Travel + Leisure September 2022

Chadner Navarro LONG LIVE THE LAYOVER (P. 65) Navarro, who is based in New Jersey, spends plenty of time in airports for his work as a freelance travel writer. This month he reports on upgrades at some of America’s biggest travel hubs. “It’s encouraging to see so many improvements,” he says. Osayi Endolyn THE CASTAWAY Before arriving in St. Lucia on assignment for T+L, Endolyn researched the foods to seek out. “I loved having fragrant, delicious, tropical fruit every day,” she says. She cowrote the book Ghetto Gastro Presents: Black Power Kitchen, which will be out this October. Sarah Enelow-Snyder THE ROAD AHEAD (P. 66) For this issue, the Washington Post contributor covered the newest sites to join the U.S. Civil Rights Trail. “Oklahoma is a state Americans don’t associate with the Civil Rights Movement, but they should,”…

IS IT SACRILEGE TO SAY that the best croissant I’ve ever had was in England? Perhaps. But if I’ve learned anything over these past two years, it’s that life throws curve balls—sometimes, in the form of buttery French pastries—where and when you least expect them. My family and I were on vacation at the Newt (thenewtinsomerset.com; doubles from $460), a 65-acre country estate in Somerset, where the gardens provide produce for candlelit evening meals; 70 varieties of apples, grown on site, are made into sweet cider; and breakfast serves as a reminder that in the age of juice cleanses and intermittent fasting, starting off the day with something rich and filling is actually kind of great. At home in New York City, as I’m rushing to work or nudging my son off…

A GLOBETROTTER’S GUIDE TO THE LATEST IN TRAVEL WITH BROAD BEACHES bookended by temple-topped rocky outcrops, Hua Hin has been a playground for Thai hi-so (local slang for high-society) since members of the royal family built their summer palaces there in the 1920s. Over the century that followed, well-heeled Bangkok residents snapped up beach villas and luxury condominiums, turning this getaway—just three hours south of the capital—into Thailand’s version of the Hamptons. And, as in the Hamptons, cool young people tended to steer clear. That began changing in 2020, when a new crowd of hoteliers, chefs, surfers, and coffee enthusiasts started setting up shop along its shores. Perhaps the biggest sign that Hua Hin has found a new audience is the fact that the Standard hotel group chose to open its first…

ON A BLUSTERY SATURDAY in early May, I stood in an open-beamed farmhouse in northern Connecticut, looking into a pot of steaming tea swirling with chunks of mushroom: Chaga, reishi, and rippled fans of turkey-tail. Across from me was Tracy Hayhurst, culinary director of Husky Meadows Farm, telling me about her stint cooking meals for hikers along the Appalachian Trail in her early 20s. It was then, working off the grid, that she developed her passion for food that, like my mushroom tea, is natural, creative, and waste-free. I had come to Husky Meadows to experience the farm’s new program, Seed & Spoon (seedandspoon.com), where visitors can sleep in one of four apartment-style suites, help out in the fields and greenhouses, and cook meals with ingredients grown just yards from the…

ONE NEW YORK evening, Alice Waters found herself at a party with Adele Chatfield-Taylor, then president of the American Academy in Rome. The academy had hosted the likes of Maya Lin, Roy Lichtenstein, and Chang-rae Lee through its esteemed fellowship program—but, Chatfield-Taylor explained, the food wasn’t quite as brilliant as the visiting luminaries. Fifteen years later, the collaboration that resulted has grown into Waters’s Rome Sustainable Food Project (aarome.org)—part farm-restaurant, part culinary incubator, and one of the most innovative kitchens in the city. (Its exclusive reservations are certainly among the most coveted.) T+L spoke to Waters, who visits Rome regularly from her home in California, about where food goes from here, and where travelers can taste Italy’s long tradition of local cuisine. What drew you to Italy? When I first visited Rome…

“ART FORMS, from beadwork to bronze sculpture, are how we continue to tell the story of our people and our tribes, and move forward to the next generation,” says Kim Peone, the first Native American woman executive director of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts. Nothing embodies this sentiment better than the Santa Fe Indian Market (swaia.org), the organization’s marquee event, which marked its centennial in August. The market, which is an annual cornerstone of Santa Fe’s identity and a Native American arts hub, includes selected traditional and contemporary works by 800 artists from more than 250 federally recognized tribes in the U.S. and Canada. Shoppers can find everything from intricate heritage pottery to abstract paintings on display. After working for 35 years with tribal enterprises and governments in Washington and North…