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INSPIRED BY<br />
ISSUE 133 | MAY <strong>2019</strong> | COMPLIMENTARY COPY<br />
ST LUCIA<br />
A true taste of<br />
Caribbean life<br />
CALIFORNIA<br />
DREAMING<br />
The coolest way to see the best<br />
of America's Golden State<br />
Produced in Dubai Production City<br />
LONDON<br />
PARIS<br />
NETHERLANDS<br />
SOLO TRAVEL
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While at Raffles,<br />
why not visit Dubai?
Welcome note<br />
Trip to London on the horizon? It's one of the most popular<br />
destinations for travellers from the Middle East to head to<br />
during the summer, and we've pulled out all the stops to help<br />
make this year's jaunt your best experience yet by giving you<br />
Managing Director<br />
Victoria Thatcher<br />
Editorial Director<br />
John Thatcher<br />
General Manager<br />
David Wade<br />
Managing Editor<br />
Faye Bartle<br />
faye@hotmediapublishing.com<br />
Content Writer<br />
Habiba Azab<br />
Art Director<br />
Kerri Bennett<br />
Senior Designer<br />
Hiral Kapadia<br />
Senior Advertising Manager<br />
Mia Cachero<br />
mia@hotmediapublishing.com<br />
Production Manager<br />
Muthu Kumar<br />
a heads up on all that's new and noteworthy in the<br />
city in our cover story on page 24. From why you<br />
should swap Shoreditch for Peckham and Hackney<br />
Wick (trust us, we know what we're talking about),<br />
and taking a sneak peek at the hottest tables<br />
and most desirable hotels in town, we've got<br />
everything you need to curate your perfect trip.<br />
And if you fancy tagging on a long weekend in<br />
Paris, our four-page feature, by our in-the-know<br />
travel writer Lara Brunt, tells you how to explore<br />
the City of Lights in style (p58).<br />
Also inside this issue, we take you on a trip<br />
across California in a classic Airstream (p36) and<br />
whisk you away to live the easy breezy life in St<br />
Lucia (p48). Plus, in the spirit of Ramadan, we've<br />
unearthed some trips that'll add extra cultural<br />
meaning to your future travel plans on page 16.<br />
Happy travels,<br />
Faye Bartle<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>2019</strong> // Issue 133 // What's New in London / California / Paris / Netherlands / St Lucia<br />
ISSUE 133 | MAY <strong>2019</strong> | COMPLIMENTARY COPY<br />
CALIFORNIA<br />
DREAMING<br />
The coolest way to see the best<br />
of America's Golden State<br />
ST LUCIA<br />
A true taste of<br />
Caribbean life<br />
Win!<br />
INSPIRED BY<br />
A stay at Jumeirah<br />
Al Wathba Desert<br />
Resort & Spa in Abu<br />
Dhabi on p75<br />
FIVE THINGS<br />
WE LEARNED<br />
THIS ISSUE:<br />
1<br />
A-listers including<br />
Hanks, Pitt, and<br />
McConaughey are fans<br />
of the humble Airstream<br />
trailer – it's our new<br />
favourite way to explore<br />
California, p36<br />
2<br />
The mighty Tower Bridge<br />
has straddled the<br />
River Thames for<br />
125 years, p24<br />
3<br />
The best view of the<br />
Pitons in St Lucia can be<br />
found 600m above sea<br />
level at Tet Paul, p48<br />
4<br />
You can have breakfast<br />
with Red Riding Hood,<br />
among other adventures,<br />
at the fairy tale theme<br />
park Efteling in the<br />
Netherlands, p42<br />
5<br />
This year, Paris is<br />
celebrating the 130 th<br />
anniversary of the<br />
Eiffel Tower, as well<br />
as 350 years of the<br />
Paris Opera, p58<br />
INSPIRED BY<br />
Produced in Dubai Production City<br />
LONDON<br />
PARIS<br />
NETHERLANDS<br />
SOLO TRAVEL<br />
Photography credits:<br />
Getty Images and Phocal Media<br />
COVER IMAGE<br />
Getty Images<br />
Reproduction in whole or in<br />
part without written permission<br />
from HOT Media Publishing is<br />
strictly prohibited. HOT Media<br />
Publishing does not accept<br />
liability for omissions or errors in<br />
<strong>World</strong> <strong>Traveller</strong>.<br />
Tel: 00971 4 364 2876<br />
Fax: 00971 4 369 7494<br />
Find us at…<br />
ONLINE worldtravellermagazine.com<br />
FACEBOOK @worldtravellermagazine<br />
INSTAGRAM @dnataworldtraveller<br />
TWITTER @WT_Magazine<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 5
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Contents<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>2019</strong><br />
Kimpton Fitzroy London Hotel<br />
24<br />
WHAT'S NEW IN LONDON<br />
regulars<br />
10 15 20 24 76<br />
TRENDING<br />
DESTINATIONS<br />
This month's go-to<br />
places include the<br />
Turkish coastal city of<br />
Bodrum and blooming<br />
Amsterdam.<br />
GLOBETROTTER<br />
Passport at the ready<br />
as our world tour takes<br />
us from edible art in<br />
London to a new (and a<br />
newly relaunched) hotel<br />
in Maldives.<br />
THE KNOWLEDGE<br />
Carina Otero, founder<br />
of She is Not Lost, and<br />
Nastasia Yakoub of<br />
Dame Traveler share<br />
their expert advice for<br />
female globetrotters.<br />
COVER FEATURE<br />
It's soon to be summer<br />
and London's calling.<br />
Putting your finger on<br />
the pulse of what's hot<br />
in the Big Smoke are our<br />
on-the-ground experts.<br />
SUITE DREAMS<br />
It's high stakes<br />
glamour inside the<br />
Pierre-Yves Rochondesigned<br />
Diamond Suite<br />
at Hôtel Hermitage<br />
Monte-Carlo.<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 7
CONTENTS<br />
features<br />
36 42<br />
TRAILER FLASH TALES OF THE<br />
Jenni Doggett hits the UNEXPECTED<br />
road to discover why an Once upon a time, a<br />
Airstream trailer is the fairy tale land was built<br />
hippest way to holiday in Netherlands. Maggie<br />
in California.<br />
O’Farrell heads there.<br />
48<br />
KEEPING IT REAL<br />
Liz Edwards on why<br />
self-catering in<br />
St Lucia is your key to<br />
getting a true taste of<br />
Caribbean life.<br />
58<br />
A LONG WEEKEND IN PARIS<br />
weekends<br />
56 58<br />
REASONS TO<br />
A LONG WEEKEND<br />
VISIT AMMAN<br />
IN PARIS<br />
The strikingly modern Lara Brunt falls head<br />
meets old world charm over heels for the City<br />
in Jordan's capital. of Lights.<br />
66<br />
STAYCATIONS<br />
Feel in need of a break?<br />
We have a couple more<br />
reasons to book a<br />
weekend escape.<br />
70<br />
TRAVEL OFFERS<br />
It's time we sent you<br />
packing. Choose your<br />
next adventure from<br />
our exclusive offers.<br />
© Paris Tourist Office. Photographer © Sarah Sergent<br />
8 worldtravellermagazine.com
ENJOY A BLEND OF STYLE AND TRADITION THIS RAMADAN<br />
Celebrate the Holy Month of Ramadan with friends and family in Dubai’s most<br />
established Ramadan setting within our intimate courtyards.<br />
A FEAST OF IFTAR EXPERIENCES<br />
Enjoy Iftar buffets, served daily from sunset at Tagine and The Rotisserie for AED 230,<br />
or enjoy a private banquet setting with menus starting from AED 250.<br />
Then extend the evening relaxing in our ‘Ramadan Café Courtyard’ at The Palace<br />
or ‘Ramadan Outdoor Café’ at Arabian Court.<br />
Ramadan Café & Majlis: daily 8pm - 2.30am<br />
oneandonlyroyalmirage.com<br />
+971 4 399 9999
TRENDING DESTINATIONS<br />
Emily Williams, dnata Travel’s resident globetrotter,<br />
reveals the places that are trending this month<br />
Keukenhof, image courtesy of Conservatorium<br />
Amsterdam<br />
People are flocking here to see the famous Dutch tulips bloom. Just 30 minutes' from the city centre you'll find the<br />
flower fields of the beautiful Keukenhof tulip garden, although blooms can also be seen at numerous locations<br />
throughout the capital, including the famous Tulip Museum. The weather is perfect at this time of year, and the<br />
city kicks off the summer in style by hosting a variety of outdoor music festivals to suit all tastes.<br />
Highlights 1 Take an Instagram snap of the red, snake-like Python Bridge in the Azartplein district. 2 View rare artwork<br />
by the Dutch master at The Rembrandt House’s staging of Rembrandt’s Social Network (until 19 <strong>May</strong>). 3 Check out the<br />
Longing for Mecca exhibition at Tropenmuseum, which showcases personal stories from Dutch pilgrims.<br />
10 worldtravellermagazine.com
TRENDING DESTINATIONS<br />
Jakarta<br />
The metropolitan capital delivers the best of Indonesian city and beach life. A melting pot of different cultures, this<br />
urban jungle’s 100+ malls, packed closely together, make it a popular shopping destination. Plus, you can wander<br />
around Jakarta Old Town's colonial buildings, or take the 90-minute boat trip to the idyllic Thousand Islands beaches.<br />
Getting around is easy thanks to the Jakarta MRT underground railway system, which launched in March.<br />
Highlights 1 Hop on a boat from Ancol Bay and head to the tropical islands of Kepulauan Seribu for a night in a private<br />
beach hut. 2 Soak up the heritage in West Jakarta at Museum Fatahillah, and tour the surrounding Kota Tua district on<br />
a classic bicycle. 3 Drop by Setu Babakan in the south, where you can learn the story of the native Betawi culture.<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 11
Kenya<br />
It’s the perfect time to go on safari. In Kenya, the green season is in full swing, which may result in a thunderstorm<br />
or two. But the aftermath, combined with the lush flora and fauna, will enhance your landscape shots dramatically.<br />
As <strong>May</strong> is a wet month, and typically quieter, it'll be easier to view Africa’s big five (the lion, leopard, rhinoceros,<br />
elephant, and cape buffalo) while driving through the unforgettable Masai Mara National Reserve.<br />
Highlights 1 Take a guided tour of Kericho, which has long been Kenya’s richest tea growing district. 2 Admire the great plains of the Mara by<br />
taking to the sky in a hot air balloon at dawn. 3 Consider going north to the shore of Lake Turkana, and making a guided visit to the El Molo<br />
villages for a glimpse of the traditional way of life of the smallest tribes of Kenya.<br />
12 worldtravellermagazine.com
TRENDING DESTINATIONS<br />
Bodrum<br />
This ancient port city on Turkey’s Aegean Coast is enjoying a surge of trendy five-star hotel openings and celebrityfavourite<br />
beach clubs. Add to the vibrant food scene, and abundance of superyachts bobbing in the marina, and<br />
it's easy to understand why Bodrum is referred to as 'the St. Tropez of Turkey'. Its 15th century castle on the water,<br />
white-plastered back-streets, and honey-coloured beaches and turquoise waters enhance the charm.<br />
Highlights 1 Take a dip in the mud baths at Black Island and emerge with glowing skin. 2 Take a close up look at the famous windmills<br />
on the hilltop near Yalikavak and you'll also get great views of Bodrum and Gumbet. 3 Brush up on your maritime history at the<br />
Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology in Bodrum Castle.<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 13
DESTINATION<br />
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Book your summer<br />
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• Promotional code B4F appears in the<br />
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18th April <strong>2019</strong> – 25th September <strong>2019</strong><br />
• Stay Window:<br />
18th April <strong>2019</strong> – 30th September <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
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MAY<br />
Globetrotter<br />
XXXXXXXXXXXXX<br />
Be informed, be inspired, be there<br />
GRANDE DAME<br />
Following a two-year renovation, the<br />
newly relaunched Baros Maldives will<br />
rekindle your love affair with the Indian<br />
Ocean. A beacon of luxury with a fourdecade-long<br />
pedigree, this grand dame<br />
of Maldivian hospitality has added two<br />
new spectacular standalone villas to its<br />
exclusive palm-thatched community<br />
of secluded and over-water abodes.<br />
Returning gourmands can rest easy, with<br />
the signature lobster bisque still headling<br />
The Lighthouse's award-winning menu.<br />
<strong>World</strong> <strong>Traveller</strong> 15
GLOBETROTTER<br />
Photo: Dr Esther Mahlangu by Clint Strydom<br />
SOUL TRIPPING<br />
Add extra cultural meaning to your travel plans this month<br />
SEE A NATIONAL TREASURE<br />
South Africa bound travellers looking<br />
for unique artistic insight can explore<br />
Bantu nation tradition at One&Only<br />
Cape Town, where a collection of<br />
works by legendary 83-year-old<br />
Ndebele painter and national treasure<br />
Dr Esther Mahlangu is on show at the<br />
hotel's Melrose Gallery. Dedicated to<br />
celebrating the best of Pan African<br />
contemporary art and creativity,<br />
the newly opened space is the sister<br />
outpost to its original Melrose Arch<br />
Johannesburg gallery.<br />
SNIFF OUT OMANI TRADITION<br />
The perfume capital of Arabia, Salalah<br />
is the epicentre of Oman’s centuriesold<br />
frankincense trade. Extracted from<br />
the Boswellia sacra tree, this precious<br />
resin with its distinctive sweet, woody<br />
scent is burned in homes as a natural air<br />
freshener, and used in beauty rituals to<br />
de-stress. It's also said to have powerful<br />
healing benefits. Check into Al Baleed<br />
Resort Salalah by Anantara and join<br />
local area guru Hussain Balhalf for a<br />
guided frankincense tour and collect a<br />
few nuggets to take home. The resort<br />
spa also offers a signature 90-minute<br />
frankincense ritual.<br />
SPIN A YARN OVER LUNCH<br />
Morocco's Atlas Mountains are<br />
home to the Berber people and this<br />
proudly independent ethnic group has<br />
maintained its language, culture and<br />
identity since 3000 BCE. Subsistence<br />
farmers and accomplished weavers<br />
famed for their intricate Amazigh<br />
carpets made using hand-dyed yarn,<br />
book the Berber Experience package<br />
at Mandarin Oriental, Marrakech for<br />
a unique opportunity to sit and chat<br />
with a local family over a home-cooked<br />
lunch in a traditional mountain home.<br />
ON OUR<br />
RADAR<br />
Add some cachet to your<br />
holiday essentials with a<br />
stylish carry-all from The<br />
Reethi Rah Collection,<br />
a limited edition<br />
capsule collection<br />
by One&Only Reethi<br />
Rah in Maldives and<br />
State of Escape.<br />
Available from the<br />
resort's Neo Boutique.<br />
Looking for the latest<br />
scuba hotspot? Pimalai<br />
Resort & Spa on Koh Lanta,<br />
Thailand, is offering a Diving<br />
in Koh Haa package,<br />
offering access to 12<br />
spectacular marine<br />
life-rich underwater<br />
locations on this<br />
nearby jewel-like<br />
island. Lucky ones<br />
may even spot an<br />
endangered whale shark.<br />
Exclusivity in the extreme<br />
is the MO at North Island<br />
Seychelles. The super luxe<br />
11-villa private island<br />
resort has upped the<br />
desirability quotient<br />
with the opening of<br />
its ultra-exclusive<br />
cocktail destination,<br />
West Beach Bar on<br />
North Island. Bespoke<br />
cocktails and fabulous<br />
sunsets are the standard.<br />
Take a leaf out of Saudi<br />
Arabian influencer Dr Hassan<br />
Ghoneim’s book and upgrade<br />
your old suitcase to<br />
something altogether<br />
more stylish from<br />
premium luggage<br />
brand TUMI. Join his<br />
1.3 million-strong<br />
Instagram following<br />
(@hassanghoneim) to<br />
see more. tumi.com<br />
16 worldtravellermagazine.com
WORLD TRAVELLER X CAESARS BLUEWATERS DUBAI<br />
Empire state of mind<br />
Relax, refresh and revitalise body and soul at Caesars<br />
Bluewaters Dubai, for the ultimate imperial experience this summer<br />
A<br />
life of enjoyment and pleasure<br />
was the foundation of the<br />
Roman empire, and Caesars<br />
Bluewaters Dubai puts a luxury spin on<br />
this ethos with a wealth of rich lifestyle<br />
experiences designed to pamper and<br />
please 21st century travellers. With an<br />
exclusive address at Bluewaters, this<br />
iconic destination has Las Vegas panache.<br />
BEACH TIME & TRANQUILLITY<br />
A pristine stretch of private beach is<br />
your gateway to the crystal-clear waters<br />
of the Arabian Gulf and is best enjoyed<br />
from the comfort of a private cabana or,<br />
if you’re more action inclined, out on the<br />
water. A duo of stunningly landscaped<br />
outdoor pools add an extra layer of al<br />
