, friends. I’m not sure about any other Americans. My cheeks have never been happier. A beach so quiet and intimate in scale. It made for an ideal place to stretch out all day to swim, sunbathe freely, and embrace my inner ‘feral ocean child’ nature.

The beauty I found on Folegandros was space. Space to live, space to think, space to slow down and space to marvel at the beauty of it all. An island that wasn’t overcrowded. A town where I didn’t bump into a litany of other Angelinos or New Yorkers all in the flow of their ‘Euro summers.’ Spots like this feel special, and fleeting. I hesitate to even write about them at times. I love the limited options, the particular taverna hours, times of day when nothing is open and there is nothing to do. A breakfast with only one or two options, rather than a whole palatial spread.

It’s a necessary counterpoint to life in LA. Here’s that duality again. A balance to the optimization and streamlining we’ve done to our lives. I love not being able to have anything delivered. To not be allowed to pack my day so full that I have no choice other than getting the thing I ‘need’ now rushed to my door.

I left the island feeling strongly that I’d like to spend more time living in places less accessible. Perhaps this is age, or perhaps this is me leaning into my own creativity and artistic sensibility. It’s a wild and freeing thought to think about being someplace difficult, and the beauty that would come out of spending more, less-optimized time in a place like this.

HYDRA

Then it was on to Hydra.

To best answer the question of what it would feel like to live and work somewhere else for a month, I decided it was necessary to lean into the duality of experience a month could hold. Thanks to my brilliant friend Lynette, I was inspired to turn this into a Gemini trip. A trip that holds duality. Her recommendation is to start fast and end slow. Program two very different rhythms and experiences into one adventure. I knew it couldn’t all be introversion, asking big questions, feeling uncomfortable and sitting alone with my journal someplace beautiful. There was living to do!

So, a chunk of my Gemini experience in Hydra would be living as a ‘village girl.’ Staying in an apartment high above the port, climbing 29 flights of stairs a day, in between trips to restaurants, shops, coffees, swims, and socializing. I would immerse myself in island life. Make friends, stay out too late, eat gyros in the town square at midnight, sneak off for night swims, and do anything else that felt fun, exciting, and free-flowing. The reflective balance to bring the Gemini contrast into the trip was a quiet, languid and slow set of days in a cove off the main port at Mandraki Beach Resort. Time to reflect, review, and process everything that I’d hoped would come up.

If you know me, you know I’m serious about process. The container for the experiment had been set, and it was time to live it. It was time to get loose. To not be too precious about it, and to just enjoy being somewhere else for a little bit and see what comes out of that.

I have professed my love for this island before, and got to feel that WAY more deeply with this trip lasting longer than ever before. Spending a month here spoke to how I crave to travel and spend time out in the world lately. I’m done rushing. That’s a simple, but not easy one for me.

My ‘village girl’ routine on Hydra was a good one. Write a bit, work a bit, swim a bit, socialize a bit, sun a bit, eat a bit, savor and repeat. It was such a pleasure to return to my favorite places over and over again. To eat multiple plates of sardines at To Pefkak, and the ice cream at Il Casta. L’Americano became my evening apero spot, or Windmill to watch a sunset. Long dinners at Oraia (my friend Kim is local to the island and kindly took me to her favorite spot in the port, among many others).

I’m personally a big fan of finding your favorite rock to stretch out on when you need a bit of sunbathing. But, Bellevallia, St Nikolaos, Mandraki Beach Resort and Spilia are all great for a beach day, too. I was working, so each of these became a satellite office and graciously accepted me with my laptop at times (St Nikolaos being the exception, due to spotty cell service/Wi-Fi).

If you need lunch by the sea, Lefertaki’s taverna does just fine, and for dinner Douskos is a classic, as well as Ostria (IYKYK).

I don’t think you could talk about Hydra without mentioning the island’s literary past, and current artistic soul. Visit Josh & Dimi at the Hydra Book Club in the port, and Stamatia’s Hydra Bookstore, see a movie outside at the Art Cinema and if you’re lucky you can get into the Old Carpet Factory for a peek (they occasionally open their doors to host).

My driver back in Athens laughed hard at me when I told him I was going to Hydra for a month. He exclaimed, “But you will be so bored.” For me, the beauty of Hydra is there is so much on offer, but also not that much to do. That’s part of the magic. With a little bit of effort, my social calendar was robust, and there was always time to bump into a friend, enjoy the kismet, have an unexpected coffee or meal, and just see where the day takes you.

And since this Gemini adventure started fast, it was time to end it slow. This was a new way for me to experience Hydra. Mandraki Beach Resort presented an elegant and tranquil island counterpoint to bring the slow half of this ‘Gemini adventure’ to life.

For a few days, I didn’t move from their cove. I took breakfast by the sea, accompanied by a few sailors who have arrived in their dinghy for an early coffee. The water was still as glass in the cove, perfect for a morning swim. I got lost in a book. I lounged on my terrace. I soaked in my very own sun-warmed pool. I enjoyed a fresh lemonade and a watermelon salad, eaten in the sun. You come here to do nothing, and that’s exactly what I did… Well, OK. I did a lot of journaling, a lot of processing, a lot of feeling, and a lot of writing. But I promise you, I slowed down and did nothing too.

It was unusual for me to take myself out of the social rhythm of the island. The space felt uncomfortable, and not always pleasant. But it was also so special. I filled the whole journal on this trip months faster than I would have usually. Looking back at those pages, I’m reading the writing of a woman who is feeling bold and dropped in, yet sensitive and tender at the same time. There’s that duality again. Which is my sign that setting up this experiment was a success.

THE RETURN… SIMPLE, BUT NOT EASY

I’m sitting in the return from this odyssey right now. Trying to process it all, holding on to the feeling. Re-reading the journals. Thinking about the next steps.

This one-month experiment has been fruitful.

There are the practical things. I’ve been reminded that I love the pace, the flow, the synchronicity and vibe of Hydra. I love living in a place where the day is enjoyed on foot. You walk to run your errands. You bump into people on the street. This scratches an itch I’ve been neglecting since I moved from New York four years ago.

I’ve learned to eat dinner at 9 pm more often. It feels good to drop into the rhythm of a place and to get taken out of your own habitual space. I’ve also learned that maybe I would like to live in Europe for a while. I’m still not sure exactly where, but it felt really good to be somewhere different for a month.

I can feel I’ve returned differently than how I was when I began. I had a friend in LA tell me that this is the most relaxed she has ever seen me.

It’s amazing the shift this summer trip has already made in my emotional and inner life. I’m more resolved. Resolved to put down some of the worries I tend to carry with me. To travel more often, and more fearlessly. To live more fearlessly. Full. Stop.

I said here that this is the year I choose to be radically and unapologetically obsessed with my life. It’s time to make good on that promise. After all, what better place to sit with inspiration, ideas, and big dreams than a small, difficult island?

Next up for me, I’m going on a sail in the Aeolian islands in a few weeks (staying on Filicudi at Yolanda’s recommendation), then spending a week antiquing through France. After that, back to L.A., Mexico, and onward from there, who knows.

I do know I’ll be leaning into the adventure.

The duality of it.

The stop and the go. The quiet and the loud. The time to reflect and prepare, and the time to take action.

I can’t wait to see what I find.

So of course we thought of Rebekah right away when considering who we’d like to step in for us this month while we attempt to be a little more OOO. We know you’ll love her too!

As a freelance travel and food writer, it’s rare that more than a few weeks pass that I’m not living out of a suitcase. Often I’m researching for my travel newsletter, Shortlisted or on assignment for one of my editors. Sometimes I’m even on proper holiday (which frequently turns into a pitch or two once I’m home). When Yolanda and the YOLO team asked me to write a guest post on Club Yolo, it felt like the ideal chance to take a look back at the places I’ve been in my year thus far and offer up some of the places and spaces I recommend should you happen to be heading any of these directions in your coming months.

Thank you for having me! —Rebekah

Paris | Tokyo

I started the year at home in Paris, the city I’ve called home for over 10 years. When I’m in town, I crave routine and familiar faces, so I’m either hosting friends or heading to spots opened by friends: pour-over coffees and canelés at Dreamin’ Man or Clove, steak frites at Bistrot des Tournelles, tacos cantineros at Tarántula, the marinara pizza at Oobatz, pain suisse at Panifacture. (My full list of Paris favorites can be found here.)

Shortlisted, on the other hand, began 2026 in Tokyo, aka one of my absolute favorite cities to eat and drink in. I’m plotting ways to get back later this year or early next, and when I arrive I’ll be heading directly to Butagumi for tonkatsu and Tenmo for tempura; caffeinating at Fuglen and popping into Studio Mule to say hi to Toshiya-san and drink whatever natural wine he is pouring/make note of every record he plays. If I can snag a reservation, I’ll be splurging on omakase at Sushi Mizukami or Sawada. And if I have the time, I’m taking a trip out of the city to Hanamurasaki in Yamanaka Onsen.

Paris, Shortlisted

Tokyo, Shortlisted

Short Stay | an onsen weekend from Kyoto or Tokyo

Lanzarote | Mexico City | Oaxaca

In late January, my partner Laila and I took a quick, sun-seeking hop to Lanzarote. I had booked the trip mainly because the Canary Islands are among Europe’s warmest winter destinations and Lanzarote is known for its mineral-rich wines, but I wasn’t prepared to fall completely in love with the simple act of driving back and forth across the volcanic island. The landscape feels lunar and otherworldly and is completely mesmerizing. We stayed at the five-suite Buenavista Lanzarote in La Geria (the island’s wine region), and if you’re planning a trip, definitely make a lunch reservation in advance at Bodega Uga, take a tour of Museo LagOmar, and don’t miss stops at Playa el Golfo and Charco de los Caicos. Also, save room in your checked luggage for bottles from Bodega Cohombrillo (contact them in advance to set up a time to visit!).

In February, we flew from CDG to MEX for our annual few months in Mexico City — where Laila is from. I have an…extremely in-depth Mexico City, Shortlisted, but a few favorites we come back to again and again include: the rib-eye taco at Maizajo, the shrimp at Masala y Maíz, cocktails and chicatana ant popcorn at Salón Rosetta, everything at Hugo el Wine Bar, Fantasma for natural wine paired with a meal at Fugaz next door, Contramar for a long Sunday lunch and a stay at Casa Bosques Pensión.

While I was based in Mexico City, I packed my favorite overnight bag to sneak over to the Riviera Maya for a few nights at Etéreo for YOLO, took another work trip to Antigua, Guatemala on assignment for Travel + Leisure (the piece is coming out soon!), and also spent a long weekend in Oaxaca, where I had the best memela of my life at Tacos Del Carmen. (While in Oaxaca, make sure to book a reservation at La Cocina de Humo, grab drinks a Selva, stop for late night suckling pig tacos at Lechoncito de Oro and go shopping at Marchanta.)

Lanzarote, Shortlisted

Mexico City, Shortlisted

Oaxaca de Juárez, Shortlisted

Madrid | Stockholm

After unpacking all the hot sauces, salsa machas and bags of Tostitos® Salsa Verde back in Paris, we bopped over to Madrid in April to celebrate our anniversary with croquetas de jamón at Jurucha, sherry at La Venencia and gildas served on top of potato chips at Bodegas Alfaro.

In May, I spent a stretch of time in Stockholm filling up on kardemummabullar (cardamom buns) at Lillebrors bageri, sourcing the glassware of my dreams at Bobo, eating an incredible dinner at Bord and making sure my luggage came home overweight with books from Nord Books. I stayed at the very lovely Stockholm Stadshotell — read the full Guest Book on YOLO here.

Madrid, Shortlisted

(Stockholm, Shortlisted coming in September!)

Antibes | Nice | Namibia

Toward the end of May, I packed my suitcase for three very different trips: a seaside weekend, a work trip and a safari. I started this travel sprint with a phenomenally relaxed Memorial Day weekend at the lovely Cap d’Antibes Beach Hotel. I spent quite a bit of time in Antibes while working on my latest cookbook le SUD and the city’s marché provençal remains one of my favorites in the south of France.

From Antibes, I headed up to Nice to host a trip for Capital One x PRIOR. (We stayed at Hôtel du Couvent, shopped the local marché, ate barbajuans and pâtes au pistou at Chez Davia, and you should too.)

Then from Nice, I flew to Namibia to report a story on the opening of Hoanib Elephant Camp for Travel + Leisure. I also spent a few nights at the newly-opened Nkasa Linyanti, a six-canvas suite camp in Namibia’s northeast. It is the only camp on Nkasa Island and the lush wetlands, rivers, forest and grasslands that surround it offer a completely different landscape from the expansive coastal deserts and sand dunes of Hoanib Elephant Camp. From lions wandering through the unfenced camp to hippo-adjacent sundowners, it was a truly magical trip, and I highly recommend booking a stay if you are planning a trip to Namibia. Whatever safari you’re planning, I wrote a Safari Packing Guide for YOLO a bit ago that is full of the packing advice I very much wish I had had before my first safari.

