I almost didn’t write this.

Not because the ideas aren’t clear to me, they have been forming for years. Sharpened by every border crossing, every meal eaten in a language I didn’t speak, every moment I sat across from someone whose life looked nothing like mine and felt the particular humility of realizing I have been wrong about something without ever knowing I believed it.

I almost didn’t write it because I’ve started it before. Every attempt ended before it began. Not from fear of criticism, but from something harder to name. A deep awareness that what I think and feel today may not be what I believe tomorrow. That my opinions evolve, my perspectives shift, and the more I see of the world, the less certain I become about the things I once held as fixed.

In a world drowning in opinions presented as facts, I needed to figure out how to share my experiences honestly. Not as truth. Not as authority. But as a snapshot. A glimpse into how I see things at this particular moment, from this particular vantage point.

That’s all any of us can offer, really.

We spend a lot of time in travel content talking about where to go, what to eat, which hotel has the best infinity pool. We talk almost never about what travel actually does to a person when it’s working the way it’s supposed to.

Perspective is something we talk about far too little. We treat it as a destination, something you either have or you don’t. But it’s not. It’s a practice. It’s the ongoing sometimes uncomfortable work of holding your own experience lightly enough to let someone else’s land.

I’ve been moving through places that look nothing like where I grew up for two decades now. Markets in Marrakech, local artisans in Indonesia, sailing the Adriatic, and a hundred small moments in between. Each of those experiences did something to the edges of what I thought I knew. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Quietly, incrementally, the way water reshapes stone, so slowly you don’t notice until you look back and realize the shape has changed entirely.

That is what travel does when you when you lead with curiosity rather than a checklist. Let it.

Here is something I have come to believe completely:

Take a group of people from different backgrounds, different socioeconomic realities, different cultures. Put them in the same room, for the same amount of time, talking to the same people, eating the same food, hearing the same music. Every single one of them will walk away with a different experience.

None of them are right. None of them are wrong.

Each has drawn their understanding from everything they know – and everything they don’t. Their history, their fears, their reference points, the stories they were told growing up about places and people that looked like what they are now standing in front of. All of it filters the same moment into something entirely their own.

I find this endlessly fascinating and also frustrating. What if, instead of judging the distance between those perspectives, we got curious about it? What if we asked why someone’s experience of the same moment was so different from our own, and actually listened to the answer?

That question is at the heart of everything I want to do here.

I work in the hospitality industry. I have for twenty years. I know what a good thread count feels like, and I know which properties deliver on their promise and which ones are selling a fantasy. I am not naïve about the role that access and privilege play in the kind of travel I write about.

But I’ve come to believe that real luxury, the kind that stays with you, the kind that changes something, isn’t a thread count. It’s having your assumptions quietly dismantled by a place you didn’t expect to move you, and the people you didn’t arrange to meet.

The most luxurious moments of my traveling life have not been the finest hotels, though some of those have been extraordinary. They have been the unexpected ones. The afternoon on Nusa Penida when our boat broke down and we stumbled into a small dive resort and spent three hours talking to a server who was saving money to leave the island for the first time at thirty years old. The call to prayer echoing through the medina in Marrakech at sundown as the city became still. The dinner on a remote Croatian island where a kind couple fed us their fresh catch of the day and poured wine they had made themselves, the kind of evening that only happens when you stop looking for it.

Those moments cost nothing extra. They required only the willingness to be present to something outside the itinerary.

Why this matters right now? I am not a political writer, and I don’t intend to ever become one. But I would be dishonest if I didn’t acknowledge that the reason I feel the urgency about this particular project, at this particular moment, is that the world feels less curious about itself than it did even ten years ago.

Fear of the unfamiliar is not new. But it has found a new amplification. And I watch it produce what you would expect – resentment, suspicion, the hardening of positions to what people want them to be. Anger directed at people and places that, if you actually went there, actually sat with someone, actually ate the food and heard the music and watched how people move through their days, you would likely find almost impossible to hate.