fresco extravagance and are perfectly<br />
positioned for a quick dip or leisurely<br />
few laps. Zen moments away from the<br />
sand and water are also guaranteed in<br />
the upscale sanctuary of Qua Spa, with<br />
a regal collection of elemental inspired<br />
treatments that ensure the perfect<br />
balance of internal Qi energy. Try the<br />
revolutionary Psammo Concept Quartz<br />
Bed experience with its tension-relieving<br />
sand therapy, or the signature Ladies<br />
Collection Facial with a choice of Caviar<br />
Repair, Golden Glow and Collagen Lift.<br />
DINING DELIGHTS<br />
Energy of a different kind is the focus<br />
of Caesars Bluewaters Dubai's talented<br />
culinary team, with a multicultural<br />
offering for every guest. From an<br />
immersive iftar experience at Michelin<br />
starred chef Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s<br />
Kitchen to a family friendly Arabian<br />
feast experience headlining at Bacchanal<br />
throughout Ramadan. The popular<br />
Hellicious Brunch is also on the menu,<br />
with a spread fit for a Caesar every Friday<br />
evening in the month of <strong>May</strong>.<br />
Sunset takes on extra special<br />
significance at the rooftop dining venue<br />
Paru, where contemporary Japanese<br />
cuisine is paired with signature drinks.<br />
Sundowners with spectacular view of<br />
the JBR skyline and ocean? Paru ticks<br />
all the boxes. It doesn’t end there with<br />
Dubai’s social set to be found at Havana<br />
Social Club, the home of chilled Latin<br />
beats and classic Cuban flavours where<br />
extravagance takes on a seductive note.<br />
SUMMER STAYS<br />
Play and stay like a Caesar for the<br />
ultimate romantic getaway at Caesars<br />
Palace Bluewaters Dubai, where couples<br />
can unwind to the sight of the sparkling<br />
sea from their own private balcony. A<br />
fun family escape awaits at Caesars<br />
Resort Bluewaters Dubai, with a fullypacked<br />
roaster of entertainment for<br />
all ages. Make it a summer stay, and<br />
be treated like royalty with exclusive<br />
summer savings and a host of added<br />
benefits yours to discover.<br />
To find out more, visit caesars.com/dubai<br />
Neptune Pool, Caesars Palace Bluewaters Dubai<br />
Havana Social Club, Caesars Palace Bluewaters Dubai<br />
One Bedroom Ocean Suite Living Room,<br />
Caesars Palace Bluewaters Dubai<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 17
GLOBETROTTER<br />
ART ON A PLATE<br />
Culinary culturalists can whet their appetite, discover the<br />
arts scene and enjoy a science lesson at this trio of top London<br />
museums where food and fun are on the menu<br />
LUNCH WITH VAN GOGH<br />
REX WHISTLER AT<br />
TATE BRITAIN<br />
Vincent Van Gogh's love of<br />
vivid colours is translated to<br />
the table with a three-course<br />
lunch and tasting menu to<br />
celebrate the EY Exhibition:<br />
Van Gogh and Britain (until<br />
11 August). The Rex Whistler<br />
restaurant menu features<br />
best of British produce and<br />
uniquely Dutch ingredients.<br />
Look out for an artistic<br />
culinary nod to his most<br />
famous works, including<br />
Starry Night on the Rhône.<br />
tate.org.uk<br />
BIGGER THAN THE PLATE<br />
VICTORIA & ALBERT<br />
MUSEUM<br />
The hot topic of food and<br />
sustainability takes centre<br />
stage at this bold exhibition,<br />
which invites visitors on a<br />
sensory journey through the<br />
food cycle, from compost to<br />
table. Over 70 contemporary<br />
projects, new commissions<br />
and creative collaborations<br />
by artists and designers<br />
working with chefs, farmers,<br />
scientists and communities<br />
sit alongside 30 objects<br />
from the V&A collections.<br />
Opening 18 <strong>May</strong>. vam.ac.uk<br />
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM<br />
NATURAL HISTORY<br />
MUSEUM<br />
Sleepovers aren't just for<br />
kids. The Dino Snores for<br />
Grown-ups experience is an<br />
adult-only night of fun and<br />
games in the grand setting<br />
of the vaulted Hintze Hall.<br />
Bed down for the night<br />
under the giant blue whale<br />
skeleton after a galleries<br />
tour, science show, edible<br />
insect tasting, monster<br />
movie marathon, threecourse<br />
dinner and more.<br />
Taking place on 18 <strong>May</strong>, 5 Jul,<br />
13 Sep and 9 Nov. nhm.ac.uk<br />
Photography: Katie Wilson<br />
18 worldtravellermagazine.com
GLOBETROTTER<br />
Taj Rishikesh Resort & Spa, India<br />
NEW HOTELS<br />
Spiritual bliss and city vibes<br />
Check out the latest hotel hotspots, from India to the Indian Ocean<br />
1 2 3<br />
Taj Rishikesh Resort & Spa, India<br />
Just 30km from Rishikesh, the selfstyled<br />
yoga capital of the world, this<br />
sprawling 79-room haven of rustic<br />
luxury has the dramatic Himalayas as<br />
its backdrop, and the sacred Ganges at<br />
its feet. The Jiva Spa lies at the heart of<br />
the resort, and offers a menu of ancient<br />
holistic therapies. Explore your spiritual<br />
side with a private Ganga Aarti ritual,<br />
or seek adventure with rafting, rock<br />
climbing and trekking action on tap.<br />
Jumeirah Living Guangzhou, China<br />
Location is everything at this homeaway-from-home<br />
styled CBD hotel,<br />
which has the Canton Tower and<br />
Guangzhou Opera House on its<br />
doorstep. The 169 suite residences<br />
are split between two iconic towers,<br />
each with its own design aesthetic.<br />
With Guangzhou the birthplace of<br />
Cantonese cuisine, the hotel celebrates<br />
the city's pioneering flavours and is<br />
also home to the upscale Winter Mall.<br />
The Residence Maldives at Dhigurah<br />
A palm-fringed paradise private<br />
island in the Gaafu Alifu Atoll, this<br />
all-villa hideaway is rich with Maldivian<br />
architectural influences and a surfeit of<br />
five-star facilities. Nature takes centre<br />
stage whether you choose the luxury<br />
of a sunrise/sunset beach villa or<br />
over-the-water residence. Explore local<br />
villages, watch dolphins at play, snorkel<br />
by night and feast at your pleasure<br />
with a bespoke private dining occasion.<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 19
KNOW-HOW<br />
The Knowledge<br />
HOW TO...<br />
Join the solo female travel movement<br />
Carina Otero, founder of She is Not Lost, and Nastasia Yakoub, founder of Dame<br />
Traveler, share their top tips for female globetrotters in search of adventure<br />
Travelling solo doesn’t<br />
necessarily mean travelling<br />
alone. "It simply means that you are<br />
free to follow your own schedule and<br />
choose what you do," says Carina. "In<br />
fact, solo travellers are more likely<br />
to meet and enjoy the company of<br />
other people along the way, including<br />
fellow female travellers who can offer<br />
companionship while also respecting<br />
your independence."<br />
Carina Otero in Marrakech<br />
Feeling nervous is normal. "I was<br />
born into a strict Chaldean-Middle<br />
Eastern household so I understand<br />
feeling apprehensive and nervous<br />
about travelling," says Nastasia.<br />
"Women from a similar background<br />
will know that travelling solo is a<br />
big, bold decision. My first trip solo<br />
trip ever was to Cape Town and I<br />
remember crying on the way there.<br />
Truthfully, I was terrified, but after<br />
my feet were on solid ground, I truly<br />
embraced the spirit of adventure."<br />
Do your research, and familiarise<br />
yourself with a destination<br />
before you get packing. "Even<br />
some of the 'safest' places have<br />
incidences of violence," says Nastasia,<br />
"so make sure you do your research<br />
and trust your gut."<br />
Make sure you only do what you<br />
feel comfortable with. "Speaking<br />
from personal experience I’ve<br />
felt safe travelling solo in many<br />
destinations, including Taipei, Hong<br />
Kong, Bali, Italy, Spain, Switzerland,<br />
and Denmark," says Carina. "If you're<br />
feeling apprehensive, look into joining<br />
a women-only tour or a staying at a<br />
women-only hostel."<br />
Safety while travelling is a top<br />
concern for any woman. "When<br />
on the move, make sure you stay<br />
connected to your map by investing<br />
in an international phone plan and<br />
keeping your electronics charged.<br />
Try to schedule your travel so that<br />
you arrive during the day, and it's also<br />
wise to dress appropriately, or like a<br />
local," says Carina.<br />
"I like to look into typical scams<br />
for the destination I'm exploring, just<br />
to feel savvy and prepared," adds<br />
Nastasia. "In addition, you'll never find<br />
me without a safe and secure bag to<br />
tote around during the day. I like one<br />
with a sturdy zipper that crosses over<br />
the body."<br />
Staying focused and aware of<br />
your surroundings is key. "If you<br />
are making small talk with a new<br />
person, never reveal that you are<br />
travelling alone or that you are in a<br />
place for the first time," says Carina.<br />
"Even sharing a little white lie, that<br />
you are on the way to meet someone,<br />
will signal that someone is aware of<br />
your whereabouts and is expecting to<br />
hear from you. Other information you<br />
should avoid sharing, or keep guard<br />
of, is your hotel name, your room<br />
number, and your home address if<br />
you happen to have it written on your<br />
luggage tag."<br />
Follow She is Not Lost at sheisnotlost.com<br />
and @sheisnotlost; and Dame Traveler at<br />
dametraveler.com and @dametraveler<br />
20 worldtravellermagazine.com
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Island idyll<br />
Indulge all the senses on Naladhu Private<br />
Island Maldives, where tropical escapism<br />
and signature Anantara luxury promise<br />
the perfect slice of paradise<br />
22 worldtravellermagazine.com
WORLD TRAVELLER X NALADHU PRIVATE ISLAND MALDIVES<br />
If there was ever a blueprint for<br />
bliss then Naladhu Private Island<br />
Maldives would be the master<br />
plan. Naladhu, which translates from<br />
Dhivehi as ‘beautiful island’, lives up<br />
to its name from the moment you<br />
step off the private boat transfer to<br />
the sound of beating drums and warm<br />
welcome from your personal retinue.<br />
Exclusivity comes in the shape of<br />
just 19 houses and one two bedroom<br />
residence, all with requisite views of<br />
the Indian Ocean, private pool and a<br />
charming colonial inspired design,<br />
with colourful Maldivian accents for<br />
that desirable island vibe. If luxury<br />
knows no bounds, then only the<br />
two-bedroom Pool Residence will<br />
do. With carved gates opening onto a<br />
private courtyard and your own beach<br />
beyond, 600 square metres of premium<br />
living space is yours to explore.<br />
While tropical escapism tops<br />
the travel list for most guests,<br />
it’s comforting to know that a<br />
dedicated butler is on speed dial,<br />
and your go-to for indulging your<br />
every whim, from restaurant<br />
reservations to local excursions.<br />
Island living is characterised by lazy<br />
days spent lounging in a hammock<br />
or wandering along the fine white<br />
sand beach, with moments of pure<br />
bliss only interrupted by gourmet<br />
dining opportunities. Seasonal cuisine<br />
is in the all-day dining spotlight at<br />
The Living Room, with its intimate<br />
lagoon-front setting, whether it’s<br />
a simple but exquisite breakfast, a<br />
world-class dinner courtesy of a visiting<br />
Michelin starred chef or Maldivian<br />
inspired feast. Bespoke occasions are a<br />
speciality. One call to your butler and a<br />
romantic meal served in your favourite<br />
lagoon location is easily arranged.<br />
Work off an indulgent lunch<br />
with a game of tennis or several<br />
laps of the 17-metre infinity pool,<br />
or exercise the mind with culinary<br />
classes, guided meditation sessions<br />
and private yoga tuition.<br />
Mind, body and soul are also<br />
pampered at Anantara Spa at<br />
Anantara Dhigu and Balance Wellness<br />
by Anantara at Veli. Here, healing<br />
Ayurvedic rituals meet Thai, Balinese<br />
and Western traditions with therapies<br />
designed to relax and rejuvenate.<br />
The island will do its best to hold<br />
you captive but unforgettable moments<br />
of discovery await elsewhere, courtesy<br />
of a luxury yacht, speedboat, catamaran<br />
and traditional dhoni for chartered<br />
excursions and island hopping. Deep<br />
sea fishing, snorkelling and scuba<br />
diving take you above and below the<br />
crystal-clear waters. Or, take a seaplane<br />
tour for a bird’s-eye view of the<br />
stunning natural landscape and your<br />
Maldivian home away from home.<br />
To find out more, call +960 664<br />
4105 or visit naladhu.com<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 23
XXXXXXXXXXXXX<br />
What’s new in<br />
LONDON?<br />
Set to ship your supercar to <strong>May</strong>fair? In this ever-evolving, trendsetting city a<br />
lot has changed since last summer. If you’re keen to experience the latest and<br />
greatest London has to offer, our team of on-the-ground, in-the know city<br />
experts have the lowdown…<br />
24 worldtravellermagazine.com
THE LONDON SCENE<br />
THE ’HOODS<br />
Move over, Shoreditch. For too long,<br />
London’s east had the monopoly on<br />
cool: now it’s all about the smaller,<br />
sassier neighbourhoods it inspired<br />
South of the river<br />
Of the many London neighbourhoods to be<br />
billed as ‘the new Shoreditch’, Peckham, to the<br />
south of the River Thames, is where art galleries<br />
and rooftop bars now rub shoulders with street<br />
markets and indie coffee shops – the four hallmarks<br />
of hipsterdom. Check out Hannah Barry Gallery<br />
(hannahbarry.com) for contemporary creations,<br />
and the lofty terrace of Bussey (busseyrooftopbar.<br />
com) for Shard views over your artisan espresso.<br />
Closer into central London, Bermondsey was once<br />
lined with warehouses and shipping wharves (it’s<br />
right on the river) – but they’ve been transformed<br />
into trendy boutiques and loft apartments. The<br />
restaurant scene is buzzing: Andalucia-inspired José<br />
serves a mean patatas bravas and padrón peppers<br />
(josepizarro.com) – while Village East’s menu has a<br />
New York twist (think smoked Applewood burgers<br />
and crab mac ’n’ cheese, villageeast.co.uk). In a<br />
striking yellow cubist building – trust us, you can’t<br />
miss it – Bermondsey’s Fashion and Textile Museum<br />
(ftmlondon.org) showcases London’s rich<br />
design history.<br />
North of the river<br />
Hackney Wick was once one of London’s bestkept<br />
secrets: the kind of place you’d ‘discover’ for<br />
a weekend breakfast, and then spend the next<br />
two days skipping between vintage boutiques,<br />
art galleries and achingly cool cafés (actually,<br />
Stour Space combines all three: stourspace.<br />
co.uk). Halfway between Regent’s Canal and the<br />
Olympic Park site, the Wick is five minutes from<br />
Stratford’s Westfield mall (westfield.com) and the<br />
Olympic-icon-turned-slide – slide! – ArcelorMittal<br />
Orbit (arcelormittalorbit.com). With its swimming<br />
pool and Scandi-chic interiors, the shiny new<br />
Manhattan Loft Gardens Design Hotel is the area’s<br />
coolest place to stay (manhattanloft.co.uk). As<br />
any style maven will tell you, Kings Cross is hot<br />
property too – check out its shopping district Coal<br />
Drops Yard (coaldropsyard.com) and sexy new<br />
hotel The Standard (standardhotels.com). Still<br />
hung up on Shoreditch? It’s a winner for street art<br />
(head to Rivington Street or Great Eastern) and<br />
speakeasy nightspots (check out Callooh Callay,<br />
calloohcallaybar.com) – and now two new hip<br />
hotels, the nhow (nhow-hotels.com) and Redchurch<br />
Townhouse (redchurchtownhouse.com).<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 25
The Dixon<br />
L'oscar<br />
Kimpton Fitzroy London<br />
THE HOT HOTELS<br />
From makeovers of historical abodes to spectacular, super-sized,<br />
full-service apartments, London’s hotel offering has upped its game<br />
again in the past year<br />
1KETTNER'S TOWNHOUSE LONDON<br />
Where: Soho<br />
If walls could talk, Kettner’s tales<br />
would be enthralling. First opened<br />