Antibes, Shortlisted

Nice, Shortlisted

Safari Packing Guide

Marseille | Athens | Serifos | Milos

In June, I took the train from Paris to Marseille—aka one of my favorite places to eat/drink/swim in France (the city even served as inspiration for the chocolate I created in collaboration with Casa Bosques Chocolate). We swam and ate and stayed in Les Goudes at Tuba Club, popped into town to shop for provisions at Épicerie L’ideal, sandwiches from Pétrin Couchette and moitié-moitié (half cheese-half anchovy) pizza at Chez Etienne.

For my birthday last month, I headed to Greece for a proper summer holiday. We started in Athens — making sure to fill up on souvlaki at Volvi Souvlaki, tyropita at Ariston and piles of amaranth greens at ΛΙΝΟΥ ΣΟΥΜΠΑΣΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΣΙΑ before heading to the islands. In Serifos, we stayed at Perma Serifos and in Milos we booked a few nights at the magical Skinopi Lodge. Both stays offered exactly what I was looking for to kick off a new turn around the sun: unparalleled views of (and access to) the sea, outdoor kitchens and the feeling of quiet seclusion…even in high season.

Marseille, Shortlisted

Athens, Shortlisted

Short Stay | Two Island Stays from Athens

Porto | Paros

I recently spent a quick, August weekend in Porto based at the fantastic, eight-room Casa Cedo, and am currently repacking my bag to fly back to Greece. I’ll be checking out the just-opened Luura Paros and writing a Guest Book for YOLO while there—stay tuned!

Porto, Shortlisted

La Rentrée

The remainder of my year is starting to fill up with exciting travel (Cairo, Luxor, Milan, South Africa, Botswana and more), but I’m aiming to ease into September at home in Paris. La rentrée is one of my very favorite times to be in the city: the quiet of August magicked into autumnal bustle, piles of ripe tomatoes still at the market, the outdoor terrasses filled with locals catching up after summer holidays. I hope you have a beautiful rentrée wherever you are, and safe travels wherever you’re heading next.

We’re kicking things off with Christine Muhlke, who writes the brilliant newsletter, Xtine. We know Christine from our magazine days—she was a longtime editor at T Magazine and Bon Appétit—and have forever admired her for her impeccable taste and uncanny ability to always be first to know about the coolest new wine bars, hippie sandals, host gifts, plus she always comes back from her extensive travels with the very best, most specific intel. And with that, over to Christine!

What makes a hotel unforgettable? We each have our own list. For you, it might be the view or the bathtub. For me, it’s the breakfast. (And I don’t really eat breakfast!)

I hopped onto the intermittent fasting trend in 2019, the week before I flew to Sicily to write about the cooking school at Rocca delle Tre Contrade, one of the more perfect villas on this earth. Why did I resist their breakfast spread, which took up half the dining room to offer everything from rosy prosciutto to fresh ricotta to a tender-crumbed Bundt cake, its flavor changing each morning? (Luckily the recipe is in their new book.) Once the pandemic travel ban had lifted, the ridiculousness of this missed opportunity made me swear to always order breakfast when traveling. Here are the five most memorable, ranked from best to best.

1/ Auberge de Chassignolles / Chassignolles, France: Most people make a pilgrimage to this hotel deep in the (bizarrely overlooked) Auvergne region for its restaurant, which hosts a promising young chef each summer season, as well as for its exceptional list of natural wines. I can’t wait to return for the breakfast: Almost every item on the table — bread, butter, raw-milk yogurt, granola and many jams — is made in-house, with the cheese coming from the region’s great cheesemakers. Also, they don’t mess around with the coffee and tea. (How many hotels take tea seriously?!)

2/ Ottmanngut / Meran, Italy: This 1850’s guesthouse in South Tyrol is wildly charming. But what tipped me into must-come-back mode was the breakfast. Served in the garden beneath palm and cypress trees, the daily-changing three-course feast is worth its 40-euro price — available to non-guests, too. On my visit, excellent Darjeeling tea and local apple juice were followed by just-baked whole-grain bread with local cheese and marmalade from the larder; housemade yogurt with buckwheat, figs and fig leaf-infused oil; and a surprisingly modern egg dish. The best part? A tap on the toe from the hotel’s pet turtle. The only thing better than enjoying the breakfast was knowing how much Maira Kalman was going to enjoy hers when she checked in a week later. It’s a very Maira place.

3/ Brokkestøylen / Setesdal, Norway: Last summer, while visiting Norway to write about its summer farming, I stayed in a dome at this rural hotel, where the food is as much of a draw as the riverside sauna and cold plunge. Co-owner Gro Furset went out of her way for every meal, but her breakfasts were the most memorable, beginning with the shot of probiotic drinking vinegars that she makes from foraged plants and berries. Breakfast for one takes up half the table, and everything is homemade or local, from the garden veg and neighbor’s cheese to the moose sausage and the butter and jam. It was the buttery almond-flour waffles that I couldn’t get enough of, especially with smoked salmon and cultured cream. Gro even sent me off with a batch for the drive to the next hotel.

4/ Ett Hem / Stockholm, Sweden: The breakfast itself is solidly Scandinavian — hearty, just-baked breads (and croissants) with jam and your own wedge of cheese, cold cuts, eggs however you please, fresh fruit. What’s most memorable is that you can eat it wherever you’d like in what is more home than hotel. One morning in the greenhouse or garden. Another in the living room or library. And, finally, in bed.

5/ Tawaraya / Kyoto, Japan: In the recent post I wrote about Japanese breakfast — how to make it and where to find the best — this ryokan ranked high. Maybe it was the freshly made tofu in the hinoki warmer. Or the salt-grilled mackerel with an onsen egg. Or the fact that dozens of beautiful boxes, bowls, pots and cups filled with the best of everything magically appeared and disappeared without having to get up from the tatami mat. Find the rest of my Kyoto guide here.

Packing!

Earlier this year, our friends at Banana Republic asked if I wanted to partner with them, and it felt like a full-circle moment. As a teenager, I’d wander endlessly around their safari-inspired store at Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo, CA—travel and exploration have obviously been core to the brand since its earliest days—and over the years, I’ve owned so many of their pieces. Since their new collections are always inspired by a different destination, a collaboration with them was such a natural fit. We kicked things off with two stories inspired by their summer collection, shot in Portugal—a Porto Black Book and Three Portuguese Road Trips Through a Craft Lens—and we look forward to working on two more global destinations with them this year.

As a part of our partnership, I curated my favorites from their summer collection here, and put some of them to the test on my U.S. travels throughout July. Because I was going from balmy NYC to scorching-dry Utah—with some chilly mornings/evenings in Napa and San Francisco in between—I chose pieces that would layer well, look good even on the third wear (and more), and all work together. My absolute favorite was the safari jacket in navy, above. It’s a super-soft cotton, which worked equally well on 95-degree days in NYC (sleeves rolled up and worn as a shirt) as on chilly mornings in SF (sleeves down, layered over a linen shirt with a cotton sweater as a scarf). I can’t tell you how many compliments I got on it. Another MVP has been the navy linen sailor short (also above), which keeps its structure thanks to the sailor buttons, rather than losing its shape as linen can do after half a day of wear.

I even wore these shorts on morning desert walks in Utah, because they didn’t stick to me like running shorts can. And I might have worn the brown linen shirt every day. It really is the perfect cut—structured enough and fitted, but not too much. I wore it to death. And now for all the intel on all the places I went this month!

NYC

We arrived from Lisbon during the New York heat wave, and since there was no food in the house, we headed around the corner for a quick bite—martinis and fries at Café

Read more

Culinary

Helder Farm Studios, Culinary Table – September, Alentejo, Portugal

Dutch couple Esmee Brandwijk and Laurens Smit left Amsterdam for 7.5 hectares of land in Portugal’s southern Alentejo and built their dream farm from scratch. The Culinary Table is a women’s-only week of yoga, seasonal cooking and creating with NYC chef-artist duo Maya Aristimuño and Alyssa Hannah. Yoga and ocean swims are also on the schedule.

Notos Creative Culinary Retreat – September, Greece

Canadian chef and photographer Allegra D’Agostini and her Greek-born partner have teamed up with chef and two-time cookbook author Helena Moursellas for a six-day

Read more

Summer is nearly half over, and I don’t know about you, but I have barely managed to crack a book (blowing through Yesteryear and Strangers on audiobook at 1.2x doesn’t entirely count, I know). And yet this is the season I most look forward to turning actual pages: in a backyard lounger, on a beach blanket, on a plane to some summery destination I’m trying to understand through a vividly drawn novel or biography. (I’m clearly not alone in my atrophy: The Atlantic recently declared “The End of Reading is Here,” noting that fewer than half of American adults had read a book in the past year.)

But I still believe travel—getting there, being there—is one of the last sanctuaries where a reading habit can be reclaimed (clawed back?). So, wanting to know what transporting stories we might be filling our heads with this season and beyond, we turned to Radhika Jones. The former editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair and a veteran of the NYT Book Review, Radhika is working on a book that explores chapters of her life through the touchstone of books, and recently launched a Substack, Radhika’s Book Club, devoted to what she’s reading, re-reading (and not reading!). She answered our questions about the books that shaped her as a traveler, what she always recommends to fellow itinerants, and what’s on her current “beach reading” list. —Alex Postman, deputy editor

P.S. Looking for more book recs? See our Giant Travel Reading List!

What piece of travel writing—essay, book, even something that isn’t officially travel writing but is deeply rooted in place—has had the greatest influence on you?

When I was young, my parents had a copy of Paul Theroux’s 1975 best-seller The Great Railway Bazaar, about his travels by rail through Europe and Asia. I was very taken with the idea of exploring the world by riding on famous trains. I was lucky in that I traveled a lot as a child. My mother is from India, so we spent every Christmas in Bombay, often stopping over in London or Paris. My father was a producer of jazz festivals, and we spent our summers on the festival circuit with him. But it wasn’t until I was 24 that I got to make good on my train inspiration. I took the Trans-Siberian railroad—technically the Trans-Manchurian route—from Beijing to Moscow in the summer of 1997. I had been living in Moscow for two years and was preparing to move back to the U.S., and I decided that I couldn’t in good conscience leave Russia until I’d seen the vastness of Siberia. It was a twelve-day trip, including a stop in Irkutsk, where I swam in Lake Baikal, which they say adds 25 years to your life. So I have Paul Theroux to thank for my future longevity.

You dedicated a few early posts of your Substack to re-reading Wuthering Heights. Have you ever been to the Yorkshire Moors? If so, how did it feel to encounter a landscape you’d first known through fiction? If not, is it somewhere you’d still like to see?

I haven’t been to Yorkshire yet. I’ve traveled to various places in England, Scotland, and Ireland, but I have a dream of doing a full literary tour of the region, reading across genres and periods as I go. Wuthering Heights for Yorkshire, of course, and also Boswell’s Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, and J.M. Synge’s plays in western Ireland. Jane Austen in Bath! There’s so much to choose from.

More broadly, have certain books ever inspired you to travel somewhere—or changed the way you experienced a place once you arrived?

E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View and the exquisite Merchant Ivory film adaptation basically scripted my first trip to Italy. I went in the spring of 1996. I was living in Moscow and arranged to meet an old friend in Rome, and from there we went to Florence. I’d just been through my first Russian winter, so everything in Italy was a balm. The sun! The wine! The tomatoes! When we got to Florence we sought out all of Lucy Honeychurch’s spots, and did our best imitation of peevish cousin Charlotte, aka Maggie Smith, saying, “This is not at all what we were led to expect” when their rooms didn’t look out on the Arno, and made jokes about sightseeing without our Baedeker. Whenever there was the slightest prospect of a view, we climbed whatever steps or hills were required to see it. I like to think we were two in a long line of young women who have followed in Lucy’s footsteps.

Do you read your way into a destination before you travel? What books have most enriched a trip (or set you down an unexpected path)?

Sometimes the reading really clicks while I’m there. My family and I went to Japan this year. It was my first time, and though I’ve read some Japanese fiction, I realized when we arrived in Tokyo that I had no way of getting my head around the complexity and specificity of Japan until I saw it. I’m a very textual reader; I sometimes find it challenging to convert descriptions into visual images. We stayed at a ryokan in Hakone, and I was reading a mystery called The Inugami Curse, by Seishi Yokomizo, in which the detective stays at a ryokan near the scene of the crime, and thanks to our own experience I could picture his setting so clearly, down to the configuration of the tatami mats. I loved feeling that connection.

Are there books you find yourself recommending when someone is heading somewhere in particular?

