The sounds of the city entering through the swinging door of the celebrated Ritz London late at night are strangely subdued, muffled under moisture-laden clouds hovering over a slumbering Piccadilly. This elaborate palace with its imposing pink-hued marble pillars standing tall, crystal chandeliers sparkling overhead, and floor-to-ceiling mirrors, is the perfect finale to a dream-filled London evening.
The first thing you notice is the fragrance; where the intoxicating perfume of the tiare flower announces to your senses that you are in a magical place, overflowing with tropical vegetation and soothing trade winds. It is the same fragrance that the English seamen on the HMS Bounty first encountered; but they came not for flowers, but for breadfruit, intended as a new food staple for their African slaves in the West Indies.
Being cooped up in the house these last few months has got me to thinking about a few of my bucket list travel destinations. And as things start to get back to normal I would like to take a close look at one of the places that I definitely want to visit in the next few years.
Over 30 years, Mr. Verdure has built a reputation as the world’s top photographer of cruise ships. When he stepped off the gangplank of the Celebrity Silhouette on March 13, completing his 284th cruise, he found his industry in collapse and himself out of work.
If it weren’t for the potholes, thousands of gaping pits bouncing us on the back seat, I wouldn’t have missed the sign on the tree. But Andrew, our guide on Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, knew everybody. “That’s Dolphin View Cottage and there’s the owner,” he said, waving at a stocky, dark-skinned man in rumpled shorts.
With Canada Day just passing our door, we thought this would be an appropriate time to ask a group of our illustrate Canadian friends, all connected to the world of travel, one questions: Who is their favorite Prime Minister? It proved to be a good pathway for the beginning of dialogue between our nations. As can be expected their answers were both thoughtful and astute.
In Palermo, Arab craftsmen carpeted the Norman palace with glittering mosaics and 18th-century artisan Giacomo Serpotta fashioned fanciful scenes from stucco in chapels around the city. Few interiors in the exotic, enchanting, and at times exasperating capital of Sicily, though, are as enchanting as the stately dining room of the Palazzo Lanza Tomasi.
When you’re self-isolating at home, whiling away the hours scanning the internet for recipes, did you ever stumble across Mexico’s most-watched television show, “Master Chef Mexico?” How about the celebrity chef herself, Betty Vasquez, one of the show’s three judges?
With more than 7,000 islands, the Philippines is customarily known for its tropical climate, beaches, rainforests, islands and dive spots. However there are also wide swaths of mountainous areas waiting to be explored.
At a time when travel has come to a complete standstill, award-winning photographer Dennis Cox releases the perfect anecdote for cruise-starved readers – a luscious, photography-laden look at all aspects of the worldwide cruise phenomena that defined the last decades.