over 150 years ago by Napoleon III’s<br />
former chef, this legendary French<br />
restaurant was once the haunt<br />
of Oscar Wilde – and its newlyopened<br />
hotel is fast becoming hot<br />
property too. The bedrooms are few<br />
but fabulous, with richly-textured<br />
wallpaper, vintage furniture and<br />
deep-soak standalone bathtubs.<br />
2NEW ROAD HOTEL<br />
Where: Whitechapel<br />
Set in an old textile factory – where<br />
the owners' father used to work –<br />
New Road Hotel is the home of Marco<br />
Pierre White’s latest restaurant, Mr.<br />
White’s English Chophouse. While<br />
that’s certainly a boon for business,<br />
the hotel doesn’t rest on its laurels:<br />
expect excellent service, edgy interior<br />
design, and Loft rooms with al fresco<br />
London-view hot tubs.<br />
THE DIXON<br />
3 Where: Southwark<br />
Capturing the creativity and<br />
cultural clout of Southwark, The<br />
Dixon champions local craftsmen:<br />
everything from the imposing marble<br />
staircase to the hotel’s own coffee<br />
blend are British-made. The result? A<br />
wholly unique twist on a much-loved<br />
heritage property (it’s over 100 years<br />
old) that’s guaranteed to set your<br />
Insta alight.<br />
FOUR SEASONS RESIDENCES AT<br />
4 TEN TRINITY SQUARE<br />
Where: City of London<br />
For longer London stays, these ten<br />
spectacular apartments top anywhere<br />
else in the city. Each one boasts views<br />
of the Tower of London and Tower<br />
Bridge, and combines the comfort<br />
and ease of a hotel with the luxury of<br />
a private (and huge) apartment. The<br />
Four Seasons hotel – and its Michelinstarred<br />
dining, spa and fitness centre<br />
– is a mere elevator ride below.<br />
BELMOND CADOGAN HOTEL<br />
5 Where: Chelsea<br />
Guests at these luxurious lodgings<br />
will be given the keys to Cadogan<br />
Place gardens – one of Chelsea’s most<br />
beautiful gated retreats. Festooned<br />
with English roses, fruit trees, and<br />
plenty of quiet nooks for a picnic, it’s<br />
a little rural idyll in the heart of the<br />
city. Just as you’d expect from the<br />
Belmond brand, the hotel itself<br />
is sublime.<br />
VINTRY & MERCER<br />
6 Where: City of London<br />
With its leather door handles, silken<br />
upholstery and velvet headboards,<br />
Vintry & Mercer feels more like a<br />
heritage property than a newbie (it’s<br />
just a few months old), but those<br />
plush interiors were inspired by the<br />
area’s illustrious textile-trading past.<br />
For front-row views of London’s<br />
skyline (from the dome of St Paul’s<br />
Cathedral to the tip of The Shard,<br />
head to the Mercer Roof Terrace.<br />
26 worldtravellermagazine.com
Belmond Cadogan Hotel<br />
THE LONDON SCENE<br />
OR REVISIT A<br />
CLASSIC…<br />
Having completed the<br />
most extensive restoration<br />
in its 117-year history, the<br />
Mandarin Oriental Hyde<br />
Park, London reopened in<br />
its entirety last month. The<br />
fresh look includes two<br />
newly created penthouse<br />
suites.<br />
Four Seasons Residences at Ten Trinity Square<br />
WHITE CITY HOUSE<br />
7 Where: White City<br />
White City House, the BBC’s<br />
former Television Centre, is one<br />
of London’s greatest cultural<br />
icons – so all eyes were on its<br />
transformation into a members’<br />
club and hotel last year. It didn’t<br />
disappoint. With just 45 rooms,<br />
a fabulous rooftop pool, and<br />
exquisite dining in the Canteen<br />
(one of many nods to the building’s<br />
history), it’s an interesting and<br />
intimate retreat.<br />
KIMPTON FITZROY LONDON<br />
8 HOTEL<br />
Where: Bloomsbury<br />
Behind the soaring archways of<br />
its ornate 19th-century facade lies<br />
the most extravagant newcomer<br />
in London. After an £85 million<br />
revamp, the Kimpton is pristine<br />
and palatial: all multi-coloured<br />
marble and rich dark woods, with<br />
chandeliers the size of small cars.<br />
Opt for a corner suite, and you can<br />
gaze over Bloomsbury from your<br />
gold-trimmed tub.<br />
9 L'OSCAR<br />
Where: Holborn<br />
Inspired by the area’s theatrical<br />
heritage (the West End is just<br />
a stone’s throw away) L’oscar’s<br />
interiors feel deliciously vaudeville:<br />
think glittering chandeliers and<br />
velvety claret tones. Jaques Garcia<br />
– creator of New York’s The NoMad<br />
Hotel – is the design mastermind,<br />
while Michelin-starred chef Tony<br />
Fleming brings the culinary clout.<br />
GREAT SCOTLAND YARD<br />
10 HOTEL<br />
Where: Westminster<br />
Another of London’s great<br />
landmarks to be reborn as a<br />
five-star hotel, Great Scotland<br />
Yard (the former HQ of London’s<br />
Metropolitan Police) promises<br />
decadent suites and destination<br />
dining – though at time of press,<br />
the opening date hasn’t yet been<br />
confirmed. But if you’re in town<br />
after this £110 million hotel has<br />
launched, it would be criminal<br />
(sorry) to not take a look.<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 27
Cakes and Bubbles<br />
Berenjak<br />
Jean-Georges at The<br />
Connaught<br />
THE TOP TABLES<br />
Tom Kerridge, Albert Adrià, and Endo Kazutoshi are some of the<br />
big-name chefs to have served up somewhere new. These culinary<br />
hotspots have 'em clamouring for a table<br />
DIN TAI FUNG<br />
Go for: The hottest dumplings in town.<br />
On Saturdays, Din Tai Fung’s flagship<br />
restaurant in Taipei 101 serves upwards<br />
of 10,000 hand-folded dumplings –<br />
and, judging by the clamour for tables<br />
at its new Covent Garden outpost,<br />
its London chefs need to be pretty<br />
fast-fingered too. The plump xiao long<br />
bao, with their intricate origami twists,<br />
taste just like Shanghai’s real deal.<br />
KUTIR<br />
Go for: Inventive Indian dishes.<br />
Not content with having three<br />
Michelin-accredited restaurants<br />
under his belt already, chef Rohit<br />
Ghai is aiming for yet more stars<br />
with his latest project – Kutir, in<br />
Chelsea. Expect authentic flavours<br />
with an international twist, such as<br />
Gressingham duck korma and jackfruit<br />
kofta dumplings. The six-course<br />
‘expedition’ tasting menus are superb.<br />
CAKES AND BUBBLES<br />
Go for: Edible art.<br />
Feast your eyes on Albert Adrià’s<br />
sweet masterpieces: flowers handcrafted<br />
from chocolate and coconut,<br />
crispy ‘air pancakes’ filled with maple<br />
syrup butter, and the signature<br />
cheesecakes that put his Barcelona<br />
restaurant – Tickets – on the map.<br />
Adrià refined his craft at Michelinstarred<br />
El Bulli (Ferran is his brother),<br />
so expect great things from this<br />
restaurant in Soho’s Hotel Café Royal.<br />
IMPERIAL TREASURE FINE<br />
CHINESE CUISINE<br />
Go for: Truly decadent duck.<br />
While we could wax lyrical about<br />
Imperial Treasure’s succulent seafood<br />
and exquisite dim sum, one dish at this<br />
Waterloo restaurant always steals the<br />
limelight: the £100 Signature Peking<br />
Duck. After a first course of tender<br />
meat and crispy trimmings, a second<br />
serving – stir fried, with a variety of<br />
sauces – makes this a feast you’ll<br />
rightly return for.<br />
ENDO AT THE ROTUNDA<br />
Go for: London’s best bite?<br />
Endo Kazutoshi’s hotly-anticipated<br />
sushi restaurant at White City House<br />
has whipped London’s top food<br />
writers into a frenzy – and already<br />
welcomed the King of Jordan. With<br />
just 15 seats, you’ll need to book<br />
months ahead, but in the words of<br />
Times restaurant critic Giles Coren:<br />
‘It was probably the most perfect<br />
meal I have eaten in a restaurant’.<br />
High praise indeed.<br />
BANCONE<br />
Go for: A quick bite between<br />
sightseeing.<br />
It comes as little surprise to learn that<br />
Bancone’s founder and head chef,<br />
Louis Korovilas, is Locanda Locatelli<br />
28 worldtravellermagazine.com
Kerridge's Bar and Grill<br />
THE LONDON SCENE<br />
alumni. Those dishes of silky oxtail<br />
ragu pappardelle and tender cuttlefish<br />
tagliatelle wouldn’t look out of place<br />
in a Michelin-starred joint – but<br />
here they’re served in a refreshingly<br />
laid-back setting, in one of Covent<br />
Garden’s best-value restaurants.<br />
OR REVISIT A<br />
CLASSIC…<br />
During the '60s Langan's<br />
Brasserie in <strong>May</strong>fair proved<br />
a magnet for famous<br />
faces, pulling in the likes<br />
of Jagger, Brando and Ali<br />
while remaining resolutely<br />
unpretentious. It no longer<br />
hogs the limelight, but still<br />
deserves star billing.<br />
Neptune<br />
BERENJAK<br />
Go for: Perfect Persian.<br />
“With Berenjak, I wanted to evoke the<br />
style of a rustic hole-in-the-wall eatery<br />
from Tehran,” says its founder Kian<br />
Samyani, “and reinterpret signature<br />
dishes using seasonal British produce.”<br />
It’s a recipe for success: the chargrilled<br />
poussin – a juicy, spicy triumph – is<br />
one of Soho’s hottest dishes right now.<br />
KERRIDGE’S BAR AND GRILL<br />
Go for: Great British bites.<br />
It’s hard to believe that this is Tom<br />
Kerridge’s first London restaurant,<br />
but he actually made his name in the<br />
village of Bray, Berkshire – with the<br />
double Michelin-starred Hand and<br />
Flowers. Building on his reputation<br />
for fine British cuisine, Kerridge’s new<br />
project (at the Corinthia Hotel) gives<br />
old favourites such as fish and chips<br />
and cottage pie the five-star makeover<br />
they deserve.<br />
NEPTUNE<br />
Go for: Oyster ‘happy hour’, 6-7pm.<br />
The elegant, airy dining room of<br />
Kimpton Fitzroy London boasts an<br />
oyster bar, wood-fired grill, and one<br />
of the most exquisite seafood menus<br />
in town. Come for lunch, and you’ll<br />
want to linger on the luxurious leather<br />
banquettes – supping shellfish and<br />
swigging vintage bubbly ’til sundown.<br />
JEAN-GEORGES AT THE<br />
CONNAUGHT<br />
Go for: A fancy breakfast.<br />
The latest addition to Jean-Georges<br />
Vongerichten’s international empire,<br />
this <strong>May</strong>fair restaurant is open for<br />
breakfast, lunch, dinner, and afternoon<br />
tea. Our tip? Book breakfast in the<br />
light-flooded conservatory: the menu<br />
is just as globetrotting as J-G himself,<br />
and includes spicy Indian dosas,<br />
homebaked brioche, and truffle-laced<br />
scrambled eggs.<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 29
Hampton Court Palace<br />
SUMMER’S HOTTEST TICKETS<br />
From the Proms to grime, Kubrick to da Vinci; London’s<br />
summer events offer something for everyone<br />
MARY QUANT<br />
Where? Victoria and Albert Museum<br />
When? 6 April-16 February 2020<br />
She was the visionary that changed<br />
the world of fashion forever – and this<br />
summer’s Mary Quant retrospective<br />
at the V&A is a colourful caper indeed.<br />
From makeup to miniskirts, over 200<br />
garments and accessories are now on<br />
display, including many pieces from the<br />
designer’s personal archive. vam.ac.uk<br />
BEASTS OF LONDON<br />
Where? Museum of London<br />
When? 5 April-5 January 2020<br />
Designed especially for inquisitive kids,<br />
this immersive digital installation will<br />
tell the story of London through the<br />
eyes of its animal residents: from lions<br />
and elephants, to horses, rats and – of<br />
course – pigeons. See if you can spot the<br />
famous voices, including Brian Blessed,<br />
Nish Kumar and Stephen Mangan.<br />
museumoflondon.org.uk<br />
LEONARDO DA VINCI: A MIND IN<br />
MOTION<br />
Where? The British Library<br />
When? 7 June-8 September<br />
Showcasing the highlights of Leonardo<br />
da Vinci’s extraordinary notebooks, this<br />
unique exhibition will mark the 500th<br />
anniversary of his death. From waves to<br />
winds, da Vinci considered motion to be<br />
‘the cause of all life’ – and the exhibition<br />
will explore his theories further, shining a<br />
light on one of the greatest thinkers and<br />
scientists of all time. bl.uk<br />
ANTONY GORMLEY<br />
Where? Royal Academy of Arts<br />
When? 21 September-3 December<br />
He’s best-known for his epic Angel of the<br />
North, but Sir Antony Gormley’s oeuvre<br />
spans decades, materials, and disciplines<br />
galore – and this summer he’ll be taking<br />
over the RA, too. This significant solo<br />
exhibition will display his early works<br />
alongside large-scale installations<br />
All Points East<br />
made especially for this <strong>May</strong>fair gallery.<br />
royalacademy.org.uk<br />
ALL POINTS EAST<br />
Where? Victoria Park<br />
When? 24 <strong>May</strong>-2 June<br />
With headliners including The Chemical<br />
Brothers, Primal Scream, and Christine<br />
30 worldtravellermagazine.com
THE LONDON SCENE<br />
OR REVISIT A<br />
CLASSIC…<br />
One of the longest running<br />
shows in West End history<br />
(seen by almost 10 million<br />
alone in London), WICKED,<br />
the big hit musical about<br />
the Witches of Oz,<br />
released a further 470,000<br />
new tickets last month.<br />
Go get some.<br />
and the Queens, it’s hard to believe that<br />
this East London festival is only in its<br />
second year. Set over two weekends,<br />
it’s a great place to catch up-andcoming<br />
London acts performing<br />
alongside the big global names.<br />
allpointseastfestival.com<br />
HAMPTON COURT PALACE<br />
FESTIVAL<br />
Where? Hampton Court Palace<br />
When? Various dates<br />
Explore one of London’s greatest royal<br />
residences in star-studded company –<br />
including Kylie, Nile Rodgers, and Tears<br />
For Fears. After a day exploring the<br />
stately splendour of Hampton Court<br />
Palace – and feasting on afternoon<br />
tea – the evening brings incredible al<br />
fresco performances, complete with a<br />
full orchestra playing under the stars.<br />
hamptoncourtpalacefestival.com<br />
WIRELESS<br />
Where? Finsbury Park<br />
When? 5-7 July<br />
One of the biggest weekends for rap and<br />
grime obsessives, Wireless will see the<br />
likes of Cardi B, A$AP Rocky and Travis<br />
Scott descend on Finsbury Park. Like<br />
the sound of that? Don’t miss Lovebox<br />
(Gunnersbury Park, 12-13 July) – featuring<br />
Solange, Loyle Carner, Chance the<br />
Rapper and more. wirelessfestival.co.uk &<br />
loveboxfestival.com<br />
BBC PROMS <strong>2019</strong><br />
Where? Royal Albert Hall<br />
When? Various dates<br />
Taking over this incredible venue<br />
every summer since 1941, The Proms is<br />
London’s biggest and best celebration of<br />
classical music. It has moved deftly with<br />
the times: 2018 saw Beethoven’s Fifth<br />
restyled as a punk triumph, the festival’s<br />
first virtual reality recital, and the BBC<br />
Concert Orchestra collaborating with<br />
some of the biggest names in folk<br />
music. royalalberthall.com<br />
LEE KRASNER; LIVING COLOUR<br />
Where? Barbican Centre<br />
When? 30 <strong>May</strong>-1 September<br />
For too long, the work of Lee Krasner<br />
has been overshadowed by that of her<br />
husband, Jackson Pollack – but not for<br />
much longer. The Barbican’s summer<br />
exhibition will bring Krasner’s bold,<br />
bright canvases to the fore, revealing<br />
her as a true pioneer of Abstract<br />
Expressionism. With nearly 100 works<br />
Lee Krasner<br />
Beasts of London<br />
on display, this will be one of the most<br />
far-reaching Krasner retrospectives to<br />
date. barbican.org.uk<br />
STANLEY KUBRICK: THE<br />
EXHIBITION<br />
Where? The Design Museum<br />
When? 26 April-15 September<br />
From The Shining to A Clockwork<br />
Orange, Kubrick’s classics are<br />
countless – and this immersive<br />
exhibition details the inspirations<br />
and talent that brought them to<br />
life. With insight from rare artefacts,<br />
interviews and unseen footage, this<br />
is a fascinating deep-dive into the<br />
director’s obsessive genius – a mustsee<br />
for any film fan.<br />
designmuseum.org<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 31
Pat Mcgrath Labs<br />
OR REVISIT A<br />
CLASSIC…<br />
There's always something<br />
cutting edge at old<br />
favourite Selfridges and<br />
last month saw cult beauty<br />
brand PAT MCGRATH<br />
LABS set up a threemonth<br />
residency, which<br />
includes exclusive in-store<br />
beauty services.<br />
