Can you keep a secret?
Plus, London to Sydney in three hours, Brussels embarrasses itself, is New York City a cult?
Chris Dickey loved to take me to lunch at Les Deux Palais in Paris. Not because the food was particularly good, but because the legendary Washington Post and Newsweek journalist thought it made for great people watching, and he liked to take photographs of them in the mirrors. I always felt lucky to be one of the young journalists Chris spent so much time getting to know. Since I was in Paris four or five times a year back then, we spent a lot of time together, and memories of him bubble up at the oddest times. He would’ve loved that I got my foot in the door at National Geographic.
But when he wanted to make sure I ate well, he always took me to a nondescript little wine bar outside the Jardin du Palais Royal. Called Juveniles, it looks more unremarkable than however you’re currently envisioning it. But I always devoured every dish, and he never let me turn down a chance to finish a meal without their riz au lait. Juveniles was his haunt, so I didn’t put it in a guide or on my social media until after he passed. Once Chris was gone, my reason for protecting it was gone, and I wanted to share something with others he’d shared with me. I started to post about it. The last few times I’ve been in Paris, I haven’t been able to get a table.
Chris and Juveniles have been on my mind lately because of how pervasive the feeling has become that we can’t have anything nice anymore. If the wrong person (i.e., the “right” person a decade ago when everybody thought attention was good!) posts something, it’s done.
When I first started going to Madrid, the Sorolla Museum was a teeny little wonder that was so uncrowded that you could often go read in the garden. Before it recently closed for renovations, it had become one of the city’s hottest destinations with lines wrapped around the block. In Rome, the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna used to have to shutter whole wings because so few tourists came—it wasn’t worth the money to keep them open all day. I could marvel at the cartoonish and raw primal masculinity of Canova’s Ercole without a soul bothering me. Now, it’s full. The same goes for Borromini’s masterpieces of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza. Once empty or dotted with only a couple of architecture students sketching away, they’re now must-sees.
I am not egotistical enough to think I played a significant role in any of these things’ sudden popularity in the last half-decade, but I certainly didn’t help.
Line culture has become an abomination and such a frequent practice that it’s making me feel old and disconnected at a much younger age than I should. Not because I’m too cool for a line, I’ve never been somebody “on the list.” It’s simply that there are way more enriching things to do with that time. (While I appreciate a stretch argument as much as every person told a lot as a kid they’d make a good lawyer, it’s laughable that line culture is a pendulum swinging back from the loneliness epidemic and the “new third place.”)
I rolled my eyes a few years back when a dear friend made me promise I’d never tag it if she showed me her favorite little garden in London. (A promise I’ve kept.) Now, I roll my eyes at my rolling of eyes.
When I was running travel at The Daily Beast, I created a series on underrated destinations called It’s Still a Big World. While I think the vast majority of destinations we highlighted stood to benefit from our spotlight—places like Cincinnati, Jacksonville, Sao Paulo, and Roissy—when I wrote one about Boise back in 2018, I got a screed from a local. I’m paraphrasing, but the man essentially told me go f*ck myself for trying to ruin his nice small city with obnoxious out of towners. I thought he was nuts then. Now, I think he was prescient.
I’ve shifted a lot of my thinking about travel in the years since the pandemic. Repeat and tradition have become much more important.
Less important, to the point of irrelevance, is chasing hidden gems. They don’t exist anymore. That, more than anything, is what I’d pin the demise of Atlas Obscura on. Its premise was subsumed by everybody chasing the unknown until even the silliest little thing was “known.” My guides are focused more on things I enjoyed, regardless of popularity or exclusivity. I do, however, advocate for destinations that are underrated like Antwerp.
But now I’ve started to worry about my own downstream effects. When I wrote about Eltham Palace and Villa Cavrois, I thought it was fun that a big TikToker who followed me subsequently went and posted beautiful and popular content from those places. I’m almost scared to find out if either of those places got too popular.
Forgive me for essentially thinking out loud in this week’s column, but I’m curious if any others grapple with this. Should we all be shifting how we think about our own roles promotionally in ruining a good thing?
If I find something beautiful or wonderful, should I keep it a secret?
DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES
Well, well, well. Expedia’s One Key is finally caving in (sort of) and revamping its rewards program. Just a quick refresher: Hotels.com, which is part of Expedia, used to have one of the best rewards programs in travel. It was simple. Stay 10 nights, and get one night free, which was an average of those 10 nights. Essentially, a 10% reward. The company scrapped that in 2023 and rolled out its not-as-beloved One Key that affected loyalty on Hotels.com and never managed to build it across their other platforms like Vrbo and Expedia itself. One Key’s reward-earning methods were opaque and stingy. Now, the company is simplifying them and presenting them as more generous. While things are simpler in terms of how you earn OneKeyCash, I’m skeptical of the whole “instant discount” thing. When this has been done before, it’s often more akin to a store putting a high MSRP crossed out and then the price it would’ve always been.