In general I think mysteries are terrific choices for travel reading, because those writers excel at depicting an environment. They have to, because the setting plays such a key role in the solving of the crime. When I was last in Mumbai, I discovered Sujata Massey’s Perveen Mistry series, set in 1920s Bombay. Not every city has the benefit of a mystery series to illustrate it, but I like the idea of historical detective fiction to peel back the layers of a place.

What are you reading this summer—and what are you recommending to friends? What counts as “beach reading” for you? ;)

I am happily all over the map this summer. I’m rereading A House for Mr. Biswas, by V.S. Naipaul, set in Trinidad, for my book club. I’m in the middle of very slowly rereading The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen, about his search for that elusive animal in Tibet. I recently finished Ann Patchett’s Whistler. As for beach reading, I keep about half a dozen Kate Atkinson novels on hand in Rhode Island, where we spend time every August. They’re so smart and entertaining. My favorite on-theme beach read is William Finnegan’s memoir Barbarian Days about his lifelong pursuit of surfing, which took him around the world. Truly the perfect book to accompany waves.

Your forthcoming memoir, called Bookish, explores pivotal moments of your life through the books you were reading. Did travel—or a particular place—shape any of those moments?

Absolutely. At the moment I’m writing about the years I spent abroad, in Taiwan and Russia, when I was in my early twenties. They were profoundly formative years, partly because of being young and far from home, but also because I was reading voraciously, anything I could get my hands on. I was guided purely by appetite and instinct. One of the most important moments in my reading life happened in Hong Kong in 1995, when I picked up a copy of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy in a bookstore. It has traveled with me ever since.

Do certain books remain inseparable from the places where you read them? In a hammock, train compartment, Adirondack chair overlooking a lake? Which pairings have stayed with you?

Oh yes. I remember finishing Colm Tóibín’s The Master at dawn in Rhode Island. It’s such a brilliant novel. He manages to imbue a fictionalized account of Henry James’s creative process with suspense and high emotion. I love being the only person awake in the house, alone with a book as the sun comes up. It’s the closest I come to meditation. The final scenes of that book are very important to me, and I think it’s partly because I got to read them in a moment of private illumination.

I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled on the Trans-Siberian. That was quite a ride.

About that Atlantic cover story on the end of reading: is this something you worry about, and does the act of reading a book feel different today than it used to?

I worry about it for young people. This relates to travel too. I worry they won’t know how to get lost—lost in a book, lost in a city. They won’t know how joyful it can be to let go in that way. You really do discover things when you allow yourself to wander. This is what Eleanor Lavish wants for Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View. You put down the guidebook, or in our case the phone, and take sharper note of your surroundings, and you embrace serendipity. It requires focus and commitment, and a willingness to surrender control. I do feel that it takes more effort now, even for me, to shut off distractions and lose myself in a book. But it’s worth it, because the distractions are temporary, but a good book will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Dopp Kitt Diaries: Talya Taylor of Dangene

I met Talya 19 years ago when she started working at Dangene, where I’ve gone for facials for close to 25 years. Talya has always had incredible skin—she sort of looks like a bad-ass version of Snow White. Of course she doesn’t take any sun, and is vigilant about this—down to wearing gloves when she drives. She’s the person in the office who meets with every skincare company, drills down on their ingredients, and tests them on herself. She hates fragrance, prefers natural ingredients but wants the science behind them, and is constantly on the lookout for new products while shifting away from ones that she thinks have changed their formula. Every time I go into Dangene I get sucked into the Talya vortex—she is so knowledgeable and knows exactly what works for my type of skin. Selfishly I wanted to get all of her summer skincare tips written down somewhere, and I’m so happy we have them all here now! —Yolanda

My Sunscreen Lowdown

In terms of sunscreen I have my favorite everydays, then I have my favorite tinted, full-coverage, etc. There are so many to choose from and I have a lot of opinions about this.

My favorite everyday treatment sunblock—a combination of sunscreen that simultaneously treats the skin—is Pavise. It has tranexamic acid in it, which is a really great ingredient for pigment—anyone with sun damage or excess pigmentation. It also has niacinimide, which treats redness and pigment by exfoliating. This is a 100% mineral sunblock, but it truly doesn’t have a white cast!

Another treatment sunscreen that I love is the IS Clinical Extreme Protect SPF 30. It’s part mineral and part chemical. However, the chemical ingredient is partially encapsulated, meaning the chemical does not release into the body, which is pretty cool! This leaves absolutely no white cast, and it’s super hydrating and moisturizing. This also comes in at a bit of a lower price point, and the only thing that it doesn’t have (which I love) is the tranexamic acid, but in terms of a healthy, everyday, glowy sunscreen, this is great.

Then I have my favorite everyday-tinted sunscreen, the Epicutis Lipid Shield. This is super-sheer tinted, with 21% non-nano zinc—some people are very concerned about nano particles, but that’s a whole different conversation! However, for those who are concerned, this is a great option. This sunblock also has TSB, a proprietary ingredient for tackling inflammation, redness, and collagen breakdown from UV damage. It’s a nice sunblock because it’s great for everyday inflammation and it’s also so sheer.

For those looking for a more full-coverage sunscreen, I would recommend Revision Intellishade. It comes in chemical and non-chemical formulations and what’s really nice is that it is anti-aging, thanks to its Vitamin C, peptides, etc. They call it a 5 in 1. I truthfully would recommend the chemical option if people don’t mind using a chemical sunscreen, because it’s nicer in terms of application and wear.

My favorite for the beach and the pool is Tizo Ultra-Zinc mineral face and body. It’s so good that when I went to the pool and the UV was 10, I didn’t get any color. I am the opposite of the rest of the world who wants to get tan! What I love about it is that even though it’s zinc, it doesn’t leave a white cast because of the anti-oxidant ingredients. It’s also super moisturizing and has Vitamin C, so it gives you a nice glow.

I put sunblock on every time I leave the house (obviously) on my face and my hands, and when I drive, I actually wear gloves that go up to my upper-arms. But if I have sunscreen on my face, I always have it on my hands, which is my automatic. I was never into tanning when I was younger, because my skin either burns or freckles.

For a younger person I would recommend the IS Clinical Eclipse 50, which is a really good sunblock for everyday (and honestly every age). If it fits your budget, the Epicutis is one I would recommend for every age, especially if you have redness and pigmentation in your skin.

My Everyday Skincare

Epicutis oil cleanser - My favorite everyday cleanser that leaves my skin clean and soft.

Hydrinity Hyacin Active - Hypochlorous acid mist that kills bacteria and on the skin, calms inflammation and irritation.

Hydrinity Restorative HA Serum - This is my go-to if my skin gets irritated, so I always travel with it.

Anfisa Dew - My go-to Azelaic Acid + PHA serum for a gentle exfoliation and to combat redness in my skin. Also great for smoothing texture.

Ourself Advanced Regenerative Serum - All-in-one vitamin C, hyaluronic and peptide serum.

Revison DEJ daily Boosting Serum - A light firming serum that energizes the skin.

Epicutis Shield SPF - A sheer tinted mineral spf that calms redness and gives a beautiful glow.

Systane Eye Drops - For moisture

Obagi Nu Cil - Lash and brow growth serum.

Makeup I Carry With Me

Wonderskin eyeliner

NYX brow pencil

L’Oréal luminous Lash Paradise

L’Oreal Tru Match Crayon Concealer

Rome

If you’re ever planning a trip to the city in early June, try to be in town on the morning

Read more

After three months on the road living out of a suitcase—and completely reliant on my packing cubes—I’m ready to upgrade to these colorful ones from Tuckernuck.

My favorite Le Monde Beryl Venetians make a comeback, but in a summery suede version, to celebrate their 10th anniversary!

This may be the year I actually make it to Basilicata, and when I do I’ll be checking into the Santavenere and the Palazzo Margherita.

Love this modernist house in Puglia.

Designed in Venice, Lido makes swimsuits that are perfectly simple in very chic colorways—they’re high on my summer kit list.

I’ve been so Greece-centric all these years, I’ve only made it to Maçakizi (on the Bodrum Peninsula) once, and just for drinks. But this book, written by our friend Melinda Stevens for Assouline documenting its evolution from 1970s boho guesthouse to the most renowned hotel on the Turkish Coast, makes me want to go back and stay awhile.

Daughters as influencers: Clara just tried the Summer Fridays Jet Lag Mask—you apply a thin layer, let it absorb, and voila: glassy skin. Alex’s daughter Nell turned her onto their jet lag eye patches and now she’s a convert.

Perfect summer meals with no cooking needed—tinned fish with the best packaging that transports me to Portugal.

Speaking of Portugal, this beautiful book on Portuguese interiors.

This new-ish place to stay in Biarritz.

Arrivals & Departures

Neos Eros (“New Love”), from the family behind our favorite Eros Keros, is a restored 5-BR beachfront villa in Amorgos. With a pool and secluded pebble beach, it looks as sweet as its sibling. Be sure to hike up to the monastery and say hi to Yolo Journal contributor Constantine, who lives there!

Ten minutes outside Arles, Casa Ideale—also known as Villa Bank—is available to rent through October exclusively via our friends at Boutique. One of two organic 1970s villas designed by architect Émile Sala and recognized as “Architecture Contemporaine Remarquable” by the French Ministry of Culture, it’s a true landmark of French modernism. Also on premises: a photo exhibit featuring Helmut Newton, Urs Lüthi and others.

Grecotel Filoxenia Kalamata reopened this summer on land with a genuine before-life: once the open-air “Cinema of Valasis,” in the 1970s the site became the Xenia hotel, then expanded in 1975–82 by noted Greek architects into scattered tile-roofed buildings facing the sea. Grecotel (the family-owned group that launched 50 years ago) later renamed it for the Greek philosophy of hospitality, and the fresh renovation brings 162 rooms and suites with terraces facing the sea, gardens, or Mount Taygetus. Ancient Messene, Byzantine Mystras, and the Mani are all nearby—a genuine Peloponnese experience, not resort-bubble Greece.

Also family-owned and opening in Greece: Luura Cliff debuts next month on the west side of Paros, near the ferry at Pounda. With 39 suites designed by Elastic Architects and Lambs and Lions interiors, the hotel is an intimate setting for the owner’s huge private art collection—with a kitchen helmed by Michelin chef Mimi Kakushi and a Greek-leaning spa.

Lousy beach weather in the Hamptons? Fine. Starting on July 19th, Eight Decades of Ellsworth Kelly is showing at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill (pair this with a wellness weekend at Shou Sugi Ban!). The Hamptons Fine Art Fair starts on the 9th, with over 140 global galleries exhibiting in Southampton, which coincides with East Hampton Art & Design Days. Artist Joe Henry Baker also has a show at the Montauk Yacht Club starting on July 10th.

The latest from the De Santis family, proprietors of Lake Como icons Passalacqua and Grand Hotel Tremezzo, is a bit of a departure: four new suites atop their lakeside Casabianca Art Gallery, with highlights from the family’s collection. Each one is shaped around a site-specific art installation, against a backdrop of Gio Ponti and modern Italian details. They’ve also collabed with Milanese cafe Cova for the perfect morning coffee.

The largest Wooden Boat Festival in North America happens in Port Townsend, WA, in early September. Ground it in a couple of days in Seattle!

For three weeks in July (5th-26th), The Ranch Malibu has introduced short-term stays of 3-4 nights, a more condensed version of their hard-core (yet beloved) week-long retreats—great for those who want a quick reset without the major time commitment.

Opening soon from hospitality group A Place in Mind: The Seminary in Old Bennington, Vermont. With a mission “to restore at-risk, architecturally significant buildings across the American landscape,” the group is working on 5 properties in New England, in partnership with their architecture/interiors brand, Hendricks Churchill, and landscaping by Grace Fuller Design.

Catch it before it’s gone: the Rothko Exhibit at Palazzo Strozzi is on in Florence until August 23rd!

Fans of Studio KO (YSL Museum Marrakech, Chiltern Firehouse) will want to know that the French design duo’s latest property, Hotel Bus Palladium, has now opened in Paris. Both a 5-star hotel and a very cool event venue, it blurs the lines between polished Parisian chic and the grunge vibes of the 9th arr.

The hills are alive: the Salzburg Music Festival takes place from July 17 to August 30 with star-power performances across opera and classical music. Take in a séjour at the Sacher Hotel Salzburg to complete the elegant picture.

Heads up for Berkshire-goers (doing Tanglewood or maybe visiting Hancock Shaker Village): Walker Street Market opens on July 11th—a gallery showcasing craftsmanship and design heritage with 70+ artists and designers exhibiting their work, from furniture to jewelry to textiles.

Argentine chef Francis Mallmann has cooked over open flames from Patagonia to Provence, but next June he heads somewhere new: Botswana’s Okavango Delta. In partnership with our friend ROAR Africa founder and safari specialist Deborah Calmeyer, he’ll host a five-night journey for 20 guests at Xigera Safari Lodge, called “Wild Heart, Open Flame.” Days are devoted to game drives, mokoro excursions, and bush walks; evenings revolve around fire: with long-table dinners beneath the stars, an open-fire cooking workshop with Mallmann, and meals that celebrate one of humanity’s oldest rituals. More info here.