WHAT’S IN STORE<br />
London’s always on-trend shopping scene fuels the need for a mid-spree spruce<br />
DESIGNS FOR LIFE<br />
When Coal Drops Yard first opened its<br />
doors last November, all eyes were on<br />
the mall’s cutting-edge threads – by<br />
Paul Smith, Cos, Superga, et al – but<br />
now its homewares are hogging the<br />
limelight. From pared-back Scandi<br />
lighting at iyouall to hand-forged<br />
knives at Kitchen Provisions, this new<br />
Kings Cross collective includes some<br />
of Europe’s most inventive designers.<br />
Tom Dixon’s boutique showcases his<br />
iconic ‘S Chair’ – a gravity-defying<br />
squiggle of furniture – while French<br />
emporium Caravane is stuffed with<br />
sumptuous fabrics. Short on suitcase<br />
space? Head to Miller Harris for<br />
naturally-inspired home fragrances, or<br />
to Bonds for hand-poured candles.<br />
HIGH STREET HEAVEN<br />
It isn’t quite The Dubai Mall<br />
proportions, but Europe’s biggest<br />
shopping mall, Westfield London, got<br />
a £600 million makeover last year –<br />
so it’s only polite to pay a visit. New<br />
names include Urban Revivo (for fast<br />
fashion from Asia), Frencheye (for<br />
men’s tailoring), and Cath Kidston<br />
(for those iconic floral prints). But the<br />
real boon is John Lewis’s new flagship<br />
store, which puts many of Britain’s<br />
best ateliers – plus plenty more from<br />
Europe and beyond – in one superstylish<br />
spot. As well as oodles of<br />
fashion and beauty brands (including<br />
in-store manicures and facials) there’s<br />
the Style Studio – where you can<br />
explore London’s latest trends.<br />
BEST OF BEAUTY<br />
Shopping taking its toll on your mani?<br />
Perfectly positioned for a mid-spree<br />
spruce, House of Lady Muck (HOLM)<br />
has just opened in Topshop’s Oxford<br />
Circus emporium – the hottest new<br />
salon in town. Check out HOLM’s Insta:<br />
its nail art is sublime – and a snip, from<br />
just £18. Provence-inspired beauty<br />
powerhouse L’Occitaine recently<br />
opened its new flagship store in<br />
Covent Garden – replete with a Pierre<br />
Hermé macaron bar. For more paredback<br />
skincare, head to Aesop (just<br />
opened in Coal Drops Yard) or nearby<br />
FaceGym, which promises surgeryfree<br />
lifts by working the ‘40 forgotten<br />
muscles’ of the face. Definitely<br />
something to write home about.<br />
32 worldtravellermagazine.com
THE LONDON SCENE<br />
FUEL FOR YOUR FEED<br />
Want your wall to pop with style? Smartphones at the ready<br />
for these instaworthy venues<br />
The Gallery at Sketch<br />
THE HOTEL<br />
Every inch of the Bloomsbury Hotel<br />
is sheer Insta heaven. The striking<br />
botanical-print wallpaper; the Murano<br />
glass chandeliers; the monochrome<br />
marble bathrooms – and, of course, the<br />
gorgeous Dalloway Terrace restaurant.<br />
Its décor changes with the seasons:<br />
this spring, festooned with silk blooms,<br />
it became a jungle of fuschia orchids<br />
and passion flowers. @dallowayterrace<br />
Kew's Royal Botanic Gardens<br />
Dalloway Terrace at The Bloomsbury Hotel<br />
THE MUSEUM<br />
The British Museum’s Great Court is an<br />
Instagram star in its own right. When<br />
the sun shines, the domed glass roof<br />
shimmers – casting geometric shadows<br />
across the exquisitely curvaceous<br />
courtyard. How to capture it best?<br />
Head to the upper floor gallery area,<br />
and coincide your visit with the Manga<br />
exhibition (23 <strong>May</strong> - 29 August) for<br />
some seriously striking shots.<br />
@britishmuseum<br />
THE RESTAURANT<br />
You’ll recognise Sketch’s bubblegum<br />
pink décor and marshmallow-esque<br />
banquettes as soon as you step<br />
through the door – but The Gallery<br />
(a brasserie) is just one part of this<br />
<strong>May</strong>fair Insta-sensation. Even the<br />
bathrooms – eerie, egg-shaped pods –<br />
are irresistibly snappable.<br />
@sketchlondon<br />
THE GARDEN<br />
With their exotic flowers, immaculate<br />
lawns, and towering trees, Kew’s Royal<br />
Botanic Gardens always look great on<br />
the ’gram – and this summer (from 13<br />
April) they’ll be more gorgeous than<br />
ever. Dale Chihuly, the world’s most<br />
celebrated glass artist, will be taking<br />
over the gardens with his delicate-yetdazzling<br />
creations. @kewgardens<br />
THE ICON<br />
Tower Bridge has straddled the River<br />
Thames for 125 years, and it has never<br />
looked better. The angle’s up to you:<br />
a cross-water panorama from London<br />
Bridge? A downward-facing shot from<br />
the glass walkway? A selfie from St<br />
Katharine Docks? Just try and squeeze<br />
the Shard into the frame too.<br />
@towerbridge<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 33
Ramadan Kareem<br />
For Iftar with a difference, join us at the newly opened<br />
Masala Library by Jiggs Kalra which will host<br />
a unique Indian 10-course set menu.<br />
Available from sunset until 8.30pm.<br />
T +971.4.414.3000<br />
jwmarriottmarquisdubailife.com<br />
masalalibrarydxb
XXXXXXXXXXXXX<br />
Gros Piton in<br />
Southern St. Lucia<br />
Postcards<br />
Stories from journeys<br />
far and wide<br />
CALIFORNIA p36<br />
HOLLAND p42<br />
ST LUCIA p48<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 35
CALIFORNIA<br />
With retro good looks and bunk space for<br />
two, an Airstream trailer is the hippest way to<br />
holiday in California. Hotels? Who needs ’em?<br />
Jenni Doggett hits cruise control<br />
36 worldtravellermagazine.com
CALIFORNIA<br />
fter 250km, turn left.’<br />
California’s epic scale<br />
has rendered my satnav<br />
redundant. But at least we don’t have<br />
to worry about making it to the hotel in<br />
time: my friend Sergio and I are touring<br />
the Golden State with accommodation<br />
in tow. Our home for the fortnight<br />
is a classic Airstream trailer, one of<br />
those shiny aluminium bullets (don’t<br />
call them caravans) that have graced<br />
the highways of America since 1931.<br />
As well as 90-odd years of history, the<br />
space-age-silver trailer comes with a<br />
glamorous Hollywood pedigree: name<br />
an A-lister and they probably own one<br />
— Hanks, Pitt, McConaughey, Depp et al<br />
have all fallen for its vintage-Americana<br />
looks and freedom-of-the-open-road<br />
mythology. The film-star version is<br />
probably a bit more substantial than<br />
ours, mind: Sergio and I have booked<br />
the smallest model available, a 5.5m<br />
‘Bambi’, along with a muscular fourwheel<br />
drive to tow it. Truth be told, our<br />
Bambi looked a little ignoble beside a<br />
truck almost twice its length, but I’d<br />
been assured that, for a first-time RV<br />
driver like me, it’s manageable, cosy<br />
and maintains a sheen of cool in spite<br />
of its size and resemblance to a toaster.<br />
So, at a rental lot on the outskirts of<br />
San Francisco, we receive a quick briefing<br />
on how to hook up the power and empty<br />
the tanks, then we’re off, leaving the city<br />
at rush hour, me terrified of Downtown’s<br />
famously treacherous gradients.<br />
Hunched like a tense crow, I grip the<br />
steering wheel, barely reaching double-<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 37
CALIFORNIA<br />
digit speeds for the first few kilometres.<br />
Urban rush hour aside, the US is<br />
built for these beasts, and once we<br />
get across the Golden Gate and out of<br />
the metropolis my confidence swells.<br />
The gears are automatic, the roads<br />
broad and the locals forgiving.<br />
We’d chosen the state for our<br />
Airstream adventure partly because<br />
this is where Wally Byam founded the<br />
company in 1931, partly because nowhere<br />
else in America says, ‘Go west, young<br />
man... Head out on the highway... This<br />
land is your land... Wherever you lay<br />
your hat, that’s your home...’ and all<br />
the rest of it quite like California.<br />
And then there’s the variety. California<br />
comes with a range of terrain that<br />
makes it a road-trip dream: temperate<br />
rainforests, alpine mountains and vast<br />
tracts of desert, as well as the more<br />
clement Pacific coast stretching south<br />
from Los Angeles. We haven’t made too<br />
much of a plan — the whole point of an<br />
RV is that you’re not tied to a schedule or<br />
itinerary, so you can pull over and stay any<br />
place that calls to you — but we do decide<br />
at the outset to reject the iconic Route<br />
101 in favour of a loop heading north to<br />
the Redwoods and the wilderness that<br />
we could experience in our Airstream in<br />
a way we never could staying in a hotel.<br />
It’s pretty civilised to start with. Vivid<br />
red Budweiser and Coca-Cola trucks<br />
coast past, the commercial lifeblood of<br />
America flowing along the country’s<br />
vast asphalt arteries. We lumber by<br />
hilly vineyards and quaint country<br />
towns — Philo, Boonville, Cloverdale<br />
— full of wholesome homemade-pie<br />
shops and hand- painted signs. Streets<br />
bristle with wooden porches, hanging<br />
flowers and palpable civic pride, and<br />
we pass scores of eccentric emporia:<br />
the Here’s Hair Salon, Independence<br />
Guns and Ammo, the Love In It Co-op<br />
(a medical herb dispensary). We snack<br />
‘<br />
THE SMITH<br />
RIVER RASPS<br />
PAST, AND<br />
SMALL STREAMS<br />
CHUCKLE AWAY<br />
UNDER FALLEN<br />
TRUNKS<br />
’<br />
on punnets of two-dollar honestybox<br />
cherries from local farms.<br />
Keen to plug in for our first night<br />
while it’s still light, we’ve reserved a<br />
spot in an almost empty campground in<br />
Manchester, Mendocino County. Early<br />
<strong>May</strong> is the perfect time to travel here:<br />
the parks are quiet and we’re pretty<br />
much alone. At reception we’re issued<br />
with a camp map and allotted a site<br />
number. These places are seamlessly<br />
managed, and navigation is easy — we<br />
circle Sunshine Drive and turn off<br />
Happy Kamping Way — but still with<br />
a proper dose of nature: the narrow<br />
gravel track peters out at our parking<br />
spot between towering tinselly firs.<br />
While I build a fire and crack open<br />
some Californian red, Sergio hooks<br />
us up to the mains. The campground<br />
is well catered for, with electricity,<br />
water, pump-out, shower block and a<br />
bear box to protect food supplies. The<br />
cleverly conceived Airstream interior<br />
we’d so carefully packed, however, has<br />
rearranged itself into a Jackson Pollock<br />
of ketchup and socks. It takes time to<br />
get used to living in such a small space,<br />
but as the trip progresses we learn<br />
how best to seal, wedge and stuff our<br />
possessions to minimise the carnage.<br />
Every day we devise new ways to make<br />
do with our resources: I discover that<br />
black pants make a passable eye mask for<br />
sleeping through those early sunrises.<br />
The next morning, however, we hit<br />
serious trouble, with our 4WD’s engine<br />
emitting a sulky grunt followed by<br />
silence. Our neighbours convene around<br />
the stubbornly unresponsive motor<br />
and various theories are advanced. I’m<br />
worried we forgot to flip a connection and<br />
drained the batteries, but our advisory<br />
panel kindly demurs. ‘You know what’s<br />
wrong?’ says Glen, a wry glint flickering.<br />
‘It’s a Ford.’ (All-round mirth.) Twenty<br />
minutes and a squirt of something<br />
homemade later, we are on our way —<br />
with a glovebox full of numbers to call<br />
should we have any more problems.<br />
It’s clear from the affectionate, slightly<br />
covetous glances we receive on leaving,<br />
that the Airstream has successfully<br />
initiated us into the RV fraternity.<br />
We push on up the coast through Fort<br />
Bragg, Garberville and Eureka, as all<br />
the while the Pacific hurls itself angrily<br />
ashore in dark grey arcs on our left. We’re<br />
keen to get some distance covered, and<br />
still apprehensive of any manoeuvre<br />
more complicated than straight driving,<br />
so we barely stop on the first day, lapsing<br />
into a cruise-control trance. Gradually<br />
we relax, and life resolves itself into a set<br />
of simple priorities: where to sleep and<br />
find firewood, fill up and empty tanks.<br />
One of California’s main draws for us is<br />
that it has more national parks than any<br />
other state — not to mention hundreds<br />
more state parks, many of which you can<br />
stay in — and our next night is spent<br />
at the Redwood State Park RV Resort.<br />
We quickly ditch the trailer and head<br />
to nearby Stout Grove, which doesn’t<br />
have the biggest trees in the region, but<br />
is staggeringly, serenely beautiful.<br />
We wander by belt-high sword ferns,<br />
bright-yellow banana slugs and outsized<br />
sorrel. The wind builds a gentle<br />
snare-drum-roll high up in the canopy,<br />
animating the leaves then swishing<br />
away. The Smith river rasps past, and<br />
Credit: Jenni Doggett/The Sunday Times Travel Magazine/News licensing<br />
38 worldtravellermagazine.com
CALIFORNIA<br />
This page, clockwise from top left:<br />
leaving the city behind via Golden Gate<br />
Bridge; Lake Helen at Lassen Volcanic<br />
National Park; a burst of sun at Redwood<br />
National Park; parked under the stars<br />
at El Capitan State Beach; reading time<br />
aside a mountain lake<br />
GOLDEN<br />
GLOW<br />
Diwali (7<br />
November)<br />
is one of<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 39
CALIFORNIA<br />
Panamint mountains<br />
small streams chuckle away under fallen<br />
trunks. Prehistoric moss is delicately<br />
draped over ancient branches.<br />
I stretch out on the sun-warmed<br />
pebbles at the water’s edge. Far removed<br />
from the bleeps and screens of city<br />
life, I feel myself slowly filling up with<br />
whatever it is that urban living siphons<br />
away — something atomic is soothed.<br />
Heading east, to Lassen Volcanic<br />
National Park, we become doubly grateful<br />
for having all our gear in tow. The<br />
weather here is rarely a polite British<br />
mist or mild bluster — it’s more extreme.<br />
The wind has teeth. In fact, there’s some<br />
question as to whether we will manage<br />
this stretch, blizzards having recently<br />
closed the roads, but we push on. We’re<br />
rewarded by a surreal hike through the<br />
snowy hydrothermal peaks. Steaming<br />
fumaroles and sulphur vents flank the<br />
path, spluttering mud pots and boiling<br />
springs mutter and pop as we pass.<br />
We suck fistfuls of snow and listen<br />
to indigo-crested pine jays ack-ack<br />
at each other from icy branches. We<br />
sleep soundly in the snug confines<br />
of our aluminium abode, wake with<br />
the sun blushing through panoramic<br />
windows, and feel ourselves slipping<br />
deeper into the landscape each day.<br />
Further south, at Lake Tahoe, our<br />
campsite has just opened for the season,<br />
so we have a grand sandy-beach view<br />
of the deepest lake in America all to<br />
ourselves. We’re seat-shaped and tetchy<br />
from too much driving, so we take a<br />
few days out, to kayak and stretch our<br />
legs, relishing the freedom to change<br />
our plans on a whim, and pitying<br />
those poor fools locked into their prebooked<br />
hotel regime. Tired of our own<br />
cooking, we eat at a restaurant called,<br />
unpromisingly, the Naked Fish — and<br />
feast on fresh local sushi, which turns<br />
out to be some of the best I’ve ever had.<br />
When we do hit the road again, we<br />
head towards Death Valley — with a<br />
stop en route, somewhat incongruously,<br />
at Walmart. I’d heard RVs are welcome<br />
to stay overnight in the grocery<br />
giant’s car parks for free (it’s known<br />
as Wallydocking, apparently), but<br />
seriously doubted the appeal — until I<br />
saw the Gardnerville branch, with its<br />
crisp, dramatic view across the whitetipped<br />
peaks of the Sierra Nevada.<br />
And sure enough, a row of enormous<br />
motorhomes were parked up neatly in<br />
the far corner of the lot. One owner,<br />
lazing in a deckchair, nods an unspoken<br />
assertion that this is the life.<br />
At the other end of the spectrum,<br />
there’s ‘boondocking’ — dry camping<br />
in the middle of nowhere, with no<br />
