Wanderlust: The 15 Best Travel Stories from City AM in 2023
Whether ten minutes down the road or a day’s flight across the world, travel bonds us. As well as giving us brilliant experience, it helps us discover ourselves in new and deeper ways.
City A.M. publishes our travel section every Monday in our newspaper and regularly online. To celebrate our editorial output this year we’ve chosen 15 travel stories that really resonated with us.
It’s been fun to remember these trips and we hope you find some inspiration for your next adventure.
1) A staycation at the Old War Office – read the story here
How about laying your head where Churchill tapped his cigar? The Old War Office is the first Raffles hotel in London, but that is certainly the building’s least-interesting claim: open for the first time in over 100 years, this hotel has refashioned the actual old war office, where Churchill decided to send Britain to war. Luxury hotels can’t often claim these sorts of incredible spaces, and this build, at a cost of over one billion pounds, was contentious. But this property is a miraculous feat, certainly the most significant hotel opening of the decade and an opportunity to literally live history.
2) London to Italy in a day by train – read the story here
Train travel is all the rage, with more and more of us choosing against flight to minimise our eco footprint. But that’s the worthy stuff: the other reality of train travel is that it’s more relaxed, and much more fun. This story takes a look at how easy it is to reach Italy from London in a day (with lunch in Paris along the way.) Breakfast in St Pancreas and pizza for dinner in an Italian piazza, sign us up. We went with Byway, the rail providers who put together itineraries to help Brits properly take in countries they pass through by rail, making the journey the destination. We don’t often plug brands, but Byway, we’re happy to shout about.
3) A penis pilgrimage in Bhutan – read the story here
Readers couldn’t click fast enough on the headline for this Bhutan story, about the country’s cultish interest in the male form. Daniel Edward went to Bhutan to go hiking, but ended up being tickled by many phalluses. Not physically (well he didn’t put that in the article at least) but by their appearance on the edges of so many private homes. The penis is an iconic symbol of fertility in Bhutan, and people pilgrimage to the nation when they are having fertility troubles. The Fertility Temple of the Divine Madman is where they go to see a monk who performs a fertility ritual by strapping a sculpture of a penis to a woman and parading her around. We won’t ruin the rest though, go get reading.
4) Getting away from it all in Abu Dhabi – read the story here
Pilgrimages have risen hugely in popularity, and this piece by Matt Hardy about having a profound experience in the Abu Dhabi desert is a touching example of the trend. He had visited the Middle East for the Formula 1, but ended up finding his desert camping experience surprisingly reflective. Desert camping itself – but done well, with posh tents – is another exciting new trend to help us get away from the endless distractions of modern life.
5) A weekend away in a classic car – read the story here
There’s nothing more fabulous than a weekend away in the country, à la Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy, and this piece about a rollicking weekend in Suffolk with a vintage car to boot is simply a joy. The Montagu Arms will continue their vintage car packages next year, allowing Londoners the opportunity to make like a mid-century film star in a retro Mustang.
6) Skiing with a Meribel legend – read the story here
“We played a game of lose the security detail,” said our ski instructor in Meribel. He was remembering when he took Sophie Wessex out during one royal visit to this luxury French ski town. Meribel is worth visiting for all the obvious reasons: it has some of the most handsome slopes in the Alps. But this piece tells you how to book a guide from a legendary local family who helped set up Meribel skiing over a hundred years ago.
7) Town and country in Scotland – read the story here
We particularly enjoy first-person stories from our writers that speak about how going places adds something new to one of their personal relationships. Justine Gosling took her dad to Scotland to the Highlands, and to visit the new Gleneagles Townhouse in Edinburgh for a good dose of city and country. It bought them closer together than ever before.
8) Going old school in Las Vegas – read the story here
Las Vegas is full of shiny new hotels, so it’s a wonderful novelty to stay in the city’s only remaining 1940s-era motel. The El Cortez in Downtown still has its beautiful tiled stone floor with 1941 splashed across it in italics, but treat yourself and book the Jackie Gaughan Suite for the room Adam Bloodworth called the most spectacular he’s ever stayed in. With seven balconies and all its original 1980s fittings like old dishwasher and fridge, you are inhabiting the original private home of Vegas Kingpin Jackie Gaughan – and you you can truly feel his presence through all his old glasses, mugs and trinkets laying around. With fantastic Strip views and an incredible 1980s bubble bath, this is truly the Vegas room to book.
9) Visiting Auschwitz with Holocaust survivors – read the story here
Daniel Edward took a break from writing about penises to do something altogether more serious. Once a year you can visit Auschwitz with survivors – children who grew up in the concentration camps during the war. He found it a hugely powerful experience, and as these survivors reach their nineties, time is running out to book this profound, but only once-annual, trip down memory lane.
10) A night in the English woodlands – read the story here
More and more of us are desperate to switch off from ordinary life – to get away from our phones and other distractions. A whole series of remote cabins around the UK are exploiting this trend by offering accommodation in far-flung places that replace WiFi with wildlife. These nicely designed pods have floor-to-ceiling windows so you can just lay on the bed and watch animals wander past. Bliss.
11) Can the Maldives cure me? – read the story here
Damien Gabet didn’t believe this Maldivian hotel’s wellness shtick was anything beyond marketing fluff – but then he was carried around topless like a prince and changed his mind. In a (literal) sea of luxury hotels, how can Maldives properties stand out? This hotel offering a full health M.O.T certainly goes beyond the classic lazing around looking at sharks and rays as they swim beneath your hammock. (Although that does sound lovely.)
12) Bear watching without the bears – read the story here
Italy has a small but (thankfully) growing population of brown bears. New wildlife corridors are providing the animals the opportunity to mate, and bear tourism is growing. Adam Bloodworth went to the Abruzzo National Park to trek through the forests to try to catch a glimpse of the animals, but got no luck. But seeing no bears was better, he argued, because the simple act of sitting and being mindful in the countryside was so profound.
13) Lording it up in Monaco – read the story here
Sometimes you just need all-out luxury, and Nicole Trilivas is our writer who understands that brief the best. She touched down in Monaco to do a sweep of all the fabulous new openings for 2023, and found that, unsurprisingly, Monaco is an absolute riot. Blow your bank account on expensive cocktails and lay on some exquisitely upholstered sun loungers. Monaco is waiting.
14) Turkey is the gift that keeps on giving – read the story here
Turkey has always been a steal, a great place to find five-star luxury for a smidge of the price. But much of it remains lesser-known. Angelina Villa-Clarke travelled to the country’s south-west coastline to find where Turks go on holiday: lovely restaurants, perfect beaches and wonderful hotels for a fraction of what you’d pay in more popular destinations like Greece and Italy. So much is still undiscovered.
15) Dining underground in France – read the story here
More sustainable rail travel, the northern French city of Arras is both lesser-known and absolutely worth knowing. Limestone tunnels under the town’s chocolate-box-pretty historic squares were used in World War I to house soldiers, but these days private groups can book a posh dinner down here with local beer pairings. (Beer, not wine, in this part of the country. It’s humid but uniquely brilliant.) Also in town is a newly reimagined WWI audio-visual exhibition in the Wellington Tunnels. War exhibitions too often feel staid, but this one, with projections of rifle-clad men as they run to their deaths on the battlefield of Arras, feels so affecting that it makes whole tour groups cry. Technology properly brings these men back to life.
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