Travel + Leisure May 2021


United States
Meredith Operations Corporation
12 期号


letter from the editor

CONTRIBUTORS 1. Gisela Williams BEAUTY BY DESIGN (P. 84) Eight months after the writer traveled to Beirut, an explosion rattled the city, killing more than 200 people. “I immediately checked in with many of the people I met there,” Williams says. “All were—thankfully—safe. But their lives had been dramatically affected. The owners of the Arthaus hotel, Nabil and Zoe Debs, who are profiled in my piece, started out wanting it to be a place filled with art. Not only did they succeed, but they also managed to build a space of hope.” 2. Desiree Espada JUST AROUND THE RIVER BEND (P. 92) Espada, a Dallas-based photographer, had traveled to the Big Bend region of West Texas a few times before her assignment for T+L. But she had never experienced the magic of Terlingua. “I fell in…

it list 2021

DENVER Life House Lower Highlands IF WES ANDERSON were to make a western, the set would resemble Life House Lower Highlands. Period details—opulent Louis XVI bergères upholstered in floral patterns; leather headboards and sofas—transport guests to the late 1800s, when industrialists were moving west to frontier outposts like Denver. Today Lower Highlands, known as LoHi, is the city’s hippest neighborhood, home to stylish bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and breweries—and Life House finally gives the area its first boutique stay. The American West narrative continues in the 16 rooms, each decorated with Navajo-style pillows and botanical paintings. Some rooms come with bunk beds inspired by 19th-century Pullman sleeping cars; they don’t skimp on comfort, thanks to full-size mattresses and corduroy privacy curtains. The hotel restaurant, Wildflower, pays homage to the city’s Mexican and…

through the looking glass

TRAVELERS’ TALES, FROM NEAR AND FAR AS NIGHT DESCENDS on the rugged slopes of the extinct Palo Huérfano volcano, Casa Etérea glows brighter with each star that appears in the sky. The villa’s mirrored exterior magnifies even the faintest twinkle, creating the effect of an infinite celestial sea. Gaze long enough, and you get the sense you could step through the glass and into another galaxy. I felt similarly awestruck earlier that day, when I first laid eyes on Casa Etérea through a dusty traffic jam of cattle. High above the cobblestoned streets of San Miguel de Allende, this 800-square-foot glass box rose out of a desert landscape of mesquite trees and bisnaga cactus. Given the city’s arty reputation, I almost mistook it for another of the site-specific sculptures that pepper this…

beasts of the southern wild

ALL OF STATIC hissed from the radio receiver. As the sun dipped, the sandstone of South Africa’s Waterberg massif lit up in shades of ocher and orange. We were running short on time—tracking big cats after dark would be near impossible. We strained our ears for the telltale blip of a radio collar as Arie Swiegers, my field guide at Marataba Conservation Camps, swung the antenna toward an acacia copse. Suddenly, a signal from the collar of a young male cheetah leaped from the static. Shouldering his rifle, Swiegers shot me a wide grin, saying: “Let’s go.” We were tracking cheetahs on foot, not for the thrill of a sighting or a perfect snapshot, but to record their movements. Our research would help ensure the cats’ safety and health, and that…

my side of the mountain

AS A NATIVE and mostly lifelong Californian, I should by now have internalized how rugged and wild the Sierra Nevada are—real mountains, with bears and blizzards and Yosemite and the Donner Party—but every time I venture into them, I’m surprised all over again. Maybe it’s the abruptness with which they appear. As you drive north along Highway 395, the eastern Sierra seem to loom up out of nowhere. To your left, above the town of Lone Pine, rise a craggy ridge and Mount Whitney’s summit, the highest point in the Lower 48; to your right, austere desert rambles over the horizon toward the lowest, Death Valley. Only 80-odd miles separates the two extremes. If coastal California is the state’s soft underbelly, this harsh landscape is its armored shell. In October, after…

a divine mission

WHEN YUGOSLAVIA SPLINTERED into warring states in the early 1990s, the Swiss art patron and collector Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza hurried down to Dubrovnik to help document Croatia’s endangered art heritage. She was working with the city’s Franciscan monks to restore Renaissance paintings when the head monk, Pio Mario, invited her to see an abandoned monastery built in 1483 on the nearby island of Lopud, in the Elaphiti archipelago. “As we rounded the headland of the island, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she recalls. “The monastery, with its huge fortress in the back, took my breath away. We went in, climbed the steps, and of course there were no roofs, there was graffiti everywhere. It was completely ruined.” Thus began Thyssen-Bornemisza’s struggle to breathe life into this majestic corpse. Working with Croatian architect Rujana…