From Venice to Athens, Europe’s most popular destinations are buckling under the weight of unsustainable tourist numbers.
14.12.2023 - 15:18 / cntraveler.com
Sunset descends like a dream in Kenya’s Lamu archipelago: Each evening, the channel separating the islands of Manda and Lamu is anointed in a hazy veil of golden light as dhows pirouette in the water, triangle sails billowing overhead. I gazed out over a carousel of boats from my perch on the deck of Taqwa, delighting in the snatches of American hip-hop, Afrobeats, and Bollywood bangers emanating from them as they passed by. At some point, Taqwa sailed in tandem with a smaller vessel boasting the best playlist on the water. As we floated together companionably, a romantic Swahili tune filled the air—and for a moment, the weather, landscape, and music came together in a sublime alchemy that left me breathless.
Several weeks later—and time zones away—that song continued to transfix me. At the time, I hadn’t thought to interrupt the mood by inquiring after its name, but now its notes began arriving unbidden as I rode the subway or browsed the grocery store—phonetic approximations of lyrics I didn’t know that had still managed to burrow into my subconscious. After countless attempts to plug them into Google (“baby ukosawana?” “sisimi?”), I finally struck gold: “Malaika” by Nyashinski. Now whenever I play it, I drift back to the gentle waves and sultry breezes of Lamu.
Over the years, I’ve amassed a trove of souvenirs from my travels: an abstract painting of Bosnia’s Stari Most bridge; a vase inscribed with Kufic calligraphy by a seventh-generation ceramicist in Tashkent; juniper wood trivets from an Estonian island; a Seychellois bowl shaped like a coco de mer; a neon-yellow pop art rendering of the Kaaba in Saudi Arabia. But there is one thing that goes much farther to immortalize my most memorable trips: my playlists.
Each country has its own sights, flavors, and melodies, and the sounds that filter in from the periphery of cafés or open car windows, and nest neatly into your subconscious, can often define the destination as much as its skyline or cuisine. After a few days adrift in a new foreign musical vernacular, I start to pick up on some favorites. I’ll request Uber drivers in Durban to turn up the volume on their favorite Gqom tracks; I ask hair stylists in India to switch the salon playlist from Bieber to Bollywood; and I wave Siri around at restaurants in Samarkand to identify an Uzbek pop song.
The music you listen to while traveling can create some of the most powerful sensory memories.
“I may be mid-plank in a New York gym when my trainer queues up David Carreira’s “Menta,” but the minute zips by as my mind deposits me to a cobbled Lisbon street.”
These songs stay with me long after the trips end. A week in Egypt and Jordan revived my enthusiasm for Amr Diab’s earnest ballads. Road-tripping
From Venice to Athens, Europe’s most popular destinations are buckling under the weight of unsustainable tourist numbers.
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For me, travel is about meeting people, being a lifelong learner and seeing the world through different perspectives.
Being a points and miles enthusiast means I have a drawer of credit cards. Choosing which cards to carry in my wallet can be a daunting task at times. However, one card will always have a slot in my wallet: the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card.
Flaine is a French purpose-built resort whose creator didn’t feel the need to reflect the grandeur of the mountains in jagged shapes or classic chalets. It was born in the Swinging Sixties, designed by Hungarian architect Marcel Breuer who called the US home. He was a master of the geometric Bauhaus style and had created UNESCO’s grand Paris HQ. An entire ski town was a new challenge, which he met by producing a resort like no other.
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Finding the perfect gift for everyone on your list is no easy feat. Maybe you're shopping for the friend who has everything already or someone you don't know that well—you're stumped on what to buy, but still want their gift to be thoughtful and practical. Or, maybe you've accidentally waited too long to finish up your holiday shopping and need a gift with zero shipping time required. In any case, a gift card is a great idea for travelers. We put together a list of the very best gift cards for travelers, with options for book worms, outdoor enthusiasts, and beauty gurus included. From suitcases to skincare to entire vacation rentals, you can put your gift to good use and rest easy knowing your giftee got exactly what they wanted: something they picked out themselves. Plus, some have physical card options, if sending an email isn't the glamorous gift-giving experience you imagined.
Finding the best walking shoes for travel can be tough. You want something comfortable enough to get you through a full day of wandering around, but not so comfortable that it screams “I'm a tourist!” And since nobody wants to tote around a bag (checked or otherwise) filled with shoes, the ones that do make the packing list cut need to be versatile enough to wear with multiple outfits.
At first, the idea of building an entire city in the shape of a straight line might sound puzzling. After all, wouldn’t it take that much longer to get from one end to the other? Would the traffic going from end to end be terrible? It turns out that the straight line model is actually based on efficiency of transportation, and when done right, it can be an incredible advantage to other layouts. That’s the goal with “The Line,” Saudi Arabia’s trillion-dollar futuristic city that’s an ambitious feat of engineering. The planned 105-mile long city in NEOM, in the northwest section of the country, is slated to cut across the desert in a straight line, hold nine million people, and serve as an almost utopian example of what cities could look like.