Music tips

Warsaw had never been on my travel radar. But when my friend asked me to join him on a birthday trip, I thought why not?

Good morning from Skift. It’s Thursday, February 8. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, draws millions of visitors year-round to experience the city's rich and thriving live music culture. While some of the best talent can be heard in the clubs, bars and streets, one of the biggest draws for live music enthusiasts is the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival at the Fair Grounds Race Course.

Music soundtracks our travels, kills time and distracts, entertainingly. In Berlin, which has more than 300 train stations and where you can see everything panoramically from the overhead S-Bahn, a well-loaded smartphone or MP3 player turns a journey into a film with a score.

Qatar Airways announced Wednesday that it has secured naming rights for a premium members club at The O2 in London.

There’s never a bad time to visit Puerto Rico.

During the 49 years that Estée Lauder worked at her namesake company, she oversaw the creation of a dozen scents and encouraged women to create fragrance “wardrobes” tailored to every occasion and mood. The brand’s Legacy Collection, which comes out on Feb. 1, revives five of Lauder’s creations with the help of Frédéric Malle (whose perfume brand was acquired by the Estée Lauder Companies in 2015) and the perfumers Anne Flipo, Carlos Benaïm and Bruno Jovanovic, all of whom have worked with Malle on previous fragrances. During an interview inside Lauder’s well-preserved office near Central Park, Malle explained how he retooled the scents using more modern fragrance-making techniques. He noted that, in Lauder’s day, perfumers combined base scents that were “like premixed mini-perfumes” to create a final fragrance. “They contained things that weren’t necessary and created background noise,” Malle said. To update the formulas, any nonessential ingredients in those bases were stripped away — “it’s like cleaning up,” he said. The new collection has notes that range from fresh and herbaceous to musky and sweet. Azurée, initially released in 1969, evokes dry Mediterranean shores with herby notes like basil and tarragon as well as jasmine, spicy cardamom, bergamot, and cumin, which Malle amplified in his edition. For White Linen, a classic floral bouquet of rose and jasmine, Malle used pure labdanum, an ambery resin from the rockrose plant, which wasn’t available when the scent debuted in 1978. Knowing, a seductive scent from 1988, “contained a little bit of the Muzak of the ’80s,” Malle said. The modernized version is a fruity chypre with raspberries, black currant, rose and patchouli. The overall goal of the collection, Malle said, “is to revive this work and show how good Mrs. Lauder was.”

Everyone knows Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. But smaller cities and towns around the world put on epic parties of their own. The events—which mostly began as a sort of pagan late-winter celebration in Europe and morphed into a global kind of Catholic last hurrah before the austerity of Lent—are lively, colorful and often steeped in tradition. UNESCO has put many of them, both in Europe and in its former colonies, on its List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

There is no shortage of nature-driven euphoria in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Nestled between Spain and the Atlantic Ocean, Portugal is a compact country that you could fit into a two-week road trip.

Dinner begins at Gori, the tasting menu chef’s counter that opened this month above Anto, a high end Korean steakhouse in New York’s Midtown East, with the presentation of ingredients in a lavish Cartier chest. How to take this: a bit showy, too quintessential East Side? But once the ten courses start to appear, the luxe introduction makes sense. Chef Jeong Muk Kim, formerly of Myomi in Seoul, the youngest chef to earn a Michelin star in Korea, joined this nearly year old restaurant in November and uses strictly elite ingredients such as the caviar, uni and Wagyu in the chest. Even more important: the creations he produces from them for the ten seat counter have flavors so fully developed and enticing that they immediately set up anticipation for the next course.

Jason Momoa is usually splashed across our screens as Aquaman, but his latest venture is a little closer to home than the DC Universe. On the Roam, a new eight-part docuseries streaming on Max, sees the Hollywood actor travel across the US on his motorcycle—making stops to meet with homegrown artisans and craftsmen, many of whom are his friends and mentors, along the way. From the restoration of a 1936 Knucklehead bike in both Tennessee and North Carolina to guitar restoration with Guns n' Roses very own Slash at Gibson guitars’ headquarters, the show is Momoa at his most authentic, describing himself as “a vagabond, a dirtbag, a roamer” seeking out “the artists who are doing things out of their own shops and back yards.”

The spectacular House of Music is in Budapest’s beautiful City Park. After going through the mushroom-like main entrance, you find a museum dedicated to the history of music. From the beginning of music to the modern day via Gregorian chanting and Hungarian folk, the House of Music is a fascinating place. With a superb audio guide, and for just 1,000 forints (£2.25), it is well worth a visit.Danny Baker

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Sundance Film Festival. It’s a big milestone for the festival, which takes place January 18-28 in Park City, Utah. The years following COVID have been muted, with parts of the festival taking place virtually. This, of course, impacted party attendance and the overall festival vibe, which traditionally does a full takeover of Park City’s historic Main Street corridor. The sense is that 2024 will restore Sundance to its full capacity, which also means Hollywood will truly bring the party to Park City this year.

Music, like travel, broadens the mind, opening new horizons and offering new perspectives.

Pack a sun hat, some loose-fitting clothes and a book of José Martí’s poems – and get ready to uncover the buoyant and sophisticated magic of Cuba.

Whatever trends come and go, there should always be a place for proper pubs — those iconic institutions that have been the cornerstone of British culture for centuries. A purist’s pub is their safe place — a calming quarantine of quiet contemplation, a serene antidote to modern-day madness, a cosy asylum where one can clutch a pint to one’s chest.

There are many ways to visit Cuba. Many price points, too. While the country’s unique circumstances may not make the island the best place in the world for shoestring backpackers, you can certainly save money if you understand a bit of the local mecánica (Cuban way of doing things).

Known as the no-winter island, Cuba cycles through mild to warm to hot-as-hell weather with the changing seasons.

From gorgeous cities swaying to the beat of tropical rhythms to unspoiled, lush forests, Cuba delights travelers with a wide variety of contrasting places.

Beads at the ready – Mardi Gras is just around the corner.