I’ve come to believe that the more the world genuinely understands one another – not tolerates, not coexist with, but truly understands - the greater the chance that compassion crowds out ignorance. That’s not a naïve idea. It’s actually the only one that makes sense to me after moving through places that look nothing like where I grew up.

Travel is not the only path to that understanding. But it is one of the most effective ones available to those of us lucky enough to have access to it. That luck comes with a responsibility to pay attention and to share what I notice.

I am not an expert. I am flawed in more ways than I’d care to list. I have a raw sense of humor and an adventurous spirit that some people find refreshing, and others find to be a lot, and I’ve made peace with both.

I’ve been lucky enough to travel extensively, to sit at tables I have never expected to sit at, to hear stories I never would have encountered had I stayed within the comfortable radius of what I already knew. I’ve also been wrong about places before I arrived and had to quietly revise everything I thought I knew once I got there. That process of revision is not embarrassing to me, it is the whole point.

What I think and feel today may not be what I believe tomorrow. My opinions evolve, my perspectives shift, and the more I see of the world, the less certain I become about the things I once knew. I write from this vantage point, at this particular moment, with everything I currently know and all the things I don’t yet.

The question is whether we’re willing to keep showing up anyway – to the unfamiliar place, the uncomfortable conversation, the moment that asks us to hold our own experience lightly enough to let someone else’s land.

I am. That’s why I’m here.

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If this resonates, please subscribe and join our community. If you have a moment where travel rearranged something you thought you knew, I'd genuinely like to hear about it in the comments.

We were the second kind.

My husband and I needed to escape. Not in the aspirational sense, but in the actual, urgent, the-cold-is-winning sense. We flew Chicago to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Bali, and by the time we arrived at Alila Villas Uluwatu, we had been traveling long enough that the first glimpse of the Indian Ocean through the villa’s open walls felt less like arrival and more like permission. Permission to stop moving. Permission to exhale.

We took it.

Alila Villas Uluwatu | The Art of the Exhale

The resort is perched on the southern cliffs of the Bukit Peninsula, and it earns every superlative that has ever been written about it — not because of the infinity pools or the private villas or the butlers, though all of those things are real and excellent. It earns them because of something harder to articulate. The place has a particular intelligence about what you actually need, as opposed to what you think you came for.

What I came for was rest and sunshine. What I got was a 7am cliffside yoga class that I attended every morning, looking out at an ocean that had no visible end, my body moving through postures while the sun came up over the water. I never set an alarm. I just woke up wanting to go.

Breakfast followed - not a quick breakfast, a two-hour meditative breakfast, the kind where the food keeps arriving in small beautiful portions and you keep saying you’re done and then you’re not. Our villa had a private pool and a view that made sitting still feel like an achievement. Monkeys watched from the trees with the calm authority of creatures who knew the property better than we did.

Bali has become expert at exactly two things: wellness and partying. The island has decided there is no contradiction between those two pursuits, and once you understand that, the rhythm of a day here makes complete sense. Yoga at dawn. Long breakfast. Afternoon nap by the pool. And then, if you want it, world-class nightlife directly next door.

Savaya Bali Beach Club sits adjacent to the Alila property on the clifftop above the Indian Ocean, and we were there on a night when John Summit was headlining. We danced until it was no longer night. We met couples from Australia, Dubai, Shanghai, Toronto, Spain — everyone moving to the same music, sharing the same loosened feeling that happens when you’re far from home and the night is warm and the music is right. The resort sent a golf cart to collect us when it was over, which is the kind of detail that distinguishes genuinely thoughtful hospitality from the kind that is merely expensive. I am still not entirely certain how I made the yoga class the next morning.

