We didn’t do it on purpose. It was actually quite late in the process of assembling this issue that we realized it contained two stories which, though very different in many ways, were about parents taking their children on important trips. One is Ashlea Halpern’s luminous meditation on the week she spent in Oman with her toddler son amid an epic three-week adventure following her father’s death. The other is my own piece about watching my kids reenact the summer rituals of my childhood on Washington State’s San Juan Islands. Both ultimately come to a conclusion we talk about a lot here: that travel is a gift to be shared and that passing it along enriches the lives of both the recipient and the giver.
This issue also contains the 2024 Hot List, our 28th, a compendium of all the new and reborn hotels, cruises, and restaurants we’ve loved in the last year. It includes places I’ve been fortunate enough to visit already, like the resplendent Carlton Cannes, a Regent Hotel (our cover star), which has been thoroughly transformed and has brought a new golden age to the Boulevard de la Croisette. And it includes many more places that have gone straight onto my bucket list, like Shinta Mani Mustang, the mystical retreat that acclaimed designer Bill Bensley has crafted among the mountains of Nepal. What is the Hot List if not a handbook for giving the gift of travel?
Whoever you share it with—be it a child, a parent, a spouse, a lover, a best friend—remember to be grateful that travel is something that is available to you. Because it truly is a gift, and one not bestowed equally, especially in this moment when freedom is under threat in so many places around the world. We who get to travel, especially to the magical places in these pages, are all so very lucky. Let’s be sure never to forget it.
This article appeared in the May/June 2024 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
