​His tapering tower was nicknamed the “splendid splinter” by some and “Pereira’s prick” by potty-mouthed others. The most violent response was the California politician who said it would “rape the skyline of San Francisco.”

​The reviews were savage. In The Washington Post, a critic wrote that, “tastes change. But not the taste of tastelessness,” and called it “hideous nonsense” and “a second-class world’s fair space needle.” The Chronicle’s critic dubbed it “authentic architectural butchery” and then wheeled out some top-notch snobbery to finish it off, griping that “this building would even be wrong in Los Angeles, where it was hatched, or in Las Vegas, where it belongs, or in Dallas, where buildings vie for attention.”

“This is antisocial architecture at its worst,” cried The Los Angeles Times.

​Why do I bring this up?

​I wrote a pretty harsh piece a couple of months ago about the designs of the Obama Presidential Center, and yesterday I managed to tour it in person. Despite going to tour it with an open mind, and despite being impressed by its interior and the ambition of the campus as a whole, the appeal of the tower’s design still utterly eludes me.

So if you read this column and think I’m cynical, or nuts, or missing its appeal, know that in 1977, just a few years after the Transamerica Tower was completed, The New York Times ran a mea culpa: “Transamerica Building: What Was All the Fuss About?” And perhaps that will be true of the Obama Center.

​Then again, the Tour Montparnasse, which also pushed aesthetic boundaries, has been the most hated building in Paris since its unveiling. (My favorite part of the New York Times feature in which they had star architects defend hated buildings is that the best Daniel Liebeskind could muster for the Tour was: “I want to defend it not because it’s a particularly beautiful tower, but because of the idea it represents.” It’s that ugly.)

​In my column, I took three main issues with the design of Obama’s tower:

1. It was aesthetically displeasing. A “tumescent shorn obelisk … redolent of a siege tower in Lord of the Rings … its attempt at something sculptural fails, summoning merely an acknowledgement that it is, in fact, a shape. Despite breaking from its surroundings both in form and style, it is inert, pulled down by its adherence to some aesthetic sensibility I will never be able to crack.​”

2. One of its central design twists—Obama’s Selma speech carved onto two facades—was an unreadable folly.

3. It represented the worst of what has become a gross tradition for a democracy in these presidential libraries.

Before I dive into how those critiques stood up in person, I think it’s only fair to acknowledge what I loved when I visited.

The first is that the interior is breathtaking. The materials and their implementation are top-notch (I am obsessed with the chainmail-esque wall panels on the ground floor). End-grain parquet floors, walls made of wood carved like rippling theater curtains, and a wonderful harmony of concrete, metal, and glass throughout. The artwork is worth a visit alone and is so well placed and lit that it puts most major museums to shame. (While I love that the statue at the entrance is of both Obamas, it follows a trend of modern bronze statues looking slightly off because it chooses to have them smiling. Teeth never look good rendered in bronze.)

The experience of touring it is a slick operation that impeccably tells the tale of American progressivism and the Obamas’ place in it. Nearly everybody I chatted with that day felt the center was this beautiful escape to a different time, one that, for them, felt hopeful and bright.

It’s hard to summon outrage when everybody inside is visibly loving it.

​I particularly enjoyed reading about and looking at photographs of their early Chicago years, and often found myself Googling progressive figures they worked with or were inspired by. I got chills watching clips of his seminal speeches and debate performances. The dresses of Mrs. Obama were a fun highlight. And the views from the top-floor skybox are extraordinary.

The larger campus, with its extensive gardens I am keen to see mature, public library, an incredible playground, and basketball courts, are a real testament to what the Obamas have always said they want their legacy to be.

Unfortunately, I can’t help but look at that tower and think it is the exact opposite.

No matter your political persuasion, the Obama story is a remarkable one. And as the videos and speeches throughout the exhibit halls remind you, his presidency constantly promoted a mindset of openness, hope, and togetherness—opening up the White House to groups that never dreamed of it, reaching out to countries long ignored or vilified, and so on.

A near-windowless tower of gray stone says the inverse.

In person, it looms less large than photos, and thus less obnoxious. But I still can’t grasp anything pleasing about its appearance. It is also eerily reminiscent of Marcel Breuer’s Whitney (now Sotheby’s). The slabs of granite cladding, though of different shades, are similarly veined and marble-like. Even the small windows on the top of the north and eastern faces are almost exactly the inverse of those twisted trapezoidal windows punched out of the Breuer’s facades. There is a similar jutting-out-edness.​

It’s a strange parallel, because Breuer was going for isolation and monasticism. Theoretically, the Obamas and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects were going for “hands coming together to hold a lantern of light.”

​Which brings me to something that has irritated me tremendously about the response to criticisms of this building, particularly of its illegible speech carved into its top third.

There is a tendency in writing and speaking about contemporary architecture that confuses reason with result. An architect will say some conceptual thing about their design, and people will repeat that as if that’s the end of the matter. But rarely do we ask: did it accomplish that? And perhaps more importantly, should that have been the priority at all?

Reading interviews with the architects, I’m reminded of that scene in La Grande Bellezza where the protagonist, a newspaper columnist, is questioning a performance artist. She speaks in contemporary performance art pablum, and when he presses her on one detail—what she means by “vibration”—her answers grow ever more nonsensical and hysterical before she demands a higher-caliber journalist.

So, for instance, outlets keep repeating that the tower is meant to show “hands coming together to hold a lantern of light”? But does it? No? Maybe at night? If we judged a public monument solely by how it looked at night, then Gehry’s Eisenhower Memorial in DC would be a hotspot. What person sees the hands holding a lantern without having been told?

“It’s intentionally more sculptural,” said Williams in an interview, “and we’re able to do that because, in fact, it didn’t require that many windows.”

Again, I’d ask, why are we assuming it doesn’t require windows? A place without windows signals secretive or closed off, no? And what is it a sculpture of?

But what about whether a tower was the right idea in the first place?

“It actually says ‘look at me’ and that’s intentional,” Williams told CNN.

Why is it a good thing for a presidential library to say “look at me”? What does that say about us as a country?​

Interestingly, Williams said in an interview: “We didn’t think of a tall tower [in the early stages] … We thought the president was more modest, and it should be a more modest solution.” But President Obama requested it.​

This leads to point 3 (we can come back to point 2), which is the concept of the presidential library itself.

The further we get from FDR’s original library, the more propagandistic they get, and this $850 million iteration is no exception. You will not see any grappling with various tough points in the presidency. No self-examination of the healthcare rollout, the Afghan war, the Arab Spring, or criticisms of the response to the financial crisis. No matter how joyful the people walking its halls were, I cannot escape the icky feeling of a man building an Ozymandian tower devoted, essentially, to himself. Not to mention tickets cost $30 for adults and $23 for children 3 to 11.

Walking the rest of the campus with its gardens, public library, and court, I found myself wishing that this was all he’d built and what a powerful statement that would have been.

When I first wrote about the tower, it was largely in response to outrage and mockery online when it became apparent from photographs that Obama’s Selma speech, which spanned the top third of two facades, was unreadable. The typeface chosen means you can’t tell the difference between I, T, and L, or E and F. It also chose a sizing for its letters that cuts off words partway at the line break, a sort of escalation of poetic enjambment that wouldn’t be so painful were it not for the fact that you can only see one facade at a time.

Fast Company got hold of the designer of the carved speech, Michael Bierut.

​“One of the key questions I asked at the beginning was, are people supposed to read this? … Is legibility the primary goal here? Do we want people to be able to stand on the ground, look up at this tower, and read those words? And that was discussed on the client end, and the answer came back, ‘No, it should have the promise of meaning, it should be decipherable, everything should be spelled right and it should make sense.’”

I was told in comments, direct messages, and in person that I was being too literal, that I essentially just “didn’t get design.” I’m sorry, but that’s all nonsense. What, if anything, should we do with a speech except hear or read it? Also, are we just supposed to nod and not notice the contradiction between saying people don’t need to read those words, and “it should make sense.”

Later in the interview comes the real doozy.

“Just as a million people go to the Lincoln Memorial, some of them will stand and read every word of the second inaugural; some people will just admire the statue in the building and kind of take it in, and a couple of words will jump out, but not the whole thing … It’s in that tradition that I think we were operating.”

But you cannot actually read many of the individual words on the Obama tower! And what an asinine way to reduce the effects of Lincoln’s speeches.

​One of my favorite things to do in Washington when I’m feeling dispirited is to stroll or bike down to the Mall and scale the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural and Gettysburg Address. I am never alone doing so. The sentences are so powerful, so relevant, and always trigger an emotional response.

“Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away,” reads the part that always gets me. “Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”

​Imagine if some future person could go for a run or bike ride to the base of this tower looking for inspiration, and could have found it by reading the speech. Instead, they’ll spend their time wondering what “vned” “nually” and “re” mean. Should they assume that those words so carefully written and spoken by Obama meant nothing?

​Just admit that, whether it was a screw-up or intentional like they’re continuing to claim, the disembodied and indecipherable text doesn’t work, and stop trying to gaslight us into thinking we’re merely screeching troglodytes who can’t comprehend next-level design.

​How did this come about?

​Originally, the plan was for completely inscrutable text. Billie Tsien told the Chicago Sun-Times that the building was inspired by a rock she found on the floor of a souvenir shop in Aksum, Ethiopia. “It fits in the palm of your hand,” she said. “The letters carved are unintelligible—maybe Amharic? Not sure if it was 100 years old or 10 days old, but it was mysterious and felt as if it carried a message.”​

Everything clicked into place when I read that line. Perhaps that’s why so much of it grates. On the outside, it’s this mysterious monument that closes itself off from the physical world. You cannot see into it, and you literally cannot understand what it is saying. Inside, it’s a time capsule that also closes itself off, allowing visitors to transport themselves to an era detached from the one raging outside. For a couple of hours, you live out your nostalgic political fantasy, free from complications.

I appreciate that this is exactly what so many might want right now. For me, it just wasn’t enough.

OTHER REVIEWS OF THE CENTER

New York Times: Obama Center’s Two Sides: A Lovely Park and a Forbidding Tower

AP: In a city with an iconic skyline, the Obama presidential museum aims to reshape Chicago architecture

Chicago Sun-Times: No tower of glower: Obama Center and its maligned signature building are worthy of consideration

Curbed (New York Magazine): We Didn’t Need an Obama Megalith The new presidential center has an ambitious community agenda, a generous spirit, and a dismayingly cold granite core.

Washington Post: The Obama Center opens as a time warp to an old political order

The Guardian: ‘Like a Klingon prison’: inside Barack Obama’s audacious, near-windowless, $850m presidential library

Fast Company: The Obama Presidential Center is more than its granite tower

The Times: ‘You say bold, I say audacious’: inside Obama’s divisive presidential library

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​The leader of the 7th largest economy in the world wasn’t talking about some manufacturing giant or cutting edge tech company when he said that. No, he was referring to Netflix’s Emily in Paris. The much-derided show was contemplating a turn in Rome at the time. Aware that some studies had shown nearly 40% of tourists to France citing the show as the inspiration, Macron knew the value in keeping it there.

​Series and movies like Emily in Paris, Game of Thrones, In Bruges, White Lotus, The Lord of the Rings, and more all became major drivers of tourism to the parts of the world used on screen. Being broadcast into people’s bedrooms—even if it’s where scandals, mass slaughter, or fictional fairy tales took place—dramatically changed the fate of Dubrovnik, Sicily, Bruges, and others. The locations almost become another character in their own right, but one you could actually meet.

​Entourage made me want to live in LA and Sex and the City and Girls might have affected my vision of NYC as much as actually living there. Breaking Bad, despite all the meth and murder, captured the beauty of New Mexico. For God’s sake, Queer as Folk had teenage me thinking I should go to Pittsburgh to check it out if it was such a gay paradise!

​These days, I’m fully committed to Widow’s Bay, a delightful horror-comedy that takes place on a fictional island off of Massachusetts. Sure, the creepy mishaps aren’t striking wanderlust. But it so thoroughly nails the unique qualities of a New England small town and its characters that it has me so excited for a summer bopping back and forth between Newport and Marblehead.

The one show that doesn’t convince me to go to its location? Hacks. The Vegas of Hacks, despite Deborah Vance’s enthusiasm, is not alluring. In fact, despite my love for the show, it has a persistent problem: it tells you something over and over, but your eyes and ears don’t agree. (Such-and-such joke is funny, but then they make a joke and it’s, well, not funny).​

Outside of the first season, which captured the strangeness of life there, Vegas has somehow become either flat or a caricature. And neither of those compels me to visit anytime soon.

Which is too bad, because the city really could use a show that does that.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

Reconsider flying to Lisbon. Back in February, I flew to Lisbon for the first time in years. My upgrade to business had gone through, and I managed to sleep nearly the whole flight. I was feeling great. Then I hit the immigration line. It took two hours to get through, with mass confusion and little communication. I at least had some expectation that things might be arduous, because I had seen chatter online about Lisbon in particular. Well, things have only gotten worse with the full rollout of the EES gates, and that has broken through to mainstream news outlets. (The EU denies the e-gates are to blame.) In fact, things have gotten so bad that if I was looking at booking summer travel to Europe and landing in Lisbon to connect elsewhere was an option, I would definitely not do it.

I flew in and out of Denver recently, and while I won’t drag this newsletter edition into my strong feelings about that airport, I will say I spent the handful of minutes waiting for the airport’s people-mover trains wondering whether they were ever going to come or if I would be stuck on them. That’s because the airport has been plagued by train breakdowns over the last year, which causes bottlenecks for thousands and thousands of passengers unable to get to their gates. The trains, you see, are the only way. Well, Edward Russell of Airport Architecture reported that Denver is finaaaaally retrofitting its baggage tunnels to become passenger tunnels so people can have the option of walking between terminals. What’s great about Russell’s piece is he also walks through (get it?!) the ways in which these kinds of tunnels have gone terribly wrong at other airports, and how to do it right.

So much to unpack in the recent interview by Southwest CEO Bob Jordan. The airline is now fully into its new era, with checked bag fees, basic economy, extra-legroom seats, and more. Jordan said in the next few years, we can expect to see clubs, first class, international long haul routes, a Starlink rollout (that he says they’ll do faster than United), and more. I’ll believe it when it all happens. He also named Baltimore’s BWI airport as the logical spot to build out international. Perhaps the most interesting part of the interview, though, was Jordan getting explicit about why airlines are adding destinations to far-flung places that might not make economic sense—credit cards. “The loyalty programs and co-brand are a huge part of the financials of an airline, and having long-haul, aspirational destination kind of routes really, really enhances the co-brand program as well,” he explained. “It’s as much a part of that. That’s as much the reason as it is even destinations that our customers want.”

I love a beautiful train station as much or more than the next guy (see last week’s column), but the choices involved in prettifying train stations aren’t hard ones. They’re often just a numbers question. But building out an actually useful rail network that is fast, reliable, and logical does require hard choices. Choices over land use, skipping intermediary cities, etc. And American politicians have been unwilling to make those, meaning we’ll have lots of beautiful stations and few reasons to use them except to take pictures.

Ouch! Three hotels in France—two in Paris—lost the coveted “palace” designation. The three in question? The Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme, the Mandarin Oriental Paris, and Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz.

​The cult of Delta will die a death by a thousand cuts. This week, it’s a report that on one of the most important routes in the world—NYC to LA—Delta’s customers are pretty unhappy with delays and service, and a report that it’s losing its reputation as an airline that doesn’t cancel flights.

Well, it’s official. A whopping four million fewer people visited the U.S. last year than the year prior. It’s not really a surprise, but it still bites seeing the numbers. Now, Mexico’s tourism industry is growing faster than the U.S.

​Cooome on, Chicago Sun-Times. It isn’t 1890! Have enough dignity not to ascribe everything the French do as being “high-fashion.” It’s akin to people thinking somebody with a British accent is more of an intellectual. They’re lawn chairs! (Which is what the headline on the article eventually read as).

​Like elite colleges over the past couple of decades, airports are in the midst of an upgrades arms race that seems poorly thought out. When colleges did it, they often strapped themselves with enormous costs and accelerated administrative bloat—usually without asking if any of these things actually contributed to educating young people. Airports, particularly in the U.S., are spending or proposing to spend billions and billions on new terminals, often with designs that make one wonder if they’ve considered the passenger at all. More than anything, they seem designed to compete with splashy airports in the Middle East and East Asia that impress columnists like Tom Friedman. Even worse, as Edward Russell noted on Twitter this week, these pricey upgrades lead directly to high airport fees that price out low-cost carriers like Spirit, Frontier, and the like.

​I mentioned it a few newsletters ago, but keep an eye on the trend of hotels within the Hyatt umbrella recategorizing themselves as “resorts.” Why are they doing this? Well, perks for the Hyatt rewards program aren’t as plush at properties categorized as resorts! The latest offender? The Park Hyatt Sydney, according to One Mile at a Time.

​London has some of the most talented designers in the world living there. And this is the best the city could do for its new public drinking fountains?! (These also don’t work unless you already have a water bottle.) Come on. Why can’t we have services and beauty!?

The Tren Maya always seemed like it was going to be a disaster, and so far it is, losing millions of dollars a day according to documents obtained by El Universal.

STORIES I LOVED OR WISH I’D DONE

I’ve been banging on to anybody who will listen about how we’re entering this golden age of safari tourism because it’s overlapping with massive wildlife restoration projects. Whether it’s the puma and the jaguar in South America, the wolf in Yellowstone, or tigers in India, the list of animals we can see and admire while keeping them protected seems to grow yearly. The latest? The Iberian lynx, a gorgeous cat that was down to a wild population of just 64 in 2002. Now, there are 2,700 and they’re at the center of a new type of tourism Spain hasn’t really experienced—safaris.

If you’re a fan of Gilded Age-era architecture, the most under the radar destination is actually Washington, D.C. For decades, money—old and new, and Old World and New World—raced to build stately homes here as America grew richer and Washington’s grip on the country grew stronger. Many of those homes are now embassies or ambassador residences, which open up to the public at various points of the year. So I loved this Washington Post feature taking readers inside some of the best ones. (The staircase at the Indonesian Embassy, which used to belong to Thomas Walsh and his daughter Evalyn Walsh McLean, is my favorite.)

This FT feature on how the original Hilton hotels represented modernity, which actually made them a key part of American soft power during the Cold War.

And for Dolly Parton fans, her latest act as tourism empress is honestly incredible and this Wall Street Journal story takes a look at how she pulled it off.

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

Olive Young, South Korea’s leading beauty retailer, is opening its first U.S. store in California

Italy restores lucky testicles on bull mosaic in Milan worn down by tourists

Brazilian court orders restoration of Fordlandia, Henry Ford’s Amazon ghost town

The Royal Palace in Brussels to reopen this summer after two-year renovation

Plus-size passengers on Southwest will no longer be required to purchase an extra seat

The Jewelers Building in Chicago might be getting a rooftop bar

Hotels can refuse to serve tap water, Italy’s top court rules

Caesars Entertainment will be acquired by Fertitta, the company that owns the Golden Nugget and Morton’s

Saudi Arabia’s tourism chief to step down

Marriott launched a design portal for customers who want to buy designs from its hotels

American to add Starlink Wi-Fi to its planes beginning in 2027

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​To deny New York City’s effect is to be a person I cannot trust.

​I say all this to establish some sort of credibility as a non-hater when I say that arriving as a visitor is shit.

​The airports—even with the makeovers—are terrible, outrageously inconvenient, filled with more than their fair share of miserable people, and prone to disaster after disaster.

​But the most shameful part of New York City’s welcome to nonresidents has long been Penn Station. This abomination of hidden signage, chaos, low ceilings, filthy bathrooms, crowding, delays, hideous exterior, and more was often the perfect stand-in for everything that had gone wrong in the second half of the 20th century for American cities. (For Amtrak riders this has been slightly ameliorated by the Moynihan Station in the old post office across the street.)

​This week, the Trump Administration announced it has picked the design for Penn Station’s complete overhaul, promising to deliver a station long dreamed of.

​Put aside, for a second, the actual infrastructure promises and issues, from through-running, platform widths, whether NY and NJ can get along, and so on. I want to talk about the design. From what I can tell, while not finalized, it’s been assumed to be along the lines of what Halmar, one of the companies in the winning consortium, submitted a couple of years ago.

​It is … fine—the architectural equivalent of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “defining deviancy down,” which is fitting given his name on the station across the street.

The problem for any new design of Penn Station is that we know what it once was. The best thing for any new design of Penn Station is that we know all too well what we have had to live with since.

​As Vincent Scully once said: “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat.”

​That, more than anything, shapes how I interpret the winning bid for its redesign.

