James Bond loves it, Formula 1 loves it, and it just got the coveted No. 1 spot on the New York Times’s “52 Places to Go in 2016” list — it’s official: Mexico City is hot right now.
After years of suffering through a bad reputation — pollution, overcrowding, and crime — the city has pulled itself up by its bootstraps and become a leader in the arts, gastronomy, and cultural excursions. With 150 museums (many of them either free or costing just a few dollars) and four UNESCO sites, Mexico City is a historical culture lover’s dream. Even better, with a strong dollar (the exchange rate is now around 17 pesos to the dollar), it’s more affordable than, say, a jaunt to Europe — or even Los Angeles. And, as of Jan. 1, U.S.-Mexico aviation restrictions, which capped the number of airlines that could fly on the U.S.-Mexico routes, have eased, and carriers like JetBlue are now doing nonstop flights to the capital, making trips easier than ever.
When someone brings up the hottest gourmet, gastronomic foodie scenes in the world, places like Paris, San Francisco, or Madrid come to mind. But ever since Noma, in Copenhagen, was named best restaurant in the world in 2010 (and several times after that), the focus has moved north. And even farther north than Scandinavia is Nuuk, Greenland, which has two world-class gastronome restaurants in a town that has a population of 17,000 people.
There is Nipisa, on the edge of the Labrador Bay, andSarfalik, located in the Hotel Hans Egede — the four-star hotel of Greenland (yes, there is one). The chefs at both are Danish, but Bjorn Johanssen, the chef at Sarfalik, is the new Wylie Dufresne (aka molecular gastronomy genius) of the Arctic.
Luckily, while I was snowed in in Greenland, I stayed at the Hotel Hans Egede and got to eat at Sarfalik several nights, sampling dishes made with local meats.
“In Greenland it’s OK to hunt whale and seal,” Johanssen explained. “We all hunt here, and we use everything on the animal.” The local meat is also cheaper. As expected, not much grows in Greenland, and despite a few greenhouses in the southern part of the country, most fresh vegetables have to be shipped or flown in at considerable cost.
The first of nine courses … it was a long night.
Johanssen has a nine-course tasting menu — which combines Arctic fowl, duck, muskox, lumpfish, lumpfish roe, seal, whale, and whale skin — some served with something called “hot shell foam” yogurt, shaved ice, and frozen berries. Every now and then there will be polar bear meat (you read that right), but “it’s not so tasty,” Johanssen said.
About to dig in to some serious yumminess.
Final verdict: Seal, meh. Whale — tasty! Whale skin: tough and gummy. Muskox: delicious — like lamb and beef, but better! If you get the chance, eat it. Greenland, the cuisine capital? Who knew?
Hundreds of years ago, nomadic tribes roamed the Arabian and Syrian deserts. Living in tents and traveling on camels, they were the merchants of the desert — operating trade routes and bartering livestock. Over the years, they converted to Islam, and some settled down into villages, and nowadays most carry cellphones; but in one corner of the Dana Nature Reserve in the southern Jordanian desert, not much else has changed except the transportation.
Little has changed for the Jordanian Bedouin in centuries.
Suleiman Hassasseen, 26, helps run the the Feynan Eco Lodge, a fully sustainable hotel in the Dana Reserve that uses solar power, solar heating, and composting to reduce its environmental impact. While he and his family cater to foreigners who come for the nearby 12,000-year-old archaeology sites or the nature hikes, Suleiman still lives much as his ancestors did at the turn of the last century.
About a mile from the lodge is Suleiman’s (main) family tent, woven by his mother and composed of woolen blankets and plastic sheeting, and another smaller tent, which houses his father’s second wife. Surrounding the tents are pens for the goats and sheep, which Suleiman and his family herd into the nearby mountains daily, and two pickup trucks — the only concession to modernism.
“We move twice a year with the seasons,” Suleiman said. “In the summer we go to the shade of the mountains, and in the winter we move out of the wind.”
It’s not easy to introduce the king of restaurants, chef Eric Ripert, to a Puerto Rico seafood shack he’s never heard of. The restauranteur and host of the Cooking Channel show “Avec Eric” is married to a Puerto Rican (my pal Sondra) and has visited the island at least three times a year for the past 20 years. But I did it. (!!)
Eric was shooting his show in Puerto Rico and called to see if I wanted to come down and learn to surf. Obviously, I said (HECK) yes.
We met up at his hotel, the Condado Vanderbilt (as opposed to my hotel — the Courtyard Marriott), and when I found out he hadn’t been to my favorite food shack, Tresbe, I was shocked. Floored, even.
*Weird editor’s note: There are times in traveling when you think no one is around. Someone asks you to do something like, say, sing on top of a piano in a bar and you think, “Why not? I’ll never see any of these people again?” And then you… do. I hadn’t seen Eric in a while — but he’d seen me. A few years back, while in Hanoi, Vietnam, I’d been invited out by a couple communist officials who wanted to play a joke on the American — by taking me to lunch where only hard alcohol was served and instead of water there was beer. Little did they know I was raised on and below the Mason Dixon Line. Six hours later, not unlike that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” they were on the floor and I was at the bar of the Sofiftel Metropole Hotel belting out show tunes. Apparently, Eric was shooting a show there at the time, was walking through and …
“Hey, I saw you!” he said. “I was so dirty — I had been out in the fields all day so I thought, ‘I will go change and come down, but then I fell asleep. You were having so much fun and entertaining the room.’”
