The Best Condé Nast Traveler Stories of the Year

Fittingly shaped like a tropical fish, St Kitts packs a lot to see and do in its lush and historical expanse.

The city of Bordeaux is not only about wine.

It’s going to be a great year for airfare with domestic prices predicted to start even cheaper than 2023 and remain low for the next six months.

It was 2:38 p.m. on August 21, 2017, when day turned to night. That was the precise moment in Greenville, South Carolina, when the moon, passing between the sun and Earth, fully blocked our view of the sun.

It was the first week of April, the dawn of spring in most of the Northern Hemisphere, but in Anchorage it still felt very much like winter. Snow was everywhere: piled high on rooftops and cars, lining the sidewalks in colossal embankments, floating in clumps in the Cook Inlet, and shellacking the nearby Chugach Mountains, which form a fierce and jagged amphitheater on the city's eastern edge.

If you’ve been conjuring up images of whipping down the ski slope (or simply getting cozy during apres-ski in a beautiful setting), you might also be wondering about the best ski destinations to check off your bucket list. New data from the travel insurance experts at Compare the Market AU has recently revealed some of the objectively best ski destinations in the world to help bring your vision to reality.

​One of the most picturesque villages in the Tirol, Alpbach is not the place for a rip-roaring après ski scene, but its clutch of classic wooden chalet hotels, traditional stube restaurants and quiet bars make it a great choice for a restorative mountain break. Alongside the perfectly groomed pistes accessed by the Wiedersbergerhorn gondola, are easy snow-shoeing trails, a 7km toboggan run and torchlit hikes. Mountain huts dot the Alpbachtal-Wildschönau valley, serving käsespätzle (Tirolean macaroni cheese) and spiced gluhwein. Stay at the Post, a charming, family-run hotel in the heart of the village – and the best value in town.Doubles from £138 B&B; hotel-post.co.at

It is often said that the world is a great book, and those that do not travel only read one page. What if you read books as well as travel? You would be quite the literary sort, indeed. Here at Condé Nast Traveler, our journeys take us to places near and far, and we don't always have other humans along for the ride with us—but books are good friends to keep in our suitcases for company.

It’s believed that the Norwegians invented modern skiing as we know it, and the first destination ski resort was Switzerland’s St. Moritz around 1864—more than half a century before the oldest operating mountain in the U.S. opened. It was the ski loving but mountain-challenged British that popularized the very notion of the ski vacation, traveling to the Alps for food, fun and skiing.

Of the many conveniences that hotels offer, few are as welcome as the in-house breakfast. Whether you’re raring to go or still slumped over after that early morning wake-up, there’s no better reward for having made it out of bed at all than the sumptuous spread that awaits. Here, we’ve rounded up the most sublime hotel breakfasts our editors have enjoyed this year, comprising national dishes, pastry repasts, snow-day bread baskets, and so much more.

France’s winding cobbled lanes and tree-lined rural roadways offer a straight shot into the heart of the country. Incredible countryside vistas merge into unique and highly wanderable villages, castles and coastlines that will etch your journey into your memories.

February may be the shortest month in the year, but you can pack some serious travel into it. In 2024 — a leap year — there's even an extra day for more adventure. The hardest part will be deciding where to go.