​It’s nowhere near as great as it could be, but a hell of a lot better than it is now.

​“The modern historical preservation movement was in large part jump-started by the decision to build the current iteration of New York Penn Station, which replaced the previous classical structure,” notes Amtrak in its press release. “The new design takes inspiration from this lost architectural gem while fitting with the major structures there currently, particularly Madison Square Garden and Moynihan Train Hall.”

​Now, New York City looooves to claim that so many movements started there, despite facts to the contrary. (The Newport Preservation Society, for instance, started in the 1940s to save Colonial architecture, long before the demolition of Penn Station.) One might argue that the movements only existed to them once they happened there, but I digress. But the loss of Penn Station was a wake-up call to many.

To say, though, that the new design takes inspiration from the old is a stretch anyway you look at it. The original Penn Station was designed by McKim, Mead, and White at the height of the firm’s powers and fame. It was the grandest synthesis ever of the inspirations that Beaux Arts architecture consistently turned to—the Baths of Caracalla, St. Peter’s, the Acropolis, 18th-century Neoclassicism, and more.

​I look at old photographs of its interior and fantasize about walking alone in its empty halls. Doing so in the current Penn Station would be a nightmare. Doing so in the proposal by Halmar would just be unmemorable, despite how many times people keep mentioning the 55-foot-high ceilings in its sunken entrance hall. (As if 55 feet is so mind-blowing!)

The McKim, Mead, and White exterior boggles the mind, taking up multiple acres in Manhattan and looking just as powerful and cohesive from the sky as from the street.

For the unfamiliar, this was all torn down, and in its place we got the oversized hockey puck that is Madison Square Garden. MSG, that round-cake-box-as-a-building, if one ordered a cake from a bakery with the ugliest cake boxes, will not be torn down, moved, or even redesigned in the Halmar proposal. Instead, it will be clad in fins of stone that make it resemble a rotary tray in a Kodak Carousel. Polishing a turd. Lipstick on a pig. Whatever you want to call it.

As for the proposal for the new station exterior, it is not some gilded neo-Grec derivative like many expected, but in that strange category of modern architecture that “nods” to the classic in the laziest or most confused way.

The materials are those beloved by traditionalists, as is some sense of shape, volume, and geometries involved. Often, though, this “style” delivers a hodgepodge of a somewhat-harmonious array of verticals and horizontals and oversized glass. The Penn Station proposal is precisely this, and it suffers from its attempt to please everyone. I would have far preferred something ambitiously modern or deep trad than this middling in between.

​The best example of this style, and the building I immediately thought of, is the James Madison Building in D.C. The largest library building in the world, it’s the third and easily least magnificent of the edifices that make up the Library of Congress. An assortment of verticals and horizontals clad in marble with large glass elements, it was also designed to “nod” to its neoclassical neighbors but ended up just dismaying all.

I also thought of the Madison Building because libraries and train stations are part of a rarefied coterie of buildings that demand both utility and grandeur. And when they satisfy both, they are our most cherished spaces.

​But the best that can be said—both for the Madison and the proposed redesign of Penn Station—is that they could be worse, and at least they don’t detract from their neighbors.

Our age of apathy and indifference strikes again.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

​The next trip you go on, consider going a day without taking any photos. I tried it recently when I was in New York City, and it was a struggle, which was illuminating. It’s a reflex now to see something pretty and fish out your phone to take a picture of it. But it is having a terrible effect on each of us individually, and also collectively. This Bloomberg piece does a great job of taking something we’ve always historically been after—seeing the highlights—and how selfie tourism has taken that to extremes.

​One rule I’d like to implement? Stop taking pictures of yourself in front of pieces of art in museums. It’s one of the weirdest things I see on social media, and it’s either performative (oh look, I look at art!) or trying to draft off the aesthetic strength of the work (“today’s fit goes so well with The Scream!”).

​A number of people sent me stories and social media posts about Louis Vuitton and The Frick Museum. The expensive French fashion brand announced a three-year sponsorship of the beloved art museum, and then staged a show in its galleries for Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest collection. Fashion brands utilizing museum spaces and museums doing deals with corporations aren’t new. But something about the headline involving The Frick, Louis Vuitton, and a collaboration with the estate of Keith Haring makes me feel that little has meaning anymore and anything is up for grabs.

​Another nail in the coffin of the Delta Cult (people are finally waking up to how devalued its miles are compared to competitors)

​The steady expansion of the Edition Hotels brand (the one created by Studio 54 impresario Ian Schrager and owned by Marriott) had started to bore me, but the brand opening up a property inside the amazing John Hancock Tower in Chicago would be pretty cool!

​The number of things to do in D.C. only seems to grow and grow, and now on June 25 the undercroft of the Lincoln Memorial will open! There has been construction around the Memorial forever, but now, the NPS wrote, “a once-hidden space beneath the memorial [invites] visitors into a series of immersive exhibits. Here, history isn’t just something you read. The exhibits tell the story of how the memorial was built, how it has shaped Americans’ understanding of President Lincoln, and how its meaning has evolved for generations who have gathered there.”

​I don’t want to bleat on about it, but want to emphasize for probably the 20th time that hotel rewards program are really bad. Even the program that used to be the exception—World of Hyatt—is now worse thanks to a recent overhaul, according to a report from Thrifty Traveler and The Points Guy.

​The bifurcation of commercial air travel between the haves and have-nots continues apace. This time, Miami International Airport has announced an official opening date for its first private terminal—June 30. For about $1,300 extra, you can go to a separate terminal without the teeming masses, crowded lounges, with your own TSA agent, and be chauffeured directly to the plane.

​If the World Cup is anything but a disaster for the U.S. travel industry, given the hype and resources put into it, a lot of people will have to eat crow. But it really looks like a disaster, and now the latest reporting has a staggering statistic: “Up to 70% of rooms reserved by Fifa in Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Seattle have been cancelled.”

​This might be the funniest tweet I’ve seen in a while…

​…but the review is actually an interesting read.

British Airways was already one of the worst airlines when it came to fees on mile redemptions … and it just announced it’s hiking them even more…

​I had no idea people hated Shibumis (those beach shade contraptions that look like fluttering flags). I’ve never used one, but have considered it because of how annoying umbrellas are when there’s even the slightest breeze.

​Details are scarce, but the U.S. government is looking to scale back its proposed rule that visitors to the country applying for an ESTA will have to turn over five years’ worth of social media. However, it doesn’t look like a full pullback from the proposal.

​Sometimes I really hate the timeline we’re on. One of the reasons is the incessant stream of terms marketers/media outlets/annoying people come up with to describe things people have always done. The latest offender? “Dusking.” Apparently, it’s “the trend encouraging people to slow down and watch the sunset.” Lol

STORIES I LOVED OR WISH I’D DONE

​The Wall Street Journal of late has really impressed me with a number of pieces it’s run lately on Washington, D.C., especially considering the New York Times can often barely conceal its disdain. A year ago, it ran an ode to the C&O Canal, which I’d argue is one of the greatest urban amenities in the world. Earlier this year, it ran an op-ed titled: I left my heart in Washington, D.C. And now the paper is out with a FANTASTIC piece giving the Washington D.C. metro system long overdue plaudits for its incredible design. Its futurist stations were given the prestigious AIA 25 Year Award (a great measurement of a design standing the test of time) and are the coolest by far in the U.S. “The Washington Metro, a Wonder Underground,” is the title of the piece, and here are the incredible opening paragraphs by Nathan Eddy:

“Washington is a city obsessed with projecting power through stone, and littered with overinflated federal buildings of white marble dressed up with colonnades, pediments, and porticos. It’s an official architecture that often mistakes size for seriousness. The result, typically, is more pompous than practical.

​Buried under the capital’s broad avenues, however, are a series of public spaces eschewing classical ornament yet achieving something rarer—a monumental and timeless civic dignity.

Welcome to the Washington Metro, home to the country’s most enthralling rapid transit stations, a Brutalist masterpiece with a design discipline so consistent it reads like an architectural civics lesson.”

​I am the second-biggest Frank Furness stan I know (the biggest stan knows who they are). This Philadelphia architect was sort of the Heironymous Bosch of American architecture, with a style so unique and almost out of nowhere, it’s hard to place him in the evolution of our national aesthetic. Tracing his work is one of my favorite ways to see this great American city. So I was really happy to see CBS Sunday Morning (one of the last great TV shows) do a segment on him and his enduring legacy in the city! Also, Furness plays a key role in the unbelievable “family tree” of American Architecture, as he connects Richard Morris Hunt to Louis Sullivan.

​God, this Tampa Bay Times investigation into the Michelin Star restaurant Ebbe is delicious:

“Sometimes, staff said, dishes that purportedly featured exotic fare would be composed of less glamorous, cheaper ingredients. A smoked creme fraiche that was sour cream. Sole that was billed as turbot. On a multicourse menu that highlighted seasonal gourmet cuisine, both from Florida and abroad, there were occasions when roughly half or more of the produce came from Walmart, five employees said.”

​If the New York Times travel section, going forward, only did pieces giving honest reviews of luxury hotels as it did for Raffles at the OWO and the Chancery Rosewood, I would have my subscription on auto-renew forever. THIS is what publications with a budget and a reputation should be doing with hotel coverage because there is so much puff and flattery and disservice done to readers these days.

​I don’t want to spoil it, but the author of that New York Times piece notes that one of the very expensive rooms is pretty unremarkable, which leads me to this Bloomberg piece titled: “Cheap Hotel or Luxury Stay? Why All Rooms Look the Same.” The piece is free with that link, and you really should read it because it has cool interactive quizzes built throughout so you really see just how bad it all has gotten. And it has a very good analysis of how this happened.

​Katie Lockhart in Salon on “The cult of New England Chinese food.”

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

The winning bid for the Louvre Museum renovation was announced and includes Selldorf Architects, which did The Frick

Eurostar announces agreement that could have direct London-to-Zurich trains in six hours by 2030

Spain’s top court ruled against a law requiring owners to register before joining Airbnb and other short term rental companies

Air France and Airbus found guilty of manslaughter over 2009 plane crash

Could Washington, D.C. be getting a fourth airport?

JR’s transformation of the Pont Neuf in Paris into an artificial cave is now up

Airbnb announces new capabilities like booking boutique hotels, car rentals, and groceries in its app

Boston Logan is introducing the ability to clear TSA at a remote terminal and bus in to the airport

Airbnb thinks content creators will help it expand service adoption with locals

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Leaving those beloved memories to grow ever more romanticized with time is the safe bet.

That fear of being disappointed a second go-round was on my mind this last week because I was returning to Vancouver, a city whose charms so thoroughly seduced me that I wrote about it nearly two years ago.

Vancouver’s encore performance was owed to a terrifying proposition—I was moderating a panel at Web Summit with the Chief Animal Officer of Colossal Bioscience, the firm pursuing the de-extinction of species like the woolly mammoth, dodo, and Tasmanian tiger. (If you want to watch that interview, you can click here or watch below and scroll to 51:40ish.)

​I gave myself a few days before and after the conference to revisit highlights from my previous time, and see more of the surrounding area. Those handful of days snatched out of a busy schedule were spent biking, lounging on a beach, walking, hiking, swimming, and reading and writing in a cottage on a cove.

I can’t say I found any hidden gems or cracked the Vancouver dining scene. The stores, neighborhoods, beaches, and idyllic little seaside towns I visited would surprise no one. My sole interesting observation this time around is that rhododendrons in every color and shade imaginable play the role here that hydrangeas do in the northeast.

​But I would happily come back to Vancouver again and again and again to do all of it once more. It is now a city that does not disappoint. In fact, it might just be the world’s ultimate lifestyle city.

Or, as one friend who travels a lot wrote to me: “It is everything Seattle thinks it is.” 😳

Highlights of my week:

-Deep Cove. A cinematic little village where you can imagine wearing chunky sweaters and staring out your window. Bring a bathing suit as the water is incredibly clear on a sunny day.

-I rode my bike three times to Tower Beach. I love sitting there against a log and reading. The old men (always old men) walking by naked don’t bother me much, and the water is warm enough already to swim. Plus, the bike ride to and from the university takes you through Kitsilano and its Arts & Crafts houses, past a number of fun city beaches, and on trails in the university’s Endowment Lands.

-Riding a bike at night along the Seaside Greenway Seawall. You’re whipping around all these curved paths with the city skyline glittering across the harbor in between. Unbeatable.

-Gibsons. I rented a little guest house on the water just north of town. It rained 80% of the time, which had me curled up with a book and watching movies. The whole Sunshine Coast is magical, with a landscape that could compete with anywhere for drama. If you go, we had very good sushi from Sushi Bar Nagomi.

-Sunset margaritas at Cactus Club on Sunset Beach. I know, I know. It’s a chain and yada yada. But, the margaritas are actually good and the spot is unbeatable.

-Inform Interiors. This massive furniture store in Gastown is currently displaying pieces from the collection of Arthur Erickson, Vancouver’s most famous architect. Some very sexy pieces

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

​I love a lot of Herzog & de Meuron’s work, although I think the built result often falls short of the render. That being said, I think the Tour Triangle in Paris, which just topped out the other day at 180 meters, is ghastly. Now the third-tallest building in Paris, it just feels unnecessary, uninspired, and something we’ll all laugh about later as we do the Tour Montparnasse.

One of my favorite museums in NYC, the Neue Galerie, announced this week that it is merging with The Met. For the unfamiliar, the Neue holds the German and Austrian art collection of Ronald Lauder and is housed in one of the city’s Gilded Age palaces. I can’t predict what will come of this, though I imagine for the Lauder family, the incentive is knowing that their museum now has a long-term plan they don’t have to handle. I just hope the Met maintains the Neue’s charm.

Doing a prediction piece about anything 20 years from now is sort of a thankless task, but I found the Wall Street Journal’s “Frictionless Security and Supersonic Flights: What Travel Might Look Like in 20 Years” particularly irritating and bad. Surrounded by weekly evidence of the enshittification of tech (my latest experience being that the “gas” tab on Google Maps showed me parking garages in addition to gas stations), it somehow imagines a world in which AI travel agents will handle everything perfectly for us. Even more absurd is the picture painted by Scott Fleming, from Aon. “My agent will know the places I like, it will have insight into my finances, my budget, my risk tolerances, all my preferences from the kind of room I like to my pillow type,” he is quoted as saying. Now, I’d love to know how that matters to the types of hotels 99% of the population travels to. Lol, as if they’re going to spend time and human labor on resolving these things. I can’t even get luxury hotels to match whatever I filled out on their intake form, so I no longer do those.

Then there’s this nonsense: “If a health risk emerges on a route or a flight is disrupted, AI agents will negotiate a solution in real time. The system will monitor conditions continuously, rerouting, rebooking, and adjusting everything so that the traveler never has to make a call or chase a refund.” Every bit of reporting and surveying has shown that airline customers consistently choose to talk to a real person rather than a chatbot when resolving a situation. Why? Because there’s wiggle room with people. Not so with the machines.

​Then there’s the idea of the “distributed airport,” which Ty Osbaugh at the architectural firm Gensler tells the WSJ is the future. What is it? Basically, everybody in cities will just go to driverless taxi points scattered around and go through security there. Then they get conveyed to the airport, which will “consist of lean, airside-only gate areas: runways, tarmac and jet bridges that you simply walk onto.” Not sure how he pictures the people who have connections, the infrastructure required to build all these taxi ports in a country where infrastructure takes eons, the large numbers of customers who don’t live in cities, oh and the fact that airport design is currently headed in exactly the opposite direction—ever more massive and inefficient so they can get you to spend more time shopping.​

And in case you’re thinking about trusting these “AI” companies like ChatGPT, Anthropic/Claude, Gemini, and Grok, take a look at this paper that was making the rounds lately about how they all pushed their unsuspecting users to take higher-priced flights and other more expensive purchases because they were sponsored and therefore they made money for doing so…​

Also, the Musee de Carnavalet (history of Paris museum) is far from underrated these days. Otherwise, a pretty good list from the WSJ.​

When I flew to Palm Beach a few weeks ago on JetBlue, I did so by booking it through United, as that’s the airline I have status. I was surprised when checking in, as my boarding group number was bad, among other things. I had to ask the gate agent for something when I got there, so I also asked if there was some issue with my United number. Turns out, the rollout of United’s partnership with JetBlue has been going very slowly. In fact, she said the most common question she gets asked now is from United customers wondering why their ticket doesn’t reflect status. (FWIW, despite booking through United, my mileage earning from JetBlue never came through, and I had to file for missing miles, an act that always makes me feel like I’m scrounging for scraps.) This week, the airlines announced that status reciprocation is finally being rolled out.

I can eat crow when I’m wrong, and today I’m doing so because in JD Power’s 2026 customer satisfaction survey, Southwest topped customer satisfaction despite jacking up bag fees and other unlovable policies!

No company has ever managed to be all things for travel, and I truly don’t think anybody ever will. But that pipe dream has long pushed numerous companies over the years, from Expedia to Kayak to Google and now Uber and Airbnb, to spend lots of money and time doing so. History, though, isn’t my only reason for being skeptical of these Uber and Airbnb’s efforts—I just genuinely don’t understand how they accomplish becoming the “everything app” for travel. Anyways, this Skift column does a really good job laying out just how challenging what they’re trying to do is.

Kengo Kuma seems to be everywhere these days. I’ve found the firm’s projects reimagining the entrance to a historic cathedral and addition to the National Gallery less than pleasing. But I like their winning bid to expand the visitor center for Banff National Park. The existing one is historic but not particularly noteworthy. Yet Kuma’s design respects it without being beholden to it and introduces visitors to an elegant and sleek new center.

Not sure if this says more about baseball’s popularity, or the state of American entertainment…

​I got excited about the premise for this LA Material piece on why restaurants have gotten so loud. I am, after all, in my 30s now, and these kinds of things are suddenly vital questions. I mistakenly thought the writer had cracked the mystery of why they’re so loud, that there was some secret or clever explanation for why LA’s restaurants and bars are noisy. Instead, it was just a survey of different restaurants and their noise level. Oh well.​

The story about the five divers (and rescuer) who died during a cave scuba dive is horrifying. Everything about it is messed up. You will never, ever find me exploring underwater caves or swimming through tunnels.

30th Street Station in Philadelphia is one of the most beautiful train stations in the world, and the coffered ceiling is one of the most dramatic one can see. Now its restoration is complete so I feel like I need to pop up to Philly and see it!

​The Economist thinks the club with the best sound in the world is in a German suburb.

New York City’s iconic Bubble House may soon be no longer if its new owners don’t like it—it’s not protected. Would be cool if some museum in the city took the facade as a donation and displayed it a la the Met.

STORIES I LIKED OR WISH I’D DONE

While every other major hotel CEO seems to be out there blathering on about AI-this and AI-that or spewing consultant speak, I found this interview/profile in Skift with Peregrine Hospitality CEO Greg Kennealey refreshing and insightful. The firm, formerly known as KSL Resorts, manages or asset-manages properties owned by the private equity firm KSL. So the model is owned-and-operated as opposed to the franchise / management-fee one pursued by the big hotel groups. (I have recently learned that a lot of people don’t know that Marriott, Hilton, Four Seasons, etc., often don’t own the hotel you’re staying in.) I would argue that the decline in owned-and-operated mirrors the decline in brand loyalty and is why these groups have chased an ever-growing list of hotel brands. Kennealey and Peregrine also operate differently by being realistic about the boring and hard-nosed side of the business—operations. There is no sexy tech way out of good service and a well-run hotel, but I suppose that rarely sounds exciting or elicits the gobs of VC money floating out there.

​The plague of people leaving behind empty or nearly-empty luggage because of bag fees is something that has completely escaped me, so I enjoyed this column in USA Today that dives into the anecdotal-so-far phenomenon.

​An absolute delight! That’s how I’d describe this travelogue in The New York Times tracing Ben Franklin’s footsteps in France. Franklin was the most fun of the Founding Fathers, and I’ve long been remiss in pursuing my own hunt for what remains of the American delegation’s time in Paris, so this piece was very welcome.

​Very useful piece in the Washington Post—”How to avoid a terrible restaurant in Rome”—for anybody heading to Rome, or really any major destination in Europe these days. Lots of tidbits that had me nodding, from the red flag of a restaurant with thousands of reviews to a gelateria with colorful gelato piled sky high.

​I mentioned it last week, but if you’re into architecture even slightly, you should keep up with Dezeen’s series on parametricism as THE 21st century architectural style. This week, for instance, it tackled Seville’s instantly recognizable Metropol Parasol.