Uluwatu | The Western Cliff Does Not Sleep

The western edge of Uluwatu has figured something out. The cliffs are dramatic, the surf is world-class, and somewhere along the way the people who built venues up here realized that if you combine all of that with good music and cold drinks, nobody is going to leave. They were right.

El Kabron is perched directly above the break with an infinity pool that puts you eye-level with the horizon and the surfers below. We spent an afternoon on a daybed there and I will be straightforward about what that afternoon was: drinks, sun, house music at a volume that makes conversation optional, and some of the most attractive, unpretentious people I have encountered at any beach club anywhere. Nobody was performing. Everyone was just genuinely having a good time, which turns out to be far more rare than it sounds. The crowd was international — Europeans, Australians, a contingent of people who clearly came to Bali specifically for this corner of it — and the collective energy was relaxed in that particular way that only happens when the setting is doing most of the heavy lifting.

Single Fin is the other institution on this side of the island and it has a different personality — louder, more electric, built for the kind of evening that accelerates as the sun goes down. We were there for sunset. The DJ waited until the light dropped and then turned it up, which was exactly the right vibe. The crowd was packed onto the terrace above Impossibles Beach, everyone facing west, and when the music found its second gear the whole place shifted with it. It is the kind of night that is very difficult to leave early and unwise to try.

The western cliffs of Uluwatu are not a quiet discovery. They are a full send. Go knowing that.

Nusa Penida | The Day Trip That Went Completely Wrong and Perfectly Right

I should have known something was off when I saw the boat.

The plan had been elegant in concept: a private boat to Nusa Penida for scuba diving at Manta Point, some fishing around the island, the kind of day that sounds appropriately adventurous without actually being dangerous. I am a highly skilled, deeply experienced diver. I was not concerned. I should note that this excursion was not arranged through Alila Villas — I booked it independently, which I mention because I vet every recommendation I share and this one did not pass that test. Consider this the cautionary version.

The boat looked like something that had been found in the corner of a junkyard and convinced, against its better judgment, to go back to sea. In hindsight, the correct move was to say something at the dock. We did not say anything at the dock. We set sail on the 29-kilometer crossing to Nusa Penida with the optimism of people who have not yet fully assessed the situation.

The boat broke down four times. In the middle of the open ocean. We arrived three hours later.

At Manta Point, I looked at the 50 dive boats crowded into the small bay, several of them moving dangerously close to or directly over the dive flags, and I made a decision with both my conscience and my survival instincts. I was not going in. The visibility was poor, the boat traffic was reckless, and there is a version of protecting marine life that starts with not participating in the thing that is harming it. We turned around — slowly, on one of three functioning engines — and motored into the harbor.

We thanked the captain sincerely, wished him a genuine safe journey home, and got into the dinghy. We were not getting back on that boat.

Standing on the shore of Nusa Penida with a small day bag and a phone, we had two objectives. Find wine. Find food. In that order, as quickly as possible.

What we found instead was Mambo Dive Resort — a small, quiet, entirely unpretentious place with maybe eight rooms, all occupied by actual divers who were arriving from or departing for the water. Nobody there was on a day trip. We were clearly anomalies. The staff greeted us with the particular warm puzzlement reserved for guests who have arrived by unconventional means and ordered wine before noon.

We stayed for hours.

The food was local and simple and exactly what we needed. The wine was fine. The conversation with the staff was the kind that stays with you. Our server was about 30 years old. She was working to save enough money to leave Nusa Penida and go to Bali, to find a better job to support her family. The island we had taken a casual day trip to was the island she had never left. The contrast settled in quietly over lunch and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

When we finally decided we should probably find a way back to Bali, the resort host walked across the street and returned with his cousin, who owned a car and was definitely more relaxed than the situation required. Regardless, he drove us to the marina with the cheerful energy of someone doing a genuine favor, which is exactly what it was. We caught the ferry. We were back at Alila by sunset.

Not the day we had planned. Absolutely the day we needed and won’t soon forget.

