One of Miami’s hottest hotels is opening in NYC next year — and it’s good news for Accor fans

Low-cost airline Norse Atlantic Airways is making it easier to get to Europe from the West Coast with a new flight to Rome launching next summer. 

South Brooklyn is a lot of things. It’s an amusement park, both literally thanks to Coney Island and its thrill rides and figuratively because of the eccentric boardwalk of Brighton Beach lined with bars and restaurants open late into the night. It’s also home to New York City's Eastern European community, one rich with culture and characters. With the limited release of the film Anora on October 18, which centers around the latter, South Brooklyn now becomes something else: a movie star.

“As far back as I can remember, I knew I was different,” says Alexander Smalls. Growing up in a Gullah Geechee household in Spartanburg, North Carolina, the chef says he recognized the implication of those differences—in appearance, history, and cuisine. “I discovered early that my friends did not eat any of the foods that I ate. My foods were more akin to West Africa, you know, and very much pronounced in that way,” he says. It wan't until he moved to New York as an adult, that he assimilated the value of that diasporic connective tissue. “Food was a big part of cultural expression and identity of the African diaspora,” he says.

When we arrived in Bali, we had nine suitcases, one child getting over a cold, the other not sleeping through the night, and the hopes that a few months away might help us figure out our next steps. At least that was the plan.

In 2014, when the artist Dan McCarthy moved from Brooklyn into a converted schoolhouse in upstate New York, he decided the grand hall would be a future gathering spot for his many Facepots: large, wonky vessels decorated with a spectrum of grins and grimaces. The earliest ones, about a decade old, recall a time of emotional swings. “I hadn’t even found the clay that worked,” McCarthy says of that experimental phase, “so a lot of the pots were breaking in the kiln.” He learned to relinquish control, repairing the salvageable works using the Japanese technique known as kintsugi, in which mended seams are accented in silver or gold. The Facepots brought a new openness to McCarthy’s practice, as did the Hudson Valley. Absent the city’s pressures, he explains, “I was like a kid — on my hands and knees, lost in making a thing.” “Freedom,”a new monograph of McCarthy’s work, charts that arc, with nods to his Southern California upbringing, seen in rainbow-colored paintings of surfers and songbirds perched on guitars. Birds also animate new ceramic works in his solo exhibition at the Tokyo gallery Kosaku Kanechika, on view through Nov. 16. For McCarthy, these first faceless pots offer a shift in narrative. “Instead of a vessel, maybe it’s a nest,” he says, describing a fascination with his neighborhood birds. Kintsugi-like detailing appears on these pieces, too: Silver-leafed slabs camouflage the occasional split, while shiny rectangles evoke the little mirrors tucked inside birdcages. For the artist, fresh off his first flight to Japan, it’s a time of possibility. “I’m 62, which is old and not,” McCarthy says. “I think I’ve got another act in me. It should be an adventure.”

A last-minute trip to Europe is as romantic as it sounds. Not only is the spontaneity thrilling, but European countries lend themselves very well to travelers who appreciate local customs and enjoy exploring new places without a rigid itinerary. Often, impulsively turning down a cobblestoned street will lead you to an exceptional hole-in-the-wall wine bar, a short-notice boutique hotel booking will be the best place you’ve ever stayed, or a chance encounter with a local will lead to a life-long friendship. But come 2025, you will need to do a little planning before you cross the pond. Next year, the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS) will come into effect. This rule will require visitors from visa-exempt countries to obtain a travel authorization before entering 30 European countries and this includes US travelers.

Hotels and resorts can now become wellness certified, thanks to the industry’s first program focusing on ways that accommodations amplify and offer ways for their guests to be well, launched by Wellness in Travel & Tourism (WITT). 

Global Hotel Alliance, which runs a shared loyalty program for about 40 independent hotel brands, reported robust growth in the third quarter, with double-digit gains in performance across key measures.

Delta Air Lines officially has two business-class-only lounges open after cutting the ribbon last week on its dazzling 10,000-square-foot Delta One Lounge inside Terminal 3 at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

Marriott is rewarding its loyal travelers with up to 15 percent off fall and winter weekend getaways across the United States and Canada.

About 5,060 hotel workers are now on strike across the U.S., with walkouts in Boston and Seattle in the past two days escalating labor disputes in the travel sector.

I had my first experience with Frontier this summer, flying from Miami to Salt Lake City, and it was quite a baptism by fire.