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

Southwest Airlines bans humanoid or animal-like robots

Abu Dhabi’s Sphere will be located on Yas Island

India’s Prime Minister Modi urged Indians to travel less, and industry analysts expect up to a 15% drop in demand as a result

United unveils new direct flight to Japan’s ski region

The Venus Grotto at Ludwig II’s Linderhof Palace in Bavaria has reopened

Montreal strippers plan walkout for F1 weekend

The EU unveiled a plan for single-ticket train booking across the continent

The Smithsonian Castle reopens this coming week

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​They are not cupcakes. They are not supposed to be light and fluffy with a sweet sponge. They shouldn’t glisten. The sweetness comes not from the bread (pumpkin and banana muffins being the exception, but I’d argue they should be in the cupcake family), but from the fruits packed in—blueberries, cranberries, rhubarb, etc. And there should be an emphasis on packed in. Nothing worse than a miserly muffin.

They also aren’t scones. Though their crumb can be coarse and there is an overlap between the pleasures of a muffin top and a scone, the muffin is softer as a whole.

I say all this because one of my favorite ways to see a city is through its bakeries. In the US, hunting for good bakeries is one of the most effective ways to find charming little neighborhoods or cool towns. It’s why I’ll always stop in Lawrence, Kansas for 1900 Barker.​

And when I spent a month in Amsterdam last year, I got to see virtually the whole city by working my way through a list of about 40 bakeries. Day after day, in more rain than shine, I cycled to each one as I built my guide for the city.

​(Amsterdam Guide: Where to Eat and What to Do)

The only reason as a kid I suffered through early morning basketball with my dad at the Navy base gym was the potential for getting a muffin at Ocean Coffee Roasters afterward. Their cranberry muffin was to die for. And their muffin tops were positively sprawling. My high school infirmary used the Jordan Marsh recipe for its muffins, which were always stacked outside its entrance, and I must’ve eaten four or five a day.

The first time I went to Perth, I stayed at the Alex Hotel, which was a dream because every day they had a new kind of muffin. While I can’t speak to today, ten years ago they made a top-notch muffin.

​But I cannot find a truly good muffin anymore. Which is strange, especially in the US, because we seem to have mastered the art of French breakfast pastries.

In learning how to make a true pain au chocolat, did we lose the art of the muffin?

All of this was triggered by my current trip to Vancouver.

First, at the new United Club in Newark (props, by the way, to United, it’s very nice). I should have known better than to think I’d get a good muffin here. For a long time, the airline has at least had the decency to have muffins with clear visual cues (glossy) that they were cupcakes, so I could stay away. But they rolled out muffins that resembled traditional ones, so I got excited.​

Then yesterday, I kicked off my late morning walk across Kitsilano toward UBC by trying a couple of bakeries. Popped into a Greek one first, got a decent spanakopita and a lovely bougatsa. Walked some more until I hit one of the higher-rated bakeries. Ordered a chai (I don’t drink coffee and don’t need caffeine, but I like the theatricality of drinking a hot drink, and it tastes like Cinnamon Toast Crunch milk) and, fatefully for you readers, a blueberry muffin.

One bite, and then in the trash.

Despite running up against insanity—trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results—I sadly will keep trying. If you have a spot that makes a good one, please let me know.

​DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

It’s always nice to be vindicated by a mainstream news outlet. It happened a few months ago with my Notre Dame criticisms, and now New York has gone and done a massive piece about the cult of Delta Air Lines, a month after my column. I am not really one of those “I did it first” folks, because that’s irritating and one rarely is, in fact, first. No, why I’m doing a bit of chest thumping is that one of the criticisms leveled at me was that I was making it up that people made Delta their personality, or that it was cult-like. But the New York feature has so many great details of people being so nuts about a company profiting off them!​

A great peg for the piece was the news that Delta is still on its unrelenting march to bifurcate its experience between premium and everybody else. Now, the airline announced that on flights less than 350 miles, only Delta First will get food and beverage service.

The whole “everything is AI” is a very annoying world to live in, and add Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s recent spiel about how the AI era represents personalizing based on whether customers want a hotel or a home under that category. Places personalized for this exact thing long before OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT and spigots of money flowed toward anything with AI slapped on it. Annoying!

The steady downward trend for Berlin was something that had completely escaped my attention. But it turns out that while the rest of Europe has long surpassed its 2019 visitor numbers, Berlin is still 15% shy of those visitor numbers. On top of that, most of its visitors (60%) are other Germans. The report talks a lot about the trash, the city metro and bus difficulties, and the diminishing cultural opportunities. I’d argue a lot of it is structural and cultural. On the structural front, Berlin has a dire airport situation with few long-haul flights. It was also destroyed by war and communist planning, so it doesn’t have that same Old World beauty that draws so many Americans to other European capitals.

And while the piece I read argued that clubs closing because of regulations and so on are what’s hurting it, I’d contend that the club-centric tourism model actually has doomed it. Everywhere else in the West, clubs are closing. Younger generations don’t party in the same way, and so it makes sense that Berlin would suffer. On top of that, Berlin’s club scene, at least reputationally, is so specific that it turns a lot of people away.

As somebody who drinks a prodigious amount of water each day, the push for more public bathrooms is a cause near and dear to my heart. So it’s pretty horrifying that, according to a recent study by the Royal Society for Public Health in the UK found that since just 2016, the number of public toilets in England has dropped 14 percent!

A year or so ago, I noted in this column that RyanAir’s CEO was making a push for drinking limits in airports. Well, that didn’t sit well with pub chain Wetherspoons (duh!), whose CEO took to The Times to rip the idea, stating, “A two-drink limit would be extraordinarily difficult to implement, short of breathalysing passengers, and would, in our opinion, be an overreaction — especially since many of the problems stem from incoming flights.”

Another week, and another story about how the World Cup is proving to be a bust so far for the US travel industry. This time, it’s Forbes reporting that “nearly 80% of U.S. hoteliers in 11 World Cup host cities say bookings are tracking below original forecasts.”

Plans for the expansion of the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, have been unveiled!​

Modern additions like visitor centers or bathrooms to historic estates are often terrible, so I will be curious to see what the final result of Isabel Strauss’s designs for the bathroom (replacing a porta-potty) at the Gropius House will be.​

Construction has begun on the plan to turn a church on the Upper West Side into the new Children’s Museum of Manhattan, and new renderings were released. I think it looks great?!

​STORIES I LIKED OR WISH I’D DONE

I subscribed to former WaPo book critic Ron Charles after the layoffs, and while I can’t keep up with his output, I am glad I opened his recent missive, “The Most Exciting Room in Washington” about a new exhibition at the Library of Congress that aims to get young visitors into doing research.

“The 4,000-square-foot gallery — seven years in the making — is like nothing I’ve seen before: an audacious effort to yank library research from the dank stacks of the public imagination and show kids how exciting and rewarding the quest for information can be.”

For what it’s worth, I used to work from the reading rooms at the Library of Congress when I didn’t have to be in an office, and getting sucked into research there is one of the few unadulterated joys I’ve ever had.​

Loved this AP piece about the civil war breaking out between Argentina’s provinces about who is to blame for the hantavirus.

Two Everest-related pieces that I had a hand in at National Geographic are worth your time. The first is a curtain-raiser on the two men who are trying to set a record for Everest’s south side. They’re mountain speed-runners, which is nuts. The second is an interview with Jon Krakauer in which he wrestles with his role in making Everest too popular. Standout line:

“most people who pay to be guided just want to say I climbed Everest. They don’t want to climb Everest, they want to have climbed Everest. I don’t blame them. But it makes me sad.”​

The New York Post write-around had better headlines, but this Wall Street Journal piece about the poo-nami ruining the beaches at Coronado is quite something: “One of California’s Ritziest Beach Towns Has a Problem: A Tsunami of Raw Sewage”

“The World Has Officially Reached Peak Bagel”

Dezeen has decided that the defining architectural style of the 21st century so far is parametricism (think Zaha Hadid’s Aliyev Center in Baku). Whether you agree or not, its series on it is incredibly useful. You can start with Owen Hopkins’s essay on what it actually is.

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

Miami might be getting a second airport

In 2028, there will be a train connecting Oslo, Copenhagen, Hamburg, and Berlin, without transfers

Sveti Stefan, an island off Montenegro closed after dispute between Aman and locals, will reopen for the first time in five years

US to begin revoking passports of parents who owe child support

A German tourist won a court judgment for not being able to use sun beds at a hotel

AirBnb and Delta expanded their partnership to Experiences and Services, with the reward now being 3X miles rather than 1X for homes

The Meridian Hill Park fountains are finally flowing

Delta unveiled a plane with a staggered 44 first class seats

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Halfway through my week in the city, I was exhausted and dreading the weekend ahead of activities. I don’t know how people do this year-round, or how I used to when I lived here. (I think some combination of five days a week in the office and being in my 20s.)​

One of the reasons I was excited to be in the city was that while there is a lot that is new, four of its major cultural attractions have been given overhauls and reopened recently, and I wanted to check them out. They are: the Frick Collection, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the New Museum, and the Sotheby’s Breuer.

On a sunny afternoon between meetings, I found a window to stroll into the Frick. Built on the lot of the destroyed Lenox Library (a shame we don’t have time for), the Frick was once the home of robber baron Henry Clay Frick. Devoted in the latter half of his life to an acquisitiveness matched only by the Wideners, Frick amassed a stupendous hoard of artwork that he left to be displayed to the public. His mansion was designed by Thomas Hastings of Carrere & Hastings (known for the New York Public Library and the superbly elegant House and Senate Office Buildings) and expanded by John Russell Pope (the ultimate perfectionist behind the National Gallery, Jefferson Memorial, National Archives, and Bonniecrest, the greatest Tudor Revival house in America) to become a museum.

For most of the 2020s, the museum was closed for a renovation and expansion by Selldorf Architects, which would add more space and relieve the congestion besieging the ever more popular museum. Touching anything here was controversial, and I have to say that if you come to the Frick purely to look at the art and go through the historic rooms, you have little to nothing to complain about in terms of Selldorf’s work.

Walking through these rooms is to be battered with sumptuous perfection—only the best materials and art laid out by only the best designers and artisans. Few museums or even palaces worldwide hold a candle.

The best defense of the new modern additions I can offer—a tower attached to Pope’s library tower, a cafe, and a subterranean series of rooms—is that you don’t really see them much. The new cafe failed to make me want to stop and stay a while—it seems stuck between wanting to provide lip-service to the historic while also being modern. And the subterranean coffee bar feels like the kind of coffee bar you’d find in a European museum; i.e., an afterthought. The new tower thankfully, is blocked by venetian blinds.

While undergoing its renovation, the collection of the Frick was housed in the Breuer on Madison Avenue. The New York Times felt seeing these historic pieces in the Brutalist settings akin to “coming across your high school chemistry teacher on spring break in Cocoa Beach.” I found it particularly engrossing. Never a huge fan of Fragonard, for instance, seeing these frothy pieces in such a stripped-down setting was a favorite. Once the Frick moved out, Sotheby’s moved in and made it its flagship.

Coming for the building alone is worth the schlep, with its Scarpa-like attention to materials and trapezoidal windows onto the Upper East Side. It usually pays to wait to visit for a time when a particularly impressive holding to be going for sale, but I couldn’t. And there’s something nice about seeing how much art is available, should you strike it rich, even by artists we think of as only being available in museums.

The greatest draw of Sotheby’s on a day without a blockbuster sale, besides being free, is the crowd. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an odd and grab-bag collection of visitors anywhere. I don’t know how to articulate the range you’ll see, but it was fascinating. Perhaps it was that in the course of a few floors, there is such a variety of art on offer that it draws all types.

The two remaining venues I wanted to see are on opposite ends of the island. One was the New Museum on Bowery, which is dedicated to, you guessed it, new art. And up in Harlem, the reopened Studio Museum, which showcases art by artists of African descent.

I must admit up front that part of my experience of the New Museum was colored by expectations set by coverage of the allegedly shoddy construction. As much as the art pulled my attention, so, too, was I focused on evidence that things weren’t up to standard here. From dirty carpets to the repurposing of garbage cans to block stairs—I couldn’t escape that lens.

My experience was also determined by the simple fact that a lot of contemporary art’s appeal escapes me. It is often too conceptual, motivated by things that don’t motivate me, or visually uninteresting to me.

From the outside, I don’t mind the new OMA/Koolhaas-designed shard-of-glass tower, though there is something almost rote about it. And I enjoyed that you didn’t really notice anything as you move from gallery to gallery inside. That said, it was jam-packed, both in terms of people and often in terms of how the art was displayed. This added to my predisposition to find much of this art verging on curio or spectacle. (My favorite works were actually old—19th-century illustrations by Albert Robida of how he imagined the 20th century would be.)​

Last, but certainly not least, is the Studio Museum in Harlem by Adjaye Associates, which also designed the National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC and 130 William. Not that you ever need a reason to go to Harlem, which is arguably one of the most famous neighborhoods in the world, but the museum serves as an easy anchor for a trip uptown for those who have never ventured. I spent a fair amount of time out in front of the building, both before and after I wandered its halls for a press preview of its spring exhibitions. I still can’t decide how I feel about it, as I love the texture of it, and how it is loud with its architecture in this historic neighborhood without being dominating. The effect of the boxes all jumbled to create its form, though, is lost on me.

If the New Museum felt overwhelming, the Studio Museum’s interior gives its visitors and its art a chance to breathe. I wasn’t pressed wandering its well-lit halls, and loved how windows often brought in the historic surrounding buildings. Its newest draw is the exhibition “Fade,” which focuses on emerging artists, a category I always love because of this sense that you could be looking at the next big thing. Or, you’re getting a look at somebody’s journey toward artistic maturity.

There is one exception to the whole giving-its-art-room-to-breathe bit. It’s the new piece, “Bleed,” a wall-length textile work by Kapwani Kiwanga done an incredible disservice by the narrow hall in which it is displayed, making it impossible to take it all in at once.

Having made it to all four, with their varied approaches, content, and locations, I feel like I had a “successful” New York visit. Sure, I may have spent ungodly amounts of money on food and drink, but I also got to experience the spaces that will shape how we display and talk about art for years to come.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

​Everything about the Uber/Expedia deal is annoying. The first is that while Silicon Valley is obsessed with having an “everything app,” I don’t know any consumer who is. And the only way you have an “everything app” is with monopolistic practices that make things worse for everybody. Second, Uber’s users will now get 10% back in rewards for bookings made via Uber on Expedia … which is the same beloved reward program Expedia killed on Hotels.com to replace with the universally reviled One Key! Anyways, from Uber’s perspective, this is a likely money-losing venture that strengthens its subscription business. I’m probably the target for this, as I don’t use Uber or Uber Eats enough to justify Uber One, but if I could get 10% back on hotel bookings, that suddenly looks pretty good!​

Strongly dislike the Kengo Kuma-design for the entrance to this historic Angers Cathedral. What on earth?!

There’s a lot of hand-wringing online about the demise of Spirit Airlines and who is to blame. Some of you probably don’t care all that much, which is my first instinct. I never actually flew Spirit. But I benefited, and so have you. Spirit forced the big mainline carriers to keep prices down, especially in cities where Spirit competed for passengers. For that alone, we are all worse off without Spirit.

I am becoming more and more a fan of forcing us to put our phones down. Mainly because I’m not sure we can ever do it ourselves or will want to. Case in point is how I reacted to this BBC story about safaris that are now banning cell phone usage. My first instinct was, “Hell no.” But then I sat with it a bit and thought, “Why on earth do I need to take all those pictures and videos for? So I can make other people sit through them as if they’ve never seen a lion before?!”

​Designs for IKEA’s Museum of Furniture Studies feel apt…

STORIES I LOVED OR WISH I’D DONE

One of the most freeing things I’ve ever done was the sauna on the lake in Zurich. Not only did it feel great, but there was something about being amongst all those naked bodies—male and female—that felt like a reset in the digital age where we compare ourselves to those put forth on Instagram. That said, I’ve never gone to a nude beach. And it’s never occurred to me to go to a nude resort. So, it’s news to me that they’re facing a huge crisis with many of them closing in recent years. This Slate piece is an incredible look at the history of the nudist movement and where it stands today. It certainly gave me a lot more respect for a community I thought of as fringe or frivolous. But I don’t think it emphasizes enough that the real risk to nudism today is simply one we all can’t escape—somebody photographing or videotaping you without you knowing.

Almost as much as I like a piece that upends my smug beliefs, I enjoy a piece that confirms something I’ve derided. I don’t like the design of the new V&A East Museum, and so found myself nodding at this Wall Street Journal review of it, which dubbed “the institution’s newest outpost … frustratingly uneven.”

If you’ve found yourself interested in the steady drumbeat of stories about the troubles facing Los Angeles, you simply must read this simple but powerful column by Shelby Grad about why this particular time in LA’s history feels different. Titled, “Misery and malaise cloud L.A. Why it feels so hopeless this time,” it’s worth the time.

Truly an incredible piece in the New York Times about the only two towns in the world—one in Mexico and one in Norway—that allow you to swim with orcas. I actually still don’t know how I feel after reading it, whether it’s one of the most incredible experiences left in a world so at odds with wildness, or incredibly stupid and bound to end in either tragedy or be sucked of all its wonder.

​I caused a bit of a stir last week by slapping the wrists of The Times for calling St. Louis “obscure,” so it’s kind of fortuitous that The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is running an entire series of editorial deep dives on the state of the city and what can be done. Best of all, they’re free. Others in the series:

Crime, chaos and perception

Office space, residency — and vacancy

Streets, sidewalks and storefronts

Conventions, tourism and reputation

Bill Bensley is very cool (if you’re into hotel design at all, he’s a must-know name), and his personal home doesn’t disappoint!​

Normally, I hate stories about things you should do in a hotel room because they’re written by neurotic messes, but the reason you should flush a hotel toilet as soon as you walk in is actually a good one!

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

U.S. to put Trump’s face on new passports

Humanoid robots to become baggage handlers in Japan airport experiment

NASA captured the sinking of Mexico City from space

Santorini announces new restrictions after scientists flagged volcanic activity

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Need to show you’re not basic? That you like “real” cities with a commitment to urbanism? That you seek depth? Say you don’t like LA. That you “don’t get it” or there’s nothing interesting to do or nobody interesting to do it with.

Ironic, given that sort of stance signals to me the opposite of what they’re intending. The Los Angeles area has 10 million people with a wide range of neighborhoods, and you couldn’t find anybody or anything interesting?

The LA hate popped up again this past week because of something NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo said on the podcast “Gogi’s Garage.” Asked if he’d rather be traded to Miami or Los Angeles, he responded, “Miami, Miami, Miami. I think LA is superficial. I don’t like LA.”​

Twitter, as one might imagine, erupted.

​Put aside for a second the contention that Miami is not superficial, or less superficial than LA.

​(That’s really hard to put aside.)

​Los Angeles faces a tide of woes right now, from a spate of natural disasters, bad governance, a downturn in foreign tourism, an industry economic crisis, and so on. And yet, it’s still one of the most special places to visit. You can start the morning with a hike, grab a bite, and then shoot over to the beach for the day. Chase the sunset before returning and having dinner at one of hundreds of its great restaurants in one of the most diverse places on Earth or a concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

If you’re keen on a night out, there are parties in the hills and a burgeoning underground rave scene. Celebrities really are everywhere, if you know where to look. And if you never want to see one, you don’t have to.

It is a city full of writers, small-time and famous. Comedians. Singers. Dancers. Artists. Designers. And on and on. My two closest friends there are a writer and a stylist who travels around with a chessboard.​

I’ve already got my weekend picked this summer, and can’t wait.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

Listen, I know Saint Louis has its troubles. BUT it is horrible that The Times wrote a story about going to St. Louis on the new BA flight and headlined it: “Inside the obscure US city with new flights from the UK.” It’s definitely underrated, and for sure overlooked and passed over. But obscure!? Jeez. Also, the writer clearly hasn’t traveled much around the U.S. because they wrote about the St. Louis Art Museum: “Unusually for the US, the gallery is free.” The U.S., unlike Europe, is filled with free art museums. Maybe they’ve just been to New York?

When I first saw the tweet pushing for the preservation of 10 Cabot Square in Canary Wharf by SOM, I kinda snorted. C20, the organization that fights to preserve modern architecture in England, wrote that the building is “in a Neoclassical Chicago style, and is the finest example of this type of architecture remaining in Canary Wharf.” It goes on to say that it is, “resolutely American in its stylings, with Sullivan-like ornament and a high-quality façade system of brick and stone clad panels, meeting more traditionally British features such as the arcades, ‘inspired by enclosed passages off Piccadilly’. The building is an exceptionally well-designed synthesis of the early Chicago skyscraper and its London context.”

