Vita La-Dolce travel tips

Train lovers and travelers concerned about their carbon footprint have a lot to choose from this year — especially in Europe. While some European governments are mulling short-haul flight bans, many passengers are already opting for rail, where new connections are numerous.

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The romance of pan-European train travel is nothing new. But a few high-profile redesigns in Italy have captured the imaginations of the globetrotting glitterati. Vintage slow trains are now the most elegant way to travel through Italy.

For many travelers to the Philippines, Manila is a gateway to the country’s beautiful islands and exotic beaches. But as the editors of Forbes Travel Guide point out, the Philippine capital has plenty of beautiful luxury hotels offering unique experiences. From an immersive art tour at Raffles Makati to a speakeasy at Shangri-La at The Fort, where visitors can create their own gin, here is the FTG guide to Manila’s best hotels.

Luxe train travel aboard the Orient Express is expanding, but expect this growth to be more about modern luxury and less about Agatha Christie and murder.

The launch of new luxury trains shows no sign of slowing down, thanks to an obsession with slow travel, an appetite for nostalgia, and a taste for lavish interiors that harken back to the golden days of rail travel. Nothing epitomizes that better than the unveiling of the Orient Express La Dolce Vita later this year, a new “vintage-style” train that will travel around Italy on one—and two-night journeys.

The Swiss city of Lugano is an outlier, radically different in feeling from counterparts like Zurich, Geneva, Lausanne, or Basel. It has a 19th-century feel, a measured pace, and traces of the Belle Epoque. Situated on Lake Lugano with tree-lined promenades and a backdrop of domed mountains, the views might have been lifted from an Art Nouveau poster.

It's hard to know when to call something a travel trend but one sign might be when current trends merge into one, particularly for the top 1% of travelers.

There’s a new luxury train on the horizon that is aiming to enter the pantheon of classic trains and iconic rail journeys like the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, the Royal Scotsman, and Africa’s Rovos Rail.

To hold Dolce Vita—the new silk-swathed hardcover released by luxury publisher Assouline—in my hands feels as though I am embracing the essence and sensuousness of Italy itself. Sweet Life! Written by Italy connoisseur Cesare Cunaccia, this hefty (10-by-13-inch, 6.4-pound, 320-page) coffee-table tome showcases almost 200 expressive and evocative photographs that invite lovely lingering perusal. If you’re seeking an armchair traveler’s page-turner for yourself to kick off 2024 or a Valentine’s Day gift for a dreamer of things bellissimo, thispleases aplenty. Dolce Vita is a visual joy ride, chic and engaging. Indeed, gazing at its images fuels my fantasies of sliding onto a Vespa or into an Alfa Romeo, breezily wheeling from Venice to Milan to Genoa to Florence to Rome to Naples to Sorrento and beyond, through undulating verdant landscapes and glistening seaside ports, savoring fantastic cuisine, then sailing to Sicily for more. Prego!

Winter in Italy means one thing: ski season. Every year, Italians—but also plenty of international visitors—plan their getaways around the snowfall that hits the Dolomites and the Alps in the north for weeklong vacations packed with skiing, snowshoeing, tubing and, of course, après ski.

Romans hope that an alignment of the stars will halt a generations-long decay of the Eternal City that is as beautiful as it is disorganized.

Wealthy travelers are snapping up reservations onboard Italy's newest luxury train, "La Dolce Vita," before they've even finished building it — and it's easy to understand why.