Safari is a major new frontier for Auberge Collection, and the brand has shrewdly joined forces with two of Tanzania’s most respected safari operators, Legendary Expeditions and Chem Chem Safari. Together they’ve advanced a collection of nine camps and lodges that combine Auberge’s place-driven hospitality with decades of local knowledge and deep conservation expertise: they’ve preserved over 600,000 acres of migration corridor, and maintain exclusive use of the Greater Mwiba Protected Wildlife and Burunge Wildlife Management Areas on the fringes of the Serengeti.

A reason to visit San Francisco this summer (besides the reliably cool temps): the Matisse show is on at SFMoma until September 23. Meanwhile, in Paris, the incredible Matisse retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris bows on July 26.

Mandarin Oriental has landed in the Balearics, opening on the southwest coast of Mallorca, in Calvià. Flanked by Aleppo pine forests and the sea, MO Punta Negra has 131 rooms and a holistic wellness program.

If the summer of TS taught us anything, a concert is a great excuse to visit a foreign city (and cheaper, too). This month, Bad Bunny is on the move. Feeling spontaneous? There’s Stockholm (July 10 &11); Warsaw (July 14); Milan (July 17 & 18); and Brussels (July 22).

ICYMI

Last week in a nod to America’s 250th, we distilled all of our favorite U.S. stays that bring us “Back to the Land”—from glamping to farm stays, ranches to woodsy cabins, there are so many great places to touch grass.

Our Porto Black Book is filled with local recs from a deep bench of Porto-based creatives.

Read our Hats That Pack to find your favorite stylish summer topper. Sun protection, people!

Our Saint Tropez Black Book looks past the flash to find all the charming local spots that continue to draw generations of regulars. We put it to the test a couple of weeks ago and it really held up.

She’s also a big inspiration for my collecting habit. I’ll never forget our first Traveler studio shoot, where she brought along countless bins filled with ephemera she’d collected while traveling. She had, no joke, several large Ziplocs filled with paper napkins from cafes and restaurants all over the world. Yes, I have always been into collecting, but I can clearly trace my obsessive behavior to her influence. She recently launched a Substack, Wild Larder Journal, where she shares her finds, from road-food souvenirs to recipes and notes on her favorite places. And she also published a beautiful cookbook, Cooking With Mushrooms, which we wrote about here.

For those who don’t know you, can you tell us a bit about your origin story? Did you travel growing up? How did you end up doing what you’re doing?

I grew up between Western Massachusetts and Vermont on a small family farm. We had every animal under the sun: beautiful Jersey cows and Scottish Highlanders, horses and dogs and ducks and geese, and even a renegade monkey. We had a lot of land, so I could always wander, and I loved doing that. I was a real daydreamer. I would wander in the woods and the fields and just plop down somewhere for an hour or two, watching the day go by where no one could find me. I didn’t grow up traveling. We really didn’t have the money for travel, and honestly it wasn’t in my family culture. My grandparents were first generation immigrants from Italy, and they were very happy to simply build a life. They didn’t travel with my father, so I didn’t grow up around it. The farthest we ever went was probably Annapolis, Maryland for a relative’s wedding, and that was in the car. I didn’t really travel until my first year of college, when I went to California with my best friend from high school. After that I did an exchange in Siena, Italy to study Italian. I feel like it changed everything. I started to see a broader world and a connection between culture and travel, and then I just wanted to travel everywhere. I came to New York to study photography at Parsons, and that’s where I met my husband. I thought I would do a stint in New York and then leave, but I never left.

I first found photography when I picked up the camera my father gave me in high school. It was an old Nikon. I started photographing my friends and became a yearbook photographer. I would photograph small still lifes lying around my bedroom: old roses, letters from friends, very rudimentary things. I think my sense of composition came out of the fact that my father was an antiques dealer. We had ever-changing tableaus in our house. Things would come and things would go quickly as they sold, so there might be a beautiful piece of American glass, some silver, all of it set out in a way to be appreciated by the eye, and then suddenly it was gone. I think those early visual conversations around me formed my first interest in photography.

You work so much with light and have such a talent for capturing it in a special way. Where are some of the places you’ve traveled that have inspired this practice, and where have you experienced the most magical light?

I work with my husband, Martin Hyers, as part of a photo team. We’ve traveled the world together for work, and it feels so fortunate that someone sees the world the same way I do. We often talk about the light we saw in a particular place, somewhere we shot twenty years ago. When we’re working out how to light a job in the studio, we draw inspiration from real places. Light in the world informs our work, whether it’s contrast, shadow, or soft light. Light in churches is particularly beautiful. We talk about that often, the way there might be one high window filtering down into a piercing beam. It’s the same in temples across India and Asia, just one tiny source of light. I love the Luis Barragán house in Mexico City for this reason. It’s built with a series of shutters, and you can open and close them as you wish, creating different kinds of filtered light.

You have what many would consider a dream job as a photographer, and you get to travel for work. Do you still love working on the road, or are there times when you wish you could stay put?

I love to travel and never wish I could stay put. The minute I have three or four days off, I’m dreaming about being on a plane and going somewhere. Often I can’t, because I have post work to do from another job, or there just isn’t enough time, but if I could I would stay on the road, traveling from place to place. I find it so inspiring. It really feeds my soul. Of course the thing about traveling is that you miss your family. We traveled a lot together as a family too, really far-flung places, and now that my kids are adults we love to plan our family trips together. They’ve inherited the love for travel.

When working abroad, where is one place you have felt the most at home, and in turn the most inspired by the destination?

This is a tough question for me, because it changes as I change and as my eye changes. The three destinations I’m so in love with are India, Mexico, and Italy. They all have a strong sense of culture and cuisine, and I’m inspired by all of those things. Italy right now really feels like home.

A recent recipe you’ve picked up from your travels? And a diehard recipe you’ve picked up along the way that lives in your repertoire?

I was very inspired on a trip to Greece last summer. I became obsessed with gigante beans and developed a recipe based on what I ate there. I’m always taking notes when I travel. I am a curious traveler. I find my notes everywhere, on my phone, scraps of paper, and scribbled in notebooks. Greek food is so simple. I could eat piles of horta (sautéed amaranth and other wild greens) every day. I have quite a few Greek recipes in my new book because their diet is so greens forward. You can find the gigante beans and other recipes on my Substack (and below).

We are big fans of your cookbook, Cooking with Mushrooms, and would love to know how that came about.

I was working on a broader cookbook that was much more larder inspired. It was too broad, so my publisher, Artisan, asked me to hone the idea, and together we landed on mushrooms. I’ve always been a foraging girl, having grown up in the woods and fields of Western Mass, so mushrooms felt like a natural extension of that. It was the exact moment mushrooms hit the zeitgeist, when unusual varieties that had only been available to chefs became available to a wider audience.

Do you have any future cooking projects in the works?

Yes, I’m currently working on another cookbook called Cooking with Greens and Herbs. It’s very much in line with the mushroom book. I love diving into a single subject and really getting to know how to use whatever ingredient I’m exploring at that moment. This book has over a hundred recipes of greens and herbs, and it draws inspiration from the Mediterranean with a few notes from my travels in Japan and Mexico and India.

A go-to long weekend trip away?

To be honest, the long weekend away is really just my house in upstate New York, which is in the western Catskills. We don’t get to go there that often these days, so it’s really nice to just go someplace familiar and relax by the fire or take a walk in the woods. The Catskills have really transformed in the past 10 or 15 years. I like to head over to Hudson to Red Chair Antiques to get my fix of French flea market finds. I also love a New York City staycation, maybe a summer weekend when everyone is away and it’s really easy to get into some restaurant that’s normally hard to get into. New York feels transformed on those quiet weekends.

Favorite place to take someone visiting NYC?

Restaurant wise, Via Carota, Borgo, or Le Veau d’Or. The Bronx Botanical Garden after a walk along Arthur Avenue is pretty special too.

A hotel (or a few) you love…

I love the Raas hotels in India, particularly the Raas Hotel in Jaipur and the Raas Devigarh in Delwara. In Italy, the Convento di Santa Maria di Costantinopoli in Puglia, and the Monastero dell’Incoronata, also in Puglia.

A hotel (or a few) you’d love to visit…

I have yet to visit Hotel du Couvent in Nice. (I guess I have a thing for old convents and monasteries;)

A few things you don’t leave home without?

When I’m traveling for a vacation to a place with a kitchen, I always bring a chef’s knife, a large and a small Japanese knife. I bring my mandoline. I bring a microplane. I usually bring some form of flaky salt, and I always bring large Ziploc bags when I travel because you never know what you’re going to buy or collect. They are perfect for packing giant jars of honey (something I’m very prone to collecting) or things I buy at the market, so they don’t explode in my bag. In my Dopp kit: Roz hair serum, Sonsie face serum, Skin Food, Activist Manuka honey immune elixir, and Korean face masks.

We know you have a deep love for Italy. Do you have a favorite place there? We’re sure the list is long, but is there one destination you can never stop thinking about getting back to?

I can never get enough of Puglia. Some people feel the driving from spot to spot is too much, but the whole point of life in that region is to truly slow down. When you find you’re not hurrying, you can take in all the quiet beauty around you. I love Puglia probably because it’s tied to my cultural heritage. My grandmother’s family is from Puglia and my grandfather’s from Rome. Puglia is full of quiet hidden coves, wispy forests, and sleepy towns. There is nothing like swimming in the Mediterranean. It’s so healing.

Color also plays such a vital role in your photographic practice. Can you share some of your favorite references to color that have inspired you?

I love color. India, Mexico, and Peru have all been inspirations. There is something so beautiful about unexpected color pairings and patterns. I think Indian design does this so well: acid colors with unexpected muted pairings. I pull inspiration from the pink stucco walls of Mexico or the layered plastered interiors of Italy.

When you’re home and not travelling, but itching to get away, what transports you? Songs, movies, recipes, clothes?

All of the above. I love to read cookbooks for inspiration. Music is also very transportive. We spent my son’s twenty-fifth birthday in Oaxaca and had an impromptu dance party, and whenever I hear the songs we played it brings me right back to that beautiful moment. Movies transport me too. I’m currently obsessed with the Italian director Alice Rohrwacher, who has made some of my favorite films. Agnès Varda is another inspiration.

What’s the hardest working piece in your travel wardrobe?

The hardest working piece in my wardrobe is an oversized thick black turtleneck. No matter where I’m traveling, I bring it. I have three, and one is a beautiful neutral. It’s perfect for the plane, or for windy sunburned nights in Greece or Puglia.

The Recipe: Gigante Bans with Tomatoes and Herbs

Ingredients

1 pound dried gigante beans (450 g)

½ cup extra virgin olive oil (110 ml), plus more for drizzling

1 large yellow onion, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic crushed

Pinch red chili flakes

3 ripe medium tomatoes, grated (about 1½ pounds / 680 g)

2 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano

½ teaspoon dried thyme

5 sage leaves whole

1 bay leaf

3-4 few sprigs of rosemary

Add a handful of finely chopped fennel fronds if you have them, about 1/4 cup.

1/2 teaspoon fennel pollen plus more for serving

1 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt plus more to taste

Pinch cracked black pepper

¼ cup chopped parsley (10 g) for serving

Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon for serving

Method

Soak the beans overnight in plenty of water. Drain and rinse.

In a medium, deep stockpot, warm the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until soft and translucent, about 3-5 minutes. Stir in the crushed garlic and chili flakes and cook for an additional minute. Stir in the grated tomatoes, oregano, thyme, sage, bay leaf, fennel pollen, salt, and pepper. Simmer gently for about 5 minutes over medium heat until the sauce becomes fragrant.

Combine the soaked beans with the tomato sauce and stir to coat. Cover with 4 cups of water. Drizzle generously with olive oil. Cover and bake at 350°F (180°C) until the beans are tender and creamy. This can be anywhere from 2-3 hours. The time will vary depending on the age of your beans. Set a timer for 2 hours and then add time from there. When you check the beans at 2 hours, add 1 cup more water if needed to keep the beans just covered. Let rest briefly before serving.

Finish with parsley, lemon zest, and a scattering of fennel pollen. Serve warm or at room temperature, accompanied by good olive oil and a crusty hunk of bread.

Cook’s Note: Gigantes can sometimes be hard to find in the United States. Look for them at specialty grocers, Greek or Mediterranean markets, or Italian shops where they may be labeled as giant lima beans, Greek butter beans, or gigante beans. If you can’t find them, large white butter beans or corona beans are good substitutes. They are easy to find online. They hold their shape and take on flavor beautifully when baked slowly with olive oil and tomato. Don’t be alarmed (like I was) when you soak them if you see the skins get all wrinkly, as if they are ready to slip off. This is normal. Resist the urge to pull them off; they will hydrate and plump up, cooking beautifully into creamy little bites. If you pull the skins off, the beans will split and become mushy.

