An archbishop’s will, a garden in Tipperary, and the palace hotel where the whole thing started. Plus: a flute orchestra, the world’s most guarded stud farm, and the Michelin star that came back after. My oldest friend, whom I met when we were nine, was from Dublin and horse-crazy. Every girl of a certain era […]

I stayed at Canaves Epitome before Travel + Leisure handed it the crown. The verdict, the one dark room, my drink and tour with the owner, and which Canaves you should actually book. Travel + Leisure has just named Canaves Epitome the #1 hotel in Greece and the #5 hotel in Europe. I stayed there […]

Canaves Epitome just topped Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Awards. The ranking is the least interesting thing in the announcement. What the Chaidemenos family built instead — a fourth-generation potter. The press release reached me partly in Portuguese, from a PR firm in Brazil, about a hotel in Greece. Travel marketing has its own geography. […]

A Personal Account | ZEM Wellness Clinic Altea, SpainPart Two of Two. Read Part One: “What Hippocrates Started, ZEM Finishes” I arrived on a Monday. I’d been sick that morning. Nothing that required a doctor’s visit, just my bed and a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. But I got up and boarded the train to […]

I got off the high-speed train in Alicante and was at ZEM forty minutes later, deep in the Altea Hills, sheltered by the Sierra de Bernia. The town’s name comes from the Greek word for healing, which feels less like branding and more like an inheritance. The light here arrives before seven in June and […]

I have been doing this long enough to be selective about where and how I spend my time. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how I work at an industry conference, why I went, what I did while I was there, and what it means for the clients I serve. The Emotions Travel Show in Madrid […]

Before there was a Boston Tea Party, there was a cider tax.  This is not a metaphor. It is a sequence of events that most Americans have never been taught, possibly because it requires crediting the English West Country with accidentally inventing the American Revolution, which is awkward for everyone. Here’s what happened. In 1763, […]

I was told the stones might speak. A friend had stood here a few months before I did and said she had received a message. So I came… listening. And I heard. I understood and felt a quiet, unmistakable knowing. I also grasped that we understand far less about our beginnings than we think we […]

A Visit to the Roman Baths — and Why Bath Deserves Far More Than an Afternoon I had forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes inside one of the most remarkable sites in the Western world. A place where water has been rising from the earth at the same temperature, from the same source, for hundreds of thousands […]

Bath, the Royal Crescent, an Abbey That Shaped Every Coronation Since, and Why You Need More Than a Day I stood at the Royal Crescent and felt time fold. I was sort of hoping I’d fall through time a la Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser! (That’s an Outlander reference for those of you who’ve never felt […]