power hook-up — and we become more<br />
confident at it as the days pass. (We also<br />
become more dependent on it, as we<br />
realise how we’ve underestimated the<br />
distances involved out here: serpentine<br />
mountain roads with violent chicanes<br />
make for fun driving, but slow going,<br />
and the engine growls and strains.) In<br />
fact, of my two favourite nights, one was<br />
spent in an unbooked state-run ‘dry’<br />
park we stumbled upon, and the other<br />
was in the open desert of Death Valley.<br />
If ever you doubted your mortality,<br />
the desert will soon put you right. The<br />
suffocating stillness and telephone poles<br />
all state that you do not belong here.<br />
There is an acrid scent of searing tarmac<br />
in the air, and our vision quivers as the<br />
temperature hits 38c. Death Valley is one<br />
of the lowest inland spots on Earth, and<br />
Furnace Creek (population: 24) is at an<br />
‘elevation’ of 60m below sea level. Even<br />
with its Visitor Centre, it’s intimidating;<br />
but as the afternoon passes, a breeze<br />
stirs up dust and brings some life to<br />
this airless place. We watch for a while<br />
as a pair of wild russet mares stand<br />
mirrored, bowing over a sleeping foal.<br />
Pulling off the road at dusk, we<br />
fall into our usual routine around<br />
the fire. But the Airstream has one<br />
last surprise for us. By accident, I<br />
discover that its internal showerhead<br />
can actually be pulled outside via a<br />
hatch — so we shower off the day’s<br />
dust in the middle of an empty desert.<br />
The sun fades fast over the venerable<br />
Panamint Mountains, grand marbled<br />
strata of cream and grey; countless<br />
stars form a celestial dot-to-dot;<br />
and, amazingly, I don’t have to leave.<br />
I get to stay here, to merge into it<br />
all. I don’t need a sat-nav to tell me<br />
I have reached my destination.<br />
Inspired to travel? To book a trip, call<br />
+971 4 316 6666 or visit dnatatravel.com<br />
40 worldtravellermagazine.com
CALIFORNIA<br />
‘<br />
THE SUN FADES FAST<br />
OVER THE VENERABLE<br />
PANAMINT MOUNTAINS,<br />
GRAND MARBLED STRATA<br />
OF CREAM AND GREY<br />
’<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 41
42 worldtravellermagazine.com
This page and<br />
following pages:<br />
Fairy tale houses and<br />
adventure rides<br />
await at Efteling<br />
NETHERLANDS<br />
The author Maggie O’Farrell falls under the spell<br />
of a fairytale theme park, family-friendly cycle<br />
trails and a moated town<br />
W<br />
e are in the middle of breakfast when Red Riding Hood<br />
turns up. She skips — yes, skips — to the table, swinging<br />
her basket, and trills: “How are you today?”<br />
My youngest daughter stares, astonished, croissant in<br />
hand. She examines this vision, from the buckled shoes to the red cape,<br />
then she looks across the room to where a knight in full armour is engaging<br />
a table of children in a sword display.<br />
Such is life at Efteling, the Netherlands’ enormous fairytale<br />
extravaganza, 100km south of Amsterdam, where fantasy is to be imbibed<br />
with your daily bread. If, like me, the words ‘theme park’ make you shudder<br />
or, when paired with the word ‘Disney’, bring you out in hives, you might<br />
find this place more palatable.<br />
You won’t find any kitsch, bowdlerised renderings of folk tales. No<br />
singing rabbits or anthropomorphised deer. No overly gendered or cutesy<br />
messages are rammed home. Efteling is, instead, refreshingly loyal to its<br />
traditional storytelling roots.<br />
This isn’t to say that there isn’t a commercial side: there is and, good<br />
grief, it’s huge. The sun is out when we arrive and people are stolidly<br />
queueing for 45 minutes for the rides. There are river-rapid boats that circle<br />
you round and round while spraying you with water; rollercoasters that<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 43
CANADA<br />
shuttle you upside down and round<br />
about; a ghost train; a haunted house...<br />
Just watching makes me feel dizzy, but<br />
my teenage son seizes his day pass and<br />
disappears, delighted.<br />
Much more my pace — and that of my<br />
six-year-old — is the little steam train<br />
that circles the perimeter of the park.<br />
We like it so much that we go twice,<br />
sitting behind the driver, a silver-haired<br />
woman, possibly in her sixties, who<br />
hefts coal into the furnace. The woman<br />
next to me has her grandson on her<br />
knee. She tells me that she lives near by<br />
and has been coming here all her life.<br />
“My parents took me,” she says, “then we<br />
took our children, and now I bring my<br />
grandchildren.”<br />
Efteling was originally, she says,<br />
the idea of a local priest who, after the<br />
war, wanted to establish a place where<br />
children could play. So the mayor<br />
designated an area of forest for a football<br />
pitch and a playground. “And then,” she<br />
continues, “in the Fifties they started<br />
making the fairytale scenes.”<br />
These scenes are the reason I’m here.<br />
Efteling’s Sprookjesbos (Fairytale<br />
Forest) sprang from the imagination<br />
of Anton Pieck. Even if the name<br />
means nothing to you, you will almost<br />
certainly be familiar with his work: his<br />
illustrations shape the way we think<br />
about folk tales. All those crowded,<br />
cross-beamed houses and luscious,<br />
toadstool-studded forests. There were<br />
‘<br />
THE<br />
INSTALLATIONS<br />
ARE LIFE-SIZED,<br />
SO CHILDREN<br />
CAN WALK<br />
THROUGH<br />
SLEEPING<br />
BEAUTY'S<br />
SOMNOLENT<br />
PALACE<br />
’<br />
several of his pictures on the walls of<br />
my nursery school and I also owned<br />
a copy of Arabian Nights that was<br />
illustrated by him.<br />
So I have come to walk through his<br />
Sprookjesbos with my children (except<br />
the eldest, who mystifyingly opts<br />
for further torture by rollercoaster).<br />
What happens is this: you walk along a<br />
winding path, through a thick fleece of<br />
oak trees and, just when you least expect<br />
it, you will come upon a scene. The<br />
house of the seven kids (young goats)<br />
with a becloaked wolf knocking at the<br />
door; Rapunzel in her tower, watching<br />
a mechanised witch ascend her plait;<br />
Geppetto’s shop, with dancing mice and<br />
leaping chisels; a donkey that excretes<br />
silver coins at the press of a button.<br />
It is, of course, utterly magical, but<br />
with that slightly sinister Pieck edge.<br />
The wolves have teeth, the dragon roars,<br />
the giant fish smells appropriately<br />
piscine. The installations are life-sized,<br />
so children can walk through Sleeping<br />
Beauty’s somnolent palace and gaze up<br />
at a sugary but lethal gingerbread house<br />
that just might swallow them up.<br />
What baffles me most about Efteling<br />
is that the people in our neighbouring<br />
forest lodges, at the buffet, on the steam<br />
carousel, are largely Dutch, with a light<br />
sprinkling of Belgians. How come more<br />
nationalities don’t visit?<br />
It is a question that returns again<br />
and again as we venture farther into<br />
Brabant, the low-lying, southernmost<br />
region of the Netherlands and the<br />
birthplace of Hieronymus Bosch and<br />
Vincent van Gogh.<br />
A day or so later we are in the middle<br />
of Heusden, a small, walled town on<br />
the River Meuse. “In order to stop<br />
cannonballs in their tracks,” our guide is<br />
saying, “all the streets were built with a<br />
slight curve in them.” We look and, sure<br />
enough, the long, narrow street has a<br />
slight kink at the end. Our guide points<br />
up to a high gable, where a cannonball<br />
remains embedded, a black pustule in<br />
the brick work.<br />
Heusden, once the locus of fierce<br />
and bloody battles, is today filled with<br />
autumn sunshine: dogs are slumbering<br />
in doorways and people are sitting in<br />
coffee houses. A few bicycles swish<br />
44 worldtravellermagazine.com
NETHERLANDS<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 45
NETHERLANDS<br />
along the cobbles, past the hollyhocks<br />
and green-painted front doors. A more<br />
peaceful place would be hard to find, but<br />
Heusden’s strategic position on the river<br />
has meant a chequered past: first the<br />
Spanish invaded, then the French and<br />
then the Nazis.<br />
On a map the town looks like a<br />
cartographer’s doodle. Follow the Meuse<br />
inland and you’ll find wide, estuarial<br />
meanders until you come to a startling<br />
star-shaped blot in the middle of all that<br />
blue water. This is Heusden, constructed<br />
with defence in mind, ringed by moats<br />
and ravelins, trying in vain to keep out<br />
conquering armies.<br />
As we stand on the town walls, gazing<br />
over the moat, my husband says: “If<br />
this place was in Tuscany it would be<br />
mobbed.” He has a point. Heusden is<br />
remarkably beautiful and bafflingly<br />
empty. We take a boat up the Meuse, we<br />
wander the narrow streets, we admire<br />
the creaking sails of the windmill,<br />
we buy cloth mice at the toyshop, we<br />
have pancakes at the café, all the while<br />
encountering barely another tourist.<br />
It’s hard to imagine a more perfect<br />
place than Brabant for a family holiday.<br />
The landscape is straight from a<br />
Breugel painting, with flat fields, dykes,<br />
windmills and grazing cows.<br />
As well as Efteling, there is the<br />
newly opened holiday camp of Beeske<br />
Bergen Safari Park, where you can have<br />
breakfast on a terrace next to herds<br />
of impala and wildebeest, and briefly<br />
pretend you’re in Tanzania. The ranger<br />
who drives us around to see the giraffe<br />
calf and the lemurs, which have an<br />
entertaining penchant for climbing on<br />
anyone wearing a backpack, confirms<br />
that the park hardly gets any visitors<br />
further afield. “I don’t know why,” she<br />
says with a shrug.<br />
Did I mention the joy of family<br />
cycling? If, like us, you have exited the<br />
buggy years, a relaxing stroll around a<br />
historical town centre can be fraught.<br />
Children are not natural flâneurs and<br />
in the face of a city amble tend to stage<br />
early mutinies, citing exhaustion and/<br />
or malnutrition. In the unusually<br />
punctuated town of ’s-Hertogenbosch,<br />
however, we hit on the solution: hire<br />
a cargo bike for the smallest child, a<br />
tandem for the other two, and off we go.<br />
Dutch streets are a cyclist’s dream. You<br />
‘<br />
ON A MAP<br />
THE NOW<br />
PEACEFUL TOWN<br />
OF HEUSDEN<br />
LOOKS LIKE A<br />
CARTOGRAHER'S<br />
DOODLE<br />
’<br />
can hire a bike pretty much anywhere, at<br />
any hour. In the pecking order of traffic,<br />
bicycles come a firm first, followed<br />
by scooters, then electric cars, with<br />
motorcars trailing shamefacedly behind.<br />
There are proper sectioned-off lanes,<br />
designated crossings, special traffic<br />
lights. Everybody, cycles, from newborns<br />
cocooned in slings on their pedalling<br />
parents’ chests, to octogenarians with<br />
their shopping.<br />
My husband and I get our fix of<br />
urban wanderings, albeit at a hugely<br />
accelerated pace. Our youngest child<br />
shrieks into the wind from her cargo<br />
cabin; the other two are zooming ahead<br />
on their tandem; nobody is wearing<br />
a helmet and I try not to watch as my<br />
middle child is steered gleefully close to<br />
the water’s edge by her brother. Canals,<br />
cathedrals, windmills, cottages, cattle<br />
and lock gates whizz past. Nobody<br />
complains about tired legs and nobody<br />
demands a compensatory ice cream, not<br />
even once.<br />
Several circuits of the town later,<br />
we lock up the bikes and take a boat<br />
around ’s-Hertogenbosch’s waterways,<br />
which thread themselves underneath<br />
the streets and buildings. The 14thcentury<br />
brick arches house colonies of<br />
slumbering bats and, as the boat slides<br />
along the dank water, flashes of blue sky<br />
appear down drains, plumblines of light<br />
reaching into the dark.<br />
How can it be that, for the most part,<br />
tourists will go to the thronged streets<br />
of Amsterdam, but no farther? That they<br />
are yet to discover what lies only a couple<br />
of hours south of that city? On my return<br />
I am seized with a near-evangelical urge<br />
to grip my friends by the arms and say:<br />
“Go to the Netherlands. Quick, before<br />
everyone else does.”<br />
Inspired to travel? To book a trip, call<br />
+971 4 316 6666 or visit dnatatravel.com<br />
Credit: Maggie O’Farrell/The Times/News Licensing<br />
46 worldtravellermagazine.com
This page: Heusden,<br />
designed with potential<br />
This invaders page: in Soft, mind<br />
colourful corals around<br />
Lizard Island<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 47
48 worldtravellermagazine.com
ST LUCIA<br />
Local markets, spicy food and<br />
real people to mingle with: selfcatering<br />
in St Lucia is your key to<br />
getting a true taste of Caribbean<br />
life, says Liz Edwards<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 49
ad it all been a terrible mistake?<br />
As I lay awake for too much<br />
of our first night on St Lucia,<br />
I couldn’t help wondering. Because<br />
although I had made sure that our<br />
cottage — cute and characterful on a<br />
former plantation estate — came with<br />
a kitchen, I had neglected to check it<br />
would actually have windows. We had<br />
bars for security, floaty curtains for<br />
modesty and mozzie nets for sanity.<br />
But amid dense greenery and without<br />
glass, our bedroom came with a megadecibel<br />
lullaby. In lieu of sleep, we had<br />
a drumbeat downpour, we had singing<br />
cicadas, we had countless croaks and<br />
ribbits and — bai-ee-ai — the full,<br />
fortissimo frog chorus. We all groaned<br />
together. But my husband was so cross<br />
— irate of the Caribbean — he couldn’t<br />
even relish his ‘I told you so’ moment.<br />
It had all made perfect sense to me<br />
back home. On European holidays, I’d<br />
reasoned, we loved the villa thing —<br />
stocking up at the market, chatting with<br />
the grannies over the shopping basket,<br />
hanging out with villagers in the nearest<br />
bar. This time we’d do all that, just in<br />
tropical temperatures in the Caribbean.<br />
And with less bling than Barbados and<br />
less edge than Jamaica, St Lucia would be<br />
the easiest, friendliest, safest Caribbean<br />
island for us to get a taste of local life.<br />
My husband was sceptical. He’d visited<br />
the mountainous island in a former<br />
life as a brochure writer and knew its<br />
strengths as the honeymoon favourite,<br />
all discreet service and petal-strewn<br />
romance. I’d convinced him we could<br />
find something more authentic than<br />
a hermetically sealed resort, make a<br />
more natural connection with the island<br />
than we would on a hotel excursion.<br />
We’d stay in the less-developed south,<br />
self-cater, self-drive, self-congratulate.<br />
And yet here we were, wishing for<br />
some of that lovely hermetic sealing.<br />
Predictably, as we emerged the next<br />
morning from our shrub-surrounded<br />
cottage into the sunlight, things looked<br />
brighter. We were staying on Balenbouche<br />
Estate, an old coffee plantation in the<br />
south of the island that’s now a hybrid<br />
of organic farm, heritage site and<br />
accommodation — ours was one of a<br />
handful of cottages dotted around the<br />
Deep South-y grounds. Broad lawns<br />
flowed between magnificent mango,<br />
banyan and flame trees; an old rum<br />
still sat here, a rustic cotton barn there;<br />
waterlily ponds ran alongside a path<br />
to one of the estate’s wild beaches.<br />
Hummingbirds and finches flitted;<br />
there were cats, dogs, cows and horses<br />
— and at the centre of it all were the<br />
lovely 19th century wooden plantation<br />
house and Uta Lawaetz, the hippy-fierce,<br />
Austrian-born woman who’s kept the<br />
place going since the 1980s, when her<br />
former father-in-law owned it. As we<br />
listened to her stories over breakfast<br />
on her breeze-cooled verandah that<br />
