travel: 4 posts

With summer travels winding down, autumn is a good time to turn to travelogues to satisfy one’s wanderlust. I have always been a fan of this genre, being a traveler myself, and recent releases promise to take us to far-flung locations. My favorite travelogues combine explorations of culture with history and provide a way to understand how the past influences the present.

A good traveler arrives at a place without strong preconceived notions and allows it to take them in–or reject them, as sometimes happens. This sensitivity is what distinguishes modern travel writing from classical examples, but all excellent travelogues share the same trait in that they transport the reader to another place. When our world feels narrower due to travel restrictions and cumbersome rules, opening a book is the easiest way to break down walls.

Erica Fatland, The Border: A Journey Around Russia Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and the Northeast Passage.

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Some scents have the flying carpet effect on me. I only need to put a few drops on my skin and I feel that I’m in another place. It might be a place that I visited, but most of the time it’s about a fantasy. In my new FT column, Scents with A Sense of Place, I explore how fragrances can transport us out of our usual routine and take us on a journey. I use the example of several favorite fragrance, including my recent coup de coeur, Chanel Paris-Deauville.

The art of perfumery is about creating illusions. When we explore scents, it’s best to forget about the brand, bottle shape and perfume name, and focus on what the aromas tell us. For one person, Etat Libre d’Orange Jasmin et Cigarette is a smoky jazz club, while for another it’s an Indian temple filled with incense smoke and flower garlands. The only thing that matters is whether a perfume creates a vision one wants to experience again and again. To continue reading, please click here.

What about you? What perfume do you reach for when you wish to satisfy your wanderlust?

The concept that underpins my travel skincare has a clever and original name. It’s called a Giant Ziploc Bag. It looks as glamorous as a giant Ziploc bag can look. I gaze with envy at the cute travel cases real mavens sport (one of whom is my mom), but I remain loyal to my method, because for all of the advances of the beauty industry it hasn’t created a travel case that satisfies all of my needs while not taking up half of suitcase. A Ziploc bag may lose out on charm, but it can’t be rivaled on practicality.

For me the goal of packing for a trip is to ensure that away from home I can find the same comforts. The insouciant advice of beauty magazines to pack the essentials and buy the rest at your destination is fine if you stay at luxury hotels in NYC. I’d love for one of those editors to end up in the Ukrainian countryside, or worse, Paris on a Sunday evening, and try to find a store where a toothbrush can be procured, to say nothing of more involved toiletries. When I speak of comforts, though, I don’t even need a soft bed and functioning plumbing. Those I can do without. What I can’t do without is my sunscreen and a rosewater spray. For all of my idiosyncratic ways, I’m an easy traveler. I just love taking care of my skin. Suffice it to say, if you’re a minimalist and happy just with soap and water, then this post is not for you.

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Do you like staying at hotels? Elisa shares her thoughts.

I have an ex-boyfriend who claimed to enjoy the occasional adversity – a cancelled flight, a blown-out tire. It seemed perverse to me initially, but later I came to understand his way of thinking. He didn’t look at these mishaps as lost time, but rather an opportunity to slip out of time. If you’re stuck somewhere and can’t get to work, no one is to blame; so why not enjoy the escape from obligation, the change of scenery?

I travel semi-frequently for work, and because travel is tiring and stressful, I’ve adopted a version of my ex’s philosophy to make the most of it. I try to embrace the changes in routine for their novelty value, rather than feeling inconvenienced. And the part I look forward to most – even though I’m not on vacation and have minimal time to spend there – is the hotel.

My room on a recent stay at the Ames Hotel in Boston

In the tradition of The Pillow Book, let’s make a list:

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