Beans like this are the perfect thing to bring back when you travel. I always pack extra-large Ziploc bags so I can rewrap and protect the food items I buy. My suitcase is always full of beans.

I’m always writing these travel diaries at least a couple of weeks after the fact. Because I don’t always have time to write them in the moment, and because I’m traveling so much, when I do sit down to document my month of travel it can feel overwhelming. I hope they don’t read like a “what I did this summer” report—or if they do and you’d rather I skip this kind of content, please TELL me! I think Club Yolo feels like the best home for my personal travels—especially when they’re quick and span multiple destinations that no rational traveler would combine (like right now I’m coming off of a two-week streak that took me from Corsica to Provence to St. Tropez to Rome to Florence to Warsaw to Portugal!). Whereas our Yolo Journal website is home to our deeper-dive travel articles that focus on single destinations or practical/actionable itineraries. I know our split between two platforms can be confusing, but as I like to say, think of our website as the library and Club Yolo as the cafe next door. Both serve a distinct and complementary purpose.

And to that end, we genuinely want to hear from you here! In addition to talking to us in the comments, if you’re a paid subscriber you can use the Chat, where there’s a good amount of back and forth over travel questions and recommendations. So let us know: what hotels you’re loving or are disappointed in, what cities or places do you want us to do a deep dive on, where are you going this summer that you need recs for? And since some of you have been asking in DM about what I’m wearing on my travels, I put my MVP travel pieces here in this ShopMy link.

Sicily

I spent a week at the end of April and early May in Catania, Etna and Taormina. I hadn’t been to Taormina since 2021, pre-White Lotus. Not gonna lie, I was worried it was going to be a completely different vibe. Other than more luxury brands than before, and some new additions to the food and cocktail scene, it thankfully felt the same. Plus I found a really cool tennis club. I wrote all about it in this Dispatch.

Amalfi Coast and Ischia

We were invited to the 75th anniversary of Le Sirenuse, which kicked off with the opening of their new Sirenuse Mare Beach Club. I’d seen it very much in construction-site mode several years back, and it was so great to experience it in all of its glory—the plants have come in, the space is gorgeous, and I can’t wait to spend a long lunch and afternoon here. More than a couple of people have asked me if it’s a walk from

Read more

The start of summer also means it’s the beginning of guest season. And because we’re always trying to think of that clever gift that’s a guarantee of another invite—which means not thinking about it last minute—we’ve dug deep so that you, and we, have a good list at the ready.

There’s nothing better than a friend with a beach house—and they know it—so to show your gratitude, bring along this incredibly chic beach umbrella.

If you’re heading to a house with a pool, bring along a jauntily striped pool float—they’re cheap yet memorable. If you’re spending a week with your hosts, why not ship them this inflatable lounger ahead of time?

Invited to a lobster bake? A set of stainless seafood tools—complete with a wood-handled oyster knife—is perfect. Extra points for a delivery of these fresh Maine lobsters!

They may be small, but there’s nothing understated about these clam place settings. (Perfect for your preppy New England friends.) There’s also a corn version!

It’s rosé season, so ship a case of the newly released Wm Brown x Hudson Wines rosé. Or bring along a magnum of our favorite Domaine Tempier Bandol rosé. Or both!

This limited-edition book of photographs of Capri, published in 1983, is so breathtakingly beautiful that we snatch it up whenever we see it.

If you’re staying with close friends who don’t need much, these Comme Si boxer shorts are the chicest, comfiest, and most practical shorts for summer.

For the fancy host with an eye for elegant Viennese glassware (or multiple guest bathrooms), this Lobmeyer set nails the assignment.

Everybody loves an interior design book—this one’s great for your friend who loves antiquing and salvage.

For the gardener/seasonal cook, this almanac is filled with tips and quotes and beautifully painted illustrations, with an intro by Lulu Guinness.

The Tomato Candle by Flamingo Estate is iconic, and for good reason—it fully captures the summery, herb-y scent of tomato vine–a universal crowd pleaser.

If you’re on a budget, why not make them a Spotify playlist inspired by the destination? Check out some of our location-specific playlists here.

Arrivals and Departures

Alex Eagle of 180 The Strand, The Store, Oakley Court and namesake womenswear brand has announced the latest opening from her design studio Eagle and Hodges, with Nick Jones of Soho House: The St Clement in London. Opening in September, the hotel overlooks the Thames and backs onto the Strand, home to 180 House. With its own restaurant and charming Bobbie’s Bar, it’s arguably the hottest opening in London this year.

Gone are the days of sad airport salads and greasy burgers before your flight: Nom Wah is coming to Terminal 5 (JetBlue) at JFK.

In Athens until the end of June, the Onassis Foundation is hosting Tilda Swinton in Ongoing, featuring a performance and series of short films by Swinton, and a series of works by friend and collaborators Luca Guadagnino, Pedro Almodóvar, and Jim Jarmusch, to name a few.

We love Mayrlife, but it’s a lot to commit to the full immersion. Fortunately, Rosewood Vienna is partnering with the legendary German spa brand and bringing their holistic practice to the hotel for 2 to 7-day programs, so guests can detox while enjoying the city (kein Schnitzel!).

The Art Deco icon Delano Miami Beach reopened last week with 171 rooms after a full-scale reno under new ownership—once party central on South Beach, it’s been reenvisioned as a wellness mecca, with a huge spa where the basement nightclub once reigned.

My Simple Portugal, a local travel advisory, has just launched custom tours focusing on the often-overlooked Ribatejo region, 45 minutes outside of Lisbon.

Cecily Brown is on at the Serpentine in London through September (the show is free). If you’re in the city during a heat wave, book tickets for a swim in the Hyde Park lido behind the gallery.

As pro-dog travelers, we wish we could try Coquillade Provence’s new Canine Concierge, with a K9 Sommelier menu that includes meals prepared from the same ingredients as the hotel’s main menu (available via room service), as well as private dog pools in some suites, walking maps of the estate, and an arrival kit for your canine companion.

La Tiara di Cerco, from our friends at Borgo Egnazia in Puglia, just opened in Porto Cervo in Sardinia—with just 26 suites facing the glimmering water.

We can’t stop thinking about the in-room onsen at the newly opened Otaru Retreat by Onko Chisin in Hokkaido.

So much is happening at our favorite Marbella Club this sumer, including the opening of Kiosko 54, a younger interpretation of their iconic beach club, and an artisanal bakery and deli.

Il Capri has reopened for the season with a new Irene Forte spa, a giant indoor/outdoor gym, and rooftop restaurant, Osteria delle Sirene, next to their idyllic swimming pool. Also a nightclub that looks incredibly ‘80s—in all the right ways.

Whether you’re looking to cool down after a long hike to a breathtaking beach, or running through an airport for a connection, LA’s resident cool-girl bodycare brand Necessaire has you covered with their new Eucalyptus body spritz and travel-sized body wipes.

Troutbeck, the Hudson Valley estate that feels like a creative house party, just debuted 4 new spacious river cottages with kitchenettes and porches directly overlooking a babbling brook.

We’re always looking for a good rooftop space in NYC and are happy to hear that Fouquet’s fourth-story deck is serving High Iced Tea in the afternoons.

So many ways to keep cool in Rome this summer: there’s Kandinsky at Palazzo Bonaparte, a major Robert Doisneau retrospective at Museo del Genio, and Brancusi at the Museum of the Imperial Forums.

Under Canvas’ latest camp in Yosemite is the company’s first in California. Surrounded by pine forests, the tents are spacious, minimalist, and beautiful—tempting even for non-campers?

Gran Hotel Margalia is the latest in a spate of openings on Mallorca—above the sea, near the village of Banyalbufar, it looks breezy and fresh—the hotel equivalent of a white linen pantsuit.

ICYMI

Earlier this month our Yolo Summer print edition came out—our first Coastal Issue! Alongside it, we published a deep-dive on Paros, a great Dispatch from Salina by our friend who has literally walked the entire Sicilian island, and the matching sets we’ll be wearing on repeat this summer.

We also published a total refresh of our Copenhagen Black Book that has us so eager to get back there, plus a dispatch from the romantically windwept Faroe Islands and a sauna-focused pilgrimage around Helsinki and central Finland that really uncovered the spirit of that shared tradition.

And finally, we ran our second installment of Yolo Junior! With Family Black Books for both Vienna and London, a dispatch from Rome and the Roman Coast, and utility bags that are both highly functional and double as clutches (which you don’t need to have kids to want).

We made this list just as much for us as for you—we’re great at planning trips far afield, but often forget about the free concert that is happening down the street in Central Park. Or how we’ve always wanted to go to that rodeo in Joseph, Oregon, or to Santa Fe for the largest market of turquoise and silver, or to the world’s largest yard sale that begins in Michigan and ends in Alabama. Not to mention the state fairs, which I will always have a soft spot for. Happy trails!

Central Park Summer Stage Festival, now-October 1st

New York, NY

Now in its fourth decade, everyone’s favorite concert in the park returns with upwards of 80 performances (both ticketed and free) on the Central Park main stage and Rumsey Playfield—from the Met Opera to Laurie Anderson and Angélique Kidjo—as well as in venues across all five boroughs.

Stay nearby at our favorite Lowell Hotel, where Jacques Bar turns out the perfect cold martini.

Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, June 3-7

Burlington, VT

In its 43rd year this June, the Burlington Discover Jazz festival transforms downtown Burlington with stages throughout the city both outside and in local venues. And it’s free!

Make it a long weekend on Lake Champlain—our list of American Lake Hotels has a few thought-starters, from a grand 19th-century manor on a regenerative farm to a big sporty compound for the whole family.

Portland Rose Festival, June 4-5

Portland, OR

An immersive olfactory experience, this annual festival put on by the Portland Rose Society features more than 4,000 different species of roses from growers across the Pacific Northwest.

Book a room at the women-owned boutique Woodlark Hotel and make time to drop by our favorite Spartan Shop!

Eyes on Design at Ford House, June 21st

Grosse Pointe Shores, MI

Held every Father’s Day on the 87-acre grounds of the historic Edsel & Eleanor Ford Estate, EyesOn Design invites collectors and enthusiasts from all over to exhibit their cars past, present and future—judged by professional designers from major automakers around the world.

Tanglewood June 21- Sept 2 and Jacob’s Pillow, June 24-Aug 30

Lenox & Becket, MA

The summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Tanglewood is one of the country’s most beloved music festivals. Set on 300 acres of Berkshire hills, it combines world-class performances (this year: the likes of Paul Simon, James Taylor and the Philip Glass Symphony) with competitively OTT summer picnic spreads. Twenty minutes away, the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival takes place over 10 weeks, with performances from dancers, troupes and artists from around the world.

Go full cabincore at the newish

Read more

Athens/Aegina

We headed to Athens for a couple days after Easter to shoot the summer cover and style feature for Matt’s magazine, Wm Brown. Magazine covers are always a little tricky. You have to plan them just enough, but not too much. If they are over-thought they can look too staged, which can read catalogue. And summer covers have to be shot either the summer/fall prior, or somewhere in spring that looks summery. This is how we landed on

Read more

You Should Meet: Jenny Walton

For those who haven’t yet picked up the book, how would you describe Jenny Sais Quoi? What did you hope to give readers through it?

Jenny Sais Quoi is part visual diary, part essay collection exploring the journey of discovering yourself and your style. It’s really about how style is shaped over time, and about learning to slow down, have more fun, and get more creative. From flea markets with my mother and learning to sew, to encounters with Milanese “sciure,“ solo travels and life in Italy, the book reflects on how clothing becomes a form of storytelling. Essays like “Wardrobe as an Artist’s Palette” and “You Can’t Shop Your Way to Style” challenge the idea of fashion as consumption, instead framing it as a creative, evolving practice rooted in instinct, play, and self-discovery.

You write that style should be “a wonderfully unique mix of the thousands of references you’ve come across in your life, wrapped up into a ball and torn apart by a kitten.” What are some of the references in your own ball of yarn that you keep coming back to?

Well over the past few years, my main inspiration has been Italy—Milan specifically. The book sort of ended up being a love letter to Milan in a way. I learned so much watching le sciure (the word for elegant older Milanese women) and how they dressed. They color-palette their outfits down to the shade of their bassotto (dachshund). They’re so thoughtful and refined. They taught me that to be intentional about your style—to really care about the specifics of how you put something together—is a really beautiful act.

What we’ve always loved about your point of view, both in fashion and travel, is that it blends the really elevated and really unfussy. You’ve been front row at fashion week, and your beagle Charlie has put teeth marks in your Loewe sneakers; you’ve stayed in some of the best hotels in the world, and plenty of what we’d call Costa Menos in Italy. What do you think that mix brings to style and life in general?

