Clockwise from left to right, Fairmont Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Hamburg: TWA Hotel; Warsaw; St Andrews; Provincetown.
EDITOR’S LETTER
W
ho would have thought, thirty odd years ago, that the wasteland surrounding the now defunct Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant would become a tourist destination? As well as attracting inquisitive visitors, Chernobyl recently announced that it would begin producing its own Atomik vodka, made from crops grown in the exclusion zone. I’ve no doubt it will be priced as a premium product and quickly become a best seller, if only for its novelty value. Herein lies one of the reasons I am so fascinated by travel, increasingly so as I visit new places, meet new people and discover new and incredible sights: the travel landscape is constantly evolving to feed the curiosities of an increasingly well-travelled population. There has never been a better time to adventure to that country you’ve always wanted to explore, or plan a trip to that faraway island so-and-so told you about, not least because something new and fascinating is always just around the corner.
In this, the fifth anniversary edition of The Cultured Traveller, we endeavour to reveal the extent of our ever-expanding travel canvas, journeying from Provincetown in the States via Chernobyl in Eastern Europe to Hambantota in Asia. Along the way, we chat with British fashion designer Julien Macdonald and superstar French DJ David Guetta, roadtest restaurants in Miami and New York, and feature a space-age hotel on Bolivia’s salt flats and a new Parisian property situated within the 1300s buildings of the Marais.
8 The Cultured Traveller Sep-Nov 2019
We step back into travel’s golden age at Eero Saarinen’s retro-chic TWA Hotel at JFK airport (page104) and explore the cobbled streets of St. Andrews, one of Scotland’s oldest towns (page122). Joe Mortimer uncovers the cultured heart of 21st century Warsaw as the reinvigorated city rises again (page44), while I tread in the footsteps of some of the world’s richest 20th century shipping magnates at one of Germany’s most historic hotels (page94). Every issue of a global travel magazine should be a celebration of all the incredible places to see around the world, but a birthday edition demands even more. I hope you enjoy taking this epic journey with us and I thank all readers of The Cultured Traveller for your loyal support during the past five years. Here’s to many more years dedicated to uncovering the places, people and destinations that make this planet so extraordinary.
Nicholas Chrisostomou Editor-in-Chief