‘The Retreat’ on Celebrity Cruises Is My New Favorite Travel Hack

When planning your next trip, there’s one important thing you should do before you buy your plane ticket—check the U.S. Department of State’s Travel Advisory for your destination. The State Department provides important safety and security information about every country in the world so that travelers can make informed decisions about where to visit.

Wellington, New Zealand straddles one of the world’s great natural harbors. It's a vibrant capital city, gently nestled along the corrugated landscape that rises from the water to meet the 650-foot ridgelines of Matairangi (also known Mount Victoria). As stunning as it was to observe this scene from the Interislander ferry port, I had to wonder what I was doing here: I came to embark on a nearly two-week long Great Journeys New Zealand train trip. But this was where the adventure was to commence—aboard a 1350-passenger sea vessel, with nary a track nor train car in sight.

What makes each of us happy is certainly subjective. However, there is one easy way you can increase your chances of feeling that emotion: Choosing to live in a happier state. In September, WalletHub released its study ranking the happiest states in the U.S. It came to its conclusion after evaluating all 50 states across three key dimensions: emotional and physical well-being, work environment, and community and environment. Those three dimensions were evaluated using 30 metrics, including the physical health of the population, sleep rates, food insecurity, commute times, income growth rate, average leisure time per person, safety, and more. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing maximum happiness. It then averaged each state's numbers to calculate its overall score.

Amtrak currently operates 39 routes, with trains criss-crossing the country to service 500 destinations in 46 states. Starting November 10, 2024, however, the number of Amtrak routes will go down one notch to reach a total of 38. Amtrak is cancelling two routes and launching a brand new one between Chicago and Miami called The Floridian.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has conducted sanitary inspections on well over 100 cruise ships this year, with most receiving passing scores of 95 or above.

Returning home is probably the least exciting part of anyone’s trip. 

One of the challenges of living in a prominent transit hub like New York City can be navigating your way to and from its airports.

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).

I see London, I see France.

In a move that has aviation circles buzzing, United Airlines announced its biggest international expansion ever, with eight new international cities added for 2025. The new routes span multiple continents and include destinations that are especially difficult to access, such as Senegal, Greenland, Taiwan, and Mongolia.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Cherie Luo, a content creator and entrepreneur. Luo spent 5 years working in tech in Silicon Valley. She graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business in June. Business Insider has verified her employment and education history. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

A single panda can eat more than 70 pounds of bamboo a day, so before Mao Sun and Xing Er, two Chinese-born bears, moved to the Copenhagen Zoo in the spring of 2019, Danish zookeepers had to find a reliable source of the treelike grass. One supplier was the farmer Søren Ladefoged, whose crop has recently benefited another local attraction: the fine-dining destination Noma. The chef Mette Søberg, 34, who heads Noma’s test kitchen, was inspired to add tender young shoots to the menu after the restaurant’s 10-week pop-up at the Ace Hotel in Kyoto last year, where thinly sliced bamboo was served in squid broth. “In Japan, and in Kyoto specifically, they’re so excited about ingredients that are in season for a short time,” she says. From late March through May, “everyone knows, ‘Ah, it’s bamboo season!’” Back in Denmark, she started grilling the shoots over pine boughs for a slightly smoky tinge and serving them with a butter and sencha tea dipping sauce. “We want to make it really simple so people can actually taste the bamboo,” says Søberg, who describes the plant’s flavor as “nutty, vegetal and a little bit sweet.” She adds that many Noma diners are surprised to encounter bamboo in Denmark, where it’s cultivated but not typically consumed. Outside of Asian restaurants, the same is true in the United States, where, at Brooklyn’s Cafe Mado, the chef Nico Russell, 36, has been pickling the shoots and serving them with razor clams in a garlicky sauce. He gets his supply of the yellow groove variety from the New Jersey-based forager Tama Matsuoka Wong, 66, who described this year’s demand as “a frenzy.” Wong, who specializes in harvesting edible invasive plants, points out that yellow groove multiplies rapidly through horizontal roots and can quickly overtake a plot of land. She works with property owners to contain the plant, while getting it into the hands of chefs like Mads Refslund, 47, of the wood fire-centered restaurant Ilis, also in Brooklyn, who has ordered over 750 pounds from Wong so far this year. This past summer, he served vertically cut salt-cured shoots with buckwheat oil-brushed uni and caviar pooled in the divots of the stems. He also preserved the majority of his supply, he says, so that — despite bamboo’s short season — he can offer it for months to come. —