Now, I had never even heard of Neoclassical Chicago as a category, unlike, say, Chicago School. And I can’t for the life of me see Louis Sullivan in this building. Pale imitation would even be a stretch. That said, we are going to have to sort out, quickly, what to do with all the post-modern and historicist architecture across the globe that is hitting its sell-by date. Especially since they aren’t exactly beloved. From icons like the San Francisco Centre to more snoozy ones like 10 Cabot Square, which are the ones worth saving, and which can we let be knocked down for bigger and better things?

YES!!!! Yes!!! It is impossible to relax in an airport nowadays. It’s bad enough with the people who take their calls with AirPods on or watch videos with no headphones at all. But the incessant announcements are terrible. I would actually extend this as well to the onboard experience. Every time I’ve flown of late, the stream of announcements by flight attendants is unending. What happened to quiet?!

Want to know if an event has gone past the point of being something special? When the mega-corporations arrive to do activations. Case in point? McDonald’s opened a “Damien Hirst-informed ball pit” for Salone del Mobile Milano…

Travel reporter Zach Griff posted a photo of an offer from the Ritz-Carlton that was willing to give a guest 10,000 Bonvoy points to check out early. I doubt it will catch on, but if it did, I would definitely be a willing participant on many a trip. Especially if it meant there was a system-wide effect where getting into your room early (consistently much more valuable for me, because I’ve just traveled) became more likely.

I mentioned last week that the World Cup is looking like a bust for the on-the-verge-of-desperation travel industry in the U.S., and now even the more resilient NYC hotel industry is seeing no boost. In fact, it’s seen a decline from last year! According to BusinessWeek, “just 18% of available rooms between June 13, date of the first match at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, and July 19, when the venue hosts the World Cup final. The comparable figure this time a year ago was 26%, according to data compiled by CoStar Group Inc. earlier this month.” The only place that’s seeing a strong boost so far? Houston.

Yes, the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall was often frustratingly murky. But any solution to that should enable its core function–reflecting the monuments! I’m not a pool expert, but it seems to me that turning the Reflecting Pool into that of an aquamarine hotel pool does not do that…

​I am waffling a bit on my previous biting criticism of Foster+Partners’ design for the Queen Elizabeth II memorial. At least in renderings of its final proposal, it looks like a subtle and elegant tribute. While still not knock-me-down inspiring, it’s not godawful.

The Mayan Train–the signature domestic project of former President Obrador–is a disastrous boondoggle, and Reuters has a brutal piece detailing the numerous ways it hasn’t met its promises (something pretty much most critics predicted).

​STORIES I LIKED OR WISH I’D DONE

​I just became a print subscriber to Work in Progress because I couldn’t get past how beautiful the snapshots of the illustrations are for its epic “Why Japan has such good railways” feature. And the first issue I’ll get is the railways one, so I’m pumped because of all the print-exclusive artwork. But if you’ve ever been to Japan or dreamed of going, and are curious about how it managed to have such an incredible rail system, this essay is a must-read. (Which is why I’ve seen it shared over and over on social media this week.)

I’ve got a few reasons I need to go to Chicago soon, one certainly being the Obama center. But this Fast Company feature on the largest magic venue in the world that just opened there is another great incentive. Also, loved the opener by Mark Wilson:

“The last time I set foot in this historic Chicago mansion built in the heart of Michigan Avenue, I’d been served one less-than-generous slice of lukewarm prime rib. This is back when it was a Lawry’s steakhouse. I remember white tablecloths, silver serving trays, one decent staircase, and just the stodgiest of old rooms that felt less like I was in the Gilded Age than at a funeral parlor.​

Now, when I step inside the lobby, a large wooden door slides open in front of me. I enter a room with a ringing telephone. And when I pick it up, my journey begins…”

​There is plenty to say (and much has been said) about the layoffs at the Washington Post. Its travel/lifestyle sections, though, seem to be producing fewer but really pointed, high-quality stories that I want to read. Last week it was about beaded glasses, and this week the paper tackled the topic that just won’t go away on social media: “Are European supermarkets actually better and cheaper than American?” Runner-up in the last week from the Washington Post? “We tried to get into Berlin’s most famous nightclubs. It was humbling.”

Local news is irreplaceable, and NJ Spotlight News is showing us why with its report that the baggage scales at Newark Airport are malfunctioning a quarter of the time, meaning passengers may be paying more than they should.

How to not embarrass yourself in a British pub

Vegas is a destination I’ve failed. I don’t enjoy gambling, nor do I really enjoy seeing people gamble. And I’ve never been the kind of guy to fly four hours just to see a show. That said, I am still curious about what the experience at The Sphere is like and would like to go. And if they’ve gotten the interest of a crank like me, they’re doing something right. And the numbers back that up. According to a new Wall Street Journal story, The Sphere is now the highest-grossing arena in the world. And the piece has a fascinating insight: “the performance space that is the most cutting-edge technically works with bands whose frontmen are old enough to have decades of greatest hits that everyone knows by heart.”​

“One of the Most Famous Views in American Art Is Now Open to the Public”

Can’t beat this description of the new Orient Express megayacht/cruise ship in the FT:

​“At 220 metres long, it looks like the love child of a sheikh’s superyacht, a cruise liner and a child’s drawing of a sailboat, its three carbon-fibre masts rising more than 100 metres above the waterline.”

United CEO Scott Kirby has quickly approached that rare circle of American CEOs who become household names. He’s not there yet, but as an outspoken, brash, and leading a company that has improved rapidly, he’s become more and more visible. There is a teeny bit of a flying-too-close-to-the-sun vibe about him of late, but perhaps that’s just my personal taste. The Wall Street Journal has a fantastic profile about him out this week, and there is a detail that has sent tongues wagging: a former card-counter, Kirby is actually banned from a number of gambling establishments across the country!​

I had no idea that bread consumption in France has been plummeting.

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

South Africa’s Robben Island to convert prison guard houses into guest lodging

Texas Hill Country is getting an Aman

The famed Hedges Inn in East Hampton is officially reopening June 11

United CEO says no free wifi on non-Starlink flights

Vail Resorts says ski visits were down nearly 15% this past winter

Emirates wants to add private bathrooms to first class suites

Athens is weighing banning new hotels

American, French, Spanish, and even Italian from other parts of the country. Few that I know ever found themselves embracing or embraced by the epicenter of modern Italian life.​

Still, Milan keeps cropping up. Italy’s tax breaks have introduced a flood of wealthy Italians returning home alongside ex-pats. The demise (or weakness, if demise is too strong a word) of the London and New York City fashion industries has made Milan the only counterweight to Paris, and its houses—Prada, Versace, Bottega, etc—ever more dominant. Private member clubs are opening, sleek new overpriced hotels are popping up, and trend story after trend story about Milan’s moment gets published. Salone del Mobile, the interior design festival that is about to commence, has become a seminal component to the calendar of the peripatetic and preening.

Some of the attention to Milan is driven by a combination of unbearable crowds elsewhere and a persistent sense that Milan, as the center of modern Italy, is simply a place that demands a visit.

And yet.

Despite visiting for years, I still find Milan a funny city for tourists. It lacks the obvious beauty of Rome, Venice, or Florence, and therefore little of that romantic pull. Even b-tier cities like Bologna, Turin, and Genoa are more exquisite in parts—and gritty Naples, too, has more to latch onto and love.

It has far less “to do” than any European city of its size and import. That isn’t to say its museums aren’t lovely or don’t put on great exhibitions, but it doesn’t have the heft. The Prada Foundation, its flashy contemporary wonder, has always disappointed me. It’s a gobsmacking sin that it charges an entrance fee. Its architecture already feels like it grabbed the wrong end of the 21st-century stick (unlike, let’s say, Glenstone), and its shows veer more toward spectacle.

Despite its sheen of fashion glamour, Milan’s day-to-day is decidedly bourgeois. Business still rules here, which is reflected in the solemn blocks of shades-of-gray edifices and the eerie quiet. At night, even the Duomo and its surrounding blocks are a ghost town. On the weekends, its residents flee, either to the mountains or to the sea, or to another more exciting city altogether.

The tourists coming in droves for shopping have always perplexed me, because the famous brands and stores here are the same you’d get anywhere else. (Furniture and decorative arts shopping, on the other hand, is stellar here.)

And the food is particularly funny, as what foreigners will think of as traditional Italian is far from traditional Milan, whose “authentic” restaurants lean into its history as the epicenter for fish in Italy, or have dishes you’ve never heard of and seem more like something pre-or-right-around-the Columbian exchange.

I don’t intend for this column to beat up on Milan. It’s an easy city to get around in, and spending a couple of days there with Milanese friends is always pleasant. It’s one of the most fun cities to be nosy in. Any time a door or gate opens, and you can gaze into its famed building entryways, is a treat. (I’ve also spent an inordinate amount of time hiding out from rainstorms in them.)

I’d always happily return, but if you told me I never could, I would likely meet that with a shrug.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES​

One of the frequent misinterpretations from my column the other week on the end of the cult of Delta was that I was in the tank for United. So let me be clear. My “loyalty” to United extends as far as the company rewards it. For international travel in DC, it’s the only mainline carrier with a hub, and I have enjoyed the ways in which it has stepped up its game. But it is still a for-profit publicly traded company that looks at me as somebody it wants to get as much money out of as possible—whether by flying me or by fees from its affiliated credit cards—and I want to give it as little as possible. So when United announced its unbundling of business class (i.e., business basic), I, along with others, expected that to make flights more expensive, not less. So I do not feel betrayed, nor am I surprised, by reporting this week by Zach Griff that that is exactly what happened:

​​The drive along 95, whether from DC or NYC, to New England is a brutal one. You’re bound to hit incomprehensible traffic somewhere, and that somewhere is always Connecticut. If not Stamford, it’s New Haven, and if not New Haven, it’s New London. Out of the three, New Haven is the most maddening stretch with twists and turns that will have you veering along a highway that seems unnecessarily vertiginous. What is also unnecessary is that the urban cohesion of many of Connecticut’s struggling cities was destroyed by 95. And New Haven, cut off from the water, may be the worst of all.

​There have been a lot of eyerolls about the news this week that United CEO Scott Kirby floated a merger between United and American. It seems like an impossible and untenable proposal, but depending on how you look at what’s happening in the airline industry right now (Spirit looking for a government bailout and whispers of a possible JetBlue collapse), anything could be possible once the long-term ramifications of skyrocketing jet fuel prices play out.

There is little love lost for me when it comes to I.M. Pei. His planning ideas were part of an urban renewal movement in the 1960s and 70s that ruined American cities to such a degree that I often despair they’ll ever recover. As for his buildings themselves, there are some I adore, like the East Building at the NGA and the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, and many I equally loathe (the entire L’Enfant Plaza complex and the Lamar Building penthouse addition). His Dallas City Hall falls somewhere in between, though I’ve long felt that slanted part looks cool.

Well, it’s now on the chopping block for a new 50-acre entertainment district proposed by the Dallas Mavericks. I’m not terribly familiar with Dallas or its needs, so I don’t want to opine too much, but I would say that we should remember how much we lament what previous generations destroyed, and so if there’s a way to save it I’d be in favor of it.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who has noticed a general “enshittification” of Uber.

Wait times are meaningless, both those that the app predicts before you order a car and even those once you’ve got a driver.​

The Centre Pompidou Hanwha (a partner to the iconic one in Paris) is set to open in June, and the visuals below have been released. I gotta say. Boring!

​Not boring? A developer is planning to renovate the very cool Yamasaki-designed Northwestern National Life Building in Minneapolis into a hotel!

Few good things last forever, and that appears to be the case with Air France/KLM as a rewards program alternative for Europhile Americans. Touted just a couple of years ago for its incredible value and offerings, things have changed. “Flying Blue recently increased fees on award tickets by approximately $60 each way in economy class and a whopping $100 each way in business class,” reports Thrifty Traveler. “That makes the airlines’ already sizable surcharges on economy awards even worse: You’ll now pay close to $400 (and sometimes more) for a roundtrip to Europe.”

Everything about the FIFA World Cup in the U.S. sounds like a disaster. The allegations of ticket scamming by FIFA, the kerfuffle over transport (FIFA versus New Jersey has been hilarious to watch), and cratering expectations of any kind of economic boom, with hotels that once expected full occupancy slashing prices.

…and it looks like similar issues may be headed LA Olympics’ way…

It’s about damn time! For more than 20 years, since voters assented to rail service between Denver and Boulder (a horrible drive), nothing has happened. But the state has struck a deal with BNSF to finally move forward on the project that will eventually connect all of the Front Range.​

There were so many design unveilings in the last couple of weeks, from Delta’s new Delta One suites to Amtrak’s long-distance train cars and Air Canada’s plans. But with all the chaos, shrinking benefits, and poor planning (looking at you, Amtrak), it all kinda felt like putting lipstick on a pig.

Hmmmm…Kengo Kuma won the bid to design a new wing for the National Gallery in London and released renderings

​STORIES I LOVED OR WISH I DID

Waaaaaiiiit, have soft-serve margaritas always been a thing, and I’m just late to it?? I might have to pop up to Philadelphia soon after reading this Inquirer piece about the “it” drink of the summer there being soft-serve margaritas!

Few restaurants are as consistently lovely as the Afghani restaurant Lapis in D.C., and this Washington Post profile of the Popals (who also created Lutece and Pascual) is a great window into this low-key family.

The most-talked about piece this week in my circles was The Atlantic cover story by Caity Weaver: “I Found It: The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America” … the answer is actually surprising, but I don’t disagree.

It’s a teeny tiny column in The Economist, but I enjoyed this little window into Spanish history and contemporary politics via the fight over where Picasso’s Guernica should hang. It’s currently in the Reina Sofia, but the Basques, who have political leverage, want it in the north.​

This Wall Street Journal epic: “Inside a Corporate Retreat That Went Very Badly Wrong” … I mean, you’ve got it all—employees so sick an IV is nailed to their bedpost, eating dead tarantula, people passing out during training with a former Navy SEAL…

I have now spent more of my life living in Washington, D.C. than anywhere else, and that’s a choice I’m largely satisfied with. It’s a city, though, that draws an incessant barrage of snide attacks from other cities, so it was thrilling to read this WSJ op-ed, “I Left My Heart in Washington, D.C.: New York is great, but the nation’s capital made me who I am.”

If you happen to be going to Milan or want to learn more about it, I looooved this FT feature about its working class case di ringhiera (“railing block homes”) you see all over the city. The piece isn’t just about the buildings, though, but captures a city struggling with a boomlet that has exacerbated what is arguably the worst inequality in western Europe.​

The wonderful Edward Russell’s piece in CNN about United’s planes that have been in service since 1991 (that’s 35 years!), and how you wouldn’t even realize it because of swanky updates.​

As a sort of representation of how so many entities that once symbolized something have chosen mass appeal and gimmicks, this Golf Digest takedown of what happened to the Masters is worth a read.

The Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens in Houston is pretty awesome. The former home of local philanthropist Ima Hogg (yes, her parents did her dirty), it’s filled with an unbelievable collection of American furniture and decorative objects stretching back to the country’s inception. If you’re ever in Houston, you should definitely pop by, and it’s nice to read that its current director is not only focused on getting people to visit more, but getting them to explore its notable grounds.

Great journalism often comes in the form of taking a second look at something we’re all noticing but haven’t thought too much about. Case in point? The Washington Post’s Emily Heil investigating the rise of beaded glassware. It has a great opener:

“Sometimes, an aesthetic shift will sneak up on you and you won’t realize how ubiquitous it has become. Like when you suddenly noticed that all the jeans were baggy again. Or you looked around and saw that almost no new cars have metallic paint.

That’s how it goes with a certain style of glassware that has made its way firmly — yet quietly — into restaurants and onto home dining tables across the country. You’ve almost certainly seen it: It has rows of raised beads in the glass, like a stack of delicate pearl necklaces looped around the vessel. It comes in a rainbow of colors, from sky-blue to a pale rose.”

Some good old-fashioned bitchy attention to detail in this Curbed piece on shoddy construction at the New Museum in New York City: “‘They Put the B-team on the New Museum’ OMA designed it. The addition took a decade and cost $82 million. So why was there packing tape on the railing?”

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

Dubai’s Burj al Arab and its “7 star” hotel are closing for an 18-month renovation

A small-format relaunch of Barney’s New York is planned for Naples, Florida next year

American Airlines will start using e-gates for boarding at its Dallas hub

The FAA will cut flights at O’Hare International Airport by more than 300 a day this summer

The FAA is also secretly developing a plan to use AI companies like Palantir to overhaul air traffic control

Berlin is copying Copenhagen and offering perks for tourists who pick up trash

After 34 years of exclusivity with Pepsi, Marriott is switching to Coca-Cola

Southwest Airlines to limit passengers to one portable charger on flights

Melissa Chiu is leaving as director of the Hirshhorn Museum lead the Guggenheim in NYC

The Getty Center in LA is closing for a year renovation ahead of the Olympics

The National Park Service said the Astrodome in Houston meets the criteria for consideration as a National Historic Landmark.

Condo owners at the Fontainebleau Hotel say new rules could cause ‘economic disaster’

Air New Zealand reveals bunk beds coming to its planes

The price for the popular Japan Rail passes are set to go up

Capri proposes new rules to crack down on tour operators harassing tourists upon arrival

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That sentiment remains true about this charming mid-size city in Belgium, with its incredible restaurants, engrossing architecture, and one of the best shopping scenes. I’ve added a few more recommendations to it, and can’t emphasize enough how lovely a long weekend here is:

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

The biggest news this week is United “unbundling” its business class. For a couple of years now, the whispers were that Delta was going to be the first to make the move. Instead, United’s the first to break out business class fares into options with less of the frills. What changes with a United Basic Business fare? You have to pay for seat selection, only one free checked bag, Club but not Polaris access, no changes or refunds, and no paid upgrades to the Polaris Studio. The reaction from aviation outlets like Thrifty Traveler and One Mile at a Time was cold, and even The Points Guy was tepid. I think that’s because while the premise sounds great—if you only fly business for the lie-flat, then why pay for all the other stuff?—the history of airline behavior means that there’s a pretty good chance you’ll pay current prices for the basic and then more for what you’re currently getting...​

…meanwhile, the race for premium passengers continues, particularly between the U.S. mainline carriers. Alaska announced designs for its new Suites,with lie-flat beds, privacy doors, and what they’re calling “restaurant-quality dining.” They’ll also be providing free Starlink Wi-Fi courtesy of T-Mobile.

​…and Dawn Gilbertson’s latest column nails the problem with United’s current business class. Until its rollout of Starlink is complete, its wi-fi is possibly the worst of any major airline.

One of the most beautiful things about some of America’s most underrated cities—St. Louis, Cincinnati, etc—are its late 19th century townhouses. So I very much would love to see a townhouse renaissance that emphasizes elegance and beauty.

I feel like every other week, something else is stolen from a museum in Europe. This time, Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse works worth millions were nicked from the Magnani Rocca Foundation near Parma, Italy.​

“In the midst of every crisis,” the saying goes, “lies great opportunity.” While European airlines are struggling with fuel shortages, they’re also seeing the chance to get back some of the share of global air traffic from the Middle East airlines—mainly Qatar, Etihad, and Emirates. For the last 20 years, those three have slowly gobbled up more and more of the aviation pie and triggered a lot of caterwauling from Western execs about unfair advantages and so on. With the Iran War causing travelers to rethink flying through these hubs (or rethink being based in somewhere like Dubai), Lufthansa AG, British Airways, and Air France-KLM are looking to capitalize, reports Bloomberg. My instinct in the travel industry is that memories are short, so long as the bad thing doesn’t last for a long time. If the war is brief, people will still seek out good deals and good service, and Dubai/Doha/Abu Dhabi will go back to dominating. (Skift’s editor-in-chief has a good column on this and the issue with “recency bias.”)

As much as I often want to roll my eyes at folks who are scared of traveling, I try to remember that bad things do, in fact, happen, and there are a lot of ill-intentioned people. Case in point—a fake rescue racket involving guides at Everest getting their guests sick to trigger insurance claims for helicopter rides!

There’s something horrible, and horribly true, about the quotes from Vegas casino owner Derek Stevens in yet another piece about the state of Las Vegas. “We can all fondly remember the 99-cent shrimp cocktail and a dollar a gallon for gas,” Stevens says in the article, “but the reality is that’s in the past, and it’s not coming back.” It’s horrible because it’s crass and kind of a “sucks to be you” attitude that is never a good look. But Stevens is also right—businesses across the industry have largely moved on from volume, and those focused on the big-margin clients have been the winners. If that swings back another way, though, I wonder how Stevens will feel…

The Four Seasons announced it’s finally opening its Cartagena property, and the building looks gorgeous. However, I do hope (I’ve only seen a few photos) that the brand leaned a little bit more into the wonderful color palette of the surrounding city and less into its global cold/colorless look of late…

I get the need for headlines that make comparisons familiar to readers, but lol at the BBC, Alys Beach is not like Santorini. Not in architectural style, and not in landscape. Embarrassing!

