I'm a middle-aged mom of 3 and I'm going back to Burning Man despite my chaotic first experience last year

An American tourist was visiting an ice cave in one of Europe’s largest national parks last month when a frozen arch collapsed, killing him and injuring his girlfriend.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, September 4, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Silicon Valley's favorite festival, Burning Man, was hit by a massive dust storm that messed up travel plans for tens of thousands of its participants.

More than 70,000 people traveled over the holiday weekend to Nevada's Black Rock Desert, about 100 miles from Reno, to occupy Black Rock City, the temporary town created to host Burning Man, the annual eccentric and offbeat camping event filled with art, music, creative endeavors and all manner of curious activities.

Koji, the mold that transforms soy beans and wheat into soy sauce and rice into sake, is so beloved in Japan that it has its own holiday. And lately, chefs have been finding new uses for the fungus, which has a fruity aroma and an ability to make “anything it touches better,” says Jeremy Umansky, 41, the owner of Larder deli in Cleveland. He uses koji for almost everything: to cure pastrami; to ferment Chinese-style black beans, which are ground and swirled into chocolate babka to embolden the chocolate; and to sprinkle over salads and fries in the form of what the restaurant calls Special K, a seasoning of dried ground koji. “It’s a harmonizer,” he says. Bartenders, too, are taking note. At Nancy’s Hustle in Houston, the bar manager, Zach Hornberger, 32, adds it to the nonalcoholic Silver Brining cocktail, a sweet-sour-salty mix of pickle brine, grapefruit and lime juices, koji and tonic. “It brings this umami background to beverages, and it plays well with citrus, taming the high acid notes and rounding the drink as a whole,” he says. At the restaurant Fête in Honolulu, the bar manager, Fabrice McCarthy, 41, infuses rum with shio koji (a slurry of koji, water and salt) and shakes it into a mai tai to add salinity — the effect, he says, is similar to how salted peanuts make you want to drink more beer. Ryan Chetiyawardana, 40, the owner of the bar Lyaness in London, experiments with koji in multiple forms — for one cocktail, he ferments parsnips with koji, which he says unlocks the sweetness and delivers “a huge tropical brightness.” While koji often plays a supporting role, at Paradiso in Barcelona, it wraps around the entire lip of the glass used for the Fleming, named for Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, another influential mold. For this fungus-inspired cocktail, which includes grapefruit, tequila and miso, the manager of Paradiso’s research lab, Matteo Ciarpaglini, 30, one-upped a classic salt rim with a fluffy cloud of koji, its floral fragrance accompanying every taste. —

Over the last few years, Burning Man has become known as a haven for Silicon Valley tech bros and Instagram influencers who cough up thousands of dollars to party in "Mad Max" desert cosplay. 

Good morning from Skift. It’s Tuesday, August 27, 2024, and now, here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Southwest Airlines has extended its bookable flight schedule through April 7, 2025.

Alva Vanderbilt's 39th birthday present from her husband was a 140,000-square-foot summer "cottage" on the shores of Newport, Rhode Island.

Hundreds of charter and personal planes touched down on the same tarmac this weekend — and it wasn't in the Hamptons, Lake Tahoe, or any other particularly bougie hot spot. It was a pop-up airport called 88NV in the middle of the Nevada desert.

I'd never cruised before — but when 12 of my friends from high school hatched a plan to celebrate our 60th birthdays on a four-night Royal Caribbean cruise, I immediately said yes.

The night train boom is continuing with a new sleeper across Europe launching in 2025.