morning (our own cupboards still bare),<br />
it all began to feel rather romantic<br />
and heartwarming and natural.<br />
And things were about to look brighter<br />
still. An overseas supermarket is a<br />
thing of joy, isn’t it? Shopping becomes<br />
a brilliant treasure hunt for comedy<br />
brand names, unfamiliar packaging,<br />
what’s-that-for? ingredients, who’sthat-for?<br />
flavours. I love it, and I loved<br />
Massy Stores, 15 minutes’ drive east of<br />
the cottage. The big fruit ’n’ veg section<br />
was awash with all kinds of roots, sea<br />
moss and ‘Vel’s Mauby Bark’ (still no<br />
idea). We weren’t surprised to find a<br />
million barbecue and hot pepper sauces<br />
(we bought fearsome Viking, the local<br />
brand), but were taken aback to see<br />
Essential Waitrose olives, Bovril, Dorset<br />
Cereals and Branston Pickle. A cornflakes<br />
pack came with a recipe for Chicken<br />
Party Salad (very ’70s dinner party);<br />
Best of all, we found Alma at the<br />
till. Scanning the contents of our<br />
enthusiastically loaded trolley, she had<br />
plenty of time to let us pick her brains<br />
about St Lucian ways to spend our week.<br />
We should go to the Choiseul craft centre<br />
just beyond Balenbouche to buy straw<br />
hats and clay pots, she said; to Soufrière<br />
market for island- grown fruit, veg and<br />
herbs. She sucked her teeth when I asked<br />
if there was a less touristy alternative to<br />
the Sulphur Springs volcanic mud baths:<br />
‘Those baths keep me looking young.<br />
You might see me there this weekend!’<br />
Tips noted, groceries decanted, it was<br />
— finally! — beach time. We’d already<br />
50 worldtravellermagazine.com
spotted a likely suspect; 10 minutes east<br />
of Balenbouche we nosed the car off the<br />
main road and down into Laborie (‘Labree’),<br />
a drowsy wee town that was big on<br />
its street names: Dame Pearlette Louisy<br />
Drive, Martin Luther King Street, Elvis<br />
Presley Boulevard. And the beach? You<br />
might not spot it in the brochures — one<br />
too many fondant-fancy houses on the<br />
lush hills around the bay, perhaps; no<br />
hotel staff to rake the sand — but it was<br />
no scrub. Half a dozen little motorboats<br />
bobbed prettily in the shallows, palms<br />
leant protectively over the sand from<br />
between fishing shacks and sea almond<br />
trees. We paddled, sandcastled and<br />
swam, the beach our own, frog chorus<br />
forgotten. Lunch — grilled-fish wraps<br />
— was a few metres away at palmthatched<br />
Salt Rush Café, where the<br />
only other customers were Stuart and<br />
Wendy from Alberta, house-sitting<br />
for a friend on the island and back<br />
here at Salt Rush for the fifth time in a<br />
fortnight. They’d been to the volcano,<br />
visited the botanic gardens, but were<br />
happier here contemplating the horizon.<br />
I asked Wilson, the guy in charge, if<br />
it was always this quiet. ‘Sometimes<br />
quieter in the day,’ he shrugged. ‘But<br />
it’ll be different this evening...’<br />
‘<br />
BROAD LAWNS<br />
FLOWED<br />
BETWEEN<br />
MAGNIFICENT<br />
MANGO, BANYAN<br />
AND FLAME<br />
TREES<br />
’<br />
With that, Wilson had saved us a long,<br />
twisty drive in the dark. Friday evenings<br />
on St Lucia, as on other Caribbean islands,<br />
mean Fish Fry — time for a barbecuefuelled<br />
street party. A few towns do<br />
them; the one in Gros Islet sounded<br />
cheesy so I’d earmarked Anse la Raye,<br />
a 90-minute wiggle up the west-coast<br />
road, as St Lucia’s best local-tinged bet.<br />
But there was no need to go that far.<br />
Laborie’s monthly Fish Fry was tonight.<br />
And a very casual, community-spirited<br />
affair it was —with twerk-along sound<br />
systems turned up past 11. Even shouted<br />
conversation was tricky, so I did well<br />
to make out the verdict from Brad, my<br />
picnic-bench neighbour: ‘The fish is<br />
better at Gros Islet but you get lots of<br />
tourists! Laborie is for St Lucians!’ We<br />
ST LUCIA<br />
grazed on grilled fish, pork stew,<br />
savoury doughnut ‘bakes’. There was<br />
‘fig salad’, a mix of tuna and green<br />
banana — like that ancient Yellow<br />
Pages TV ad with the bloke ordering<br />
pizza for his pregnant wife — which<br />
actually tasted excellent (moral: never<br />
doubt the pregnant lady). At half-nine<br />
we called it a night; we’d had enough<br />
of the volume, though my husband<br />
found the silver lining: ‘<strong>May</strong>be the<br />
tinnitus will drown out the frogs.’<br />
That wasn’t the last we saw of<br />
Laborie, but we did explore other bits<br />
of the island, too. You’ll spot the twin<br />
Piton peaks on everything from beer<br />
labels to the masonic-looking national<br />
flag, but you’re probably not allowed<br />
to leave without seeing the west-coast<br />
icons in the pointy, jungle-clad flesh.<br />
Luckily they’re quite big, so we didn’t<br />
have to switchback too far up the<br />
west coast before they began sliding<br />
in and out of our windshield view.<br />
Petit Piton certainly looked pretty<br />
impressive looming up behind the<br />
seafront at Soufrière. Either we<br />
arrived too late to see its streetside<br />
market in full flow or it was having<br />
an off day (whereas Alma’s tip about<br />
Sulphur Springs, a few miles back,<br />
Opening pages: grilled<br />
prawn salad; climbing a<br />
tree against the backdrop<br />
of a fiery sunset<br />
This page: Petit Piton<br />
above Margretoute Bay<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 51
XXXXXXXXXXXXX<br />
was a goodie — we shared its murky 30C<br />
waters with visitors and St Lucians, and<br />
left feeling soothed and smoothed). But<br />
one vendor did show me the Creole way<br />
to drink from a green coconut — the<br />
top machete’d off flat (no Piton-pointy<br />
whittling), and no straw. What price<br />
dignity when authenticity and singleuse<br />
plastics are at stake, I thought<br />
nobly, as it dribbled down my chin.<br />
But the best view of the Pitons came<br />
600m above sea level at Tet Paul, a<br />
community-run nature trail through an<br />
organic farm, where we learnt a bit of<br />
history, and a bit about local produce,<br />
medicinal plants and other exotic flora<br />
— but mainly gawped at the sight of<br />
both Pitons rearing up dramatically<br />
from the sea. The beer label hadn’t done<br />
them justice. But my husband still had<br />
amphibians on his mind: ‘They’re like<br />
giant toads emerging from a pond.’<br />
The furthest north we got was<br />
Rodney Bay, where the topography<br />
was less crumpled, and life more<br />
obviously tourism-focused. The yachtfilled<br />
marina, especially, felt a world<br />
away from creaky Balenbouche and<br />
homespun Tet Paul, but it was another<br />
community enterprise that brought<br />
us here. Keen to get out on the water,<br />
I’d found Jus’ Sail, a company offering<br />
‘<br />
HALF THE FUN WE HAD IN ST LUCIA<br />
WAS DRIVING THE TWISTY ROADS<br />
AND WAVING BACK AT GRANNIES<br />
LEANING GOSSIP-READY ON THEIR<br />
VERANDAH RAILS<br />
’<br />
day charters on the restored Great<br />
Expectation, a historic Carriacou trading<br />
sloop; owners James and Pepsi also run<br />
a training scheme for local youngsters<br />
to help them out of unemployment.<br />
As a means of wrapping some<br />
heritage and social responsibility up<br />
in a rather lovely, lazy afternoon, their<br />
sunset cruise was hard to argue with.<br />
James, Pepsi and a scheme graduate,<br />
OB, chatted sailing, history and potent<br />
punches as we tacked across the bay,<br />
the boat tilting 45 degrees one way<br />
then 45 degrees the other. Pepsi said<br />
that out here they were often treated<br />
to a green flash, that optical effect as<br />
the sun finally slips over the horizon.<br />
That day, moody tufts of cloud framed<br />
the sinking sun — and hooray, a pop<br />
of green like a magician’s flourish.<br />
It was wonderfully relaxing; of course<br />
it was. But quite honestly, half the<br />
fun we had in St Lucia was driving its<br />
twisty roads, waving back at grannies<br />
leaning gossip-ready on their verandah<br />
rails. We’d crank up the country and<br />
western on the radio (St Lucians love<br />
it), stop at random roadside joints, and<br />
follow our noses down little tracks to<br />
Piaye and other empty beaches. We<br />
even found we’d grown fond of (or<br />
used to) Balenbouche’s eccentricities.<br />
We assumed the teeny tree frogs in<br />
the sink and the doorstop-like toad<br />
in the corridor were doing their bit<br />
to keep mozzie populations down.<br />
We supplemented our supermarket<br />
breakfast with mangoes collected from<br />
the lawn. We felt more immersed in<br />
the island’s nature than we would<br />
have in a pest-controlled, manicured<br />
resort. So maybe we could do without<br />
windows after all. No pane, no gain?<br />
Inspired to travel? To book a trip, call<br />
+971 4 316 6666 or visit dnatatravel.com<br />
Credit: Liz Edwards/The Sunday Times Travel Magazine/News Licensing<br />
52 worldtravellermagazine.com
ST LUCIA<br />
Opposite: taking a<br />
break, St Lucia style<br />
This page: a starfish<br />
lazes on Reduit Beach<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 53
AROUND<br />
THE<br />
WORLD<br />
IN 60<br />
YEARS<br />
Book at dnatatravel.com<br />
call 800 DNATA (36282)<br />
or speak to us in-store<br />
Download our app<br />
| Follow us on
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Weekends<br />
Staycations and short-haul escapes<br />
SOARING SKILLS<br />
Located in the world’s largest sand<br />
desert, the Empty Quarter in Abu Dhabi,<br />
Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort by Anantara<br />
beckons all those who want to get closer<br />
to nature. Here you can slow down the<br />
pace and take part in the many desert<br />
activities on offer, such as watching a<br />
falcon and saluki take part in a thrilling<br />
faux hunt across the dunes.<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 55
WEEKENDS<br />
Reasons to go back to…<br />
AMMAN<br />
A city of fascinating contrasts, explore the old<br />
and new in Jordan’s diverse and dynamic capital<br />
Suite moments<br />
Add the ultimate wow factor<br />
to your trip with a night or two<br />
at W Amman. Check into a<br />
cool Corner Suite with fab city<br />
views or hold out for the new<br />
signature top floor experience<br />
set to debut this summer.<br />
Choose from the Wow Suite<br />
or E Wow Suite featuring a DJ<br />
booth, cocktail bar, Jacuzzi,<br />
huge living spaces and, of<br />
course, panoramic floor to<br />
ceiling city vistas.<br />
City snapshot<br />
Keen photographers and<br />
guests of Four Seasons<br />
Hotel Amman can<br />
explore the city behind<br />
the lens in the company<br />
of former official palace<br />
photographer Zohrab<br />
Markarian. Join him for<br />
a tour of top landmarks<br />
including the Citadel, Old<br />
Souk, and 2,000-year-old<br />
Roman amphitheatre. He'll<br />
share his photography<br />
tips, and plenty of local<br />
insight, over a cup of<br />
Jordanian tea.<br />
Al Balad Theatre/<br />
Raed Asfour<br />
Corner Suite, W Amman<br />
Street art scene<br />
Cultural graffiti art is popping up across the city,<br />
with blank canvas walls permanently transformed<br />
into vibrant artworks thanks to the annual Baladk<br />
Street & Urban Art Festival, which has been<br />
beautifying local communities since 2013. Check<br />
out talented local Jordanian artists and international<br />
guest graffitists as you wander through the capital’s<br />
neighbourhoods. al-balad.org<br />
Cook like granny<br />
Learn how to whip up a feast of<br />
Middle Eastern dishes, from falafel<br />
and kousa to mandi and more, at<br />
Beit Sitti cooking school in Jabal al<br />
Weibdeh, one of Amman’s oldest<br />
neighbourhoods. Established<br />
by three sisters to honour their<br />
grandmother’s culinary legacy, sign<br />
up for a cook and dine session with<br />
a four-course menu using seasonal<br />
vegetables and locally sourced<br />
produce. Be sure to pick up some<br />
pomegranate molasses and olive oil<br />
at the shop. beitsitti.com<br />
56 worldtravellermagazine.com
Running until 8 June <strong>2019</strong>
long<br />
the<br />
weekend<br />
Paris<br />
Home to café-lined boulevards,<br />
vibrant culture and fabulous food, the<br />
City of Lights is in a league of its own<br />
58 worldtravellermagazine.com
THE LONG WEEKEND<br />
Long considered the epicentre of fashion, art, culture,<br />
gastronomy and romance, the French capital needs no<br />
introduction. From elegant boulevards and world-class<br />
museums to Michelin-starred cuisine and effortlessly<br />
chic locals, the city has an undeniable je ne sais quoi that<br />
beguiles even the most seasoned visitor.<br />
Split by the Seine into two halves – the Right and Left<br />
banks – Paris is further divided into 20 Arrondissements<br />
(districts), each with their own style and atmosphere.<br />
On the Right Bank, the upmarket 1st Arrondissement is<br />
home to iconic sights such as the Louvre and 17th-century<br />
Tuileries Garden, while the Champs-Elysées is the heart of<br />
the exclusive 8th Arrondissement. Spread across the 3rd<br />
and 4th Arrondissements, the Marais is one of the trendiest<br />
neighbourhoods in town.<br />
On the Left Bank lies the elegant 6th and 7th<br />
Arrondissements, where you’ll find historic pavement cafés<br />
and big-hitters like Musée d’Orsay, Musée Rodin and the<br />
Eiffel Tower. The 5th Arrondissement, meanwhile, is home<br />
to the Latin Quarter and the famous Sorbonne University.<br />
And as the city celebrates the 130th anniversary of the<br />
Eiffel Tower and 350 years of the Paris Opera in <strong>2019</strong>,<br />
there’s never been a better time to visit. Here’s how to do<br />
Paris in style…<br />
Paris is home to nearly<br />
a dozen ‘palace hotels’ –<br />
ultra high-end properties<br />
whose amenities surpass<br />
those of five-star hotels<br />
– including the Ritz Paris<br />
and the Peninsula Paris.<br />
The former is home to 142<br />
rooms resplendent with<br />
Louis XV furnishings and<br />
marble fireplaces, along<br />
with two Michelin-starred<br />
restaurants and the world's<br />
first Chanel spa. The latter,<br />
meanwhile, is just steps<br />
from the Champs Elysées<br />
with 200 sumptuous<br />
rooms and some of the<br />
best views in town from<br />
the top-floor restaurant.<br />
Hoping to join the<br />
elite club is the newly<br />
renovated Hotel Lutetia.<br />
the only grande dame<br />
on the Left Bank. The<br />
historic hotel features 184<br />
contemporary rooms,<br />
along with a subterranean<br />
spa, sun-lit swimming pool<br />
and brasserie overseen by<br />
three-Michelin-star chef<br />
Gérald Passedat.<br />
A perennial favourite of<br />
ours is Le Royal Monceau,<br />
Raffles Paris, which boasts<br />
stunning suites designed<br />
by Philippe Starck.<br />
Opposite: Eiffel Tower<br />
© Paris Tourist Office.<br />
This page top to bottom:<br />
Cafe culture © Paris Tourist<br />
Office; Hotel Lutetia<br />
STYLISH SLEEPS<br />
Find the perfect place to sleep<br />
in the French capital<br />
For those who crave a<br />
more intimate experience,<br />
Maison Armance<br />
recently opened in the 1st<br />
Arrondissement, feels like<br />
your own Parisian piedà-terre.<br />
There are just 20<br />
rooms with parquet floors<br />
and soothing shades of<br />
dusty pink or duck egg<br />
blue, while the top-floor<br />
lounge has dreamy views<br />
over the city’s rooftops.<br />
Moored on the Left<br />
Bank of the Seine, OFF<br />
Paris Seine is Paris's first<br />
boat hotel and a favourite<br />
with Instagrammers,<br />
thanks to its plunge pool<br />
(complete with inflatable<br />
gold swans). It is home to<br />
58 sleek rooms, but the<br />
buzzy poolside lounge-bar<br />
is the draw.<br />
best<br />
bistros<br />
Eat like a Parisian in a cosy<br />
neighbourhood bistro<br />
ASTAIR Opened last<br />
year in the Passage des<br />
Panoramas, this glamorous<br />
yet unpretentious spot<br />
– think rattan chairs, bowtied<br />
waiters and a smooth<br />
jazz soundtrack – boasts<br />
a menu by three-star chef<br />
Gilles Goujon. Aim for a<br />