​Sure, I’ve been on flights where I could or should have been on a conference call. But British Airways allowing calls on its flights using Starlink is a nightmare. Haven’t they seen how people talk on the phone?!

The new V&A East looks like a Westfield mall!

STORIES I LOVED OR WISH I’D DONE

It’s a bit all over the place, and hard to read in parts BUT this essay on Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and expats/gentrification is a great starting off point with lots of useful references to other works for anybody interested in the roiling debates over what makes a city cool and when that becomes a bad thing.

There are fewer and fewer of them these days, but I love a story that makes me go: “Huh, who knew?” And that was certainly my reaction to this BBC story, “The Easter crime wave sweeping Norway.”

USA Today is a shadow of its former self, but it’s still a middle-brow bellwether so I was heartened to see it running a column titled “Why travel rewards programs feel worse than ever now.” I’ve been harping for a while now about this, but readers really should be aware that few if any of their rewards programs are as good as they were a few years ago—and act accordingly. Loyalty is not a real thing in business unless rewarded, so make sure you are.

​Exhibit A? The famed Lost in Translation Park Hyatt Tokyo has reportedly changed its classification to “resort,” so it’s not subject to guaranteed late checkout for World of Hyatt Globalist members!

I love a good “what really grinds my gears” column, and this Wall Street Journal one about all the gizmos and hidden switches in hotel rooms hit the spot. Note to anybody designing or redesigning a hotel—it’s not cool to have to hunt for light switches!

This lovely history-laden travel piece about the 17th century engineering marvel, the Canal du Midi in the south of France.

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

Boulder tenants can sublease their rentals during Sundance

The replica Oval Office in the Obama Presidential Center will recreate nearly every detail from the one designed for Obama by interior designer Michael S. Smith

First JetBlue, then United hiked fees for checked bags, other airlines likely to follow

The three-year renovation of Fallingwater has been completed

The New York Times and Delta have a new partnership allowing flyers access to NYT content

The plan to turn Michael Jordan’s former home outside Chicago into a museum has been killed

Valencia planning to curb short-term rentals in the increasingly popular city

The Trump administration has proposed privatizing the TSA

The FAA is cutting the number of arrivals allowed at SFO per hour, likely leading to delays

Trump says his presidential library in Miami will have a hotel

The Delta One Lounge at JFK is now asking for tips

Kansas City Symphony revealed its plans for a new venue

Editor’s Note: I got fooled by an April Fool’s Day post about New Jersey lifting a self-pumping ban. I have since removed it :(

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“What’s the coolest place you’ve been?”

​“Where should I go this summer?”

“What’s your go-to airline?”​

The last often felt like a loaded question, as it not infrequently came from somebody coiled and ready to tell me how it should be and could only be Delta.

This usually elicited a raised eyebrow from me. A chortle. Okay, maybe even a sharp retort.​

I bring it up because this week was the proverbial nail in the coffin of one of the more irritating and perplexing trends in travel over the last decade—the Delta cult.​

United Airlines announced a sweeping series of changes from overhauled premium cabins (including new “Polaris Studios”), new regional and transcontinental jets, and the ability to book an entire economy row and turn it into a bed.

All of which brought the airline near-universal praise from the various corners of aviation geekdom. And it comes after a steady couple of years of exciting new routes (to places like Greenland, Madeira, Mongolia, Bari, and more), building what is indisputably the best airline app, and maintaining relatively reasonable point redemption rates.

For years, Delta sold its ovine loyalists on the idea that if you’re willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money with us and/or on our card, we’ll make you feel better than non-status losers with our premium offerings and with how we talk about ourselves. It gave its customers a language and attitude such that meeting a Delta loyalist felt like meeting that strain of New Yorker who, unsolicited and without sequitur, says it’s the greatest city in the world (a tick that denizens of pretty much no other comparable city have).

It was a haughtiness that started at the top, with a CEO whose interviews felt like those of a head of state (and who had no problem making clear how he felt about heads of state), on through a comms team that every journalist I met found a nightmare to deal with, to customers who bleated incessantly about medallion this and diamond that. (General note: loyalty to a big corporation is not only cringe but irrational.)​

Meanwhile, redemption rates (the amount of miles required to book a flight) at Delta became wildly inflated, and the crowding at its lounges a punchline. Its attitude toward customers was revealed when it let slip about using AI and pricing, changes to its loyalty program pissed off consumers, and its business model of focusing on premium customers copied pretty much across the travel industry.

​Delta also became a victim of its own success. If everybody and their mother is a Delta loyalist, there’s nothing exclusive or distinct about being one.

At the same time, other carriers, domestically and abroad, made changes to their planes and service that pretty much left Delta with only its historic reputation as the premium airline.

Don’t get me wrong. United’s non-Polaris lounges are often embarrassingly shabby. It is hampered by having terrible hubs (Newark, no matter how many videos or interviews Scott Kirby does, is a nightmare, and the mobile lounges and temporary concourses at IAD a joke).

Alaska is years away from competing. American Airlines is steadily becoming a shadow of itself. Southwest is eating itself from within. And JetBlue is up for sale.

And Delta has plenty of moves it can make, from cool new destinations to its own airplane upgrades.

​All of which is to say—they’re just airlines. And we’re just people flying commercial. It’s not part of your identity. They don’t love you. They have been, are, and always will be looking to squeeze whatever they can out of you. That’s okay!

As fuel prices skyrocket and demand softens, the airlines are going to attempt to wring every last dollar from us (watch out for the return of bag and change fees) while banking on our emotional loyalty to allow that. You should act accordingly.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

If I were traveling right now (and I will be later this week), I would change my flight to an airport without issues, even if I had to drive a few hours. I wouldn’t fly out of BWI (not when Dulles and DCA are nearby options), and if I were out of IAH (Houston), I would even consider driving to Dallas. Just my two cents.

I might try to report this out over the next couple of weeks, but this new report from Cirium on the precipitous decline in bookings for travel from the U.S. to Europe is fascinating. I had been thinking about writing a column in a couple of weeks arguing that the misery of flying, coupled with fuel price shocks, likely meant that this fall—shoulder season—would be a great time to book a trip if you want to avoid crowds. I assumed, wrongly, that folks had already locked in their summer plans. According to Cirium, bookings to Europe from the U.S. for the month of July are down 11.2% compared to last year.

Now, people could be holding out, and if prices stabilize or come down, there will be a surge of bookings.

But more likely it means that three major issues—rising airfare prices, fears over the economy, and a brutal exchange rate with the euro and pound—have large swathes of American travelers saying no to a European summer.

What does this mean?

Well, if you’re part of the population that isn’t price-sensitive, you’re probably going to have a much more pleasant European escape.

For European countries like Spain, Portugal, and Greece that have had gangbusters growth post-COVID thanks to gushers of American tourism cash, things might get ugly quickly.

Domestically, it also means things will likely be much busier at hotspots on the east coast and Great Lakes as people look to get away but cut costs. Some of that might be mitigated by another statistic mentioned in the Cirium report—traffic from Europe is also dropping fast, even with events like the World Cup. And that’s also with Canadians showing no sign of giving up their political protest and returning to the U.S.

​We’ve all had to fly when we aren’t feeling so great, but jeez if you’re so sick you’re coughing up a lung, reconsider—especially since most airlines have allowances for health, and most have done away with change fees.

I love running in cities early in the morning. You get to see so much, and you do so without inconveniencing yourself or thousands of other citydwellers who are fortunately still asleep. London always proved a bit annoying, though, because running along the north side of the Thames uninterrupted wasn’t possible. Until now! “For the first time in London’s history,” notes Matt Brown in The Londonist, “it’s possible to walk along the north bank of the Thames, from the Houses of Parliament to the Tower of London, without straying more than a few paces from the river.

​All too often, attempts at being contemporary by European museums and attractions fall flat (I’m thinking of those horrible kiosk screens in Hotel de la Marine). But I really like the subtle “ghost column” slabs of marble installed at the Colosseum to give an idea of the towering arcades that once surrounded the stadium.

Vienna used to be one of my favorite cities in the world (I still like it, but others have jumped in front), but I always thought Sachertorte, its famed cake, was disgusting. I thought about this because I saw The Guardian up with a story: “My search for the perfect Sachertorte in Vienna.” Maybe I’ll give it another go…

I wish the administration would leave things like the White House’s Ionic columns and historic edifices alone and train its energies on good ideas like their proposal for a subterranean visitor center that can elevate what is currently a pretty haphazard experience visiting this iconic building.

STORIES I LIKED OR WISH I’D DONE

If readers are looking for a byline, they should make sure not to miss it’s Dawn Gilbertson at The Wall Street Journal. Her matter-of-fact, here’s-what-happened style of writing is always a delight. Her recent column is on what happened when she let an AI chatbot plan her getaway from London. “I Let AI Plan My Seaside Break and Wound Up Swimming in the North Sea” is the title, and it’s got something for AI lovers and skeptics alike. (Her byline is here. I also enjoyed her review of JetBlue’s Transatlantic Mint experience.)

Love, love, love this column from Mark Ellwood in Airmail: “The Bonvoy Problem Points programs are destroying the luxury-hotel experience. Can anything stop the freeloaders?” It’s a fascinating piece, detailing the ways in which the hotel rewards world has fatal flaws. Unlike with airline hotel reward programs, the hotels are not owned by the big hotel companies, meaning there’s a tension between the rush to service cardholders by the companies and a need to service actual paying customers by the hotels. It’s a tension that’s only getting worse, as high loyalty levels at places like Marriott are achieved by more and more customers.

​It’s a simple conceit (and I’m not sure if it’s a series the Times has done consistently) but their “What’s New in Bangkok: Restaurants, Bars, Hotels, and More” almost has me wanting to go back and I’d read this exact formulation of story for any major city.​

Architecture lovers should read this Los Angeles Times piece about the painstaking restoration of the Jardinette Apartments, the groundbreaking Richard Neutra project (with a Rudolph Schindler assist). I’ll certainly be poking around it the next time I’m out west!​

I’ve been critical of the celebrity-recommendation story (they’re usually sooooo bad), but if it’s Alex Honnold giving spots for his favorite outdoor getaways in Nevada, count me in!

The havelis (old Mughal-era mansions) in Delhi and the cities of Rajasthan were a source of perpetual delight for me on my trip to India a decade ago. Some had been restored, but countless others were in various states of ruin and disrepair. The AFP has a lovely little piece this week about efforts to restore and save these wonders.

This Skift piece about hotels waking up to the idea that you need to sell a destination and not just the hotel will certainly be valuable for travel writers/influencers/PR hands trying to convince hotels to widen their requirements for press trips.

It’s spring break, so it’s also time to visit college campuses. Given that some of you are probably embarking on this journey with your child, I thought you might find this recent study about how much the weather on the day you visit a college affects the preference choices of a student.

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

American Airlines is considering bringing back seatback screens

Refusing to give the password to your electronic devices in Hong Kong is now a criminal offence

Google unveils live translation for any iPhone user

FAA suspends use of “see and avoid” for helicopters and planes near busy airports

Madrid’s High Court refuses to suspend a €64 million fine on Airbnb

A luxury farm resort from the founder of Aman will open in Japan in April

England is considering charging fees for foreigners at its museums

The family behind Le Sirenuse in Positano is opening another hotel on the Amalfi Coast next month

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When I first wandered into its shops and restaurants, little English was spoken—if I remember correctly, guide books suggested using French as an intermediary. A reflection, perhaps, of a former time when the second language taught in American schools was primarily French. “The language of diplomacy,” we were assured, without anybody actually explaining how or why that mattered.

The Baixa, that neat grid in the center made up of Pombalian edifices that today has been wholly ceded to the worst of mass tourism, felt then like the functioning heart of a city, albeit a very sleepy one.

When my boyfriend and I chased the sunsets all those years ago up the hilly streets of the Alfama, we felt like we’d made some wrong turns. The twists of the road did not reveal other giddy tourists, but rather grumpy men leaning out for a smoke, stooped old ladies dragging their shopping caddies, and lines of laundry out to dry. (The last of which made us Americans, whose laundry was never in the public domain, feel like we were intruding.) Nowadays, Alfama positively teems with foreigners each night. A steady stream of invasive ants rushes up those same hilly streets and spills out onto every terrace and vantage point to snap photos of the sunset over the city and the mighty Tagus.

On the opposite side of the Baixa from Alfama is the Bairro Alto. Walking here with its little pubs with live music—often the sounds of Portugal’s former colonies—once felt like a revelation. Now, the cool stuff has moved farther uphill. There’s a pretty good chance that what we were experiencing wasn’t cool all those years ago, but because we were one of the few Americans, it felt cool.

And going out to Belem was a hike, a tram ride past a number of derelict neighborhoods. But sidling up inside the historic Pastéis de Belém was easy, with no wait. Now, the journey to Belem is filled with new condo buildings, museums, and fancy international schools. Pastéis de Belém has a rope line and a hyper-efficient takeaway shop. The pastel de nata still holds up, though three is now my limit, whereas before it was a half-dozen.

At drinks one night, I remarked to a friend that I grew up in the heart of the Portuguese community in America (Rhode Island). “You must have had a lot of good Portuguese food!” he replied. I laughed instinctively, but trailed off as it hit me—there weren’t any Portuguese restaurants back home that I knew of. I grew up with a myriad of Moniz, Da Silva, Chaves, Ferreira, Gomes, and so on and yet could not name a single special dish they made, unlike the Italian, Irish, French, and Greek families. Until eating pastel de nata, if you’d asked me to name a Portuguese dish, I could only have proffered chorizo. (Which I grew up pronouncing “sha-REES” like the Portuguese, a pronunciation that I still think sounds better than “sho-REE-zo.”)

It’s not just tourists, though, that have reshaped Lisbon. It’s one of the destinations of choice for digital nomads, particularly for those in the tech/crypto world. The beguiling neighborhood of Lapa—a sort of Montmartre meets Pac Heights—is now in expat clutches. Or, at least, that’s how everybody I talked to sees it.

​Roughly 30 million people visited Portugal last year. Half that number in 2010. Obvious are the ways Lisbon has changed as a result.​

But most remarkable is the way it hasn’t. The energetic entrepreneurial escapees of the world have done little to shake the city of its somniferous qualities. The city I had once found sailor-y, misty, hardy, and restrained compared to other European capitals is still misty and restrained. It’s not just its inhabitants seemingly put to sleep by this city. Even its own buildings seem to slumber, unaware of their own former flamboyance.

For all the concerns about housing—and they are valid—a lot of buildings are just sitting empty. Waiting for the families or the state that owns them to allow their rebirth.

“It’s like an old abandoned kingdom,” one person wrote to me on Instagram as I posted a series of photos from my peripatetic day.

Which is exactly how I felt all those years ago.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

Maybe the Lisbon column just had me feeling nostalgia, but it feels like only yesterday that nobody moved museum crowds like Yayoi Kusama. Her Infinity Rooms were instant draws in the Instagram-dominant 2010s, and you could hardly go a week without seeing somebody in one. That hasn’t been the case for so long that when I saw the story about the Museum Ludwig in Cologne hosting an exhibition with 300 works of hers, it felt … dated? It’s not the right word, but what I’m trying to say is there isn’t the same frisson of excitement to her. The type of spectacle-as-art that has come to dominate so much of our visual world has sort of made looking at her work a bit like going through the Medieval section of a museum.

Speaking of spectacle-as-art. JR, “the French Banksy",” has revealed plans for the tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s wrapping of the Pont Neuf in the 1980s. Now, the revolutionary bridge will be returned to its pre-carved state—or at least that’s how the artist describes it. La Caverne du Pont Neuf will run from June 6-28. I am holding fire for now…

There are some absolute atrocities in the proposals for a new landmark in Rotterdam. For instance, the MVRDV proposal which looks like something out of The Land Before Time or Avatar, would probably look horrible in winter??

What is most remarkable to me about the DHS shutdown that led to the ill-thought-out suspension of Precheck and Global Entry (which are funded by fees that people directly pay) and now to gobsmacking TSA lines at some airports is how blithely we all seem to be taking it?

This:

A tip of the hat to the folks at One Mile at a Time for their coverage of a recent change in the Marriott Bonvoy program. As many of you know, I’m very negative about most hotel rewards programs because of the inflated redemption levels. A room at a nice hotel in a nice city costs—it seems to me—an insane amount of points. So Marriott’s new change that got lots of buzz allowing people to top off an award night with 25,000 points is described thusly by One Mile at a Time: “This is a positive change, but it’s hard to get too excited.”

The absolute hammering that the American ski industry took this year due to lackluster snow has exposed numerous cracks. One of the biggest being the vulnerability of companies like Alterra (Ikon Pass), whose soon to be ex-CEO (a former chairman of Ticketmaster) made things so laughably expensive that editors of travel publications for the past few years have ensured their readership numbers with evergreen stories about how much cheaper it is to fly to Europe and ski. One can only imagine the numbers of potential skiers in younger generations that were lost because of the greed.

I’ve always appreciated the line in European churches between the secular experiences (climbing the tower or visiting its treasures) and the spiritual (the church itself) where the former costs money and the latter doesn’t. Well, that seems to be going away as the Cologne Cathedral will start charging visitors to the church.

There are so many contradictions in this interview given by Hilton’s CEO Chris Nassetta that I don’t even know where to start. I’d say watch/read it for yourself but I think you’ll find it painful in its inconsistent logic and wishful/willful thinking about what will make the domestic American travel situation better.

Love a hotel review that actually reviews, and the FT’s look at the new Corinthian in Rome by Maria Shollenbarger does just that: “The Corinthia, Rome: former Bank of Italy building plays it safe.” Money quote is as follows, “The 60 rooms and suites are less engaging design-wise — safe bordering on anodyne, as is sadly the way of so many top-tier hotels in 2026.”

STORIES I LIKED OR WISH I’D DONE

It’s not a story, but if you happen to be in Chicago in the next couple weeks go see Bruce Goff: Material Worlds at the Art Institute for me since I can’t…

The paucity of chic stays in Egypt has long been a problem, so cool to see a new spot in Fayoum Oasis get treatment in the FT. (The owner’s are the same pair behind Luxor’s Al Moudira Hotel.)

I once wanted to launch a series at The Daily Beast on the power lunch spots in each of the world’s major cities. I’d be much more interested as a people-watcher to see where the movers and shakers of Mumbai, Istanbul, and Buenos Aires eat every week than whatever fussy Michelin tasting menu caught the eye of food critics. Alas, it never happened, but I loved the Wall Street Journal’s “New York’s New Power Lunch Is on the 37th Floor of an Office Building” about Coco’s at Colette.

Love a story that I knew absolutely nothing about, like Skift’s “How Montreal Quietly Became the World’s Second-Most-Important Travel Tech Hub.”

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

The iconic Duke’s Malibu has reopened

American Airlines’ new lounge at Austin will have an outdoor terrace

Southwest Airlines is ending all its flights out of Dulles and O’Hare

Brazil’s Gol Airlines to launch its first-ever New York flights with new Rio route

Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport just got a U.S. Customs pre-clearance facility

LAX is jacking up its Uber/Lyft fee by up to 140%

The flight cap at Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport (the source of much U.S. government ire) has been scrapped

For a handful of years, we returned every winter to this charming town, although with each year it felt like more and more of the world was finding out about it. The final year we went, we went kind of reluctantly. My sister was doing her birthday there and a Mexican friend asked us if we wanted to go sailing for a few days on some islands off of Loreto.

We may have been done with Todos, but those days sailing around the Sea of Cortez remain some of the most beautiful I’ve ever spent on a boat.​

Describing the islands sprinkled up and down this slit of a sea is both simple and insufficient. Stand in front of the Grand Canyon or at the edge of Monument Valley or in any picturesque corner of the American Southwest. Imagine that instead of sand, cactus, and shrubs, there is an ocean. That, is the Sea of Cortez. The contrast is a startling one when the extremes of desert islands meet these waters teeming with life. Depending on the time of year, you can see all manner of seals, fish, sharks, and whales.

And carved into all these islands is a seemingly endless array of soft-sand beaches with water in hues ranging from emerald green to spots so clear that “crystal clear” can be used literally.

