Why I chose the Ink Business Preferred over the Chase Sapphire Reserve

Europe's scorching hot summer is showing no signs of cooling down, with Italy facing its warmest weekend of the year so far and heatwave warnings issued in southern France.

When my husband and I decided to retire, we devised a plan. We wanted to rent out our home in California and visit the UNESCO World Heritage city of Guanajuato.

The tonka bean, a wizened-looking South American seed, is beloved for its complex almond-vanilla scent, often appearing as an ingredient in perfumes. Outside the United States, it has also long been utilized by chefs, but studies have indicated that coumarin, a chemical compound in the plant, can cause liver damage in animals, and the Food and Drug Administration banned the bean in commercial foods in 1954. Now, with reports that the minuscule amounts used to impart big flavor are harmless (and the F.D.A. seemingly not particularly interested in enforcing the ban in recent years), tonka is showing up on dessert menus here. Thea Gould, 30, the pastry chef at the daytime luncheonette La Cantine and evening wine bar Sunsets in Bushwick, Brooklyn, was introduced to tonka after the restaurant’s owner received a jar from France, where it’s a widely used ingredient. Gould says the bean is an ideal stand-in for nuts — a common allergen — and infuses it into panna cotta, whipped cream and Pavlova. Ana Castro, 35, the chef and owner of the New Orleans seafood restaurant Acamaya, discovered tonka as a young line cook at Betony, the now-closed Midtown Manhattan restaurant. Entranced by the ingredient’s grassy, stone fruit-like notes, she’s used it to flavor a custardy corn nicuatole, steeped it into roasted candy squash purée and grated it fresh over a lush tres leches cake. And at the Musket Room in New York’s NoLIta, the pastry chef Camari Mick, 30, balances tonka’s richness with acidic citrus like satsuma and bergamot. Over the past year, she’s incorporated it into a silky lemon bavarois and a candy cap mushroom pot de crème and whipped it into ganache for a poached pear belle Hélène. “Some people ask our staff, ‘Isn’t tonka illegal?’” she says. Their answer: Our pastry chef’s got a guy. —

Amid Greece’s peak travel season, raging wildfires near Athens are putting tour operators on high alert.

Dangerous wildfires near Athens, Greece forced hundreds to evacuate the suburbs north of the country's capital on Monday, August 12, reported to be the worst fire the Mediterranean country has seen so far this year.

I’m cheering from the banks of the Seine in a plastic rain poncho, my dress soaked and loafers sloshing. The rain has not let up once during the four-hour Opening Ceremony, but as we watch boatloads of beaming athletes float past us one by one waving their national flags, my smile could not be wider. By the time the evening comes to an end, Celine Dion is belting Hymne a l'amour from a glittering Eiffel Tower—some in the crowd cry, others dance, or FaceTime family—and a contagious sense of universal joy ripples across Paris.

You don’t hear about Central Florida very often, and when you do, chances are it has something to do with Walt Disney World. But just over an hour north of the famed resort complex is the mid-sized city of Ocala, a destination bursting with superlatives, including “America’s largest spring” and “horse capital of the world.”

Aug 11, 2024 • 9 min read

Paris est une fête! Especially during the Olympics. The French title of Hemingway’s legendary memoir A Moveable Feast is an apt encapsulation of what can only be called a dramatic vibe shift in the French capital in the last few weeks. Indeed, Paris is a party. The opening ceremony elated even the most hardened of local skeptics of the Olympic Games—locally: les Jeux Olympiques, the JO. Since then, the city has been suspended in a Disney-esque euphoria; the JO is now a multi-week carnival of good cheer.

While most American cities aren’t considered easy to navigate by foot, a recent study by travel insurance experts AllClear ranked one popular Southern city as the most walkable in the country. AllClear examined topographical information for more than 240 cities around the world, taking into account average elevation and range, and assigned each city a score — and ultimately, it was New Orleans that was named the most walkable city in the U.S. and the fourth most walkable city globally.

Like many TPGers, I've been sucked into credit cards with annual fees, but when I'm out and about, I use just two credit cards in my daily life.

Europe dominates in a new ranking of the world’s most beautiful cities, filling nine of the top 10 spots.