I'm finally old enough...

Plus, good news for luxury travel to Egypt, the war over museum benches, sex tourism coverage

Feb 15, 2026

I was too young to drive the rental car the first time I did the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway), which meant my coworker drove the entire route. I was also too young to know better than to make a smart aleck remark about how he was constantly braking and accelerating. I assumed it might be some horrible remnant of British driver’s ed, not knowing he was overly cautious because of an accident when he was younger.

I was also too young to really appreciate this magical stretch of accessible wonder and its odd quasi-cities along the way.

When I did it again in my late 20s, I was duly impressed. Carmel was a little fairy land of a town, the pools at Hearst Castle stupendous, and Big Sur magnificent in its gloom.

But if I think back on both of those trips, the most prominent feeling was one of agitation. The views were beautiful, but repetitive. I wanted to get to San Francisco and LA quicker and hang out there. I resented that at a certain point, there was no crossing over to the much faster 5.

‘What is wrong with me?” I also thought, until I ventured back to the Central Coast last weekend to (finally) visit my sister who lives in Santa Cruz.

I just wasn’t old enough to appreciate it.

Active once meant racing around to see lots of things—museums, people, architecture, etc. Now it means getting my multiple walks in, and in Santa Cruz, they could be alternated between those hugging a coastline smashed by an oft-angry Pacific or up into the surrounding hills and redwood forests. The parties full of interesting and hot people that enticed me in my 20s have nothing on a promontory resplendent in ice plant with a bench for reading my book. (I know, I know, ice plant is bad.)

A once lame internal excuse for not visiting—”What am I going to do there for that long?!”—has morphed into admitting my body would love a week or more of this. A younger me that wanted to be somewhere more exciting has been replaced by one who can finally find pleasure in being somewhere that is not only comfortable and nice but also distinctly itself.

And I say this with love but also with a teeny bit of East Coast side eye—the Central Coast is very much something uniquely Californian.

Breakfast sandwiches reach art form at the farmer’s market

The lesson for travelers here is obvious—some places are enjoyed differently at various points in your life. But there’s also a lesson for destinations and hotels. Stop chasing everybody. Figure out what makes you different and who can really appreciate what you have, and lean into that.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

One of the biggest stories in U.S. aviation this week was the news that the employees of American Airlines have essentially collectively said that CEO Robert Isom should step down. If the aviation reporters/enthusiasts reading this have a really good piece about the slow demise of AA, I’m happy to recommend it next week, but I haven’t read it. There are lots of little pieces focused on its strategic missteps, including having more of a domestic focus than United or Delta. Demand for international (particularly transatlantic) travel has exploded while domestic demand has lagged, leaving American behind on profits. Its partnership with JetBlue was blocked by a judge, which really hurt it in the New York City market. But there is really one simple difference between AA and the other two mainline carriers (and even increasingly competitive Alaska). It’s an inferior product, and it feels intentional to the consumer. Customer service is abysmal, on-time performance is poor, the app and website are janky, and the experience often feels more like an LCC. What kind of long-term culture created that would be interesting to read about?

Egypt remains one of my favorite trips. Seeing the temples (they’re way more impressive than the pyramids) and sailing down the Nile was a lifelong dream. But you can literally count on one hand how many nice hotels there are in the country, and two of them—the Winter Palace in Luxor and the Old Cataract in Aswan—have seen better days. The Winter Palace, in particular, was leaning a little too hard into the faded part of faded glamour. Until recently, they were operated by Sofitel, but this past week it was announced that they’re being taken over by Mandarin Oriental and the pair are being renovated. In addition, Mandarin said it’s launching cruises on the Nile.