My family decided to return this winter over President’s Day Weekend. We chartered a four-cabin catamaran—and prices for chartering are nearly half those of the Virgin Islands, for example. This time, we struck out from La Paz and explored the two large islands to the southeast, Espiritu Santo and Partida. For a few days, we snorkeled with schools of fish and seals, lazed about on pristine beaches, and hiked up trails in preserved wilderness.

​There are few guarantees in travel. In fact, one of the only places I know that will blow away anybody I recommend it to is Great Sand Dunes National Park. These otherworldly islands, though, are another.

​They remain one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to in the world.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

Since I try to make this column a reprieve from politics and nobody is (hopefully) coming here for incisive commentary on international relations, I don’t have much to say about the situation in Mexico or the Middle East. Both, however, affect travel deeply so I don’t want to ignore. Depending on how things resolve, the effects psychologically for tourism could be long-lasting. Mexico shedding its image as a dangerous place, especially for Europeans and Americans branching out from Cancun, was a loooooong struggle. (A Danish friend of mine’s parents flipped out in 2022 over the idea of him going to Mexico because Denmark still had intense warnings for the country.) And the Gulf states sold themselves as places of safety and security.

The earliest test for Mexico will be spring break, which is just about to start. Numbers out of Cancun and Cabo will tell us how security-conscious Americans are these days. As for the Middle East, my personal instinct would be to avoid any country that has been a target in the campaign–UAE, Saudi, Qatar, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and even Turkey. More debatable is a place like Egypt, which is suddenly riskier but not a direct target. And for those with a stomach for risk will likely benefit from smaller crowds and better deals. And in general, prices for airlines are likely to skyrocket with rising fuel prices, so book soon.

It’s always remarkable to me the lack of foresight about obvious things when it comes to major companies. Take Southwest, the subject of many a customer’s ire over the last month since it changed its boarding process. The interiors of Southwest’s planes have long been dated—many don’t have charging ports and the bins are the old ones that aren’t deep enough to accommodate the roller bags so many customers have, let alone for them to be turned on their side to allow more. The airline had a year to update or begin to update those bins before rolling out a new boarding process. Now, a month after, the airline says it’s going to take steps to update its bins.

London’s Piccadilly Circus tube station has new bathrooms (loos) and they’ve been given an Art Deco-ish makeover. I expect we’ll all start to see them on our feeds…

It’s about time!!! United announced this week that passengers who play noise out loud on their phone could face getting kicked off the plane. TBD if this is actually enforced in a meaningful way, but scrolling Tik Tok, playing games, or facetiming without headphones in a crowded place is one of the most antisocial behaviors these days.

Barcelona’s war to curb tourism while squeezing more and more out of those who come reached new heights as the region enacted one of the highest tourist taxes in Europe. Holiday rentals like Airbnb go up to a maximum of 12.5 euros a night and hotels to 15 per person. This is nearly a doubling of the current rates. I’ve always wondered where the line is of what travelers can stomach for a beloved place, and I think Barcelona may soon find out.

Despite the grand pronouncements at every summit, there is zero evidence that Airbnb is capable of being the website where consumers “plan the entire trip.” Not only does the company have a spotty record branching into other categories, it’s completely out of the game on one of the biggest drivers of consumer behavior in travel—loyalty rewards. Meanwhile, it has no “moat” as they say. I was just in Paris where new companies like Pied a Terre are able to use Airbnb to attract first-time guests who will then just book directly going forward. That’s pretty typical, in fact, of operators of groups of apartments, small hotels, or even tours offered on Experiences.

STORIES I LIKED OR WISH I’D DONE

I’ve always said in this column that sports and religious tourism are two topics underserved by mainstream travel media, so it’s great to see the AP’s story “Display of St. Francis of Assisi’s bones confirms enduring appeal of relics for Christians.” A whopping 400,000 people have pre-registered so far to see the relics which will be on display for a month.

I don’t necessarily agree, but I found The Independent’s column “The argument for scrapping business and first class on flights” thought-provoking and worth reading.

The breadth of the major hotel brands—a world in which Marriott, IHG, Hilton, etc have dozens of hotel categories–has always perplexed me given no consumer can tell the difference between 90% of them! What is Voco?! Skift is out with a new report putting data behind my hunch, with consumers saying they couldn’t differentiate and felt little loyalty to the myriad of little offshoots.

The Wall Street Journal’s “Americans Are Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers” is a must read. The ripple effects of even a small percentage of Americans moving abroad are huge, and if this number keeps growing, it has serious repercussions for lots of spots worldwide.

Fodor’s “Airports, We’re Begging: Add These 10 Amenities for ALL Passengers.” My top wish I’d add to this list is a gym!

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

JetBlue exits Asheville and Belize as it consolidates

Mount Rainier drops reservation system ahead of summer crowds

Southwest bans employees from wearing smart glasses

Six Flags is selling seven of its parks

Peak bloom for D.C.’s cherry blossoms will be between March 29 and April 1

The private apartments used by Queen Elizabeth II’s private apartments at the Palace of Holyroodhouse will open to visitors for the first time from May 21 to September 10

Tens of thousands of comments were submitted for the White House ballroom proposal, with the majority being negative

A bust has been re-attributed to Michelangelo

The Heated Rivalry cottage is available to rent

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For those reading this from abroad and unfamiliar with this particular American monarch-ish tendency, presidents raise (lots of) money to build museums dedicated to their presidencies under the guise of making their papers available to the public.​

It may have started as a civic act by FDR—prior to him, presidents took all their papers when they left office—but it’s now a thoroughly ego-stroking affair ripe for sordid conflicts of interest and outright corruption. And we all go along with the pretense by calling them Presidential Libraries.

Amidst the slop, the risqué, and the ragebait, the Twitter algorithm does occasionally surface stories that I don’t see elsewhere. This week, it was nonstop hate for the nearly complete Obama Presidential Center.

​And I don’t blame them.

It is, in a word, ugly.

I’m not saying this because it’s modern. There is plenty of contemporary architecture—Calatrava’s Zurich Law Library, the Biblioteca Vasconcelos, Aqua Tower, Andao’s Monterrey houses, Naples’ metro stations, and more—that I love. Furthermore, while I’m fond of historic and revival architecture, people who only admire the historic are essentially cowards. It takes far less courage to have your “taste” be the winners from the last few hundred years than to go out on a limb for something new that might blow up in your face years later.

And I’m not saying the Obama Presidential Center is ugly for political reasons—I consider the current East Wing renovation an affront to any person with taste and respect for history.

But I would be willing to stake good money that this tumescent shorn obelisk will not be beloved decades from now. Redolent of a siege tower in Lord of the Rings, it is ungainly. Its attempt at something sculptural (confusingly referred to as plasticity in architecture) fails, summoning merely an acknowledgement that it is, in fact, a shape. Despite breaking from its surroundings both in form and style, it is inert, pulled down by its adherence to some aesthetic sensibility I will never be able to crack.​

There are buildings, though, whose beauty lies not in the obvious but in some clever way of serving whatever purpose they were created for. The center, however, is made worse by a witless act. On one of the top corners of the tower, a quote from Obama’s speech at Selma is carved into the facade. Nothing wrong with that, and I actually think those criticizing this as evidence of Obama’s ego or as offensive are off the mark. The man was known for his speeches, so this is fitting.

“You are America,” goes the quote. “Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We The People.’ ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ‘Yes We Can.’ That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”​

The problem?

The text is wrapped, meaning you can’t actually read it while standing in front of the building. You’d have to go back and forth from a great distance to read it line by line. Even worse, the corner is sometimes mid-word AND there is end-of-line hyphenation, meaning the second line starts with “ED” which is the end of “UNCONSTRAIN” from the line above but on the adjacent facade! EVEN WORSE, the typeface chosen means a reader cannot differentiate between T’s and I’s, as well as E’s and F’s!

I am hoping to go this summer to see it in person, as photos never fully capture a building. And given the Obama Foundation’s lofty ambitions, it should be judged as much by what they do inside as its exterior.

“In 50 years, when none of us are here, people will want to pay homage [to Obama’s presidency]. This was a crucial time in the history of our country. Therefore, the building needs to have a kind of power to it,” one of the building’s architects, Billie Tsien, said.

So far, though, it’s really a disappointment.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

The biggest news in airline world this week was United Airlines announcing an overhaul of its rewards program. (Side note: can any of these airlines just leave their program alone for a few years and give us certainty??) Essentially, United is leaning even further into strengthening its credit card program by slashing the award mileage accrued by non-cardholders and cardholders without status flying in its planes. (One wonders how much this is a stick being wielded against customers who found the new status requirements too rich to stomach?) The airline is also on the warpath against those who buy its Basic Economy tickets, with some users seeing zero accrual and even cardholders with status having possible accruals cut. The takeaway? The transformation of the airlines from a business predicated on simply flying people from one point to another erodes further to one in which the act of flying people from one point to another is a mechanism for spending on credit cards.

I’ve been pretty hard on Airbnb and its founder-CEO Brian Chesky, but I am intrigued to see what, if anything, the company rolls out if it does take the leap into a loyalty benefits program. Airbnb has two programs currently—a partnership with Delta where you get miles per booking (if you aren’t doing this, you should be! You’re leaving money on the table for no reason), and bookings on HotelTonight turn into a discount on Airbnb. Chesky says Airbnb wants to do something very different from a typical points program, and there’s speculation it might be a paid-membership thing a la Amazon Prime. All I would ask is that it be simple…​

Maybe 15 to 20 years ago, I was a religious user of TripAdvisor. I trusted it for a lot of the research on a destination—hotels, sights, food, experiences—but then I eventually stopped using it altogether. I can’t even remember the last time I opened it; it must be close to a decade. It just became so cluttered and hard to navigate. Other OTAs got better, and prices between sites like Booking, Expedia, and more became less varied. And the restaurants and sights were the worst of collective groupthink as well as gamed by operators. Now, the company is in crisis because investors think AI is going to eat its lunch, and the OTAs have continued to chip away at its hotel business.

Gosh, the power of movie/tv tourism always surprises me. This time it’s Heated Rivalry, with searches for cabin rentals in the Muskoka District, where the final episode is set, jumping 110% since it aired.

Once in a while, the powers that be impress you by “getting it.” This time, it’s the folks at Eurostar/St. Pancras who realize that the whole thing has become “the equivalent of an airport departure lounge” and are planning to cut boarding times by 30 minutes.

I don’t really have a ton of thoughts on the first Amangiri villa for sale at $33 million—it looks fine! Kinda sad though that Rick Joy as well as Marwan Al-Sayed and Wendell Burnette (the original designers of the famed hotel) don’t seem to have been involved.

Some big changes are coming to St. Peter’s Basilica, including a booking app to help regulate crowds, are coming. The lack of predictability for visiting the famed church was always an obstacle for me back in the period of my life where I went to Rome once a year. In addition, a museum about the history of the building will be added to the terrace, and the cafe there will be doubling in size.

I was actually excited to click on this Fodor’s story on “The 10 Weirdest, Stupidest, and Worst Tourism Slogans of All Time” because I am constantly befuddled by the slogans I see when wandering through airports. But it was a series of pearl-clutching, worry-wort, no-fun-at-all takes.

Having just been stuck in an hour-long line there after landing, it’s no surprise that Los Cabos has seen a 130%(!!!!) increase in visitors in the last 10 years.

STORIES I LOVED OR WISH I’D DONE

Couched within this Travel Weekly puff piece about the W Miami Beach’s transformation from party spot to something more refined is an interesting snapshot about Miami Beach’s transformation as a whole. If you haven’t been in a while and decide to go in a couple of years, I think you won’t recognize much of it. So much has been put in place to curb the partying, and a number of luxury hotels—Fasano, Aman, Delano, etc—are slated to open.

Skift’s story looking at the whiplash for the hotel industry in Minneapolis. In an era where everything is political, nobody wins.

The BBC has a roundup of the most anticipated museums opening in 2026, and a handful of them are very much on my wishlist. Also, a couple of surprises on their list of countries where tourism is growing the most.

​A great headline in The Telegraph:

The Washington Post smartly followed up on Rafat Ali’s Skift column I flagged a few weeks back, “How U.S. Lodging Abandoned the Middle Class.” The Post had an equally grabby headline: “What happened to the $150 hotel room?” And while little of the ensuing story surprised me, I think it’s important that the author highlighted the brands that are trying to stay in that lane.

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

The Spanish government confirmed a chalet in the forest was in fact designed by Gaudi

DHS is suspending TSA PreCheck and Global Entry starting this morning due to the shutdown

Three National Parks, including Yosemite and Arches, will no longer require reservations

American Airlines is hiking prices for second checked bags at the airport

Travel to the U.S. continued to decline in January

Nepal is considering new restrictions on Mount Everest climbers

Italy’s famed “Lover’s Arch” collapsed on Valentine’s Day

Vegas’s decline in visitors for 2025 is official and it’s the biggest since 1970 outside of the pandemic

France retains title as most-visited country in the world

Sexual assaults are up on airplanes according to new report

Bernini’s elephant statue in Rome may have been vandalized, again

Louvre employees working w/ Chinese tour operators scammed the museum out of millions of dollars

Alexander Wang has revealed his plans for the landmarked domed bank on Canal and Bowery

Split, Croatia is considering banning alcohol sales after 8 p.m.

I was also too young to really appreciate this magical stretch of accessible wonder and its odd quasi-cities along the way.

When I did it again in my late 20s, I was duly impressed. Carmel was a little fairy land of a town, the pools at Hearst Castle stupendous, and Big Sur magnificent in its gloom.

But if I think back on both of those trips, the most prominent feeling was one of agitation. The views were beautiful, but repetitive. I wanted to get to San Francisco and LA quicker and hang out there. I resented that at a certain point, there was no crossing over to the much faster 5.

‘What is wrong with me?” I also thought, until I ventured back to the Central Coast last weekend to (finally) visit my sister who lives in Santa Cruz.

I just wasn’t old enough to appreciate it.

Active once meant racing around to see lots of things—museums, people, architecture, etc. Now it means getting my multiple walks in, and in Santa Cruz, they could be alternated between those hugging a coastline smashed by an oft-angry Pacific or up into the surrounding hills and redwood forests. The parties full of interesting and hot people that enticed me in my 20s have nothing on a promontory resplendent in ice plant with a bench for reading my book. (I know, I know, ice plant is bad.)

A once lame internal excuse for not visiting—”What am I going to do there for that long?!”—has morphed into admitting my body would love a week or more of this. A younger me that wanted to be somewhere more exciting has been replaced by one who can finally find pleasure in being somewhere that is not only comfortable and nice but also distinctly itself.

And I say this with love but also with a teeny bit of East Coast side eye—the Central Coast is very much something uniquely Californian.

The lesson for travelers here is obvious—some places are enjoyed differently at various points in your life. But there’s also a lesson for destinations and hotels. Stop chasing everybody. Figure out what makes you different and who can really appreciate what you have, and lean into that.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

One of the biggest stories in U.S. aviation this week was the news that the employees of American Airlines have essentially collectively said that CEO Robert Isom should step down. If the aviation reporters/enthusiasts reading this have a really good piece about the slow demise of AA, I’m happy to recommend it next week, but I haven’t read it. There are lots of little pieces focused on its strategic missteps, including having more of a domestic focus than United or Delta. Demand for international (particularly transatlantic) travel has exploded while domestic demand has lagged, leaving American behind on profits. Its partnership with JetBlue was blocked by a judge, which really hurt it in the New York City market. But there is really one simple difference between AA and the other two mainline carriers (and even increasingly competitive Alaska). It’s an inferior product, and it feels intentional to the consumer. Customer service is abysmal, on-time performance is poor, the app and website are janky, and the experience often feels more like an LCC. What kind of long-term culture created that would be interesting to read about?

Egypt remains one of my favorite trips. Seeing the temples (they’re way more impressive than the pyramids) and sailing down the Nile was a lifelong dream. But you can literally count on one hand how many nice hotels there are in the country, and two of them—the Winter Palace in Luxor and the Old Cataract in Aswan—have seen better days. The Winter Palace, in particular, was leaning a little too hard into the faded part of faded glamour. Until recently, they were operated by Sofitel, but this past week it was announced that they’re being taken over by Mandarin Oriental and the pair are being renovated. In addition, Mandarin said it’s launching cruises on the Nile.

The New York Times had a piece titled “Champagne, Concierges and Emergency Sand: How the Ultra- Rich Travel.” It wasn’t terribly interesting or surprising (until maybe the very end) if you follow the luxury travel market, and I’d argue that the things these luxury advisors are doing now aren’t really that different from a decade ago. BUT, there was a line in it that stood out to me. “At the Nobu Barcelona hotel, guests fill in pre-stay questionnaires listing their requirements.” I find filling out these questionnaires one of the least luxurious things that all these luxury hotels are now doing. First, because it’s rare, I see the things I’ve filled out reflected in the experience. Which just makes the disappointment even sharper. Second, because it’s homework. I don’t want homework!

There is a war being waged online about the benches at the National Gallery in London, and it’s hilarious…

There isn’t much to say that hasn’t been said, but it’s still staggering that 2.5 million more people visited Spain in 2025 than the previous year, for a record 96.8 million.

Summer travel will be upon us relatively soon. American tourist destinations hoping for a reprieve after the drop in Canadian tourists last year shouldn’t bank on it. The drop in Canadian tourists continues apace, with Canadian visits dropping by double-digit percentages in January compared to the year before.

Skift has an interesting but not surprising piece—Marriott is looking to co-branded credit cards for its growth in the coming year, offsetting weak demand for its actual hotels. (Basically, Marriott makes money from credit card swipe fees on its co-branded cards.) Marriott’s execs have much more experience than I do, but anybody who asks me for credit card advice is always told one thing—with the exception of Hyatt, hotel-branded cards stink. That’s because, unlike airlines, the big hotel groups don’t actually own the hotels you’re redeeming points and status at. This means many hotels won’t actually honor it or will do so minimally. It means that it takes a crap ton of points to get meaningful redemptions. And so on. So, best of luck to Marriott, but I won’t be getting their card anytime soon.

It’s been a couple of months since I got cranky about Expedia and its still-terrible decision to scrap its beloved Hotels.com rewards program for the terrible One Key. So I’m just going to post this Skift headline: “Expedia’s B2B Surge Buys Time for Vrbo and Hotels.com.”

Was sex tourism always a core part of Fodor’s coverage, and I just didn’t know it, or is the outlet’s extensive coverage a recent thing? An example of recent stories includes: “If You’re Feeling Kinky, Head to the Pacific Northwest,” “Why Is Vacation Sex Always Better?” “I Was Sick of Dating Apps, So I Tried Ireland’s Wild 60,000-Person Matchmaking Festival,” “Inside the World’s 10 Wildest Sex Resorts,” “The Best App For Finding a Date While Traveling,” “The 10 Most Unusual Aphrodisiacs Around the World,” and “I Hung Out at a Naked Party in Texas and It Changed the Way I Travel.”

It’s no surprise that there have been some issues with Southwest’s shift to just another airline, but one would’ve assumed the airline thought through one of the most pressing issues in domestic air travel—bin space. Instead, the past few days I’ve seen lots of rants online about how poorly baggage space has gone, most notably by passengers who have a high loyalty ranking or paid extra for leg room.

Everything about these machines that allow you to melt down your jewelry on the spot so you can spend more on gambling is very, very sad, and I hope they never make it to the U.S.

The new David Geffen Galleries at LACMA, which I thought looked cold and sterile a few months ago, are now officially opening in April…so I’m going to try to see them IRL as soon as possible.

Each time I look at this photo of the new Mother-of-Pearl Experience Museum in Germany, I change from loving it to hating it to back to loving it and so on…

STORIES I LOVED OR WISH I’D DONE

One other sign of getting older? Grocery stores in other places fascinate me. In Santa Cruz they have this chain called New Leaf Community Market that is basically Erewhon supersized. They have this hideous logo, so bad it feels intentional, like they’re the anti-supermarket supermarket. So I enjoyed the Wall Street Journal’s “The Booming Business of Luxury Grocery Stores.”

Never thought I’d see Yawgoo in a national news outlet, so that was fun!

I always love when The Guardian does reader tips stories, like this one about unsung museums in Europe, as I consistently find new things to see!

Anthony Paletta used to write for me at the Beast, and he always had such fun architectural ideas. I really loved his column this past week for Dezeen on the need to preserve decommissioned airport buildings as architectural works.

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

Canada’s Air Transat to stop flights to the U.S.