Ubud | Honest Notes from Someone Who Went Anyway

We did the Ubud day trip. We drove through the rice terraces. We stopped at the Monkey Forest because we were passing it and it seemed wrong not to. We saw the coffee plantation.

I will be honest with you: the tourism has taken a significant toll on the authenticity of that particular circuit. The “local experiences” in the most visited parts of Ubud are packaged now in a way that makes them feel less like discovery and more like confirmation of something you already saw on Pinterest. If you’re going expecting raw, quiet Bali, the main tourist track around Ubud will disappoint you.

But here is what I will also tell you: between those places, along the roads that connect them, there are small local shops that have nothing to do with what anyone came to see. Unremarkable storefronts with handmade things inside them.

In one of those shops, I found a knit top that was clearly handmade — imperfect loops, small irregularities in the weave, the evidence of human hands visible in every row. The shop owner made it herself. I bought it without negotiating the price. I proudly wore it to a music festival the next night.

Day Zero Bali | When the Island Stays Up Late

Our last night in Bali was Day Zero, one of the island’s premier electronic music festivals, held at GWK Cultural Park in the shadow of the largest statue in Indonesia — a towering Garuda Wisnu Kencana that watches over the southern peninsula with the calm authority of something that has seen many seasons of music lovers below it. We danced until we couldn’t. We were surrounded by people from everywhere, all of them giving themselves over to the same thing at the same time. There is a particular kind of euphoria available only in those moments — the ones where you realize that the person next to you came from somewhere entirely different to end up in exactly the same place.

What I Know Now

Next time I go to Bali — and there will be a next time — I will stay longer. I will rent a local villa. I will skip the must-sees and go looking for the things that aren’t on any list.

What I will not skip: Uluwatu. The cliffside yoga. The long breakfasts. An evening at Savaya when the music is right. And Alila Villas, which gave us hospitality so genuine it recalibrated what I thought that word meant — and I have spent twenty years in this industry knowing exactly what it can and cannot be.

Bali doesn’t care what you expected. It gives you what you needed instead. Sometimes those things are the same. Sometimes you end up on a broken boat in the Indian Ocean and find the best afternoon of the trip on the other side of it.

That’s the island. That’s the point.

And in the words of John Summit, live from his Savaya Bali set — I wanna go back, I wanna go back, I wanna go back.

[video below]

Visited: April 2026. Stayed at: Alila Villas Uluwatu, Uluwatu, Bali. Don’t miss: Savaya Beach Club, the local shops between tourist corridors, Uluwatu’s Western Cliffs. Next time: longer, slower.

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I spent two weeks moving along the Côte d’Azur in June, from the quiet peninsula of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat to the beach clubs of St. Tropez and Cannes, with three days in a Provence vineyard in between that recalibrated everything. What I found was a place operating at two completely different speeds simultaneously, and the discovery that you need both to understand it.

Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat | Barefoot Luxury

I expected Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat to announce itself. Ultra-wealthy, ultra-polished, the kind of place that knows exactly what it is and performs accordingly.

What I found instead was something quieter and more confident than that. Yes, the villas are extraordinary and the cars parked along the narrow streets cost more than most apartments. But the peninsula itself is surprisingly unhurried, surprisingly un-crowded, and entirely without the self-consciousness you find further along the coast. It is luxury that has nothing left to prove.

Paloma Beach Club sits tucked into a bay on the peninsula, accessible only on foot, no valet, no grand arrival. Tan loungers sit close to the sand rather than elevated on platforms designed to be photographed. The restaurant is elegant without being intimidating. The whole place operates on what I can only describe as barefoot luxury, the most refined version of completely relaxed. It is the kind of place where the absence of pretension feels like its own form of extravagance.

From Paloma we walked the path that circles the tip of the peninsula, one of the most quietly beautiful walks on the entire Riviera. The views across to Beaulieu-sur-Mer open up without warning, a sweep of coastline and Mediterranean blue that stops you completely and makes the effort of finding this place feel entirely worth it.