I’ve always loved a high/low mix. It’s incredible to be invited to a fashion show or a new hotel opening, and I love dressing up and playing the part for the occasion. But in my day-to-day life, I love dressing casually, too–I have to go to the dog park after all, and spend most of my time by myself either painting or writing. I think you can take a lot of inspiration from luxury, but it doesn’t mean you have to buy it. Last spring, The Row released a fabulous red plaid shirt, but there was no way in hell I was going to pay over a thousand dollars for it. So I took the inspiration and found a handful of fantastic vintage plaid shirts for around twenty bucks a pop on eBay. I told my mom, and she found a great one for me at a thrift store, too. I think people sometimes get turned off by luxury—no one is saying you have to buy it, but the inspiration is free. And style really comes down to having your own point of view. If you don’t have that, you don’t have anything.

Speaking of clothes getting a bit of wear and tear, how do you care for them while traveling, especially when packing so lightly? Do you wash things in the sink, rely on hotel laundry, send things out to local wash & folds?

Laundry detergent sheets! Travel with a few and thank me later. You can wash things in the tub or the sink. Although if I’m in a place long enough, I think it’s very chic to send things out to local wash and folds. Hotel laundry is typically so expensive, so I try to avoid. The most annoying is when they don’t have an iron in the room, in which case I usually just hang whatever I want to wear in the shower with me (works very well for linen).

We loved the story in the book about your trip to the South of France, where you packed everything in a single tote bag! Can you walk us through what made the cut, and how you were thinking about packing for that?

Yes! So my main goal was that I wanted to be able to fly into Marseille and then travel throughout the south without a loud rolly suitcase announcing my arrival, or a large duffel killing my shoulder. I wanted to take only public transport (2 euro buses, trains, etc). So I brought one tote—it’s this great old straw Prada bag they gave me as the shopping bag when I bought a skirt in Porto Cervo (because only in Porto Cervo would they give you a tote you can resell for 1K as the shopping bag). I put another tote inside for unexpected purchases and committed to one look, a long white skirt (so you know the tide pen came in handy there) and a lightweight silk-blend cardigan. I used a chic vintage Hermes ‘Fleurs de Fuchsia’ silk scarf (the 90 size is best as it’s larger) as a scarf/pool cover-up to combat any chilly nights and just a few delicates to get me through the week. This of course can only really be done in the spring or early fall in most places (April, May and September are my favorite months to travel). Traveling in the winter is such a pain—better to just stay in California, which is my plan this year.

In our office we often reference your brilliant “fashion math” Substack, so we were thrilled to see this graphic made it into the book. Is that a framework you always use when packing for a trip?

Thank you! This was actually based on an old magazine spread I found from the 1950s. I thought it was so clever because you realize, as you get older, that you really don’t need that many clothes, and that actually having too many options just weighs you down. It’s like that thing at Costco or the grocery, where they realized if they presented you with 8 ketchups, you might become overwhelmed and not buy anything at all—whereas two ketchups? Sold! People are so over having decision fatigue, and I get it. The more you can simplify but still have fun, the better.

You write so fondly of the sciure—the resourceful, well connected Milanese woman who can fix anything, or at least knows the best cobbler in town who can. Do you travel with any similarly practical tools: a sewing kit, stain remover, or rolodex of trusted repair addresses in every city (is there an app for that!)?

Well, I always stock up on Tide pens when I’m in America (oddly, this is the one thing that’s more expensive in Italy than the US). And yes, I always have a sewing kit. If my mother found out I went to Parsons for Fashion Design and didn’t fix my own missing button, she’d kill me. Still, when I go home and ask her to fix something on her sewing machine for me, she says, “I sent you to college for this!!” She’s an amazing quilter. That’s how I started making my own clothes and got into fashion in the first place, because we had a machine and all this fabric in the house.

Your book feels as much about creativity as it does about clothing—about developing taste in the real world, off of algorithms. What are the last three people/places/things in the real world that have really inspired you lately?

I’ve just come back from Venice for the Biennale, and I have to say I thought of Yolanda when I wandered into the Spanish Pavilion. The artist, Oriol Vilanova, had collected thousands of postcards from flea markets and covered the entire pavilion with them. It felt like this magical display of what we preserve and how we communicate with the ones we love. It also felt like a great excuse to keep obsessively collecting things, so that was fun.

After spending years in Milan, what would you say is your perfect day in this city you love?

A perfect day starts when I take the dogs to their two favorite bars in the morning, where they get all their favorite treats from the loving baristas as I slowly come back to life with the aid of a few macchiati. After we go to the dog park, the big one with the tall ginkgo and pine trees I love, and I talk to some of the locals, or just listen to the parrots and blackbirds overhead. We head home, and I paint or write. In the afternoon we take a long walk into the center, stopping to admire all the little moments along the way. Maybe I pop into a shop and get a chic little hair accessory or something. I meet up with friends for aperitivo (always Campari, never Aperol), and we enjoy a nice evening outside and head to some trattoria for dinner.

A few favorite vintage shops in the places you’ve called home over the years…
NYC - Stella Dallas in Williamsburg, Bonnie Slotnick used cookbooks in the East Village. Desert in the LES always has something I swoon over.
Milan - L’Arabesque, Shop the Story, Cavalli e Nastri, and Pennisi Gioielleria for the best antique jewels.
CA - Relic Vintage in SF is my go to! Decades down the street is so fun too.

Do you have a travel uniform? (And if so, what is it?)

No, not really, since I’m always experimenting with new things. It usually just comes down to practicality, so I’ll typically wear whatever is my heaviest shoe so I have more space in my bag. Another rule is layers, always. So I typically do a pant so I can be comfortable and a tee of some sort with a sweater over it (why are the planes always either freezing or burning up?). A good scarf or pashmina is very important, so you can roll it up and use it as an extra pillow or blanket if needed. And the largest size purse I can get away with, legally. I do like dressing up and wearing a skirt or something if I’m taking a shorter flight, but long-haul it’s definitely a pant situation.

What’s the one accessory or piece of outerwear that does the most work on a trip?

A lightweight navy rain/car coat! It’s a game-changer, works with everything, and this is what I travel with throughout the spring and fall (mine is an old Prada with a removable white collar). There are many good vintage Prada and Jil Sander versions of this idea. Typically, they’re very well priced on The Real Real. I also have a very chic bamboo handle umbrella from Church’s.

Most useful thing in your carry-on that isn’t clothing?

I carry an old Hermès scarf box filled with art supplies ( a little gouache set, paint brushes, glue stick, etc.). I’m very inspired when I travel, so I love having a way to document that.

Parting words for someone who wants to travel, dress, and live with a little more je ne sais quoi?

Take chances and stay curious. Don’t be afraid to travel alone—solo trips are often the ones that stay with you the longest. Immerse yourself in new cultures, have fun with what you wear, and don’t overthink any of it. A little spontaneity, confidence, and openness go much further than a perfectly packed suitcase. Most importantly, be present enough to enjoy the small moments along the way—they’re usually what make a life feel beautifully lived.

Dopp Kitt Diaries: Christene Barberich author of A Tiny Apartment

I am a tiny zip bag hoarder, and I keep a million of them stuffed inside each other in my closet like Russian dolls. I love to make little travel art kits out of them for my daughter, with tiny notebooks and colored pencils (they come in handy for long car rides or dinner at a restaurant). But the two I’ve been using lately for my beauty/skincare things on the go is this oversized striped zip pouch from IKEA (they always have at least two new prints of mini zip bags for $5 and they are indispensable for skincare and LIFE). I have another smaller one by Bags In Progress (my favorite everyday woman-owned crossbody company). I like that the larger one is roomy and flexible and very unprecious and the smaller BIP one keeps all the smaller bits organized so everything doesn’t get swallowed up into a black hole. (I’m not a fan of the structured, hard case kits as they sometimes feel awkward in a backpack or soft duffel.

What’s In My Dopp Kit

It’s always changing based on what I’m enjoying using and what smells the best (the smell of products is really important to me, particularly when I travel). Right now I’m VERY into...(I also just did a story about taking care of my skin and basic everyday routine at 57 on my newsletter A Tiny Apartment, which was fun to summarize for our community and share tips, too):

Ursa Major individual cooling wipes...I have these on hand in my purse and dopp kit always.

Mother Science Molecular Hero Serum and Ursa Major Forest Water Hyaluronic Serum are both great as moisturizers/hydrators/overall skin waker-uppers!

Tower 28’s Sunny Days tinted moisturizer - It’s so light and glowy and fun to put on with a skin brush from Jones Road (or any foundation brush, really).

Ilia’s Skin Blur concealer is AMAZING on the go as an overall foundation replacement as well as under-eye fatigue erasers.

I can’t leave the house w/out some color on my lips, and Ilia’s Lip Sketch and Balmy tinted lip treatment is THE BEST combo for varying the depth of coverage throughout the day (balm for day and lip sketch on top for night/parties).

My hair is long and try not to brush it too much (particularly when I travel) so the waves stay smooth, so I use a skin/body brush to smooth out along my part-line and also on my actual body, which is a nice routine on the road before the shower, in place of bringing an exfoliating stuff.

Lots of things from Versed, too, including this INCREDIBLE brightening eye gel (I use it a few times a day, it feels so good), stick blush, gentle retinol at night, and their brow color is wonderful too.

Matt and I share a hoarding habit love for collecting, and while in most parts of our relationship we balance each other out, when it comes to accumulating saving objects big and small, we just enable each other. Our house in France is a great example of this. Yes, we may have bought this house because I’d be in love with it for ages—but it was also a massive excuse to find more things to fill it with. Neither of us golf, play tennis, or do anything that takes up a lot of time (other than work), so our flea market/garage sale/bric-a-brac adventures are something we love to do together that isn’t work. We also spend so much time on the road, as you know since you’re here reading this.

A lot of you (including my close friends and family) wonder how we manage to be gone so much and for so long, and a big part of it is having a base. Our French house is a wonderful escape, but it’s not the easiest base: it’s an hour and 15 from the airport, and while Bordeaux has many flight connections to Europe/UK/N. Africa, our place in St.-Yzans is just too rural. Once our daughter Clara started school in Scotland (almost five years ago now!), we decided to fulfill a fantasy of living in a European city. When we mentioned this to our friends in Rome, it was over a long, sun-drenched outdoor December lunch at Pierluigi. They gestured to a building across the street and said, “You know, there’s an apartment available in that building.” We arranged to go see it,

Read more

May Moodboard

So many good books are coming out this month that I want for my bookshelf, and/or to order in multiples for host gifts this summer. From this celebrity passport photo book to this homage to Fire Island art, to our former Martha Stewart and Traveler colleague Steve Orr’s new gardening book, and our dear friend Jenny Walton’s book Jenny Sais Quoi: Adventures in Vintage & Personal Style—a visual diary that includes her amazing illustrations and paintings, as well as essays on how she sources and styles vintage and other inspirations.

This summer “suit”—meant to be wrinkly—is perfect as separates, too. I’m also dreaming about this more formal version.

Maybe this will be the summer I finally make it to see Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden, Il Giardino dei Tarocchi, in Capalbio. Starting in 1978, she spent over two decades creating 22 giant, mosaic-encrusted sculptures inspired by the tarot deck, and it’s supposed to be incredible.

This bag from The Armoury is made of stiff canvas—it stands up so well—and it comes with a shoulder strap. Finally available again in the States.

Of course, I have to plug the Wm Brown prebottled Negroni! Matt’s only been working on it for years, and market researching every hotel minibar to confirm that there isn’t a good one yet. This one is great, and you can order it here.

I love clever pop-ups and programming where unlikely bedfellows come together. I was sad to have missed this kintsugi workshop at our friends’ winery, Hudson Ranch, last weekend, but am lobbying for a repeat. And if you find yourself in St. Tropez this summer, our friends at Alessi, Connolly, Fornasetti, Globe-Trotter and Smythson are joining together for a pop-up called The Shop on the Corner—and I’m hosting a cocktail party to celebrate both the launch and our summer issue on June 13.

Speaking of St. Tropez, I can’t wait to get back to Rondini to restock on these sandals that I got on my last trip there (had literally no wear-in issues!)—in either navy or red… or both!

Next time I’m in London, I want to try to see this 15th-century English noble home with a surprise 1930’s Art Deco interior—Eltham Palace was built in Greenwich in 1936 by “eccentric millionaires” Stephen and Virginia Courtauld and is only 40 minutes by train.

Our Roman friend Roberto came over the other day wearing this grassy/sweet scent called Ichnusa that was so good I couldn’t stop talking about it. Turns out it’s from a family-owned Roman perfumer called Profumum (which turns 30 this year), with scents inspired by Italian terroir—Ichnusa is Sardinia in a bottle.

