Virgin Atlantic is expanding its network with the addition of three "new" destinations.
27.08.2024 - 22:51 / insider.com
Alva Vanderbilt's 39th birthday present from her husband was a 140,000-square-foot summer "cottage" on the shores of Newport, Rhode Island.
As heir to the Vanderbilt family fortune during the Gilded Age, William K. Vanderbilt spared no expense in building Marble House for his wife. It was designed by Richard Morris Hunt, the same architect who worked on The Breakers, another expansive Newport mansion. Construction cost around $11 million in 1892, or about $380 million in today's dollars. The home's 500,000 cubic feet of marble alone cost about $7 million, or around $241 million today.
The marriage didn't last, but Marble House remained in her possession after their divorce. In addition to throwing extravagant balls and dinner parties, Alva Vanderbilt also hosted women's suffrage rallies on the property and leveraged her wealth to champion the cause. She even wrote the libretto for an operetta about women's suffrage, which was performed at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in 1915.
In recent years, the HBO show "The Gilded Age" has used Marble House as a film set.
Take a look inside this historic Newport mansion.
Virgin Atlantic is expanding its network with the addition of three "new" destinations.
Finnair is offering huge discounts on flights to popular Scandinavian destinations through next spring, and round-trip tickets are bookable for less than $500.
The opulent mansions of the Gilded Age's wealthiest families once required exclusive invitations to visit. Today, many of them are museums open to the public.
Dating is complicated. Finding love while living abroad can seem impossible.
Before Vanderbilt mansions like The Breakers and Marble House put Newport, Rhode Island, on the map as an escape for the Gilded Age's wealthy elite, there was Chateau-sur-Mer.
In 1901, Gilded Age coal magnate Edward Julius Berwind and his wife, Sarah Herminie Berwind, spent $1.4 million, or around $28 million today, to build a summer home in Newport, Rhode Island.
JetBlue thinks there might be some skiers who are willing to splurge on its top-notch Mint business-class experience.
Welcome back to our Saturday edition, a roundup of our best lifestyle reads. If you have to choose one supplement to benefit your overall health, make it creatine. Although it's been around since the '90s, it's exploded recently — and for good reason.
Clarksville, a historic district of Austin, Texas, has lately emerged as a stylish dining and shopping enclave. Among the area’s most compelling new businesses is La Embajada, a design shop housed in a 1923 Craftsman bungalow. Combining the hospitality and interiors expertise of its founder, Raul Cabra — who has designed tableware for some of Mexico City’s most celebrated restaurants, including Rosetta and Pujol — La Embajada presents a refined, regionally diverse selection of Mexico’s artisanal offerings. A series of small rooms display vintage and contemporary furniture, from stately midcentury armchairs and 1970s glass sconces to a minimalist agave fiber rug by the Oaxaca-based textile artist Trine Ellitsgaard. The house is also an actual residence. Cabra often stays in the bedroom up the creaky stairs, and he’s recently made it available for short-term stays (bookings include a daily basket of baked goods from Austin’s Swedish Hill). Guests can purchase the room’s handmade décor, such as a pair of sleek bedside lamps in milky white onyx, a 1960s La Malinche dresser and a bedspread from a Michoacan manufacturer that once supplied Herman Miller. Downstairs, glassware, candles and gifts fill a section modeled after a typical general store in a small Mexican town. But La Embajada’s heart is its inviting kitchen, where visiting chefs cook elaborate meals and staff prepare ice cream and coffee. In another twist, every bespoke detail — including a hammered copper sink, caramel-colored tiles and waxed pine cabinets — can be custom-ordered for one’s own home.
In March, Brian Gallagher, an editor for the Food section of The New York Times, texted me a question: Did I have strong feelings about Costco?
Summer travel 2024, with its record-breaking crowds, is set to reach a fever pitch over Labor Day Weekend. The busiest summer season in recent history is set to end with a bang, as a historic number of people are expected to take to the roads and skies.
Low-cost Icelandic airline Play is celebrating the unofficial end of summer with a Labor Day sale tempting travelers with 25 percent off flights to Europe.