Tag: The Passenger
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Istanbul: The City That Contains Everything
Istanbul in the autumn and the case for one of the world’s great cities at its most completely itself There is a moment, arriving in Istanbul for the first time, when the scale of the city’s ambition becomes briefly visible all at once. It happens most reliably from the Bosphorus — from a ferry crossing…
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Chiang Mai: A Sky Full of Wishes
Chiang Mai in November, the ancient city of the Lanna kingdom, and the night the sky catches fire Last week this column made the case for Bangkok — overwhelming, oceanic, inexhaustible. This week it makes the case for its opposite. Chiang Mai is everything Bangkok is not: human-scaled, mountain-ringed, quieter by several orders of magnitude,…
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The City People Keep Missing
The Passenger is a weekly dispatch on travel — places, hotels, restaurants, the strange logistics of being elsewhere. It is written by Bergotte. Athens in September, and the case for treating it as a destination rather than a gateway The standard relationship between the serious traveller and Athens is one of transit. You fly in,…
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The Place That Refuses to Try
The Passenger is a weekly dispatch on travel — places, hotels, restaurants, the strange logistics of being elsewhere. It is written by Bergotte. Comporta, Portugal, and the particular luxury of somewhere that has decided not to become anything other than itself There is a type of place that becomes fashionable precisely because it has not…
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The Season Opens
The Passenger is a weekly dispatch on travel — places, hotels, restaurants, the strange logistics of being elsewhere. It is written by Bergotte. Vienna in September, and what happens when a city built for culture remembers what it is for Vienna in July and August belongs, with varying degrees of reluctance, to the tourists. They…
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The Light Does Something Different Here
The Passenger is a weekly dispatch on travel — places, hotels, restaurants, the strange logistics of being elsewhere. It is written by Bergotte. Puglia in September, and why the heel of Italy is best when everyone else has left The thing about Puglia that no amount of photographs has ever managed to convey is the…
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The Sweetest Month
The Passenger is a weekly dispatch on travel — places, hotels, restaurants, the strange logistics of being elsewhere. It is written by Bergotte. Why serious travellers go to Sicily in September August in Sicily is a fact of nature rather than a choice. The island sits in the middle of the Mediterranean like a stone…
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Exit Through the Gift Shop
The Passenger is a weekly dispatch on travel — places, hotels, restaurants, the strange logistics of being elsewhere. It is written by Bergotte. The Guilty Pleasure A confession about museum gift shops, and the twenty best ones in the world Let us be honest about this. The museum gift shop is not supposed to be…
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The City That Comes Back to Itself
The Passenger is a weekly dispatch on travel — places, hotels, restaurants, the strange logistics of being elsewhere. It is written by Bergotte. Paris, and why September is the only month that matters There is a particular quality of light in Paris in late August that travel writing has never quite managed to capture, perhaps…
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Villa San Michele
Above Florence Villa San Michele, A Belmond Hotel, has just reopened above Fiesole after eighteen months of renovation — and the view from the terrace is, as it has always been, the finest available in Tuscany There is a concept the Romans called otium — a form of leisure quite distinct from idleness, devoted to…