ICYMI

Last week we launched our first family newsletter, Yolo Junior! And the new home of all things family travel on our site, from Black Books of world cities at a child’s scale to packing tips, travel advice, and dispatches with the whole family in tow.

We just updated our coveted Costa Meno Italy list, so if you weren’t sure Italy was within reach this year, this is your bible, with over 200 hotels, B&B’s, resorts, and albergos spanning the vast Italian coast.

Our Nashville List made us want to join everyone who is moving to this incredibly fun city.

Our latest Travel Uniform updates our most popular post ever: the most comfortable pants for the airplane.

The most brilliant “Sudoku packing method”—a grid-based system that turns nine pieces into 27 outfits—explained!

And finally, we just published our Antwerp List—a love letter to one of the most interesting cities in Europe… all from the coolest locals, of course.

Arrivals & Departures

We’re huge fans of Pali Hotels—we’ve stayed at their Santa Monica and Seattle properties many times—so couldn’t be happier that they’ve opened Hôtel Lili, in a 1939 former residence in the heart of Beverly Hills. It reads Old Hollywood in all the right ways, with a bijou bar, herringbone floors, and touches of velvet. (For local recs, see our LA Black Book)

May is your last chance to catch (Yolo favorite) photographer Martin Parr at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. The remarkable Matisse show at the Grand Palais—over 300 pieces sourced from public and private collections around the world—is on through late July.

SF finally gets a new (and great) hotel! The Huntington Hotel has just re-opened in San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighborhood, with 143 rooms reimagined by Ken Fulk. Our friends who stayed last week say it’s so good!

One of Rome’s most anticipated arrivals, Casa J.K Place, is finally open. A stone’s throw from the Spanish Steps, the apartment-style extension of one of our favorite hotels in the city has 12 suites of 1 to 3 bedrooms, a gym, Biologique Recherche spa, and the second location of Drink Kong, an award-winning Japanese-inspired bar.

Wheely is probably the chicest rideshare app on the market—the drivers are expertly trained, the cars are immaculate, and you can choose between business, first, and XL. Until now only active in London, Paris and Dubai, they launched in NY in March. More consistently premium than Uber but at $100-150 from JFK into the city, the pricing is similar.

Belmond Villa San Michele in Florence has officially dropped the curtain after an 18-month reno, and (phew) it’s even better than before. The 15th-century convent in the Fiesole Hills encompasses 39 redesigned rooms and suites, a Guerlain spa, new restaurant Antesi, and high vibes in the former chapel, now a yoga space with an “Energy Raising Program” by La DoubleJ founder, JJ Martin.

Maison Senato, around the corner from Milan’s major shopping streets, Via della Spiga and Via Montenapoleone, sounds cool: the six new private residences (all 200+ sq meters) are odes to Italian craftsmanship wrapped in an elegant modernist design. And not crazy expensive if you have a group.

You can still catch “The Adventure of Domenico Gnoli”—the largest exhibit of the Italian artist’s amusingly stylized paintings of everyday objects—at Levy Gorvy Dayan in NYC until May 23.

Calling all Hemingway fans! Black Tomato has just announced their new itinerary inspired by The Sun Also Rises, titled In Search of the Lost Generation. Curated in part by friend-of-Yolo David Coggins, the trip spans France and Spain, starting in Paris and ending in Madrid, with stops in Biarritz, San Sebastian and Rioja.

Burgundy finally has a hotel as divine as its wine. Château de Cîteaux, the latest in the Fontenille Collection, is an immaculately restored 19th-century chateau which sits above 12th-century Cistercian cellars, in the Meursault appellation and five minutes from Beaune.

The Marcel Duchamp show at MoMa is on until August 22nd—with over 300 artworks, the exhibition is the artist’s first retrospective in the states since 1973. Also at MoMA, “Frida and Diego, The Last Dream,” in collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera, highlights work from both trailblazing Mexican artists’ oeuvres in a theatrical setting.

Jakes Treasure Beach—which recently completed a huge overhaul in the wake of Hurricane Melissa—just opened six new oceanfront bungalows that are “so close that you can fish off the deck.” (Read our Guest Book here.)

Last-minute reset: From May 28-June 1, Cap Juluca in Anguilla is hosting cult brand Sanctum (think kundalini meets HIIT), a 5-day wellness residency designed around mindfulness and dynamic movement.

We’ve been big fans of JSX ever since it started—it’s ideal for SoCal to NorCal hops and flies out of private airports (meaning you don’t have to get to the airport so early). It just added a Napa route, perfect for a weekend of wine tasting. It’s relatively inexpensive ($249 from Burbank to Napa) considering its great perks: pet friendly with a generous 2 x 50lb checked baggage allowance. See our Napa/Sonoma Black Book.

The Thinking Traveller launched a collection of rental villas in Sardinia—with exclusive-use villas from tony playground Costa Smeralda, if that’s your vibe, to the country’s ruggedly gorgeous southern coast.

We can’t wait to visit the Museum of the City of New York to see Joe Macken’s model of NYC. Spanning 50 x 27 feet, it took Macken 21+ years to complete—perfect for a spring NY afternoon with kids (or without!).

OKU Bodrum opened this month on the peninsula’s northern coast—an airy bohemian oasis amidst the big luxury chains. (For more intel see our Turkey Travel Planner).

We love drinking our “moon water,” and 2026 marks the rare occurrence of 13 full moons (vs. the usual 12—there’s a blue moon at the end of May). To mark it, Cape Sounio in the Athenian Riviera is staging The 13 Full Moons of 2026, a year-long program inspired by the region’s connection to lunar mythology, at which guests will be able to spectate the full moon rising behind the Temple of Poseidon. Chills.

Londoners: be sure to sign up to Dinner for 100’s Newsletter, the brainchild of a pizza chef and a London tour-bus guide who quit their jobs and began hosting monthly dinners for (yes) 100 people. Launched during Covid, they built their following through garden pop-ups and have finally expanded to their own restaurant/pub. Each month’s Dinner for 100 offers an exclusive interpretation by a cool global restaurant or chef, like this month’s dinner with the hip Roman wine bar, Alimentari.

The David Geffen Galleries are finally opening this week at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—20 years in the making. Peter Zumthor designed the building, a 347,500-square-foot amoeba that soars over Wilshire Boulevard, and will soon have its own subway stop.

Now through June 1st, Adam Lippes has a pop-up at Le Bristol Paris, where visitors can shop the designer’s collection of quiet-luxury cashmere, womenswear, and newly launched (made in France) handbag collection in a space filled with antiques that Lippes personally sourced and are all available for purchase.

Starting in June, Wilderness—known for its eye-catchingly designed conservation-focused lodges in Botswana, South Africa and Rwanda—finally makes its debut in Kenya with Wilderness Mara, a 12 room tented camp alongside the Mara River set in a private conservancy.

Æro, Denmark

On this remote Danish island in the South Funen archipelago (only accessible by water, unless you have a private plane), locals mostly skirt between quaint fishing villages and coastal trails by boat and bicycle—and going from early wild swims straight to breakfast with salty hair and wet bathing suits is the most sensical way to start a summer’s day.

Cilento & Calabria, Italy

Read more

Maria Shollenbarger hardly needs an introduction. As the travel editor of HTSI, the Financial Times’ weekend magazine where she’s been for nearly 18 years, she’s one of the most trusted voices in the industry. If you’ve read about a major hotel opening over the last decade, chances are Maria had the exclusive a year in advance. She lives between London and Florence, though rarely seems to stay still for long, and now with the launch of her own Substack, At Large, we can all follow along. We’re so glad she shared more of her story with us here, and can’t wait to read where she takes us next.

For those who don’t know you, can you tell us a bit about your origin story? Did you travel growing up? How did you end up in this role?

I grew up in West Los Angeles, from which the longer I’m away, both geographically and existentially (as the idea of home), the more I realize was real heaven. Mountains-ocean-deserts, everyone outdoors all the time, that openness that’s kind of societally endemic to California: all of it shaped me, probably more than travels, which were pretty basic until college—they were mostly East Coast to see family, Hawaii and Mexico for holidays. I didn’t get to Europe until I was 15, or Africa til I was in my early 30s. Maybe that’s why I am equal parts stuck and happy in this “keep moving” groove—it’s all the potential energy of my youth, turned kinetic.

You have what many would consider a dream job as a travel writer and editor. Do you still love being on the road all the time, or are there times when you wish you could stay put?

Hm. I still love it, though my home life, between London and Florence, is itinerant enough that it can make the travels, especially the long-haul whistle-stops like the one I’m on now (Melbourne-Adelaide-Tasmania-Brisbane-Sydney, then straight to California), feel more hectic than they used to. So does being middle-aged; the flight down here from Paris destroyed me for three days. Florence is a very grounding foil to that for me, because it’s small, and so is my life there, in many ways. I have sweet little routines and a fairly quiet social life, and I live really close to the Via San Leonardo, which leads straight up into the hills in Arcetri (anyone who follows me on IG will have seen my excessively Room with a View Stories from the long walks I take most Saturdays or Sundays). All of that helps locate me “home,” lets me rest and nest, etc.

In addition to editing the travel section at HTSI and writing for other publications, you just started your own Substack, At Large. What are you excited to cover on Substack that doesn’t feel like a fit elsewhere? What made you want to carve out a space of your own?

Three things, broadly. One: there are sometimes things I do and places I see that don’t fit the brief of whatever story I’m working on, but that get my attention. Two: often with the features I write—not just for the FT, but for the AFR down here in Australia, or Galerie, or wherever—there’s so much great intel that doesn’t fit into the 1,200 or 1,500 or even 1,800 words I’m allocated to tell the story. Three: I feel a bit like I’ve lost my real writing voice. I’m lucky to work with almost uniformly brilliant editors; but there comes a point when you don’t want to be edited. Particularly when it’s personal essay stuff, some of which I intend to do here as well.

As someone who everyone wants to have try/taste/experience what they’re proud of—how do you deal with that?

Oh lord. Team Yolo has deep experience of this too, I imagine. Half of my days, and this is not an exaggeration, are spent reading and responding to pitches. You just have to keep the discernment glasses on at all times, and also keep in mind the identity of the publication, and the editor you’re working for. Some things are great but the timing’s not right; some things aren’t a fit at all, but I want to keep talking to the people behind the project because they’re interesting and maybe one day they’ll do something I want to cover. Basically, you chase it if you think it’s really good and special—for HTSI, I’m often negotiating exclusives on special projects or openings for up to a year or more—and be nice if you’re saying no.

When you’re not on assignment, how do you travel for yourself? Do you find it hard to switch off work mode?

What’s hilarious, to me anyway, is that people imagine my life as that of a sultana, always put in the Presidential Suite wherever I go and being, like, hand-fed grapes and catered to within inches of my life or whatever. And once in a while, when I’m on assignment for HTSI, I do get a spectacular upgrade; I have been doing this for almost 18 years, after all. On my own, though, it’s usually more Lonely Planet than HTSI. I often stay with friends, or I plan entire trips around a single hotel I know is special and also less than €200-€250 a night (you’ll read about some of those in a couple of weeks on my own Substack). As for switching off: maybe from emails, though that’s not easy (HTSI is for me a very all-comms-at-all-times kind of job, because I’m lucky enough to be on the road a lot and not have to be based in London). But the urge to roam, explore, take pictures, ask questions, find a corner in a place that feels like where I’d go if I lived in that place—that never switches off. The job happened because that’s what I’ve loved doing my whole life.

Is there a movie, book, or formative trip that most shaped who you are and what you do today?

Movies — Two I can think of off the top of my head, and both movies I saw as a kid: the 1979 film version of The Black Stallion, directed by Carroll Ballard. The desert island-Mediterranean-vaguely Arab/Maghreb setting absolutely set my imagination alight. I am convinced it’s why I love North Africa so much in my adult life. Plus Carmine Coppola, Francis’s dad, did the incredible score. And The Man from Snowy River, which lit the Australia thing in me. Both quite basic, I realize, but they really live in me. I still watch them once every few years.

A trip — My first one to Africa in the mid-2000s: Mozambique, to visit a Norwegian friend who was working for Unesco. Suffice it to say it was not a five-star introduction; Mozambique at the time was the 10th poorest nation in the world, and I saw levels of destitution that nothing anywhere I’d been even approached. But it was extraordinary. We drove to KwaZulu Natal, across Lesotho, and it was probably acutely dangerous at some points, but I had the time of my life, and it is still so amazingly vivid in my mind.

Is there a story you’ve written that you’re proudest of or that you think most defines your POV?

There’s this one, which I wrote in 2020 at the nadir of the first Covid wave, when my life had sort of come apart at the seams. It’s part travel essay, part very personal essay, and the kind of writing I intend to do every once in a while on Substack going forward. Beyond that, I quite like doing profiles. I was tasked with profiling Kim Kardashian when Skims hit its $4b valuation in 2024, and managed to make what my brilliant and very exacting boss, Jo Ellison, thought was a good piece of it. But I wish I could have talked travel with Kim; I’d love to have had a window on why she chooses the places she goes.

