Conde Nast Traveler July/August 2021

This, the summer issue of Condé Nast Traveler, is meant to be about adventure of a gentle sort: a few tastes of the great outdoors, some new destinations and experiences, all chosen with those of you in mind who may still be getting your travel bearings again. But I’d submit that virtually any kind of travel can be construed as an adventure right now, especially if you go by the Merriam-Webster definition of “an exciting or remarkable experience.” Last weekend, I took my family on a perfectly ordinary Memorial Day trip to Washington, D.C., and it was wild. Getting to eat at not one, not two, but three restaurants (Maydan, Compass Rose, and Moon Rabbit) on my list? Thrilling! The Mad Men-goes-to-Washington vibe and everything-you-could-ever-need service at our hotel, the…

Over these past 15 months, we’ve all had our own pandemic experiences, but one thing has been the same everywhere: Travel—at least the kind we’re used to—has been on hold. For the editors at Condé Nast Traveler’s seven global offices, in New York, London, Madrid, Milan, Dubai, Mumbai, and Shanghai, being deprived of this shared passion provided some new common ground. Like so many people, we did our best to approximate some of what we most love about travel by cooking, reading, watching TV, exploring our home cities, and uploading Zoom backgrounds depicting where we wished we could be. We also reconsidered what we most yearned for in travel, and thought about the ways the pandemic made us reevaluate our priorities as travelers. Here in the summer of 2021, the circumstances…

THE NEWS FROM NEWPORT If you’ve missed festivals, take note: Newport is inching its way back to normalcy this summer with a stacked dance card of (reduced-capacity) goings-on: The Newport Folk and Jazz festivals are back in late July, followed by the Newport International Boat Show in September. Book a room at The Vanderbilt, Auberge Resorts Collection to be at the center of the action; the Gilded Age grande dame just underwent a facelift courtesy of hip Dallas design collective Swoon. Walk over to The Reef, a brand-new restaurant on Howard Wharf that focuses on sophisticated seafood dishes like za’atar-crusted salmon—it’s a welcome departure from Newport’s usual all-fried-everything approach. Across town, the beloved Castle Hill Inn ups its alfresco game with private candlelit farm dinners in the middle of its vegetable…

In the late ’70s, when José Ignacio was still a lonesome fishing village, an adventurous, then unknown Argentine chef named Francis Mallmann opened an enchanting restaurant there, Posada del Mar. He followed up its success with Los Negros, which had a tin roof, and poetry on the walls. It soon became one of the most sought-after spots in South America. Mallmann went on to garner international fame, and José Ignacio, with its gravel roads and grassy dunes, became a destination for a certain type of traveler—the kind who has seen the world and wants to get away from it for a while. Last December, Mallmann returned to open the beachfront open-flame restaurant Chiringuito Francis Mallmann. Inspired by Luchino Visconti’s seaside scenes in Death in Venice, Mallmann created a series of tents…

In recent years, badehotels, the cozy seaside lodgings that are a staple of the Danish summer, have fallen out of favor as younger Danes increasingly vacation beyond their country’s borders. Now, thoughtful hoteliers are bringing them back. After purchasing the decades-old Allinge Badehotel on the southern island of Bornholm last year, tech executive Cathrine Andersen and her partner, Christian Rasmussen, overhauled its bright white rooms with custom wood panels and classic blue-and-white striped wallpaper. Nearby, Danish shooting champion Martin Ramstrup reopened the historic Falcon Hotel in 2020, keeping its old-school vibe with vintage pieces and velvet cushions but adding a rock garden with hammocks. It joins the sleek Nordlandet, whose views over the Baltic are some of the best in Denmark. Like their design, the badehotels’ cuisine is getting a…

There is a huge incentive nowadays for scientists to break out of the ivory tower and connect to have a broader impact,” says biologist and oceanographer Allison Cusick. For four years she has been one of a growing number of scientists lending their expertise to the travel industry. In 2017 she founded FjordPhyto, a citizen-science project in which travelers aboard the expedition vessels of Chile-based cruise operator Antarctica21 help collect scientific samples for research. Sailing along the western Antarctic Peninsula from the South Shetland Islands down to the polar circle, guests do things like record the temperature and salinity of seawater to aid the vital mission of tracking the impact of melting glaciers in one of the fastest-warming spots on earth. Citizen scientists also drag nets between ice floes to…