In many instances, airlines seem to assume that passengers have a pretty high threshold for discomfort and inconvenience. Yes, they seem to think, you can handle sitting on a tarmac for a few hours, perhaps with no A/C or working toilets. You’re tough, right?
But according to a recent CNN report, American Airlines has declared a limit to what humans should have to put up with while in transit, and the repeated singing of “I Will Always Love You” is clearly over the line.
Pros: As a sunscreen-addict whose go-to brands have leaked all over my bag on more than one occasion, I love the concept of a highly-portable (indeed, swipe-able!) sunscreen. The latest from Adventuress is an SPF 30, protects against UVA and UVB rays, and even has a little finger pouch for easy application. It left my skin looking dewy and feeling protected (and no, I didn’t burn).
Cons: Each packet contains enough sunscreen for your face but not much else. They’re also probably not the most eco-friendly things in the world, as you pitch them in the garbage after one use. But they sure are convenient!
Verdict: Packable—especially if you don't have a lot of room in your bag.
Kathryn O'Shea-Evans is an associate editor at Travel + Leisure. Follow her on Twitter @ThePluckyOne.
It’s a good thing I’m heading to London this month since I just lost a button on my favorite Brunello Cucinelli jacket. A needle and thread is hard to find in a jeans-and-T-shirt world; my local drugstore sells mostly useless assortments (orange?). A good hotel, however, understands the art of the sewing kit: a discreet envelope or fitted box with a sliding top, colors I want, and—a thrill every time—threaded needles. I squirrel one away every night, hoping for another. If it doesn’t come, I’m not above filling my pockets at the housekeeper’s cart.
Thinking of bringing Spot to the Big Apple? Guests at the Soho Grand Hotel—a dog-friendly hotel if there ever was one—now have a couple of new amenities for their furry companions. This weekend, a dedicated dog run opened its gates—complete with fire hydrant water stations, bespoke benches, and design by gardener-to-the-stars Rebecca Cole.
But make no mistake: this isn't a place where your pup will run laps on end (this is New York after all; space comes at a predictably high premium). With downtown-inspired graffiti and oh-so-chic garden decor (yes, that's ornamental kale), it's the ideal place to teach your pup about the virtues of unwinding—that's what vacation is for, right?
Three ways to get your New England fix, whether you have a few hours or a whole day.
The Sanctuary: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Dodging the hum of the city is a pleasure at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum(pictured), a 1902 Venetian-style palazzo with a glass-and-steel addition by Renzo Piano. The 2,500-strong collection includes masterworks by Titian, Michelangelo, and Matisse, but the real showstopper is the transportive inner courtyard, with its classical statues and abundance of summery bellflowers and hydrangeas. Stop in on a Sunday afternoon, when you can catch a chamber music concert in the museum’s new Calderwood Hall.
Can a nitpicky hotel inspector ever find fulfillment? That’s the question of Viaggio Sola (I Travel Alone), the new film by Italian director Maria Sole Tognazzi. The film, which just picked up several nominations for Italy's Donatello Awards (the country's equivalent of the Oscars) will be showing at Lincoln Center as part of Open Road: New Italian Cinema, which runs from June 6-12.
Here, she offers T+L a sneak preview.
What’s the plot? “A Leading Hotels of the World inspector (played by Margherita Buy) arrives incognito at glamorous resorts: the Puli Hotel & Spa($$$), in Shanghai; Switzerland’s Gstaad Palace($$$$); the Fonteverde Tuscan Resort & Spa($$$), in Italy.”
What did you learn about that profession? “They work like characters on CSI: hunting for dirt with white gloves, testing the temperature of room-service coffee, ensuring that the time is synced on TV and radio. Only at the end of the journey can they reveal their true identity.”
Do you have any travel essentials? “My Rolex, set to the time in Rome. It’s been with me since I was fifteen.”
High-end hotels are taking to the water, deploying luxury yachts to give guests a taste of the sailing life. In Indonesia, the 151-foot, five-cabin Alila Purnama(pictured; $54,000 a week for up to 10 people) joins Alila’s two terra-firma properties in Bali. The teak-and-rattan phinisi carries guests to neighboring islands for snorkeling and massages on deserted beaches. This winter, Soneva Resorts will launch Soneva in Aqua(from $4,375 a day for up to four people) in the Maldives—the sleek, two-cabin seaborne villa will come complete with a chef, dive master, spa therapist, and 24/7 butler, and will cruise to less-explored atolls and reefs. Also on the horizon: La Sultana Yacht(nine days from $7,545 per person), a sister to hotels in Marrakesh and Oualidia, Morocco. The former Soviet spy ship is getting a serious upgrade and will have seven James Bond–worthy Moorish-style rooms.
Few people can claim they personally changed the way an entire generation sees the world. Tony Wheeler, who co-founded Lonely Planet with his wife Maureen in 1973 could easily take that sort of credit were he not such a modest and unassuming guy.
Last week, Wheeler stopped by T+L's offices to discuss Lonely Planet and other topics. For a man who sold millions of books worldwide and made a lot of money (The Richest, a site that tracks celebrities' net worths, estimates he and Maureen are worth $168 million), Wheeler, 66, comes off as an unpretentious guy with a backpack and comfortable walking shoes. If you saw him on the street, you'd never know he started an internationally-recognized publishing company based on the diaries he and his wife kept as they traveled from London to Asia in a van during the early 1970s. (The New Yorker's Tad Friend profiled Wheeler in 2005, which you can read here.)
"When the nation was founded, it didn't have a Sistine Chapel or any Great Books. It had coastlines gushing with oysters and crustaceans, forests crammed with deer and wolves and, out on the frontier, some thirty million buffalo rumbling over the plains as a single, shifting spectacle." So writes Jon Mooallem in the introduction to his book, Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America (The Penguin Press).
You get the sense from Wild Ones that the animal stories are Mooallem's passion, but that they aren't always easy to write, especially since, as he puts it, "The wild animals always have no comment."
We asked Mooallem a bit more about his book and the many species—humans among them—he met during the course of writing it.
You went all over North America in search of places where people are interacting—in some cases in very odd ways—with endangered animals. What was the most interesting place to you as a writer and as a tourist? Jon Mooallem: I spent some time traveling with a non-profit called Operation Migration, which teaches endangered whooping cranes how to migrate by training them to fly behind ultralight airplanes. They travel with the birds from Wisconsin to Florida. It’s a big swath of America that we tend to dismiss as Flyover Country, and they’re flying directly through it, very slowly, stopping for the night every 25 or 50 miles.
With a new update that was released last week, HotelTonight is seemingly taking a page out of the TripAdvisor playbook by adding user-generated content. But unlike the user-generated review giant, HotelTonight’s “Snap Your Stay” feature cuts out the issue of subjectivity: What they’re calling “reviews” are really no more than user snapshots documenting their hotels room’s view, bed, bathroom, and so on. Semantics aside, it’s a natural fit and welcome addition for the mobile booking platform, where users aren’t particularly inclined to read paragraphs of unreliable content. And it offers a genuine, objective look at whether a hotel will fit your particular needs.
Kathryn O'Shea-Evans is an associate editor at Travel + Leisure. Follow her on Twitter 
