Travel + Leisure May 2023

Armelle Habib BALI HIGH “To get the best angle of one swimming pool, I was knee-deep in dense jungle and I backed into a two-foot-long tree snake,” says the Australian photographer, who captured a new generation of destination hotels on Bali for this issue. Habib is the co-author of the lifestyle book Vivid: Style in Colour. Cedric Angeles EASY DOES IT Born and raised in the Philippines, Angeles photographed four of the most dynamic neighborhoods in New Orleans—the city he now calls home. “It feels good to highlight places I love, especially the smaller businesses,” he says. Angeles is currently directing his first feature-length film, Chingona, a story about female boxers in Mexico City. Sarah Moss TUSCANY’S WILD SIDE The Scottish-born educator and author wrote about Oasy, an eco-resort that’s bringing sustainable luxury to Tuscany, Italy. “The whole…

MY HOMETOWN of Philadelphia has never been considered a “hotel city” in the same vein as New York, or even Miami. But there are a few gems to call out, such as the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia at Comcast Technology Center (fourseasons.com; doubles from $885). It opened in August 2019, and that fall I reviewed the property for the It List—our annual showcase of the best new and renovated hotels of the year. I noted that though the rooms were a bit beige and the food a little costly, the Four Seasons had reshaped the Philly skyline and had finally given the city the over-the-top hotel it deserved. Three years on, the Four Seasons feels a little older and wiser—just the right amount of lived-in. After a dramatic glass-elevator ride to…

MOROCCO SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA VIENNA TORONTO BERLIN JAIPUR, INDIA ST. BART’S MORETON-IN-MARSH, ENGLAND CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, CALIFORNIA TANZANIA MIAMI LAKE COMO, ITALY PUNTA MITA, MEXICO FOR THE FULL LIST OF 100 HOTELS, GO TO TRAVELANDLEISURE.COM/IT-LIST. JAIPUR, INDIA VILLA PALLADIO JAIPUR The Pink City’s newest boutique hotel will have you seeing red—in a good way. The nine-room Villa Palladio is designed almost entirely in punchy shades of vermilion, cherry, scarlet, and carmine. Over-the-top color is something of a signature for Barbara Miolini, Marie-Anne Oudejans, and Vikas Soni, the team who famously wrapped Jaipur’s Bar Palladio in blue. Though the aesthetic might initially seem overwhelming, Villa Palladio quickly becomes a respite from the cacophony of the city, about a 30-minute drive away. Spend some time at the spa (where the massages and “grounding rituals” incorporate powdered pearl and quartz) or reading in the garden, surrounded by the scent of jasmine,…

TRAVELERS’ TALES, FROM NEAR + FAR IT WAS EARLY morning on a crystal-clear autumn day on the tiny German island of Sylt, and I was chewing toast. And chewing, and chewing. When I finally reached a count of 40, I swallowed. Outside the floor-to-ceiling window of the dining room, long strands of dune grass rippled in a brisk offshore breeze. I took another small bite, sipped some almond milk from a white porcelain cup, and began the count again. This repetitive process is part of what’s known as the Lanserhof Cure. It’s based on the theories of the turn-of-the-last-century Austrian holistic physician Franz Xaver Mayr, who specialized in gastrointestinal health, and who started clinics throughout Austria that are still in operation today. Mayr’s methods are the bedrock of Lanserhof Resorts, a group…

MY SON FELIX and I slept with the windows open, so I was woken by birdsong. The sun was just coming over the mountain, the wooded hills were flooded with golden light, and the land was alive with insects and birds. While Felix continued to doze, I stepped onto the veranda, breathed in the scent of pine trees and herbs and flowers, and saluted the sun. We were staying at Oasyhotel, an eco-resort at the Oasi Dynamo nature reserve, in Italy’s Pistoia Mountains. We had driven from the Pisa airport, winding through Tuscan valleys where stucco farms and villages perched on the mountainsides. Grandmothers sunned themselves behind geraniums on wrought-iron balconies. We reached a stone gateway and parked our car. A driver then took us five miles up a winding track…

BEFORE MY VISIT to Wildflower Farms, a new resort in the Catskill Mountains, I had only ever seen one American kestrel. It was two years ago, while driving past an open field in upstate New York, and I had screeched to a halt to get a closer look—only for the bird to fly from its fence post in an instant. But on my first morning at Wildflower Farms, I spotted North America’s smallest raptor perched on a pole a mere 30 feet from the main building. It held still long enough for me to get a good look through my binoculars, as if it had been placed there by guest services. Later that day I would glimpse a bald eagle and one of its young swooping out of their nest…