I’ll admit it: I was a little late to the Puerto Rico game. Thankfully, due to Snowmageddon this year, I finally cottoned on to our cousin in the Caribbean. Now that I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, I’m bound and determined to get everyone there — if only so that when people ask me, “Where should I go for a quick, easy, cheap getaway?” (this happens all the time) I can point them to this article.
Here are five reasons you really should go now.
1. It’s cheap and easy.
Most major airlines fly there, including JetBlue, and the price of a ticket can be up to $200 cheaper than a flight to Miami. Bonus: If you live on the East Coast, it’s quick. From JFK airport, for example, it’s only three and a half hours to San Juan, which is just slightly longer than a flight to Miami.
The hotels in San Juan are some of the chicest I’ve ever seen. Jennifer Lopez stayed at Hotel El Convento — the Chateau Marmont of the Caribbean, located in the heart of the Old City — which has weekend rates starting at less than $500 a night. If you want to bump up the price a bit, check out theCondado Vanderbilt. The recently refurbished hotel was built in 1912 by Frederick William Vanderbilt in a Spanish revival style, and has been the height of luxury ever since. Rates start at around $300 a night — expensive, but still a fraction of the cost of a luxury hotel in Miami.
3. History, history, history!
While the beach is nice, it’s even nicer that if you need a break, there’s actually something else to do. Puerto Rico’s forts and cathedrals date back to the 16th century, when Spain ruled the island.
Just a few hours away from New York City is a history lover’s dream: Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Founded by the Spanish over 500 years ago, it’s a perfectly preserved time portal. Walk around Castillo San Felipe del Morro, the ancient Spanish fort that surrounds the old city. Inside the walls, ramble through narrow cobblestone streets and past the cathedral (where Jennifer Lopez married Marc Anthony) and pick up a piragua — a Puerto Rican snow cone that comes in flavors like passion fruit, mango, and tangerine.
Half the price of Miami and without the club music booming through the streets, Old San Juan is the perfect place to get away from it all — no passport required.
Just watch out for the pigeons. One of the most popular spots in the old city is Plaza de Armas, located up the hill from where the cruise ships park, it is the main point of entry to the old city for many tourists. It is also a pigeon mecca. Thousands of the birds flock there and, despite Puerto Rico having a large cat population, they waddle, sit, and roost unmolested. This would be fine if they also hadn’t gotten into the habit of hanging out, sitting and roosting on people. On any given day, tourists will throw breadcrumbs and turn into living pigeon trees. This is problematic for so, so many reasons, least of which is THEY ARE BASICALLY FLYING RATS! Do you know how many diseased pigeons carry? (answer: LOTS!). That and they have no sphincter muscles so the poop just flies at will. Enter that park at your own risk.
Old San Juan has absolutely everything you need for the perfect getaway. (Photo: ABA Staff)
Here’s everything you need to know to do the city properly.
Warning: From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., the cruise ships hit and certain areas of the old city are packed with cruisers. Hit the shops before or after this time to avoid a massive headache.
Stay:Hotel El Convento, the Chateau Marmont of the Caribbean. Housed in a former convent, the rooms surround an inner terrace with huge trees. The rooftop pool offers some of the best views in the city, and the restaurant is legendary.
Shop: Ole Curiosidades. This famous hat store lets you get measured, pick your ribbon color, and walk out with a personally fitted, handmade Panama-style hat for around $70 — three times less than almost anywhere else in the world.
In every life there are pivotal “Sliding Doors”situations, where things would be very different if another path had been taken. I’ve had several of these, but the first one happened when I was very little in Leeds, England.
My father was getting his PhD at the university there, and my mother was teaching locally. My sister and I were both born there, and we lived in a quintessential Yorkshire home — dark, coal-stained stone; long, thin windows; and a door my mother painted bright red. It was a good time for our family. My mother would push me in a pram to the to fish and chips shop on the corner — now called the Fishermans Wife — every time she didn’t want to cook or do dishes (read: every other day), and by all accounts we were a happy little family.
Then my dad’s thesis was accepted and he got his degree, along with two job offers: one from the University of Leeds … and another from Riyadh University in Saudi Arabia.
Had he chosen the job in Leeds, I most likely would have grown up with a British accent in that very house, and my entire life would have been very different. As it was, we moved to Saudi Arabia — and very quickly back to the United States, where I grew up in Cincinnati. My parents divorced.
Visiting the old Leeds house (Andrew Rothschild)
But Leeds and that home have always loomed large in my family’s history. So when I went to England last month, I wanted to see the house, and the couple living there now were kind enough to let me in.
It was an emotional full-circle trip: seeing where I was born, where I could have grown up, where my family would have been a unit. It was like an alternate, bizarro universe.
Afterward, I stopped at the Fisherman’s Wife — and mom was right. It is the best, lightest fish and chips ever (despite the fact that I will never be a mushy peas girl). If you’re ever in Leeds, stop by.
Rule No. 1 about eating while traveling is: If you want to eat well on the road, go where the locals go. And here’s another tip: Locals don’t spend $120 a pop at breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Especially in Miami.
The thing about Miami is that it’s the home of South Beach, bikinis, and sky-high restaurant prices. But you don’t need to drop serious cash for amazing food. Check out the video above — I challenge you to not salivate! — and then check out the restaurants. Your taste buds will thank me. Trust!
There was so much good stuff on the menu, I couldn’t order just one sandwich… And yes, i ate it all. Photo: Andrew Rothschild.