cosy corner table.<br />
BENOIT Dating back to<br />
1912, this one-Michelinstarred<br />
spot looks<br />
like the quintessential<br />
Parisian bistro: crisp<br />
white tablecloths, red<br />
velvet chairs and polished<br />
woodwork. Enjoy classic<br />
French fare such as<br />
escargots swimming in<br />
garlic butter.<br />
MENSAE This modern<br />
bistro in the Belleville<br />
neighbourhood favours<br />
Scandi style over redchecked<br />
tablecloths,<br />
while Korean chef Jun-sik<br />
Cho’s menu is full of<br />
twists-on-classics. The<br />
prix fixé menus offer<br />
exceptional value.<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 59
culture<br />
f ix<br />
Home to some 150<br />
museums, Paris is one<br />
of the undisputed arts<br />
capitals of the world.<br />
Of course you have to<br />
visit the Louvre; 15,000<br />
people file past the<br />
Mona Lisa every day, but<br />
you can beat the crowds<br />
by visiting during the<br />
late-night openings<br />
on Wednesdays and<br />
Fridays. Housing the<br />
largest collection of<br />
impressionist art in<br />
the world, the Musée<br />
d’Orsay is another<br />
must-see, while you can<br />
get your modern and<br />
contemporary art fix at<br />
the Centre Pompidou.<br />
Make time for smaller<br />
museums and galleries,<br />
such as the Jean Nouveldesigned<br />
Institut du<br />
Monde Arabe, which<br />
showcases treasures<br />
from the Arab world,<br />
and L’Atelier des<br />
Lumières, which features<br />
a new immersive<br />
digital exhibition on<br />
Vincent van Gogh.<br />
The Fondation Louis<br />
Vuitton, meanwhile,<br />
is currently exhibiting<br />
110 Impressionist<br />
masterpieces from<br />
the collection of English<br />
industrialist Samuel<br />
Courtauld (until June 17).<br />
HAUTE CUISINE<br />
L'Astrance Book well ahead<br />
for a table at chef Pascal<br />
Barbot’s two-Michelinstarred<br />
spot in the 16th<br />
Arrondissement, which<br />
seats just 25 diners. Then<br />
look forward to a tasting<br />
menu that combines<br />
modern French cuisine with<br />
influences from the Far East.<br />
astrancerestaurant.com<br />
Ducasse sur Seine One of<br />
France’s most iconic chefs has<br />
opened his latest restaurant<br />
on a sleek riverboat. Opt<br />
for lunch to see the sights,<br />
or float by night to see the<br />
lights, while you dine on<br />
classic dishes such as chilled<br />
lobster and pan-seared lamb.<br />
ducasse-seine.com<br />
Arpège Alain Passard has<br />
retained his three Michelin<br />
stars at this restaurant<br />
near the Musée Rodin for<br />
more than two decades.<br />
His vegetable-driven menu<br />
features produce from his<br />
own organic garden, with<br />
dishes like vegetable arlequin<br />
jardinière with argan oil<br />
semolina. alain-passard.com<br />
elegant<br />
arcades<br />
At the turn of the 19th<br />
century, Paris was<br />
home to more than<br />
200 passages couverts<br />
(covered arcades)<br />
lined with fashionable<br />
shops and cafés. Today<br />
around 20 remain,<br />
with many found in the<br />
2nd Arrondissement.<br />
Passage des<br />
Panoramas, off<br />
Boulevard Montmartre,<br />
should be your first<br />
stop. Home to philately<br />
shops and vintage<br />
postcard dealers, the<br />
city’s oldest arcade has<br />
been revitalised with the<br />
This page from<br />
top to bottom:<br />
Arpège; Galerie<br />
Véro-Dodat ©<br />
Paris Tourist<br />
Office; Musée du<br />
Louvre © Paris<br />
Tourist Office.<br />
Opposite,<br />
from top: a flea<br />
market; Gang of<br />
Earlybirds<br />
opening of Astair [see Best<br />
Bistros]. Cross the road to<br />
Passage Jouffroy, where<br />
sunlight streams through<br />
the glass roof, and treat<br />
yourself to coffee and cake<br />
at Le Valentin. Continue on<br />
to the exquisitely restored<br />
Galerie Vivienne to admire<br />
the mosaic floor and browse<br />
high-end boutiques such<br />
as Jean-Paul Gaultier and<br />
Nathalie Garçon. Pop into<br />
nearby Galerie Colbert to<br />
marvel at its beautiful glass<br />
dome, then finish up in<br />
Galerie Véro-Dodat, which<br />
boasts a black-and-white<br />
tiled floor and Christian<br />
Louboutin boutique.<br />
60 worldtravellermagazine.com
THE LONG WEEKEND<br />
Words: Lara Brunt<br />
ask a local<br />
Lena<br />
Drevermann,<br />
blogger at<br />
Salut from Paris<br />
(salutfromparis.<br />
com), shares<br />
her top tips<br />
for exploring<br />
the city<br />
“The first piece of advice I'd give to<br />
visitors is to walk as much as you<br />
can (and wear trainers). The Metro<br />
is a great way to get around, but<br />
real Parisian life happens above<br />
ground. From stunning 19th-century<br />
Haussmann architecture and iconic<br />
sidewalk cafés to the latest street<br />
style – to discover the best of Paris,<br />
simply walk.<br />
The Belleville neighbourhood,<br />
meanwhile, is my favourite hidden<br />
gem in the city. The northeastern<br />
district is often overlooked, but<br />
can definitely compete with the<br />
famous Montmartre; the views over<br />
Paris are equally wonderful and the<br />
village style is super cute – without<br />
the crowds. For a memorable meal,<br />
book a table at Afaria, a Basque<br />
Country-influenced restaurant in<br />
the 15th Arrondissement. The tapas<br />
are excellent, but don’t miss their<br />
signature Magret de canard rôti.”<br />
STYLISH<br />
SHOPPING<br />
Nous Founded in 2018<br />
by ex-Colette employees,<br />
this achingly cool<br />
boutique on posh Rue<br />
Cambon specialises in<br />
streetwear, exclusive<br />
watches and high-tech<br />
gadgets. You can also<br />
stock up on limited<br />
edition Adidas trainers.<br />
nous.paris<br />
L’Appartement Sézane<br />
For effortless French-girl<br />
style without breaking<br />
the bank, head to this<br />
millennial pink-hued<br />
showroom in the chic<br />
Grands Boulevards<br />
district. The cult fashion<br />
label is renowned for<br />
its laidback, feminine<br />
aesthetic – think boho<br />
dresses, silk shirts and<br />
rope-soled espadrilles.<br />
sezane.com<br />
Printemps This iconic<br />
department store on<br />
Boulevard Haussmann<br />
is the go-to place for<br />
luxury fashion, Swing<br />
by La Scent Room for<br />
exclusive perfumes, and<br />
MARVELLOUS<br />
MARKETS<br />
Trawling for treasures or stocking up on gourmet<br />
goodies in one of Paris’s many markets is a great<br />
way to spend a couple of hours. Founded in 1870,<br />
Marché aux Puces St-Ouen is the largest of the<br />
city’s famed flea markets. Open from Saturday to<br />
Monday, the sprawling market is a must-visit for<br />
art and design lovers, with more than 2,000 stalls<br />
selling antiques, mid-century furniture, paintings<br />
and bric-a-brac. Foodies, meanwhile, should<br />
make a beeline for Marché Bastille. Open from<br />
Thursday to Sunday, there are more than 150<br />
stalls piled high with local produce and seasonal<br />
specialities like truffles. For a quick lunch in<br />
between boutique hopping in the Marais, pop into<br />
Marché des Enfants Rouges (closed Mondays).<br />
Opened in 1615, the covered market has stalls<br />
serving multi-cuisine, ready-to-eat dishes.<br />
don’t miss the new<br />
food hall dedicated to<br />
French gastronomy.<br />
printempsfrance.com<br />
Gang of Earlybirds<br />
Founded by a former<br />
buyer at Lanvin, this hip<br />
boutique in the Marais<br />
stocks the best up-andcoming<br />
international<br />
designers such as<br />
Mara Hoffman and<br />
Simon Miller. The store<br />
features a carefully<br />
curated selection of<br />
women’s ready-towear,<br />
accessories<br />
and jewellery.<br />
gangofearlybirds.com<br />
Merci In the same<br />
neighbourhood, this<br />
sprawling three-level<br />
concept store is<br />
housed in a former<br />
factory and boasts<br />
an eclectic edit of<br />
homewares, men’s<br />
and women’s fashion,<br />
beauty products,<br />
stationery and more.<br />
Just look for the<br />
Insta-famous red<br />
Fiat parked out front.<br />
merci-merci.com<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 61
WORLD TRAVELLER X DCT ABU DHABI<br />
THREE WAYS TO EXPERIENCE ABU DHABI...<br />
Artistic inspiration<br />
Explore the UAE capital's eclectic arts scene, from contemporary gallery<br />
showcases to cultural pop-ups, and snapshots of history with a global perspective<br />
Photo: Project Warehouse by Festember<br />
1<br />
Project Warehouse. Yas<br />
Island welcomes back<br />
the popular Festember<br />
pop-up event with a vibrant<br />
celebration of contemporary<br />
culture covering art, cuisine,<br />
fashion and design, from<br />
15-18 <strong>May</strong>. Art themes for<br />
<strong>2019</strong> range from female<br />
empowerment to rural<br />
Emirati populations with<br />
local and international artists<br />
taking part in the four-day<br />
event. Los Angeles-based<br />
artist Oliver Coreaux is flying<br />
in to handpaint a collection<br />
of luxury handbags and<br />
accessories with a visual<br />
collage comprised of text<br />
and symbols.<br />
2<br />
Louvre Abu Dhabi.<br />
The museum's first<br />
photography exhibition<br />
explores the development<br />
of this fascinating art form<br />
from its earliest beginnings.<br />
Entitled 'Photographs 1842 –<br />
1896: An Early Album of the<br />
<strong>World</strong>', the exhibition features<br />
250 images from across<br />
the globe including Saudi<br />
Arabia, Egypt, India and the<br />
Philippines. The works on<br />
show mainly originate from<br />
Musée du Quai Branly –<br />
Jacques Chirac’s collection,<br />
which includes some of<br />
the earliest photographs<br />
produced outside of Europe.<br />
3<br />
Warehouse421. A hub<br />
for regional talent, this<br />
Mina Zayed located<br />
gallery is showcasing six<br />
forms of writing as part<br />
of its Nomadic Traces:<br />
Journeys of Arabian Scripts<br />
exhibition. Works by nine<br />
GCC and Levantine artists<br />
are on show, including 'Yad'<br />
by Margherita Abi Hanna,<br />
which draws on the abstract,<br />
simple geometry of ancient<br />
Phoenician text to Khalid<br />
Mezaina's 'If Speech Is Silver'<br />
piece, featuring a trio of<br />
Musnad and Aramaic printed<br />
textiles with silver as the<br />
starting inspiration.<br />
62 worldtravellermagazine.com
worldtravellermagazine.com<br />
Your passport to the Middle East's first fully<br />
bookable travel inspiration website<br />
Extend your journey with <strong>World</strong> <strong>Traveller</strong> magazine<br />
by heading online to read more inspirational and<br />
exclusive travel content and take advantage of upto-the-minute<br />
hotel and holiday features<br />
Dream Read Click Book
WORLD TRAVELLER X SONEVA<br />
Slide into<br />
paradise<br />
Jet off on an exclusive Eid Al-<br />
Fitr escape to Soneva Fushi and<br />
Soneva Jani in Maldives, where<br />
guests from the Gulf are in for<br />
a special treat<br />
Soneva Jani<br />
*Terms and conditions apply.<br />
BEST FOR FAMILIES:<br />
SONEVA FUSHI<br />
Embrace castaway style simplicity and<br />
kick off your shoes for an exquisite<br />
barefoot luxury experience at this<br />
tropical hideaway that sits jungle<br />
style within the Baa Atoll UNESCO<br />
Biosphere Reserve. Just 30-40 minutes<br />
via seaplane from the international<br />
airport, Soneva Fushi appeals to the<br />
whole family with its stellar line-up of<br />
activities, from manta ray snorkelling<br />
trips to dolphin cruises. There’s a full<br />
gamut of dining experiences to enjoy,<br />
from a meal prepared by a visiting<br />
Michelin-starred chef to a favourful<br />
Arabic spread enjoyed in the privacy of<br />
your villa.<br />
Soneva Children’s Camp is sure to<br />
entice little ones out of their shell<br />
by offering them the chance to try<br />
something new, from nighttime<br />
island safaris to coconut oil making,<br />
glassblowing and much more. Younger<br />
ones will adore the Den, where they<br />
can launch themselves into the weekly<br />
programme of activities designed to<br />
inspire the mind.<br />
BEST FOR GOURMANDS:<br />
SONEVA JANI<br />
Home of the famous over-water villas<br />
with water slides (you must have seen<br />
the incredible drone footage), Soneva<br />
Jani in the Noonu Atoll is a 45-minute<br />
seaplane flight from Malé International<br />
Airport, or a 60-minute speedboat ride<br />
from Soneva Fushi.<br />
This playful resort is an<br />
Instagrammers dream due to the<br />
sparkling sapphire-hued lagoon that<br />
surrounds it, and the view just got even<br />
more tantalising thanks to the variety<br />
of cuisines that are being served during<br />
Eid Al-Fitr.<br />
Soneva Fushi<br />
Sample Middle Eastern favourites,<br />
delve into Japanese flavours, or taste<br />
crab cooked to perfection at new<br />
restaurant, The Crab Shack, which has a<br />
dreamily romantic setting on the beach.<br />
Appetite satisfied, you’re free to take<br />
part in the many experiences on offer,<br />
from snorkelling with manta rays to an<br />
Ayurvedic treatments at the overwater<br />
Soneva Spa while the kids get busy at the<br />
Den and Soneva Children’s Camp.<br />
GCC residents can stay for seven nights<br />
and pay for just five (or four and pay for<br />
three), with lots of added extras included*.<br />
To find out more, visit soneva.com<br />
64 worldtravellermagazine.com
WORLD TRAVELLER X THE ST. REGIS ABU DHABI<br />
STAYCATION<br />
The St. Regis Abu Dhabi<br />
Enjoy an exquisite stay at the Iconic Nation Towers in the heart of the Abu Dhabi Corniche<br />
THE ROOMS & SUITES<br />
A room with a breathtaking view is the<br />
hallmark of this landmark Corniche<br />
facing hotel, where each of its 283 rooms<br />
and signature suites drink in the iconic<br />
city skyline. Watch the sun rise and set<br />
from the signature Manhal Suite, or any<br />
one of the rooms with a view. A dedicated,<br />
on-call butler and stand-out design<br />
touches, such as standalone bath tubs,<br />
further elevate the experience.<br />
THE FOOD<br />
Ramadan flavours headline the culinary<br />
offering in <strong>May</strong>, with the world's highest<br />
suspended suite the setting for Iftar in<br />
the Sky, offering a selection of traditional<br />
Arabian delicacies, a dedicated dessert<br />
room and inspiring live music. In<br />
addition, the Terrace on the Corniche will<br />
take you on a voyage of discovery across<br />
the region, with live cooking stations and<br />
traditional flavours.<br />
THE ACTIVITIES<br />
Find inner peace in the sanctuary of<br />
Remède Spa, with top to toe treatments<br />
for sublime rejuvenation. Try a bespoke<br />
facial in the expert hands of a Balinese<br />
trained therapist, or enjoy a signature<br />
customised massage featuring a choice<br />
of exquisite aromatherapy blends and<br />
luxurious products that guarantee a<br />
restorative all-over glow. You'll leave ready<br />
to face the world with renewed zeal.<br />
To find out more, call +971 2 694 4444 or visit stregisabudhabi.com<br />
66 worldtravellermagazine.com
An Exquisite Eid Al-Fitr Staycation<br />
Celebrate Eid al-Fitr with a family staycation to create lasting memories. Live exquisite in one of our<br />
Superior Rooms or for the ultimate level of luxury upgrade to a Signature Suite. Located at the vibrant<br />
heart of Abu Dhabi with a 200 metre stretch of pristine beach, overlooking the turquoise waters of the<br />
Nation Riviera Beach Club at the finest address in the city.<br />
Superior Room from AED 650* includes:<br />
Complimentary upgrade to Sea View Room (subject to availability), AED 200 restaurant dining credit,<br />
breakfast and 4:00 pm late checkout.<br />
Signature Suites from AED 1200* includes:<br />
AED 400 restaurant dining credit, breakfast and 4:00 pm late checkout.<br />
Book one room and save 50% on the second room.<br />
Perfect for families, connecting rooms available (subject to availability)<br />
*All prices are in UAE Dirham and are exclusive of all applicable service charges, local fees and taxes.<br />
The St. Regis Abu Dhabi<br />
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates t. +971 2 694 4444 stregisabudhabi.com<br />