Southwest announces it’s putting Starlink on all its planes

United and JetBlue’s partnership is expanding. The airlines will status match and you’ll be able to book both airlines on both websites

Mount Fuji cherry blossom festival canceled because of tourist behavior

The UK’s ETA is going to increase by 25% in price

Capri to limit tour groups to 40 people max

Brazil was the fastest growing country in the world for tourism last year

Casa Battlo in Barcelona just got a new art gallery

Saudi Arabia is cutting back big time on Red Sea resort development

The Waldorf Astoria is going up for sale

The former “Britain’s Ugliest Building” just got landmark status

So powerful are our preconceived ideas that “Paris Syndrome” was something that afflicted Chinese let down by the city in real life.

So when friend after friend told me how incredible their trip to Korea was, my fears rose. I hadn’t even really wanted to go this fall. I just couldn’t think of anywhere new that was compelling me, but I had vacation days to use, a column to write, and Korea felt obvious given how dominant it is culturally right now. As a journalist, shouldn’t I want to see the original?

Stepping off my 14.5-hour flight and gritting my way through a 1.5-hour drive from the airport with only a jet-lag-riddled sleep to look forward to, I was already regretting coming. The trip started by waking up at 4 a.m., walking the architecturally grim few blocks around my hotel (a loooot of 70s and 80s), and mistakenly ordering tripe soup at a workman’s joint. Surrounded by men and a smattering of women hunched over, slurping and burping, I wondered how I was going to do two weeks here.

Fast forward two weeks, and on my final day in Seoul I was frantically rushing around in a way I haven’t in years. There was so much to see and do, and my quest to get that one fried chicken sandwich again had me criss-crossing the city until mere minutes before I slept.

There are a few things every prospective visitor to Korea should know:

1. This could change by the time you go, but cash is still good to have on hand for public transport

2. Shop with your passport, as you’ll be able to get the tax refund immediately

3. Don’t just go to Olive Young. Each brand’s store has better deals and more free stuff

4. Google Maps is useless (we used Naver), and while Uber works, it’s good to also have Kakao T (a local version)

5. If you do use Uber, it often goes the wrong way, so expect the time listed to be doubled

6. The timers at crosswalks are loooong and nobody jaywalks, so be prepared to stand for a while.

7. Train seats are tiny (I’m 6’2), so shell out for first class

8. Luxury hotels tend to close their gyms completely one day a week and charge extra for their sauna/steam facilities

9. Things open late, and stay open late

10. Wine by the glass tended to be sweet at spots not focused on wine. Stick to beer.

11. American culture has had a tremendous influence, but spoken English is a mixed bag

12. The cars make a lot of noises (in a gamified way), and the taxi drivers here are the worst I’ve ever experienced (they accelerate, brake, accelerate, brake, etc on open highways!)

13. The country has a paucity of hotels in the boutique and luxury categories

14. You shouldn’t, but you could just visit Seoul

15. Hidden gems aren’t a thing and you better be prepared to spend. Let me explain…

The busiest airline route in the world is from Seoul to Jeju Island. A plane takes off between the two roughly every seven minutes each day. This makes Jeju, a large volcanic island half the size of Long Island, very, very busy. South Korea has 52 million people in an area the size of Indiana. It means things like “untouched” and “undiscovered” are hard to come by. (When you read accounts of when part of North Korea was open to South Korean tourism, one of the biggest draws was how natural the nature was.)

I also say you’d better be prepared to spend not because South Korea is expensive—in fact, it’s quite reasonable. But it’s a highly consumerist society, and so you will want to buy stuff constantly. Clothes, beauty products, home goods stores, food, trinkets, etc.

Think of it like going to Vegas. You should have a dollar amount you’re going to lose, and so long as you stay within that, you’re content.

Since I explained number 11 on the list, I suppose I should elaborate on 10. I wrote before how I thought Busan was just okay, and I should admit I had no interest in going to the DMZ or some of the rebuilt historical towns. But my reason for number 10 has little to do with the rest of Korea and more to do with how impressive Seoul is. It is just so incredible with so much to do that you could easily tack it on to a Japan trip or make it the main focus of your Korea vacation.

But I did find myself charmed by Jeju.

This island, famed for its citrus and women (because the men die at sea), is naturally beautiful with aquamarine water frothing against black volcanic rock and a lush green landscape. The architecture, though, is what I’d call “ugly cute.” We stayed in two villages to try two very different house rentals (I won’t gatekeep, they are here and here). The winds were gusting 50 mph while there, so we didn’t get to dive into any of the pools dotted around the island, but still found ourselves slowly falling under its spell. It’s hard to articulate what’s so enthralling here; the best I can say is you should go and figure it out for yourself.

Before I went to Jeju, I sat next to a woman in a restaurant in Seoul. Her phone kept trilling with every text and email, so I asked her to put her phone on silent. Luckily, she was Swiss, so such frankness didn’t perturb her in the slightest. “Yes, of course,” she replied, and then dove into chatting with me, which was not what I’d signed up for. Perhaps, though, a fitting punishment. Anyways, she said she didn’t like Jeju the first time she went. She expected it to be all nature-y, and that’s not what it is because of how many people go. And yet, she’s been living in South Korea for seven years and goes a few times a year to Jeju now.

I would too.

Seoul, though, is on another level. I don’t want to weigh this column down gushing about it since I already wrote a guide. But, as the gymbro influencers on social media would say, it’s S-tier.

You can spend weeks here, armed with a list of things to see and do or wandering through its exciting neighborhoods and stumbling from one curious spot to the next. (One of the most dangerous things in Seoul is that I don’t know if I’ve ever been in a city that smelled—in a good way—so much of food.)

There is so much I still think about, from the graceful treatment granite is given compared to the West to how, despite how good traditional Korean food is, I found myself wanting to try Korean versions of the rest of the world’s foods—egg tarts, Philly cheesesteaks, bagels, Greek yoghurt, pancakes, burritos, etc. So prevalent is the advertising for cosmetic surgery and so dominant is beauty content on social media that I often found myself walking around, a little freaked out, wondering if I’m even looking at people with their real faces.

I loathe shopping, and loved it in Korea, both because the experience was intriguing (mind still blown by the Gentle Monster flagship) and because the goods really felt quintessentially of the moment. Despite needing to buy a giant suitcase to fit everything we bought, I still wish I had bought more.

If only it wasn’t 15 hours away…

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

Few hoteliers since Conrad Hilton and J.W. Marriott are as recognizable as Ian Schrager, although that’s probably as much to do with his Studio 54 legacy as EDITION hotels. (FWIW, it always annoyed me how they insisted to writers Edition be spelled in all caps.) Schrager gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal recently, where he divulged that he wants to take his Public Hotel in NYC (famous for its escalators) as a brand and rapidly expand it. That expansion kicks off with a Public in West Hollywood later this spring. A rendering of the lobby is below.

I’m rooting for Schrager, as I’m rooting for most folks in this industry, and given his successes, you’d be foolish to dismiss him. But there are a few obstacles one can foresee with his plan. The first is the Public brand itself, which was neglected with the rise of Edition to the point that I’m not sure it even registers with people as a place they should be trying to go when in NYC. Second is that Los Angeles is struggling mightily, and the first iteration of this expansion there seems like a challenge. Third is something curious Shrager said in the interview:

“In a city like New York where you have a restaurant on every street corner outside the hotel … there’s no reason for you to put a big emphasis on having a fancy restaurant that costs millions of dollars to do and have a fancy chef that wants to get a percentage of the gross and you make no money.”

Instead, they’ll be pursuing fast-casual and takeout offerings run by third-party operators. Which seems … not a vibe.

Wow, Herzog & de Meuron’s Tour Triangle is coming together in the Paris skyline. And while I can’t stand those acting like Paris’s skyline is only now subject to high-rises, or that this is some new phenomenon, it’s a pretty horrid building. It looks like something out of Vegas. Or, like an American regional bank’s headquarters that rose up in the ashes of historic buildings in the 70s or 80s…

Italian Twitter has somehow ended up in my feed and they’re all going nuts because they’re having their own Cecilia Gimenez/Ecce Homo (may she rest in peace) moment, only this time the restorer botched it by changing an angel’s face to … Giorgia Meloni’s!

Not seeing a lot of specifics from hotel CEOs when it comes to changes they’re making in Las Vegas, despite admitting that they erred in gouging guests so much that everybody who wasn’t rich or trying to seem rich turned on the destination.

Music and sports dominated travel in 2025. (Sidebar: There is this weird sleight of hand when industry folks talk about how more and more money is being spent on “experiences” now and that’s why it’s great that Airbnb, credit cards, and travel advisors are focusing more on that, but they don’t separate out music and sports events from, say, a Michelin tasting course or a private walking tour.) And 2026 looks to be the same with the world now salivating over the possibility of South Korea’s BTS performing in one of their cities. In fact, so astoundingly large is the band’s economic impact that Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum sent it a letter asking for more performance dates in Mexico.

It depresses me when I read stories about people sacrificing in more than normal ways to keep traveling. People have always saved to go on trips. But the combination today of the sort of frenetic addiction to travel at a time when so much of it has terrible value gets to me. And in USA Today’s latest survey, “20% said their financial cuts have been significant, and 31% said they’ve been somewhat significant” in order to keep on traveling.

Always happy to see media outlets try to address the overtourism plague, but can’t take seriously a piece by the Washington Post that tries to say Uzbekistan (nearly 11 million visitors last year with double-digit percentage growth each year), Flagstaff (next to the Grand Canyon!), and Jose Ignacio (the it spot for rich Brazilians and Argentinians for New Year’s) are not heavily touristed…

Every time people talk about the future of travel and AI, the topic of chatbots and how they can save for customer service is trotted out. While that’s certainly true, it runs headlong into a powerful reality—people don’t want to talk to a chatbot! The Independent reports that “93 percent of consumers prefer talking to a human and 89 percent believe that brands should always offer a human option.” Two weeks ago, I needed something with United and essentially just kept repeating to the chatbot to connect me with an agent until it finally did so because the bot could not understand the nuance of what I was asking. The person solved it immediately.

Residents of the Slovakian village of Vlkolínec are asking UNESCO to remove their World Heritage status because it’s brought too many tourists. I wonder how soon that will be a typical ask from places also suffering from the tourism boom that often comes with the designation.

STORIES I LOVED OR WISH I’D DONE

If you are in the hotel industry, or find it interesting, there is one piece you must read this weekend and that’s the New York Times interview with Thierry Costes, part of the Costes family that owns a number of restaurants and hotels in France. Its most notable piece is the Hotel Costes, whose central atrium restaurant is the closest Paris equivalent to Tower Bar in LA. Now, the family is expanding its iconic L’Aventure club into an accompanying L’Aventure Hotel and bringing their club-mentality of exclusivity and codes to the hotel business. The family plans to keep the hotel off of booking websites. The part of the interview that stood out the most to me:

This dive into which restaurant actually brought the Irish coffee to American drinkers is local news at its best.

An eloquent riff in The Park Record on what a year without snow does in ski world.

And the New York Times has a depressing yet readable survey of just how bad the snowpack situation is across most of the Mountain West and Oregon.

I have been LIVING for the rage online over these new benches in London. And The Telegraph delivered a great column on it with an excellent lede:
“Some years ago now – it’s hard to say when, exactly – the world got the hang of making benches.”

I love libraries, so I’m very excited for the FT’s new series on the world’s greatest libraries. The first installment is a tour of the British Library by the novelist Charlotte Mendelson.

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

At long last, Madrid’s Edificio Metropolis has reopened

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is pausing launches for two years to focus on NASA contracts

Azul is launching an Interrail-style flight pass for getting around Brazil

AI-produced content on a tour website led travelers to a non-existent hot spring

The Musée de la Vie Romantique will reopen in Paris on Valentine’s Day

Death Valley landmark Scotty’s Castle is reopening for limited tours

The Hollywood-Burbank Airport is the airport most at risk for a collision, government says

Yet this week I found myself vindicated (again), first with an uprising on social media over David Chipperfield’s proposal for the new Nobel Museum and with Saudi Arabia officially pulling back on NEOM.

Despite the steady bleating of bizarrely credulous accounts on social media and news outlets about the audacious and laudable proposals of the Saudi government’s NEOM, it always seemed ludicrous to me. A 100-mile-long city stretching from the Red Sea into the desert? A seahorse-shaped island for mega-yachts? A year-round futuristic ski resort? All by 2030?

“They’ll fly drone taxis to work while robots clean their homes,” wrote an early Wall Street Journal story about The Line, the megacity in the desert. “Their city will supplant Silicon Valley in technology, Hollywood in entertainment and the French Riviera as a place to vacation. It will host a genetic-modification project to make people stronger.”

I noted often in this newsletter that I couldn’t understand who these things were for or just the general absurdity of it all.

Now, though, the drips of delays and obvious-but-secretive scaling back of various NEOM projects is an official scaling back of the whole thing, with the FT reporting, “Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s flagship project Neom is set to be significantly downscaled and redesigned as a review of the massive development nears completion after years of delays and budget overruns.” And the 2029 Asian Winter Games it was supposed to host are now postponed. A proper evisceration, if you want to read one, has been delivered by Kate Wagner in The Nation.

The TL;DR of it all is that billions and billions of dollars have been lit on fire for a set of ideas that were unnecessarily grandiose and fantastical. And the new plan? Datacenters.

I do want to go to Saudi Arabia. I’m curious to experience firsthand the feats that have been pulled off and the culture of a country that looms large over the last half century. And I don’t think contrived tourism/urbanity is a bad thing. After finishing a recent dinner at Mandolin in Miami Beach, I cruised around the Design District which is, frankly, beautiful.

But this whole project should have been mocked from the moment it was unveiled.

As for Chipperfield, if you’ve ever felt cold in a new museum building over the last 20 years, chances are it was designed by this titan of contemporary architecture. To list the number of museums he has built or designed additions for would take up a couple paragraphs. He’s usually lauded for his restraint, but that’s probably because he’s contrasted to contemporaries like Hadid, Calatrava, BIG, Snøhetta, and Gehry.

But that restraint has always read to me as more a penchant for a certain 21st century corporate dreariness. The same sort of stripped-down frigidity that plagues luxury design of some Four Seasons, Park Hyatts, and the concrete boxes on the hills of California and the islands of Florida’s Intracoastal.

The ripples from John Pawson’s 1995 redesign of the Calvin Klein Madison Avenue flagship ended up drowning us in waves of understatement as statement.

Chipperfield’s firm just unveiled their newest design for the Nobel Center in Stockholm after its first proposal a decade ago was tossed (in part for practical reasons as well as for its size, shape, and materials). If you are even a casual follower of museum design, there’s nothing particularly notable about what Chipperfield proposes. It’s yet another set of boxes in a sea of boxes around the world that could be a high school, a museum, or a rehab center. But it grabbed the attention of a national chapter of Architectural Uprising, a fascinating social media organization that has successfully thwarted a number of projects and gotten them replaced with ones that better considered the surrounding area. Bloomberg has a fascinating (and free) profile of the movement.

I don’t want to get dragged into the often ugly debate about contemporary versus classical architecture (it attracts the worst sorts of people), and I treasure many modern and contemporary works of architecture. But we are filling the world with buildings that theorists, writers, and bureaucrats like at the expense of ones that the public will love and care about for decades.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

The biggest news in the American travel space is undoubtedly that NYC Mayor Mamdani is banning hidden junk fees at NYC hotels. The main target here is the much-hated “resort fee.” One of the more Orwellian corporate creations in the last two decades, the “resort fee” was a fee tacked on at check-in that existed so hotels could get the rate they need without actually advertising it transparently beforehand. You might not book your hotel if you know it’s actually $535 total a night, but you’ll fork out that extra $80 if you’re already at check-in for a room you thought was $455. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t trickle down to Los Angeles and Miami, the two other cities where the resort fee is abused. (My position is simple. If your business is predicated on tricking customers, your business is not delivering a good product.)

It could have been a third component to my “I’m not a contrarian, I’m just right” column but anybody interested in Airbnb and the short-term rental industry must read Rafat Ali’s Skift column “The Thrill Is Gone: Airbnb and the Crisis of Imagination in Short-Term Rentals.” Ali lays out all the issues facing Airbnb, despite the fawning coverage publications have given CEO Brian Chesky and his grand statements. In the heart of the column, Ali strikes at something that has turned me from somebody who loved many of the finds on Airbnb to somebody who reluctantly uses it. The rentals are carbon-copy and soulless. “Hosts were humans, not operators; guests felt like visitors, not customers. Living-room bookshelves, local tips, the sense that you were borrowing a life for a weekend,” he writes. “Then the supply base got financialized with investment properties, optimization software, multi-listing operators, dynamic pricing, and professional photos that all look like the same neutral beige simulation.” After you read his initial column, definitely read his follow-up.

I used to quiver with fear when approaching the security line at Heathrow, as its mirthless attendants seemed to derive their only pleasure in life from stripping toiletries from your bags. It was always a strange experience as an American. While we have liquid limits in terms of container size, but not on the number of containers. European airports, though, made you fit them into a plastic baggie. Well now Heathrow has leapfrogged American airports, officially scrapping its liquid limits!

It says something about how airlines have behaved in recent years that I saw the headlines about United planning big changes for its rewards program and braced myself. So far, all we know is that it will be focused on benefiting loyalty rather than acquiring new members. The airline enacted a big increase a year-ish ago for maintaining status, and recently made premium award redemptions more friendly to those with its Chase card. Something to keep an eye on…

Another thing to keep an eye on is the Prado, whose director just announced has hit its annual visitor limit (at 3.5 million last year) and wants to enact policies that will prevent even a single more visitor per year. Those policies have not been proposed or outlined, but will be fascinated to see unfold.

I have not experienced the Vegas Sphere, so perhaps I’d have a different reaction if I’d gone and been blown away. But the news that the D.C. area is getting a Sphere felt mostly silly to me. First, what does it say for Vegas if anything they do can just be copied somewhere else? Second, how quickly will we find a giant ball covered in screens dated?

However, I absolutely love the design proposal for the new Washington Commanders stadium in Washington D.C. It threads the impossible needle of the political push for something classical with a need to be more than historicist pastiche. It is an elegant nod to the historic neoclassical architecture of the city while still being thoroughly modern. I’ll still wait to see how they assemble the parking and what the materials look like, but so far, I’m ecstatic.

With overtourism as the greatest challenge facing our industry and social media awash in bad information, it’s particularly egregious for any news organization to run a story claiming a place is underrated that isn’t. Which is what Travel Weekly just did with Antibes, calling it a “hidden paradise.” Hope nobody goes there in summer hoping not to find crowds!

The idea of Southwest being named the top airline the year it stripped away free bags and a number of its other perks while having a clunky website, no lounges, bad airport terminals, planes without charging ports, dated overhead bins, and more is wild, Wall Street Journal.

Travelers used to going to Europe in shoulder or off-seasons and getting a deal or touring less crowded museums need to brace themselves. There is a BIG shift away from summer.

The only sentence (and a very sad one) you need to read in the news about the new Airo trains coming to Amtrak is this:

“the Airo is capable of 125mph, while the Talgo Series 8 is designed to reach 124mph. However, the fastest Cascades operating speed is 79mph, due to track restrictions and freight traffic movements.”

Sorry, I almost snorted out my hot chocolate when I saw this Daily Mail headline “Inside the ‘Canada of Europe’ - with Alpine scenery, fairytale castles and turquoise lakes.” Even funnier? It’s about Bavaria!!!!! One of the most touristy places in the world.

I try my best to keep politics/Trump out of this column, but his obsession with Dulles is impossible to ignore. For those working with him, the issues are simple—the people movers and the crappy United terminals. Not the historic Saarinen terminal.

STORIES I LOVED OR WISH I DID

The story I hope every hotel developer/architect/designer reads this week is the Wall Street Journal’s “Hotels Are Getting Rid of Proper Bathroom Doors and Guests Are Revolting.” Just absolute madness that this ever happened in the first place.

There’s another wellness/sauna trend you’re supposed to know about…

The FT’s roundup of art shows worth traveling for this year (one is in my city!)

Also its roundup of the best chai spots in London will be my main focus next visit

Always enjoyed Cassandra Brooklyn writing for me back in my days running The Daily Beast’s travel section, so was happy to see her penning “Why Yellowstone Is Better in the Winter” for the Wall Street Journal.

France is in a bit of a snit over the SNCF introducing child-free cars on its trains!

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

1 Hotels is planning a new property upstate

JSX and JetBlue have ended their loyalty partnership

Vail has seen 20% fewer visitors this year due to low snowfall

Madeira is introducing visitor caps and more fees to combat overtourism

Buc-ee’s to build world’s largest convenience store in Florida

WestJet is backtracking on new seating plan after people went nuts online

KLM is bringing free WiFi to its European flights

Amsterdam considering banning ocean cruise visits

Vitruvius’s only building discovered in Italy!!!