What are your summer plans and strategy for traveling during peak season?

My complex residency situation and tax status, compounded by the near-unbearable tourist numbers and equally unbearable heat these last couple of years, have meant that summer is when I leave Europe entirely to go on my annual round-the-world-er. Usually that’s California, Southeast Asia, sometimes Australia—I used to live in Singapore and I seem to drop easily and happily back into that life, and I’ll usually go to Bali or somewhere in Indonesia, where the weather is heaven in July and August—and then back up to Europe. This summer I might swap out one of them for India; the wonderful Jamshyd Sethna, who owns Shakti Himalaya, has issued an open invitation to Ladakh (does that still stand, Jamshyd??), and then I love monsoon season in Rajasthan, so I might go to Jodhpur and Raas, which is one of my favourite hotels on Earth.

All that said: Last summer I was still in Italy in the second week of July, and I did a road-trip around the south (which Jo asked me to write about for HTSI after she saw me posting on IG). The Salento, Puglia’s far south, was gloriously uncrowded; I was rocking up to Lo Scalo, one of its best restaurant-beach clubs, for lunch and a beach lounger without a booking, and they’d have room for me every time. And I finally got to stay at the Santavenere, which my friend Paolo Barletta owns and my other friend Aldo Melpignano runs. Heaven; a proper old-school Italian hotel.

Finally it bears saying: if this war doesn’t end soon, all bets will be off—I’m sure your readers have seen the headlines about potential jet-fuel scarcities. 2026 might be a domestic-travel summer….

As someone who probably has multiple trips on the horizon at any given moment, how do you organize all the nitty gritty details of your travel?

I am still, extremely perilously at my age, relying on my memory a lot of the time. I remember going into Yolanda’s office at CN Traveler back in the day and being absolutely gobsmacked by her superhuman organizational skills. I tend to book a lot of my own travel, including cars/transfers, restaurants, museum tickets etc for my trips, as opposed to leaving it all with a travel operator (which is very English). Often I know the operator or hotel owner/manager personally, so it’s a WhatsApp conversation (Italians = obsessed with WhatsApp) or just an email correspondence. After that... it’s all in my head, or I slam things randomly into my phone’s calendar with multiple alarms. I haven’t missed a plane or transfer yet, or booked a hotel for the wrong dates. Inshallah I’ve got another few years of this mental acuity in me. But the second I need the right app or org system, I’m hitting you up, Team Yolo.

Where do you find great travel inspiration? And how do you save travel inspiration when you come across it?

Local media and travel/lifestyle magazines often have great things. They have advertising and commercial exigencies, so that little beach club or inn you might not otherwise have ever come across is advertising (or pushing the title for editorial coverage, more like). In Europe and Egypt and Australia, I get a lot of intel from friends. I do screenshot Instagram posts and stories and stick them in a photo folder on my phone. (Shout out to the algorithm, which does occasionally deliver things I end up loving.) And—shout out to Eliza Bailey!—I usually get at least one or two great stories from Pure, the annual travel conference in Marrakech.

How do you deal with laundry on the road?!

My friend Inge Theron, who created FaceGym and designs and builds all the fab spas for Maybourne and lots of others (and is very glamorous and globetrotting), was scandalized when I confessed to her that I often travel with two or three pairs of underwear, and just wash them out in the sink every night. Scandalized! Is that really so weird…? Likewise with sports bras and gym clothes, which are obvs designed to dry fast. When I check into fancy hotels, I tend to enlist housekeeping for much more involved, princess-y things, like paying €60 for them to mend a hole in the ass of a pair of Mother jeans I can’t bring myself to throw away (true story; three times and counting).

You wrote a much-discussed story about whether it’s better to give or gatekeep when it comes to travel intel. What’s your instinct: to share or to hoard?

Honestly? It depends on the person asking. With reporting, I’m tasked with covering news, openings, all the news, so of course I put everything in. But yes, I have a list of things I’ve not written about, some of which will be on the Substack eventually.

OK, hotel version of “kiss, marry, kill:” hotel you dream of, one you could actually live at, and the one you’d never go back to.

Kiss: Nikoi, the private island in Bintan Regency in Indonesia, not far from Singapore. Few walls, sand floors, no aircon, the freshest spiciest food. In June, when the wind is offshore and the netting around your bed moves like it’s alive and dancing. It’s an absolute distillation of “luxury”—space, privacy, simplicity, beautiful old real materials, gentle kind people.

Marry: This one’s a tie, or maybe it’s city/country: Al Moudira, in Luxor, in one of [owner] Florian’s little two-bedroom bungalows. I’d go pick my own veg in the garden, and learn to glaze and fire pottery in the workshop, and have a G&T and a cigarette (just one!) in the evenings with Zeina Aboukheir, Moudira’s original owner, who created this masterpiece of beauty in the desert. And I’d adopt a baladi dog and a few cats and a donkey, and be a weird old good witch. Or: JK Place Paris, not least because it really does feel like a house to me. An impeccably chic, four-story house, with all the Francocentric bona fides but half the staff is Italian. Heaven.

Kill: Gosh, I’m sure there are a few, but I’m struggling to remember them specifically.... there are places that do their thing extremely well, and that thing is just really not my thing. Cheval Blanc Seychelles comes to mind—everything was exquisitely executed, massive villas, impeccable food and so on; of course, because LVMH. But I’m not sure I ever need to return to a resort where there are phalanxes of uniformed staff patrolling the kids’ club with trays of chilled towels. For the kids. Undeniably an impeccable iteration of luxury; just luxury I don’t personally respond to.

3 musts in your various hometowns from over the years…

LA — Honestly I barely spend time there anymore, so am probably the last person you should be asking, But when people do, I say 1) Chez Jay for a drink, 2) Geoffrey’s for Saturday lunch (you go for the classic Malibu-of-old feels, not the food, though it’s perfectly fine), and 3) a morning at the Getty Villa.

London — 1) Andrew Edmunds for a properly atmospheric candlelit supper (ideally but not necessarily with a romantic interest; I go with my gay best friend), 2) Highgate Cemetery for a walk, 3) The Conran Shop on Marylebone High Street, for three floors of design nirvana.

Singapore — I’m shortly to publish my comprehensive guide—where to eat, stay, shop, see art, be in the great outdoors (they have that!) and more—on At Large in a few weeks. Please subscribe to get the skinny on Sing from a (former) local…!

Rome — 1) Al Pompiere, which is sadly no longer in its original and very grand 1st-floor frescoed premises, but where the food and the people are both so excellent that it’s one of my regulars. Have the taglierini al limone and artichokes done any way, but the carciofi alla giudia is the best in town. 2) Chez Dede. One of the most beautiful stores not just in Rome but all Europe. And if you can afford it, sleep at their Superattico Monserrato, a gorgeous three-bedroom flat on the top floor of the palazzo the shop is in. 3) Palazzo Corsini and Palazzo Barberini, together known as the Gallerie Nazionali, are staging one knockout exhibition after another since Thomas Clement-Salomon took over as director. Beg, bribe, do what you have to to get tickets to the Bernini show before it closes in June.

Florence — 1) Trattoria Casalinga has the nicest staff and the best roast chicken in town, though if you’re even remotely hard of hearing the acoustics might do you in. 2) A walk through the gardens at Villa Bardini, just up the road from my house. There’s an extraordinary wisteria avenue that is blooming RIGHT NOW, which I’m gutted will be over before I’m back in Italy, and a nice loggia cafe with lovely views. 3) Grevi, for hats that can be scrunched/smashed/flattened and always get their shape back. There are some very cute bucket sun hats this season in all sorts of good colors and stripes.

MVP that’s always in your carry-on?

LaRoche-Posay HyaluB5 serum. Truly a magic potion. The Bader and Sisley and Sturm rotate in and out, but this is always in my bag, even when I’m not traveling.

Best seatmate encounter on a flight?

I’m not much of a chatty-pants on flights—I tend to put the buds in the ears and give Garbo vibes. I did hold a lovely old Egyptian lady’s hand not too long ago during a bit of heavy turbulence en route from Rome to Cairo; she spoke no English and I have about 12 words of Arabic, but I think she hadn’t flown before. She gave me a hug when we disembarked and I almost cried.

What was the last place you visited that blew you away?

Le Sirenuse Mare! To have taken the essence of one of Positano’s oldest hotels and elaborated something so vibrant and new and original from it, but with all the elemental Sirenuse elegance intact... the Sersale family really are the very best in the business. It is beyond beautiful. And opens this week…!

What new opening are you most excited about?

Villa San Michele, in Fiesole, above Florence, which you’ll find in the May 16th Travel edition of HTSI. Belmond closed it for an entire year, and Luigi Fragola, who besides being a friend is a very talented designer (and a Florentine! Finally, a local designer being entrusted with one of the big renovations), has redone all of the interiors working with local artisans. Passementerie, textiles, the extraordinary pietre dure tables—all made in Florence by Florentines. I had a sneak tour two weeks ago, and it’s going to be stunning. I’ve made a lot of memories in this hotel, dating back to my student days 35 years ago and on many stays and occasions since, so it’s a special one for me.

A place you go back to again and again?

Siwa, in Egypt’s Great Western Desert. Hands down the most energetically powerful place I’ve been.

Place you can’t believe you’ve never been?

What I can’t believe is that I am committing this to posterity, because it’s so embarrassing...: Japan. I know; jeez, that’s awful. Twice in the past decade I was all ready to go—tickets, hotel, etc all reserved—and both times the trip was thwarted in the 11th hour (once by Covid, for my 50th birthday). There were lots of work opportunities in between, but it always seemed a far better idea to send someone who knew the lay of the land (because nothing’s more cringe than reading a story that was clearly a jolly handed to a first-timer whose “discoveries” are actually the all-stars). I’m thinking of going by myself this autumn; some great friends are moving to Tokyo from London, so that’s my accommodation sorted.

Road Tested: ROAM Luggage

Last spring, I left the DUCO travel conference in Milan with the same branded tote as everyone else. A few days after, on our way back to Milan from Lake Como, my mom and I stopped for lunch at Passalacqua. Our driver handed my black Away carry-on and the tote bag to a handsome bellhop, both disappeared inside, and after lunch they were loaded into a new waiting car. Except—as we realized just before pulling away—my black Away carry-on and DUCO tote bag had been mixed up with someone else’s identical black Away carry-on and DUCO tote bag. I figured it was a sign I needed some new luggage.

A few months ago, I learned about ROAM, a luggage brand started by the founder of TUMI—clearly a man with a thing for all-caps, four-letter luggage names. ROAM’s whole premise is that you can custom-design the entire bag: different colors for the zippers, handles, wheels, front and back, which would make a near mix-up like mine virtually impossible. I spent a gleeful half hour matching the colors I normally wear in my travel uniform, and landed on a two-toned bag in light blue and navy, with white trim.

Expecting a fully custom suitcase to take weeks, not days, you can imagine my surprise when I came home to find the package already sitting on my stoop just a few days after placing the order. ROAM hand-assembles each case in Georgia (the state, not the country), which explains the turnaround. Each one is made with 50% recycled polycarbonate, backed by a lifetime warranty, and, admirably, they extend a 100-day trial to every case they make—even the custom ones. Which means you can take it on a trip or two and still send it back if you’re not in love.

After unboxing the exact bag I’d dreamt up, I was hopeful it would prove as durable as it was pretty—and on its baptismal trip out of my apartment, it weathered three weeks of non-stop transit: planes, trains, ferries, buses, vans, golf carts, and one slightly precarious boat transfer. It came home glossy as ever and unmistakably mine. —Carly Shea

One of the most common conversations I have with my close friends is: how do we create the commune? We want to be near each other, more than dinners in loud restaurants—or, for my friends who don’t live near me, more than a once-a-year visit or vacation together. From the “we just want to all be near each other more” conversation it often moves into the “how can we all grow old together?” conversation—two life decisions that have a lot of overlap.

We talk a lot about where. We need it to be somewhere we can all buy into easily, that has good healthcare nearby (this is also a place we want to grow old, you know!), and is easily accessible (good airport and train nearby, so we (and our kids) can travel easily to/from. We’ve talked about Italy, Greece, California, Mexico…. Ideally we want to find a village or a piece of land where we can all have our own places, but there’s also a central area/salon that would have a gorgeous library (containing our group’s book collections) and also vinyl (not because we’re young and listening bar types, but because we actually grew up listening to albums and we love stereo systems more than we love Spotify). A club house of sorts. Maybe this is weird, but what about an amazing dress-up closet?

It’s about time that we created some kind of place not for billionaires (the Yellowstone Club has that covered), but for creatives who have done well enough but not crazy f-you money). Where you could also have smaller residences where interesting younger

Read more