©<strong>2019</strong> Marriott International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Preferred Guest, SPG, St. Regis and their logos are the trademarks of Marriott International, Inc., or its affiliates.<br />
Stay exquisite at more than 40 St. Regis hotels and resorts worldwide.<br />
@stregishotels
WORLD TRAVELLER X JW MARRIOTT MARQUIS DUBAI<br />
STAYCATION<br />
JW Marriott Marquis Dubai<br />
Rise to the top at the world's tallest five-star hotel<br />
ROOMS & SUITES<br />
This lofty hotel has ample space to<br />
welcome guests. Its 1,608 guestrooms<br />
and suites have luxurious finishings<br />
– think marble bathrooms with rain<br />
showers and oversized tubs – and<br />
views of the glittering skyline or Dubai<br />
Water Canal. Families can book a suite<br />
and spread out in two separate living<br />
and sleeping areas. Room service is<br />
available around the clock.<br />
THE FOOD<br />
There are 15 award-winning restaurants<br />
and bars here, each serving memorable<br />
dining experiences including steakhouse<br />
Prime68, and Japanese restaurant<br />
Izakaya. The latest addition, Masala<br />
Library by Jiggs Kalra, will bowl you over<br />
with dishes derived from ancient and<br />
modern recipes and from every region<br />
of India. We heartily recommend you<br />
indulge in the great value tasting menu.<br />
THE ACTIVITIES<br />
The hotel is close to many top<br />
attractions, but there are lots of perks<br />
that'll tempt you to linger for longer at<br />
the property. Take a dip in the sparkling<br />
outdoor swimming pool or, for a spot<br />
of pampering, head to Saray Spa, which<br />
is home to the UAE's only Dead Sea<br />
floatation pool. Try the Saray Golden<br />
Hammam, which includes a decadent<br />
skin massage using 24-karat gold.<br />
To find out more, call +971 4 414 3000 or visit jwmarriottmarquisdubailife.com<br />
68 worldtravellermagazine.com
Inspiration. Expertly crafted.<br />
Comprising two iconic towers, the JW Marriott Marquis Dubai, the world’s tallest 5-star hotel,<br />
is centrally located beside the Dubai Water Canal and offers a spectrum of facilities and services for<br />
a seamless experience. The hotel features: 1,608 luxurious guest rooms and suites,<br />
over 15 award-winning restaurants and lounges, Saray Spa featuring traditional hammams,<br />
a Dead Sea Floatation Pool and 17 treatment rooms, state-of-the-art health club and fitness facilities,<br />
as well as 8,000 sqm of spectacular meeting spaces.<br />
JW Marriott® Marquis® Hotel Dubai<br />
jwmarriott.com/DXBJW<br />
Sheikh Zayed Road, Business Bay, PO Box 121000, Dubai, UAE | T +971.4.414.0000 | jwmarriottmarquisdubailife.com
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GRAND TRAIN TOUR<br />
OF SWITZERLAND<br />
7 nights starting from<br />
USD1,450 per person<br />
Includes: Stay for 7 nights and<br />
experience the GoldenPass Line,<br />
Glacier Express, Bernina Express,<br />
Gotthard Panorama Express,<br />
excursion to Jungfraujoch. Includes<br />
over night accommodation in<br />
Interlaken, Montreux, Zermatt,<br />
St Moritz, Lugano and Lucerne.<br />
Valid from: Now until 13 October <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
2<br />
PORTUGAL<br />
THE CLASSIC<br />
SELF DRIVE TOUR<br />
7 nights starting from<br />
USD585 per person<br />
Includes: Stay for 2 nights in<br />
Porto, followed by 2 nights<br />
in the capital city of Lisbon<br />
and 3 nights in Vilamoura<br />
in the Algarve – all in<br />
four-star hotels and with<br />
a n 8 d a y s H e r t z c a r h i r e .<br />
Valid from: Now until<br />
31 July <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
3<br />
CANADA<br />
ROCKIES TRAIL<br />
ESCORTED TOUR<br />
9 nights starting from<br />
USD2,070 per person<br />
Includes: Stay 1 night in Calgary,<br />
2 nights in Banff, 1 night in<br />
Jasper, 1 night in Kamloops, 1<br />
night in Whistler, 2 nights in<br />
Victoria and 1 night in Vancouver.<br />
Includes extensive sightseeing<br />
and tour director throughout.<br />
Valid from: Set departures June<br />
to September <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
4<br />
AUSTRALIA<br />
GOLD COAST<br />
FAMILY HOLIDAY<br />
7 nights starting<br />
from USD550 per<br />
person based<br />
on family of 4<br />
Includes: 7 nights<br />
accommodation at The Ruby<br />
Collection Surfers Paradise<br />
in a 2 bedroom apartment<br />
a n d 8 d a y s H e r t z c a r h i r e .<br />
Valid from: Now until 30<br />
June <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
70 worldtravellermagazine.com
DNATA TRAVEL OFFERS<br />
AROUND THE WORLD<br />
INDONESIA<br />
ANANTARA SEMINYAK<br />
BALI RESORT<br />
3 nights starting from<br />
USD440 per person<br />
Includes: Stay 3 nights in an<br />
Anantara Suite with breakfast<br />
daily and return airport transfers.<br />
Offer: 15% discount on room rate.<br />
Valid from: Now until 30<br />
June <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
MALAYSIA<br />
GOLDEN SANDS RESORT BY<br />
SHANGRI-LA, PENANG<br />
3 nights starting from<br />
USD160 per person<br />
Includes: Stay 3 nights in a<br />
Superior Room with breakfast<br />
daily and return airport transfers.<br />
MALAYSIA<br />
JW MARRIOTT HOTEL<br />
KUALA LUMPUR<br />
3 nights starting from<br />
USD245 per person<br />
Includes: Stay 3 nights in a<br />
Deluxe Room with breakfast daily<br />
and return airport transfers.<br />
Offer: 40% discount on room rate. Offer: 15% discount on room rate. Offer: 25% discount on room rate.<br />
Valid from: Now until 30<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
THAILAND<br />
BANYAN TREE PHUKET<br />
3 nights starting from<br />
USD660 per person<br />
Includes: Stay 3 nights in a<br />
Banyan Pool Villa with<br />
breakfast daily and return<br />
airport transfers.<br />
Valid from: Now until 31<br />
October <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
Valid from: Now until 30<br />
June <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
Anantara Seminyak Bali Resort<br />
Banyan Tree Phuket<br />
SRI LANKA<br />
SHANGRI-LA'S HAMBANTOTA<br />
GOLF RESORT & SPA<br />
3 nights starting from<br />
USD460 per person<br />
Includes: Stay 3 nights in a Premier<br />
Room with breakfast and dinner<br />
daily and return airport transfers.<br />
Offer: 35% discount on room rate,<br />
Complimentary upgrade from Bed &<br />
Breakfast to Half Board, Complimentary<br />
upgrade to Premier Room.<br />
Valid from: Now until 31 <strong>May</strong> <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
Four Seasons Hotel Prague<br />
Savoy Seychelles Resort & Spa<br />
Shangri-La's Hambantota<br />
Golf Resort & Spa<br />
Hotel De Vigny, Paris<br />
SEYCHELLES<br />
SAVOY SEYCHELLES RESORT & SPA<br />
3 nights starting from USD558<br />
per person<br />
Includes: Stay 3 nights in a Savoy<br />
Standard Room with breakfast daily<br />
and return airport transfers.<br />
Offer: 35% discount on room rate.<br />
Valid from: Now until 31 <strong>May</strong> <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
CZECH REPUBLIC<br />
FOUR SEASONS HOTEL PRAGUE<br />
3 nights starting from<br />
USD870 per person<br />
Includes: Stay 3 nights in a<br />
Renaissance Room with breakfast<br />
daily and return airport transfers.<br />
Offer: Stay 3 nights pay for 2 nights.<br />
Valid from: Now until 16 June <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
FRANCE<br />
HOTEL DE VIGNY, PARIS<br />
3 nights starting from USD700<br />
per person<br />
Includes: Stay 3 nights in a Junior<br />
Suite with breakfast daily and return<br />
airport transfers.<br />
Offer: Complimentary upgrade from<br />
Deluxe Room to Junior Suite.<br />
Valid from: Now until 31 <strong>May</strong> <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 71
DNATA TRAVEL OFFERS<br />
Eastern Mangroves Hotel & Spa by Anantara<br />
WEEKEND ESCAPES<br />
UAE<br />
THE RITZ-CARLTON, DUBAI<br />
INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL<br />
CENTRE<br />
1 night starting from USD115<br />
per person<br />
Includes: Stay 1 night in a Deluxe<br />
Room with breakfast daily and<br />
return airport transfers.<br />
Offer: 45% savings on room rate.<br />
Valid from: Now until 31<br />
August <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
Includes: Stay 2 nights in a<br />
Deluxe Room with breakfast daily<br />
and return airport transfers<br />
Offer: Complimentary.<br />
daily access to all parks:<br />
MOTIONGATE Dubai,<br />
BOLLYWOOD Parks<br />
Dubai, LEGOLAND ® Dubai,<br />
LEGOLAND® Water Park.<br />
Valid from: Now until 04<br />
June <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
Kempinski Hotel Muscat<br />
HYATT REGENCY DUBAI<br />
1 night starting from USD75<br />
per person<br />
Includes: Stay 1 night in a<br />
Standard Room with breakfast<br />
daily and return airport transfers.<br />
Offer: 45% savings on room rate.<br />
Valid from: Now until 04<br />
June <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
FAIRMONT BAB AL BAHR,<br />
ABU DHABI<br />
1 night starting from USD90 per<br />
person<br />
Includes: Stay 1 night in a<br />
Fairmont Room with breakfast<br />
daily and return airport transfers.<br />
Offer: 50% savings on room rate.<br />
Valid from: Now until 31 <strong>May</strong> <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
MÖVENPICK HOTEL<br />
JUMEIRAH LAKES TOWERS<br />
1 night starting from USD92<br />
per person<br />
Includes: Stay 1 night in a<br />
Superior Room with breakfast<br />
daily and return airport transfers<br />
Offer: 20% savings on room rate<br />
Valid from: Now until 04<br />
June <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
LAPITA HOTEL DUBAI,<br />
AUTOGRAPH COLLECTION<br />
HOTEL<br />
2 nights starting from USD217<br />
per person<br />
EASTERN MANGROVES<br />
HOTEL & SPA BY ANANTARA<br />
1 night starting from USD90<br />
per person<br />
Includes: Stay 1 night in a Deluxe<br />
Balcony Room with breakfast<br />
daily and return airport transfers.<br />
Offer: 40% savings on room rate.<br />
Valid from: Now until 30<br />
September <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
OMAN<br />
KEMPINSKI HOTEL MUSCAT<br />
2 nights starting from USD290<br />
per person<br />
Includes: Stay 2 nights in a<br />
Superior Room with breakfast<br />
daily and return airport transfers.<br />
Offer: 30% savings on room rate.<br />
Valid from: Now until 30<br />
June <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
JORDAN<br />
W AMMAN HOTEL<br />
3 nights starting from USD345<br />
per person<br />
Includes: Stay 3 nights in a<br />
Spectacular Sky Room with<br />
breakfast daily and return<br />
airport transfers.<br />
Offer: Guaranteed<br />
Complimentary Room Upgrade<br />
from Wonderful Room to<br />
Spectacular Sky Room.<br />
Valid from: Now until 31<br />
December <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
Lapita Hotel Dubai, Autograph Collection Hotel<br />
Fairmont Bab Al Bahr, Abu Dhabi<br />
How to book<br />
By calling dnata on<br />
+971 4 316 6666<br />
By stepping into a dnata outlet<br />
or by visiting dnatatravel.com<br />
On the website you can also sign up to the dnata<br />
newsletter and receive more offers direct to your<br />
inbox. T&Cs apply.<br />
72 worldtravellermagazine.com
Book at dnatatravel.com<br />
call 800 DNATA (36282) or<br />
speak to us in-store<br />
Download our app<br />
| Follow us on<br />
Holidays starting from US$1425.00<br />
Year round savings available, check<br />
with us.
THROUGH<br />
THE LENS<br />
Galata neighbourhood<br />
in Istanbul, Turkey<br />
"To me, Istanbul is one of the<br />
most beautiful cities in the<br />
world; there's always something<br />
interesting going on around you<br />
wherever you are. Even if you're<br />
visiting the same place twice,<br />
every time it'll look different<br />
than the day before. I was in<br />
a meeting when I witnessed<br />
this view and I couldn't resist;<br />
I stood up in the middle of<br />
the conversation to capture<br />
its enrapturing beauty. The<br />
originality of the photo is what<br />
makes it so special to me. Being<br />
such a magical city, Istanbul<br />
is filled with photographers in<br />
every nook and corner; finding<br />
a different angle to capture is<br />
always the most fulfilling."<br />
Lifestyle photographer,<br />
Zeyad Abouzeid, loves to<br />
travel because "travelling is<br />
not just about exploring new<br />
places around you, but also<br />
ones inside you."<br />
@zeyadabouzeid<br />
EMAIL US YOUR BEST<br />
TRAVEL PHOTOS<br />
in high-res jpeg format, along<br />
with the stories behind them to<br />
habiba@hotmediapublishing.<br />
com and you may end up<br />
being featured<br />
on this page<br />
74 worldtravellermagazine.com
Now win!<br />
DIGITAL<br />
BE OUR TRAVEL<br />
COMPANION<br />
Stay up-to-date with all that’s<br />
happening on our social channels<br />
and join in the conversation by<br />
sharing your experiences. Here’s<br />
where you can find us…<br />
@dnataworldtraveller<br />
Double tap our dreamy<br />
destination shots and tag<br />
us in your images for a chance to<br />
feature on our wall.<br />
@worldtravellermagazine<br />
Stay up to date with travel<br />
stories as we post them.<br />
@WT_Magazine<br />
Make the most of your<br />
280-character allowance<br />
by sharing your best travel<br />
moments with us.<br />
#dnataworldtraveller<br />
A two-night stay at Jumeirah Al<br />
Wathba Desert Resort & Spa<br />
Immerse yourself in Emirati tradition in Abu Dhabi’s desert<br />
hinterland at this sprawling 22,000sqm resort. Quintessential<br />
Jumeirah luxury is woven into a desert village aesthetic that<br />
exudes oasis vibes, from its 103 stone-walled rooms and villas<br />
to its destination spa, desert camp dining and backdrop of<br />
towering sand dunes. To find out more and to enter, visit<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com/win (terms & conditions apply).<br />
TRAVEL INSPO AT YOUR FINGERTIPS<br />
Let our travel news and round-ups, available to read on our website,<br />
inspire your next trip…<br />
1The Knowledge.<br />
Read our handy<br />
how-tos, from<br />
getting to grips with<br />
travel insurance to<br />
helping kids beat jet<br />
lag, and more.<br />
2Staycations.<br />
Take a peek<br />
inside these top<br />
hotels and resorts on<br />
your doorstep and<br />
then book your next<br />
mini break!<br />
3Insider Guides.<br />
Check out our<br />
in-the-know<br />
travel edits of some<br />
of the most popular<br />
holiday destinations<br />
on our radar.<br />
worldtravellermagazine.com 75
XXXXXXXXXXXXX<br />
Suite dreams<br />
Our monthly finish with a flourish, delving into a<br />
suite that has a character and style all of its own<br />
Diamond Suite<br />
Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo<br />
Swing open the shutters of this sparkling suite<br />
and drink in the views of Monaco's glamorous<br />
port and the rock. It's one of 12 Pierre-Yves<br />
Rochon designed Diamond Suites at the<br />
famous Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo, which<br />
was built in the early 1900s, and epitomises the<br />
carefree elegance of France’s Belle Époque era.<br />
The 121 square metre abode can accommodate<br />
up to five people, with two bedrooms, a separate<br />
sitting room, and no less than two balconies, so<br />
everyone can enjoy the stunning vista. It's what<br />
Monaco dreams are made of.<br />
76 worldtravellermagazine.com
A Reflection of True<br />
Ramadan Hospitality.<br />
Experience this auspicious occasion at the world’s tallest 5-star hotel<br />
with three delectable Iftar options from sunset until 8.30pm<br />
AL FANOUS LOUNGE AT DUBAI BALLROOM<br />
Iftar buffet, AED 199 per person<br />
AWARD-WINNING KITCHEN6<br />
International Iftar buffet, AED 215 per person<br />
MASALA LIBRARY BY JIGGS KALRA<br />
Unique Indian Iftar set-menu, from AED 195 per person<br />
CORPORATE IFTARS<br />
Available upon request for exclusive hire<br />
and group inquiries of more than 50 people.<br />
For bookings below 50 guests,<br />
call +971.4.414.3000 or<br />
email jwmmrr@marriott.com<br />
For Corporate Iftars above 50 guests,<br />
call +971.4.414.2000 or<br />
email jwmarquis.dubai@marriott.com<br />
Sheikh Zayed Road, Business Bay, PO Box 121000, Dubai, UAE<br />
T + 971 4 414 3000 I jwmarriottmarquisdubailife.com<br />
jwmarriottmarquisdubai I jwdubaimarquis<br />
jwmarriottmarquisdubai I #ramadanwithmarriott