Eze Village | Magic in the Overcast Morning

The correct time to visit Eze is early, before the tour buses arrive, on a day when the clouds are low over the valley.

We were almost alone in the Jardin Exotique that morning. The mist sat in the Nice valley below us and the light was soft and strange, the kind that makes colors more saturated rather than less. The winding medieval streets to the top are lined with wildflowers growing directly from the ancient brick walls — not planted, not tended, just stubbornly beautiful in the way that things are when nobody is trying. At the summit the entire arc of the Côte d’Azur stretches out below you and the clouds make it look painted rather than real.

If you see Eze on a clear summer afternoon in August surrounded by other tourists it is still worth visiting. If you see it the way we did — quiet, misty, almost private — it becomes something you will try to explain for years.

Le Plongeoir Nice | The Bar Built on a Rock

After Paloma the sun dropped behind the hill earlier than expected, so we made our way to Nice and arrived at Le Plongeoir just in time.

Without a reservation the only way in is through the bar and lounge, which is exactly where you want to be anyway. Le Plongeoir is built on a rock pillar jutting into the Mediterranean — originally a diving platform in the 1930s, now one of the most dramatically situated restaurants on the French Riviera. We sat on the patio with cocktails above the water and watched the boats come back into the harbor as the light went gold behind the city. It is not the kind of place you linger for hours. It is the kind of place you arrive at exactly the right moment and let it be exactly what it is.

St. Tropez | Where the Party Has a Schedule

Getting to St. Tropez by car is its own adventure - small winding mountain roads that descend suddenly to the coast, the kind of drive that makes you understand immediately why the seriously wealthy arrive by helicopter or by boat. The town itself is beautiful and ancient and completely overwhelmed by its own reputation in summer.

The beach clubs that made St. Tropez famous are not in the town at all. They line a stretch of beach miles from the marina, separated from a long boardwalk by tall grass that rustles in the sea breeze and gives the whole strip a slightly surreal, almost cinematic quality. You could walk the boardwalk and look into each one - Nikki Beach, Shellona, Bagatelle - like reading the chapters of a book about excess that somehow never becomes boring.

The rhythm is the same at all of them. Mornings are peaceful. The 3 to 3:30pm reservation is the one everyone wants. The DJ begins building from there and by 4pm the transformation is complete.

Shellona is for the crowd that wants to dance. EDM, energy, people genuinely having fun without caring too much about being seen having it. It is unpretentious in the way that only a beach club playing very loud music to very tan people can be unpretentious. This is my speed.

Bagatelle is the yacht crowd. The see and be seen place, where the music moves through enough genres to keep everyone moving and the signature moment is the white napkin wave - napkins raised above heads, people standing on chairs, bottles arriving with sparklers, the whole theatrical production of visible celebration that St. Tropez has made its own art form. It is genuinely fun and also genuinely a performance.

St. Tropez is extremely expensive and extremely worth seeing once. But the best beach club experience on the Côte d’Azur, I discovered later, was not in St. Tropez at all.

Domaine Mirabeau | The Movie Set in the Var

Ninety minutes from the coast, the South of France becomes something else entirely.

Arriving at Domaine Mirabeau after a week along the Riviera felt like stepping out of one film and into another. The property, a private vineyard estate in La Garde-Freinet in the Var, operates at the pace that Provence has always operated at, which is to say unhurriedly and without apology. There are goats on the property, and alpacas. There is a pool that looks exactly like the pool in A Good Year, the Russell Crowe film set in Provence, and sitting beside it with the vines stretching in every direction and the mountains visible beyond the cypress trees, you understand why someone would give up everything to stay.

The groundskeeper walked us through the vines and talked about the history of the land with the particular pride of someone who has been paying attention to the same piece of earth for a long time. Learning that history - the specific soil, the specific grapes, the specific decisions made over generations - changes the way the wine tastes at dinner.

