Collections
Places grouped by the argument locals have about them. Any card can be in any collection — a country, a street, a hatch in a wall.
Bathing in Borrowed Time
Ten places where people have been soaking, scrubbing or just standing in the ruins for centuries — two of them since before the word "hotel" existed.
The Best Bars and Cafés Where Writers Drank
Eleven rooms with a literary past — Pessoa in bronze outside his Lisbon café, Dylan Thomas's New York bar, Borges in a Buenos Aires basement, and the London pub that invented its Samuel Johnson.
The Best Cities for Winter Sun
Ten places at their best between November and March, none of them a beach resort — and one at the bottom of the world where December is summer.
The Best Hotels That Used to Be Something Else
Ten places to sleep in buildings built for another life — cave houses in Cappadocia, a Moorish fortress above Carmona, a Kanazawa merchant's townhouse and three Washington rowhouses knocked into one.
The Best Places That Do Just One Dish
Ten kitchens built around a single thing — bún chả in Hanoi, boat noodles by an Ayutthaya canal, birria from one enormous pot — and the two cities that argue about okonomiyaki.
The Best Places to Ring In the New Year
Eight places in the order midnight reaches them — 108 strikes of a temple bell in Kyoto, twelve grapes in Madrid, a river of torches in Edinburgh, and the ball in Times Square.
The Best Places on the Water's Edge
Ten tables and rooms right on the water — a Thames veranda, a sultan's palace on the Bosphorus, a fishermen's hut on a Dubai beach and cabins on a Norwegian fjord.
The Best Places to See Krampus
Seven Alpine towns where horned Krampus and Perchten run the streets in late November and early December — including Austria's smallest town, which drums on petrol tanks.
The Best Places to Spend Christmas
Ten places that do Christmas their own way — a peace declared from a balcony since the Middle Ages, radishes carved into nativity scenes, and fried chicken booked weeks ahead in Tokyo.
The Best Rooftops and Terraces With a View
Ten places to sit above it all — candlelit medina roofs in Fes and Marrakech, a rooftop pool over the Danube, and breakfast looking across Cappadocia's Pigeon Valley.
The Best Walled Towns and Cities
Ten places still inside their walls — the only fortified city north of Mexico, Marrakech's 12th-century red ramparts, and a Greek village whose houses are the wall.
The Ruin Bars of Budapest
Nine bars built out of Budapest's condemned buildings — the two everyone knows, and seven most people miss.
Halloween, Locally Observed
Eleven cities where the end of October is a real local custom rather than an imported one — a fire festival on Calton Hill, a cemetery vigil that runs all night, and ossuaries in Naples, Palermo and Paris you can walk through any week of the year.
London's Oldest Pubs, Actually Dated
Ten old London pubs with the date on the sign checked against the building behind it — one Grade I coaching inn, one invented 1520, and the city's most repeated pub legend traced to a dinner in 1892.
Palaces You Can Actually Sleep In
Fourteen former royal palaces, ducal homes and state residences across nine countries that now rent out their own bedrooms — Alhambra walls and an Ottoman prison included.
Secluded by Design
A sphere in a rainforest canopy, a dome on the Patagonian steppe — remote wasn't an accident at any of these ten.
Ski the Alps Without the Queue
Ten Alpine resorts across four countries — a car-free shelf under the Eiger, nine villages on one pass, two glaciers for the bad snow years.
Still Standing After a Century
Ten kitchens and bars that have been open, under the same name, for over a hundred years — the oldest since 1465.
Where Bourdain Ate
Ten restaurants Anthony Bourdain enjoyed.