Conde Nast Traveler January/February 2021

And does it seem possible now, with news of a vaccine, that we can look toward the dawn of a new day? I sincerely hope so. There is not a trip I have not researched, a train I am not interested in, an adventure I cannot smell in the breeze. Imagine a bedroom that is not your own. The delicious allure of it. With good timing, this Gold List issue swings in. I’ve always had a soft spot for it because it’s when our editors around the world pull off their gloves and—away from the pressure to subscribe to certain criteria—simply nominate their favorite hotels. But this issue also focuses on community, the importance of it, the celebration of it, and the empowerment of it. So here is an additional…

If you’re like me, you’ve been crossing your fingers and praying that the new year will be better than the one we’ve just survived. Of course that begins with defeating the coronavirus and protecting human life. But here are a couple of other ways I’m hoping 2021 can be an improvement on 2020. Number one, I’m hoping we can get back to exploring the four corners of the earth. And number two, I’m hoping we can be a little kinder to one another, no matter how much we might disagree. Number one and number two are connected. We completed this issue near the end of a year marked not just by the pandemic but also by even more rancor than usual, culminating in the contentious election that took place just as…

When a devastating explosion tore through the Lebanese capital last summer, the city’s independent artists and designers, whose jewel box shops and busy studios fill the neighborhoods closest to the blast zone, were among those particularly impacted. For the country it was the latest tragedy in a year already marked by the pandemic and a collapsed economy. “As a community, we felt like we’d all been hit together,” says designer Tatiana Fayad, a cofounder of the high-fashion women’s brand Vanina (vanina.me), whose store in the bohemian enclave of Gemmayzeh was heavily damaged. The network of designers, many of whom have been friendly for years, have always tried to bolster one another in the absence of more formal support, says Fayad. “We don’t have organizations that help us or teach us how…

Meryanne Loum-Martin Owner, Jnane Tamsna hotel, Marrakech “Being a child of the African diaspora, I am in awe of the extraordinary creativity that comes from our community here in Marrakech,” says Loum-Martin, whose boutique hotel is a preferred hideaway for artists and writers in the Palmeraie, a sprawling oasis at the city’s northern edge. Though the Paris native, who is Morocco’s sole Black female hotelier, admits it can be hard to peel herself away from the property, she has spent the past 25 years getting to know the city. Here, she shares her ideal itinerary, including the art galleries—and nightcaps—worth scouting out. Mornings in the medina “After breakfast, which I always have under the sun in the hotel gardens, I’ll head down to the medina. Even now I experience it with the…

In France, the artisanal trades of bread baking and haute pâtisserie—like the rest of the country’s culinary scene—have historically been dominated by men. Nicolas Stohrer, King Louis XV’s pastry chef and the founder of the oldest pastry shop in Paris, along with Marie-Antoine Carême, the onetime chef to the royal court, set the course in the 18th century by inventing everything from profiteroles to the boozy baba au rhum. The generations of male bakers that followed often credited their mères and grands-mères as inspiration for their careers, but women have otherwise been footnotes at best. No longer: Entrepreneurial women now run many of the capital’s most beloved sweets destinations. Julie Mathieu, co-owner and founding editor of Fou de Pâtisserie, a pastry concept shop and France’s leading baking magazine, says the recent proliferation…

The guide clicks his fingers. After three days of walking with Mpatinga Ole Nkuito, I know he is signaling a warning. We look up to see a bull elephant 50 feet away, striding through the spiny grass in search of a mate. “If he smells us, we’re in big trouble,” whispers Roelof Schutte, my other guide. It’s unmistakable, from the secretion that trickles down the side of the bull’s head, that he’s in musth—which means he’s aggressive and hormonal. We stop dead, shoulders pinched to our ears. I’ve seen animals in musth before, but on foot it’s infinitely more hair-raising. Schutte shakes his wind checker, a cylindrical brass container that releases baby powder, to establish which way the wind is blowing. The creature can’t see us, but one shift in…