For decades, authors, artists and presidents have all been drawn to the Hudson Valley in New York.
08.09.2023 - 21:33 / cntraveler.com / Crystal Symphony
Peering out of my suite at Hilton Imperial Dubrovnik, a 19th-century hotel with views of the walled Old Town and the shimmering Adriatic just beyond, it was hard to imagine being thrilled to leave.
But I was about to board the Crystal Symphony, the second of Crystal’s pair of oceangoing cruise ships. A mere 18 months prior, both vessels had been repossessed in the Bahamas during the bankruptcy of the Chinese parent company. Yet now, after the Crystal brand had been purchased by the parent company of luxury tour operator Abercrombie & Kent, and the ships totally reimagined in down-to-the-steel refurbishments at Italy’s Fincantieri shipyard, we were to board for the first sailing, a cruise to Athens.
We weren’t quite done with Croatia just yet, though. To preview some of the shore excursions Abercrombie & Kent is planning to integrate with Crystal’s oceangoing cruise, a group of 15 boarded a luxury tour bus for the nearby hamlet of Orašec. There, in a stone house bathed in bougainvillea, we learned about the pressing of olive oil in a horse-pulled stone mill before sitting down for a tasting replete with baskets of fresh bread and plates of olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and fresh cheese produced on the estate.
Next, it was on to Mali Ston, a seaside village on the Pelješac Peninsula where a stone wall snaked up the hillside. Built in the 1300s to protect the region’s salt production, the Walls of Ston are second in size only to the Great Wall of China. At a nearby oyster farm, we sampled fresh shellfish before returning to town for a seafood lunch in the shadow of the village’s stone tower.
These are exactly the intimate touring experiences from Abercrombie & Kent that the relaunched Crystal is planning to integrate with the ocean cruise, explained Jacqueline Barney, Crystal’s senior vice president of global marketing, over a lobster appetizer in Osteria d’Ovidio, the new Italian specialty restaurant concept onboard.
Abercrombie & Kent purchased Crystal with the intent of returning it to its roots, with two tweaks to the brand—dropping “Cruises” from the name, and refraining from any mention of the word “luxury” in the line’s marketing materials. “If you have to say you’re ‘luxury’, are you really?” she says with a wry smile.
If anything, though, the ships are back even more sumptuous than they were before. The overall number of cabins has been reduced as some smaller cabins were made into suites. Going into drydock, Crystal Symphony had space for 848 passengers—now it’s just 606. The guest-to-crew ratio is now roughly one-to-one, and even though the ship was fully booked for our sailing, it felt about half full, with a noticeable lack of crowding in virtually all of the public areas. All room and
For decades, authors, artists and presidents have all been drawn to the Hudson Valley in New York.
Kia Karjalainen and her sister were vacationing in Greece when things took an unexpected turn. “We were in our hotel room, and I suddenly said to my sister, ‘It really, really smells of smoke. Is something burning?’”
As the summer travel season comes to a close, one airline is giving travelers a reason to start planning next summer's vacation. Delta Air Lines announced it will be operating its largest trans-Atlantic flight schedule ever, debuting just in time for summer 2024. The airline will be adding new destinations including Naples and bringing back service to Shannon, Ireland. According to Delta, next summer it will operate 260 weekly flights to 18 countries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK). This includes a new flight from JFK to Munich three times a week that will start on April 9, 2024, and a daily nonstop flight to Shannon, Ireland that will begin on May 23, 2024. The carrier will expand its existing service to Italy — it already flies to Milan, Venice, and Rome — with a new daily service to Naples. It will also resume service between Atlanta and Zurich, Switzerland, four times a week, which had originally been cut in 2019.
After a summer filled with headlines about iconic European sights buckling under the pressure of overtourism and moronic tourists running amok on the continent, it’s now more obvious than ever that you need to arrive in Europe with a game plan to avoid some of the most crowded situations.
For generations, designers have adopted towns, villages, and other enclaves as second homes and visited them again and again, imprinting a touch of their own sensibility on their chosen place—and importing something of its essence into their own work. It’s the kind of symbiosis that Coco Chanel and Le Corbusier, who summered in neighboring homes, enjoyed with the Cote d’Azur’s Rouquebrune Cap-Martine, or Yves Saint Laurent with Marrakech and Tangier. More recently, Christian Louboutin popularized the Portuguese village of Melides, eventually opening Vermelho Hotel there earlier this year. Here, five designers on the places they go, and why they continue to be pulled back.
The small island of Ikaria, with its 164km (102 miles) of undulating coastline, sits serenely in the midst of the Northern Aegean islands, just a hop from the much larger Samos.
Balmy temperatures, fewer crowds and lower prices: Now is the perfect time to take a trip to Greece.
When planning a 2020 sailing trip in Greece, Bettina Trittmann knew she wanted a cruise that offered less of a carbon footprint than other cruise ships did.
For the first time, a nation is allowing travelers to cross its border with a digital passport on their smartphone instead of a physical passport. While the trial is happening in Finland, the European Union wants at least 80% of citizens in the 27-country bloc to be using a digital ID by 2030.
Air Canada is expanding its international flying schedule for the summer of 2024, especially to destinations across Europe, including a new year-round route between Montreal and Madrid.
After a summer of travel plagued by extreme heat, disruption and unpredictable weather, many of us are looking to holiday outside of the peak season.
Every day, a daily influx of 90 visitors will be presented with the exclusive opportunity to experience the awe-inspiring Kuélap site.