The New York Times had a piece titled “Champagne, Concierges and Emergency Sand: How the Ultra- Rich Travel.” It wasn’t terribly interesting or surprising (until maybe the very end) if you follow the luxury travel market, and I’d argue that the things these luxury advisors are doing now aren’t really that different from a decade ago. BUT, there was a line in it that stood out to me. “At the Nobu Barcelona hotel, guests fill in pre-stay questionnaires listing their requirements.” I find filling out these questionnaires one of the least luxurious things that all these luxury hotels are now doing. First, because it’s rare, I see the things I’ve filled out reflected in the experience. Which just makes the disappointment even sharper. Second, because it’s homework. I don’t want homework!

There is a war being waged online about the benches at the National Gallery in London, and it’s hilarious…

There isn’t much to say that hasn’t been said, but it’s still staggering that 2.5 million more people visited Spain in 2025 than the previous year, for a record 96.8 million.

Summer travel will be upon us relatively soon. American tourist destinations hoping for a reprieve after the drop in Canadian tourists last year shouldn’t bank on it. The drop in Canadian tourists continues apace, with Canadian visits dropping by double-digit percentages in January compared to the year before.

Skift has an interesting but not surprising piece—Marriott is looking to co-branded credit cards for its growth in the coming year, offsetting weak demand for its actual hotels. (Basically, Marriott makes money from credit card swipe fees on its co-branded cards.) Marriott’s execs have much more experience than I do, but anybody who asks me for credit card advice is always told one thing—with the exception of Hyatt, hotel-branded cards stink. That’s because, unlike airlines, the big hotel groups don’t actually own the hotels you’re redeeming points and status at. This means many hotels won’t actually honor it or will do so minimally. It means that it takes a crap ton of points to get meaningful redemptions. And so on. So, best of luck to Marriott, but I won’t be getting their card anytime soon.

It’s been a couple of months since I got cranky about Expedia and its still-terrible decision to scrap its beloved Hotels.com rewards program for the terrible One Key. So I’m just going to post this Skift headline: “Expedia’s B2B Surge Buys Time for Vrbo and Hotels.com.”

Was sex tourism always a core part of Fodor’s coverage, and I just didn’t know it, or is the outlet’s extensive coverage a recent thing? An example of recent stories includes: “If You’re Feeling Kinky, Head to the Pacific Northwest,” “Why Is Vacation Sex Always Better?” “I Was Sick of Dating Apps, So I Tried Ireland’s Wild 60,000-Person Matchmaking Festival,” “Inside the World’s 10 Wildest Sex Resorts,” “The Best App For Finding a Date While Traveling,” “The 10 Most Unusual Aphrodisiacs Around the World,” and “I Hung Out at a Naked Party in Texas and It Changed the Way I Travel.”

It’s no surprise that there have been some issues with Southwest’s shift to just another airline, but one would’ve assumed the airline thought through one of the most pressing issues in domestic air travel—bin space. Instead, the past few days I’ve seen lots of rants online about how poorly baggage space has gone, most notably by passengers who have a high loyalty ranking or paid extra for leg room.

Everything about these machines that allow you to melt down your jewelry on the spot so you can spend more on gambling is very, very sad, and I hope they never make it to the U.S.

The new David Geffen Galleries at LACMA, which I thought looked cold and sterile a few months ago, are now officially opening in April…so I’m going to try to see them IRL as soon as possible.

Each time I look at this photo of the new Mother-of-Pearl Experience Museum in Germany, I change from loving it to hating it to back to loving it and so on…

STORIES I LOVED OR WISH I’D DONE

One other sign of getting older? Grocery stores in other places fascinate me. In Santa Cruz they have this chain called New Leaf Community Market that is basically Erewhon supersized. They have this hideous logo, so bad it feels intentional, like they’re the anti-supermarket supermarket. So I enjoyed the Wall Street Journal’s “The Booming Business of Luxury Grocery Stores.”

Never thought I’d see Yawgoo in a national news outlet, so that was fun!

I always love when The Guardian does reader tips stories, like this one about unsung museums in Europe, as I consistently find new things to see!

Anthony Paletta used to write for me at the Beast, and he always had such fun architectural ideas. I really loved his column this past week for Dezeen on the need to preserve decommissioned airport buildings as architectural works.