Mexican studio Lanza Atelier released its design for this year’s Serpentine Pavilion in London

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“If I don’t post about it, did it really happen?”

It’s a bit of self-mocking occasionally trotted out when somebody shrugs and does something cringe like pose pensively before a painting in a museum.

The ways in which photography and our compulsion to share it have warped our travel experience has been on my mind the past couple weeks because one of the most spectacular things I did over the holidays—Kartchner Caverns State Park—was also something that didn’t allow photos.

For the unfamiliar, the caverns are a series of otherworldly underground caves filled with stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, draperies, pools, and more. All right out of a sci-fi movie set. Thanks to herculean efforts by the Arizona State Parks to preserve it, it’s also still “alive”—i.e. growing. For a couple of hours, my family and I carefully traipsed along its damp paths. Detached from our phones and with an engaging guide, we were all remarkably “present.” (God, I hate that word almost as much as “authentic.”)

Perhaps more importantly, the whole tour was, simply, pleasant. How much in travel today can lay claim to that once-unambitious word?

Many of the sites etched indelibly on my mind didn’t allow photography when I visited them. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to imprint an image in my brain as hard as I did while gazing at Giuseppe Sanmartino’s Veiled Christ in the Cappella Sansevero in Naples. And memories of the ceilings of Santa María Tonantzintla in Cholula still leave me floored. It remains the most overwhelming church interior I’ve ever laid eyes on. (The prohibition on photography in the meh Lee Bul exhibition at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, however, couldn’t have affected me less.)

The banning of photography used to be more widespread, especially in sensitive places (like church interiors in Mexico or the Green Room vaults in Dresden), places that needed to move visitors through quickly (Neuschwanstein), or in countries where cultural institutions had bizarre applications of image rights. Many places tossed those proscriptions, either because they realized how silly their legalese sounded, they wanted the organic social media attention, or enforcing it just became impossible.

Today, the places that ban it are making a conscious choice and are usually well-funded private art foundations like the Menill in Houston or Glenstone outside D.C. But I think the people running popular attractions need to quickly take a page out of members’ clubs and start enacting photography bans.

We’ve all sort of stumbled together into this new reality where every art museum has some version of a scene where people are waiting to take turns of a painting and never actually looking at it. So muddled has it all become that I can’t tell if we’re taking photos because we think we’re taking cool ones, to show we were there, or what.

Consider, for instance, the Sistine Chapel. Anything you’re going to take on your phone already exists with a quick Google, and is of higher quality. I guess it’s not yours, but is does that outweigh the plaintive cries of “No photos, please!?”

Or, worse, that in the last 15 years, hundreds of people have died trying to take selfies—on the edge of the trail in the Grand Canyon, with wild animals, or swept away by waves on a beach.

So before we all photograph ourselves into an early death, maybe before we whip out our phone we can ask what the purpose really is for taking a photo. And then reconsider taking one.

Second little note. Todd Plummer is one of the more fun and talented writers in the lifestyle arena, and used to write for me at The Daily Beast. He’s launched a weekly newsletter called Plumm that I can guarantee will be a must-read.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

The biggest news this week will be whatever BILT announces on Wednesday. The uber-popular credit card has broken up with Wells Fargo and will reveal its new era on the 14th For months, the rumors have run rampant as to what exactly the three new cards will entail—especially their first premium card. One expectation is that you’ll be able to finally pay your mortgage using the card. I can’t imagine the perks will be anything but dramatic given how essential making a splash in a very competitive space is, but let’s see…

Any time I’ve dipped my toe into the world of hotel rewards, I’ve found it befuddling how people spend so much time (and money) trying to “win” in this arena when the gains always seemed so paltry and varied. So I read One Mile at a Time’s story about a Marriott hotel manager divulging that they can’t stand elite members and don’t care about delivering any of the promised benefits. Good rewards programs are simple, and consistent in the benefits they deliver. And hotel reward programs (with the possible exception of Hyatt) have never convinced me on those fronts.

View from the Wings has a great story laying out just how much Delta and Marriott in particular have gotten customers to associate lesser benefits as perks. It’s a must-read for anybody still deep in the Delta cult. While many are still blindly loyal, the shift away from branded loyalty is accelerating. More and more travelers are converting or focusing on non-branded credit card rewards (BILT, Chase, Amex, etc) as meaningful savings are easier to find there.

Something a little gross about this Independent story: “Venezuela: when will its wonders be open to travellers once again?”

Every story about Las Vegas’s troubles features some exec acknowledging one of the main issues—value. That goes for the latest pieces about the city’s abysmal December in which the airport saw a shocking 10 percent drop in passengers for the month (its busiest) from last year! And yet there are never really any solutions offered, almost as if nobody has any ideas for what to do with travel if your business is not solely focused on the rich and/or charging everybody else more and more for less and less.

Lol at the Daily Mail making up a term “luggage lounger” in an effort to squeeze every last click out of our collective anger and anxiety around the misery of travel. The media outlet conjured this term to write a piece arguing that the new thing everybody is “seething” about is people who wait in front of the conveyor belt for their bag to come, making it harder for you to get to yours if it pops out. I almost never check a bag, but this seems like it could be resolved by a polite, “Excuse me.”

STORIES I LOVED OR WISH I DID

Really enjoyed this obituary of Jay Stein, the man who turned a studio tour of Universal into its theme park empire.

A writer tried out Apple’s new live translation technology on a trip to Japan for the New York Times. It’s exactly the kind of “service journalism” that is, in fact, a service. I haven’t done it yet, but travel a lot to countries where learning the language before is unrealistic. And the writer answered a lot of my questions, from how good it is (great for one-on-one interactions and classes, bad for crowded places and fast speakers) and what kind of awkwardness to expect.

Excellent image selection in this Washington Post story A Silk Road moonscape, with no Americans in sight about the Mangystau region in Kazakhstan.

The FT’s test of the world’s first battery-powered skis.

Apparently the Louvre is at serious risk of being flooded…

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

TSA intends to expand the PreCheck Touchless ID program to 65 airports by the end of the spring

Avelo Airlines ends ICE deportation flights

Chable Hotels is expanding into luxury branded residences

Air Premia (a relatively new South Korean airline) just is launching flights to DC

Air France adds La Premiere to Atlanta, Boston, Houston and Tel Aviv

Spanish woman who found fame for botching fresco restoration dies

​While it has plenty of accurate lamentations—Iceland, Croatia, Portugal, etc—what struck me was how thoughtful and balanced a lot of the comments were. For every fogey writing about how Interlaken was a sleepy backpacker town in their youth, there’s somebody sensibly pointing out that since there are more people in the world, and more people with disposable income, of course everything is more crowded.

The other thing that struck me is how quickly things move in the world of tourism now. It feels like a hot second ago that Albania was a place people were either scared to go to or just didn’t find compelling. Now, people on social media don’t shut up about it so much that the Washington Post felt obligated to do an is-it-overhyped type of piece.

​While the thread was fun to read through, one comment in particular snapped me out of it:

While I disagree (the number of people, for instance, who have never heard of Inhotim let alone been, is Exhibit A), the sentiment the commenter is guided by is true. Things are crowded now, and millions of people are being fed the same information on the internet every day.

The big question, then, is how you want to let that affect the way you travel?

For a while, I let this push me to an almost fetishization of the hidden gem. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find sights, cities, and neighborhoods that were “authentic” or “off the beaten path.” While this did lead me to some pretty cool spots, many of which are now overtouristed, it also led me to a number of spots that were not exactly ready for prime time. There was a reason nobody was going there.

​Of late, I’ve become relatively emotionless about what isn’t worth seeing because of overtourism. It’s why I launched this newsletter by saying don’t go to Giverny. No TikTok spot is commensurate with its line, and the weary old guy’s mantra I once overheard—“I’ve seen sights”—freed me from the idea that I need to physically see everything.

What I’ve come to value in this era of mass overtourism are three things (that I will not acronym-ize for obvious reasons): depth, experiences, and interaction.

Depth comes from travel that requires a bit of brainwork. It might involve going to a place that benefits from doing research or reading about before/after/during. It might require a tour guide, but generally, it gives me the excitement of learning something new. There is only one good thing about ignorance, and it’s the opportunity to learn something.

Experience is such a broad term, but the way I think about it is actively doing something. Trips that I have treasured the most are those that involved some activity I could only do there, like a journey on the Amazon River or a puma safari in Patagonia. Experiences also tend to be ones that require a bit of exertion on my part, like a hike. For some, these are cooking classes, concerts, or sporting events.

One of the highlights of 2025 was definitely seeing Dudamel conduct the LA Philharmonic to the Jurassic Park soundtrack at a screening in the Hollywood Bowl. If I only went to LA once, I’d be far happier having done that than trying to see the Walk of Fame.

The last one is interaction. I used to love traveling alone, and while I still like it in bursts, I almost always want to be with people. It’s why I’ve become an advocate for tradition in travel, the idea that there is pleasure in going to the same place at the same time of year every year. You catch up with family and friends and people you know there, which is a reassuring way of marking time.​

I return nearly every year to Paris, Madrid, Mexico City, and London, but no longer is it shopping or sightseeing or being seen there that excites me, but to have long wine-fueled lunches and dinners with old friends in a beautiful place.​

Emphasizing interaction also means you can value places that are crowded. It would be far less pleasurable to see Ipanema Beach empty at sunset than filled with people frolicking with the last gasp of sunlight. A Berlin nightclub wouldn’t be very fun if it were the same crowd week after week. A neighborhood bistro in Paris wouldn’t have the same electricity if you dined alone. While people rend their garments about overtourism in Mexico, Spain, and Greece, Tulum, Ibiza, and Mykonos wouldn’t be Tulum, Ibiza, and Mykonos if not for the planes full of fun-seekers headed there.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

Tip culture shows no sign of slowing down. Now, Marriott is adding a digital tipping feature to its app, meaning you might be prompted to pay a tip when you check out.

Nobody loves Spirit Airlines, but its potential demise should worry American travelers. Spirit forced mainline carriers to keep prices lower. And it also made it so that airlines felt a little bit required to treat its lower-paying customers well enough that they wouldn’t jump to something as no-frills as Spirit. This week’s news that American Airlines will no longer let Basic Economy customers earn miles or Loyalty Points is a sign of worse to come should the low-cost carriers continue to struggle. Or, look at United’s official unveiling of the layout of its premium “Elevated 787,” which has roughly half the plane taken up by United Polaris (business class). Non-premium passengers are not who these airlines care about.

Hmmmm. The cruise line Viking is partnering with Highclere Castle (home of Downton Abbey) to build a pavilion at the property.

Edward Russell of Airport Architecture posted the 1998 Cathay Pacific lounge at Hong Kong designed by Norman Foster. I found it remarkable how little has changed since then. That is, until I saw the JetBlue lounge that just launched at JFK. Finally, a spot with a bit of personality! And the airline is promising it will never be crowded.

Hat tip to Philip Oldfield for flagging it, but it’s a travesty that the world’s largest timber building, The Grand Ring in Osaka, is going to be dismantled for fire chips.

Francis Kéré’s design for the Las Vegas Museum of Art has been unveiled and I feel so meh about it…

So many United Clubs are sad, sad affairs, so no surprise to see they’re the lowest ranked of all airport lounge groups.

With maaaaaybe one exception, the Miami skyline is utterly uninteresting.

STORIES I LIKED OR WISH I’D DONE

Historian Mary Beard writing in a casual tone about her thoughts on the Grand Egyptian Museum was a delight. It read like an email sent to a friend back home, in the best way. Stars, they’re just like us!

Colin Nagy at Skift nails it in a column titled, “Why Travel’s Biggest Brands Are Becoming Dangerously Boring.” I think you should all read it, but his main point is that they’re making the same mistake that the big fashion brands made after being consolidated under a handful of holding companies as they all chased the same wealthy people.

Colin’s column comes at the same time that Jules Perowne appears to have created a stir at one of the travel industry’s premier events, ILTM (International Luxury Travel Market) in Cannes. For the unfamiliar, Perowne is one of the more influential figures in travel, sort of like a Paul Graham for the industry. She consults and represents many of the top properties. While at Cannes, Perowne reportedly declared, “”Travelers are spending more than ever before, hotel rates are at an all-time high and yet ... something feels off … [Luxury] has lost its subtlety and its awe … I’m fed up with the obsession with the ultrahigh-net-worth traveler. What happened to the wealthy, the aspirational, the person who saved up, the lowly, one-off honeymooner? I’m all for a suite-only hotel, but I don’t want to always just be in a hotel with only really rich people. This is not the great tapestry of life.”

It’s a theme I’ve been hammering for a while now, and so I’m glad to see it breaking through to people with a direct line to movers and shakers.

Speaking of breaking through, View from the Wing has a great round-up of ways in which Delta has become less of a premium experience. I’ve been pretty down on Delta for a while now, even calling its fans part of a cult, so perhaps this will help shake people out of their slavish devotion to an airline that is often pretty full of itself.

And another column at Skift this past couple weeks was a banger–Rafat Ali’s “How U.S. Lodging Abandoned the Middle Class.” He picks the perfect case study, Moab, where a decade ago you could find affordable but decent lodging, but now is rammed full of over-priced spots. Money quote:

The true $120–$150 family road-trip hotel with character is nobody’s strategic priority; it’s the orphaned middle of the development pipeline. Logos proliferate, but the lived experience for a middle-class family is still a choice between “expensive for what it is” and “cheap but risky.” The industry doesn’t like talking about this because you can’t fill a conference panel with “Why Can’t Normal Families Afford Yellowstone Anymore?” You can, however, fill it with “premium travelers,” “high-value guests,” and “experiential luxury.”

And the New York Times is also hammering the affordability beat, this time on World Cup tickets.

Proud, but also sad, to see the C&O Canal getting love in the FT. It really is one of the greatest urban amenities in the world.

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

Southwest is teaming up with Turkish Airlines

Universal Studios is looking at opening a theme park in Saudi Arabia

Africa is getting its first Edition hotel

Air traffic controllers are fleeing the U.S. for easier jobs in Australia

Tokyo’s iconic Park Hyatt has officially reopened

BILT adds Spirit Airlines as a partner

Foreign tourists could be required to disclose 5 years of social media histories under Trump administration plan

Rome to officially start charging Trevi Fountain fee in February

More travelers are now visiting Dubai rather than just connecting there

Spain fines Airbnb €65 million for illegal rentals

Coffee omakase is reportedly all the rage in Japan

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Nowadays, it’s far from overlooked. It’s an essential stop, especially in a social media era that values architectural tourism. But what’s really made me wish it wasn’t a ten-hour flight is its art scene. Without hesitation, I would put São Paulo’s contemporary art scene on par with that of any major city in the world. (To clarify, by that I mean you can easily spend a couple of days gallery and museum hopping, seeing not only exciting work but marveling at the spaces created for them.)

Since it’s winter here, and summer there, and many of you are no doubt headed to neighboring Rio for New Year’s, I thought it an apt time to put together a little guide for when you have a couple days in one of my favorite cities. (Past guides include Rio, Amsterdam, Seoul, Montreal, Antwerp, Menorca, Paris, Newport, and Tucson.)

Everything can also be found on this Google Maps list if you don’t feel like reading through:

Read more

In that spirit, and in recognition that my countrymen are spending gushers of money on “luxury” travel every day with little guidance, I thought I might lay out some things that make a hotel that sells itself as luxury less luxurious.

1. Showers with only a wand

2. Shower walls that are only partial

3. Having to get my arm wet to turn on the shower

4. Bathtubs with no bathtub products. What am I supposed to do in this gorgeous tub?!

5. Barn bathroom doors. Disgusting trend. We are not animals

6. Two beds pushed together … if I can feel the gap. I’m mostly looking at European hotels on this one.

7. Loud cleaning staff in the hallways. I have noticed this one more and more.

8. Banging on the door before checkout time or right on the dot. There’s nothing that says, “We don’t want you to feel relaxed,” like a staff member with a clipboard at 11:40 knocking to check and make sure you know checkout is at 12.

9. 11 a.m. check out time

10. Bad lotion (why is it so watery?!)

11. Dated bathroom products

12. Too long to bring steamer/iron. If I’m being honest, I have called down for it because I’m rushing to get dressed for something, so doing this quickly is a small thing that sticks.

13. Inartfully placed TVs. Nothing like a gorgeous room with a TV smack in your sight.

14. Related, but no less annoying, TVs automatically playing when you come in.

15. Gyms with weights that don’t go past 25 lbs.

16. Shades that are not legitimately blackout

17. Thin walls

18. Inane room tech. Turning off the lights, ALL the lights, should be simple and intuitive. I should not have to hunt for the one switch that turns off the track lighting above the minibar

19. Pre-check-in process with forms…homework is not luxurious, and all too often you just end up doing it when you arrive all again.

20. Waiting for bags. Don’t take my bags in the lobby and then have me sitting like an idiot in my room waiting.

21. Hovering attendants. Overly-attentive staff used to be seen as luxurious, but now I think it has the opposite effect.

22. Poorly thought out plug placement. We live an electronic life, so please give us lots of outlets and in spots we can easily reach!

23. Unripe welcome fruit

24. Resort fees at non-resorts

25. Charging extra for your steam/sauna

    ---

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

You have to laugh at Ryanair dipping its toes into a loyalty program—and a very ungenerous one at that—only for it to scrap it after a short period because their customers were all to happy to leap on even meager savings.

I agree with both of these takes. On the one hand, I’m old enough to pay more for a flight at a comfortable time. On the other, early morning flights are one of the most seamless experiences in commercial aviation.

No, New York Times, Killington, Vermont cannot become the “Aspen of the East.” No amount of mansions and amenities will change that the actual skiing on the east coast (which is what I grew up doing) isn’t as good.

It does seem like the war on Airbnb has cooled somewhat and that the lengths cities will go to curb short term rentals has somewhat settled into one specific policy—banning lockboxes, which Milan just did

Shame on USA Today for engaging in the whole “you could be hacked if you charge your phone at the airport” security clickbait. I ripped CBS for this months ago. How can you run this story without asking if it’s actually ever happened?!

The designs for Kéré’s massive library in Rio have been unveiled, and I find myself uninspired. There are nice references to the last 100 years of Brazilian architecture, but it misses the sculptural quality of its forebears while gaining little in the way of clever usefulness.

Perhaps Delta has realized that other airlines, United in particular, have been closing the gap for premium travelers so it just unveiled changes to its perks, including expanding gifting of status by top-tier members.

Paging Edward Russell…I must say I agree the new United signage is less easy to quickly understand…

Appreciative of the FT giving us some alternative spots in Cairo for architectural lovers led by the architect Salem Charabi. BUT, the number of photographs with him just staring sultrily is almost comical.

Two big projects in Abu Dhabi just opened, the Zayed National Museum, by Foster + Partners and a Natural History Museum by Mecanoo on Saadiyat Island.

STORIES I LIKED OR WISH ID DONE

I always love when something I’ve argued in this newsletter reaches a broader or different audience, so it’s great to see the BBC saying something I said a few months ago about being back tradition (I.e. going to the same place every year) in travel!

On that note, I feel totally vindicated that the Wall Street Journal’s architectural critic, Michael J. Lewis wrote this week about the Notre Dame restoration one year later:

“But in one aspect, the restoration is a disappointment—even to Mr. Villeneuve, reportedly. The lighting is bright to the point of excess, overpowering the light from the stained-glass windows of the clerestory. Stained glass needs a dim interior so that its rich colors glow by contrast”

And cheers to Vogue for the populist take on the whole dressing up for flying!

I have always disliked the service on Lufthansa, so I found it completely unsurprising that one of its flight attendants snitched on a flier over something that did not personally affect said flight attendant. And the whole thing absolutely blew up in the airline’s face. Good!

This essay in Slate has been passed around as a great look at the ails of Las Vegas, with both on-the-ground reporting, personal takes, and some bigger picture considerations.

There were a number of churches I’d never heard of in this Guardian reader-sourced story on the most beautiful churches in Europe!

And I wasn’t familiar with the Bonnat-Helleu Museum in Bayonne, which is nicknamed the “Little Louvre.” But Le Monde has a nice piece on its collection, which the paper calls, “one of the finest Old Master art collections in France.”

Really, really liked this FT story talking to various travel writers about their favorite and most disappointing experiences of the last year. Lots of fodder, honesty, and hot takes!

TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS

Air France’s La Premiere is now going to Atlanta, Boston, and Houston

All South Rim hotels in Grand Canyon have been ordered closed indefinitely

Fees to visit U.S. national parks if you’re a foreigner are going up

Louvre to hike ticket prices for most non-EU tourists by 45%

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