I completely missed the ongoing story that is the deterioration of rail travel in Spain, but it sounds like the crash in January was just the most high profile in a litany of issues plaguing the system, including rampant delays, breakdowns, and more. It’s sad to read about, because rail was such a success story for Spain, especially with the competition and frequency, so seeing it come apart makes me wish for a really good piece examining what really happened. (Renfe, the national train carrier claims, of course, that the private competition introduced is what’s behind a lot of the issues.)
Yes, New York City is a cult. It’s the only city where people feel the need to insist out loud constantly that it’s the greatest city in the world. It’s still awesome, though.
As loyal readers of this newsletter already know, I’m a massive fan of Dawn Gilbertson’s column at the Wall Street Journal. So when I saw she tested out the new TSA remote check-in and screening facility for Boston Logan Airport, I got excited. Despite the enthusiastic press its rollout got, using it (it’s 25 miles from the airport, and you have to take a bus from it!) made little sense to me. But I thought maybe I was being too negative. Well, here’s the line from Gilbertson’s column that sticks out: “For this frequent flier, it felt like a waste of time.”
The appeal of Euro summer has been lost on me for quite some time. Long before this record-setting heat wave, its cities and towns were too toasty. Not to mention the crowds. I’m a New England boy and am lucky to be from a place with all one could need. That said, I’m headed back to Europe in September and worried that the entry/exit woes will not have been resolved by then. EU officials seem insistent on denying there are any issues, a policy that would make fixing them impossible. It’s gotten so bad that the head of Europe’s top aviation association publicly demanded a wake-up call, declaring:
“EU Home Affairs Commissioner Brunner and Home Affairs Ministers must stop pretending the situation is manageable and that the EES is working just fine. It is not. We urgently need full flexibility for border control authorities to suspend the EES whenever needed to avoid further chaos – along with a rethink of those processes. This is about showing respect and decency for those who choose to travel to the EU, and safeguarding our reputation as a welcoming and efficient destination.”
Rome, for instance, is already pushing to toss the new border security checks, saying it will be impossible to process the summer crowds.
Brussels actually has a lot of great things about it, but what was done to it as an administrative center in the 20th and 21st centuries has been almost uniformly awful. The latest insult? The Schuman Roundabout, which is being brutalized in the press and on social media and whose own architect is disavowing it.
First Venice, now Barcelona. European cities that face insatiable demand are testing how far they can jack up daytripper fees. Barcelona is now looking at tripling the fee it charges to cruise passengers to 30 euros.
Not to be outdone, Japan just went and quintupled its visa fees! Might as well…
The roofs on the Gehry-designed performing arts centers in Abu Dhabi are going to get quite hot no?
I’m not qualified to judge this, but the European Space Agency says its hypersonic Invictus aircraft that go twice as fast as the Concorde, will be ready to fly by the mid-2030s, which would mean flights like London to Sydney in just a few hours. I don’t know how comfortable that would be, though.
STORIES I LOVED OR WISH I’D DONE
I’ve long felt Madrid handled its growing popularity far better than Barcelona. Sure, it has more space (literally) and is a bigger city, but there was an openness to Castilians that one never really found with Catalans. Add in the bitter politics of independence, and Barcelona started to have a sour note to it. Of late, though, Madrid has reached its breaking point. Tourism numbers keep setting records. And so much money has poured in–first from Latin America and those returning from post-Brexit London, and now Americans–that the meager Spanish salary cannot compete. The FT has a really great piece tying all the threads together of what has brought this moment, including the shocking statistic that for the last three years, 100,000 people a year have moved to the Madrid region.
When I went to Uzbekistan last year, I had mixed feelings while touring the country, but by far my favorite stop was Bukhara. It felt the most at ease with its historic nature, whereas the other cities felt either Disneyland-ish (Khiva) or dominated by their sights (Samarkand). So it’s great to see the New York Times giving it some love and visitors some ideas for where to eat, shop, and stay once on the ground.
I don’t have a teenager, but I enjoyed this Washington Post story on “A father’s guide to tricking your teen into actually enjoying vacation”
TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS
The National Geographic Museum (Museum of Exploration) in DC is now open!
Snøhetta is turning Alvar Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium into a hotel…
Hyatt is opening its first-ever all-inclusive Grand Hyatt and Park Hyatt, both in Mexico
Burbank is getting a new terminal
The largest cruise ship in Europe will launch next spring
Japan launches ‘supreme class’ bullet train airline-style private cabins
After this I think I can finally show you my little havens x
Your posts always make me laugh. (Is New York City a cult?) I try to avoid writing about "undiscovered gems" not only because I hate the overuse in travel writing of the word "gems." But also hasn't every spot on earth been "discovered" in some sense? Miss writing for you at The Daily Beast.