Peru has announced plans to introduce a digital nomad visa. It will enable remote workers to stay in the country for 365 days, with the possibility to extend.
16.11.2023 - 13:26 / nationalgeographic.com
“Vive Saintes-Maries!” comes the rousing cry from a man in a fedora and green silk shirt, his neck strung with silver pendants depicting hedgehogs, caravans and saints.
“Vive Sainte Sara!” comes the bellowed reply from the crowd that’s gathered alongside me in the sun-beaten square in the French coastal town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Call and response, music and rhythm are everywhere here at the Pèlerinage Gitan, a riotous pilgrimage that draws Romani communities from across Europe each May. I round a corner into another square to find flamenco guitarists and singers entwined in a gleeful duel. Each musical phrase is marked with handclaps and cries of “Olé!” from surrounding revellers.
Saintes-Maries is at the heart of the Camargue, the delta of the Rhône — a strange land of swampy marshes wedged between Montpellier and Marseille along France’s southern coast. For the most part, it remains blissfully undeveloped. Inhabited by vibrant flamingos and cowboys riding primeval, ghost-white Camargue horses, these humid wetlands have the feel of an interzone; a place apart. There can be no more fitting introduction to the region than the Pèlerinage Gitan, which is a festival like no other — a homecoming for a people defined by their statelessness.
As I wander the streets, I can smell the paprika of Hungarian goulash and the saffron of olla gitana (Andalucian Romani stew), bubbling in great cauldrons, jostling for olfactory dominance with shakshuka, paella and baked apples. Fragments of conversations in French, Spanish and Dutch reach my ears. The sound of flamenco dissolves into strains of Balkan brass, the ornamented cadences of Eastern European klezmer and the jaunty jig of Parisian gypsy jazz — a style of music pioneered by the legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt, a regular attendee of the Pèlerinage until his death in the early 1950s. I stop at a stall to take a face-scrunching shot of tuica, a Romanian plum brandy that’s imbibed with great gusto throughout this week-long event.
I push my way through the crowds to the town’s honey-hued, Romanesque Church of the Saintes Maries de la Mer, where I’ve been granted an audience with Father Vincent Bedon, the national chaplain for the Romani in France and also the priest in charge of the pilgrimage. He’s friendly and unassuming, a small man with glasses and a shirt as grey as his hair, fastened with a dog collar. He gives me a conspiratorial grin and lifts a sleeve to reveal a tattoo of the Camargue cross (an anchor intertwined with a heart and a crucifix) on his wrist. “It’s just a transfer,” he says, laughing. “I got it here at the pilgrimage.”
Running the festival is no small task — there are around 60,000 people here, Vincent tells me. But why have
Peru has announced plans to introduce a digital nomad visa. It will enable remote workers to stay in the country for 365 days, with the possibility to extend.
Each year in the Alps, as the first snows of the season start to fall, mountain towns welcome winter visitors with a slew of smart new hotels. And this year is no different, with upscale brands including COMO Hotels and Resorts moving its beach-beautiful ethos to the Italian Alps in COMO Alpina Dolomites, and Grace Hotels giving St Moritz its first luxury opening in half a century in the Grace La Margna. With its boutique modern addition, the sleek Swiss hotel breathes new life into the former art nouveau hotel La Margna, following a trend for high-profile revamps seen across the Alps this season. Here’s a look at the six best new openings, many of which revitalise former hotel landmarks.
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Ask any Barcelona local where they would prefer to own a second home and one of the most frequent answers will no doubt be l’Empordà. If you have never heard of this under-the-radar part of Catalonia, you are not alone.
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