And dinner. The terrace at dusk with a cheese board that seemed to grow rather than shrink, local wine in glasses that caught the last light, the sun dropping behind the vines in shades of gold and amber that have no accurate name. We sat there for hours. Nobody suggested moving. The air smelled of lavender and warm earth and the particular sweetness that vineyards have at the end of a summer day.

We spent an afternoon in Cotignac, a village nearby that felt genuinely undiscovered — locals at café tables under the plane trees, three hour lunches where nobody looked at their phone, no souvenir shops, no tour groups. A place where life is still organized around pleasure rather than productivity. I thought about it for days afterward.

Cannes and La Guerite | The Island at the Center of Everything

Hotel Martinez on the Croisette is fashion made physical. The building, the interiors, the people walking through the lobby - all of it dressed with the kind of effortlessness that takes enormous effort to achieve. Standing on my balcony with the gold wrought iron railing and the Mediterranean below and the energy of Cannes moving through the streets beneath me felt like arriving at the center of something. We walked to dinner at 10pm because nobody in Cannes eats before 10pm, through cobblestone alleys lined with bars and restaurants where the night had barely started.

La Guerite is on an island off the coast of Cannes, accessible only by boat, which means that even getting there requires a small act of intention. We arrived early and claimed beach loungers and watched the anchorage fill with tenders and dinghies ferrying guests from yachts anchored offshore - a steady procession of people for whom arriving by boat is simply the normal way to arrive somewhere.

The 3pm seating is the one that matters and by 4pm La Guerite is doing what it does better than anywhere else on this coast. Half the club that afternoon had been reserved for a 21st birthday party, the guest list arriving exclusively from yachts, 200 bottles of Cristal champagne pre-ordered, the kind of celebration that treats the extraordinary as completely ordinary. Watching it unfold with a glass of rosé felt like having a front row seat to a world that exists mostly out of sight.

What makes La Guerite better than Bagatelle (in my opinion), despite the similarities, is something harder to define. The island setting creates a sense of remove - you are not in Cannes exactly, you are offshore from it, which changes the energy in ways that are subtle but real. It feels less like a performance and more like a party that happens to be extremely well dressed. I could have stayed until the last boat left.

What the South of France Actually Is

The mistake most travelers make in the South of France is choosing a speed and staying in it. Either the beach clubs, the yacht scene and the 3am cobblestone alleys, or the lavender, the vineyards and the three hour village lunches.

The place only makes complete sense when you do both. The excess of La Guerite is more meaningful when you have spent three days at Domaine Mirabeau watching goats wander between vine rows. The quiet of Cotignac is more precious when you have stood on a chair at Bagatelle waving a white napkin while someone’s 21st birthday guests consumed 200 bottles of champagne nearby.

The South of France is not one place. It is a conversation between two versions of the good life - the loud one and the quiet one. And the best trip is the one that gives you enough of both to understand the difference.

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Visited: June 2024. Route: Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat → Eze → Nice → St. Tropez → Domaine Mirabeau La Garde-Freinet → Cannes. Stayed at: Domaine Mirabeau, Hotel Martinez Cannes. Do not miss: Paloma Beach walk around the Cap Ferrat peninsula, Eze village before 9am, Le Plongeoir without a reservation, La Guerite by boat.

There is a version of the Italian Riviera that exists on mood boards and honeymoon Pinterest boards - pastel villages stacked against cliff faces, emerald water, fishing boats and superyachts sharing the same harbor as if neither finds the other particularly remarkable. I had seen those images so many times before I arrived that I half expected to feel nothing.

I felt everything.

What surprised me most was how different two places just a short train ride apart could feel. Portofino and Cinque Terre share a coastline and a certain Ligurian light that hits the water in the late afternoon and makes everything look slightly unreal. But they are not the same place. They are not even trying to be. And understanding that difference is the whole point of coming here.

Portofino: The Art of Doing Very Little, Very Well

Portofino rewards those who arrive with no agenda.

I stayed in a villa a five minute walk from the Piazzetta di Portofino, close enough to hear the harbor come alive in the evenings, far enough to feel like I had my own private version of the place. In the mornings before the day visitors arrived by ferry, I walked to the marina alone with a coffee and found exactly what I had not known I was looking for: a genuinely quiet place that had no interest in performing for anyone.

The marina in those early hours is divided almost perfectly in half. On one side, small local fishing boats painted in faded blues and greens, nets drying in the sun, the particular industry of people who have worked this water for generations. On the other, superyachts, their crews hosing down decks in the morning light. Two entirely different worlds sharing the same harbor. That image has stayed with me longer than almost anything else from the trip.

Portofino is small enough to explore fully in a single day, and there is a specific order to doing it well. Start at Castello Brown, the 16th century fortress that sits above the harbor. Most people photograph the harbor from the waterfront, but the view from the tiny wooden windows of the castello looking down at the piazzetta and the boats below is something else entirely. From there take the trail to the Faro di Portofino, the lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula. Arrive in the late afternoon, find a spot on the patio, and let the boats sail past while the aperitivo hour begins. There is no better place on the Italian Riviera to do nothing in particular but take in the moment.

A short walk from the marina, Paraggi Beach is the kind of swimming spot that makes you understand why people have been coming to this coastline for centuries.

In the evenings the piazzetta transforms. Restaurants fill with couples ordering trofie al pesto, the local pasta made with a basil sauce so fresh it tastes like the hillsides smell, and whatever the fishing boats brought in that morning. The division between the fishing boats and the superyachts feels less relevant after a glass of Vermentino. Everything softens. Portofino at night is one of those rare places that earns its reputation completely.

One day in Portofino is the right amount. You will want more but leaving while you still want more is the correct way to experience it.

The Train to Riomaggiore: Where the Blue Path Trail Begins

From Portofino a short ride to Santa Margherita Ligure puts you on the coastal train that threads its way along the cliff faces of the Ligurian coast toward the Cinque Terre.

I stepped off the train in Riomaggiore and felt immediately that this was a different kind of beautiful. Where Portofino is polished and intentional, Riomaggiore is dramatic and slightly chaotic in the best possible way. The harbor is small and fierce, fishing boats hauled up onto the concrete between the colorful homes that stack up the cliff face in shades of ochre and rust and a particular sun-faded pink that no interior designer has ever successfully replicated. I could have stayed there for hours. I did not. I had a trail to walk.

What I had been told would be a moderate hike was not a moderate hike.

The Trail: Five Villages, One Stranger, and a Lunch I Still Think About

The trail between the five villages of Cinque Terre - Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso al Mare - is one of the most photographed walks in Europe, which tells you nothing about what it actually feels like to do it. What it feels like is earned. Steep inclines that make your calves burn. Descents where the path narrows and you grip the railing and look straight down at the water a hundred meters below. Views that stop you completely every twenty minutes regardless of how tired your legs are.

Somewhere between Riomaggiore and Manarola I met a woman hiking solo who had come from Buenos Aires. We fell into step together the way solo travelers sometimes do, no formal introduction, just a shared recognition that neither of us wanted company exactly but that company had arrived anyway and was not unwelcome. We talked about travel, about the particular freedom of walking somewhere alone, about what it means to be a woman who goes places by herself and does not find this especially remarkable. I still follow her on Instagram. She still posts photos from corners of the world I have not been to yet.

Manarola stopped us both. It is the village that appears in every Cinque Terre photograph for good reason, the cluster of tall, narrow buildings in shades of yellow and terracotta stacked above the rocky harbor is genuinely, almost aggressively picturesque. We stopped to hydrate and to acknowledge that we were looking at something that deserved to be acknowledged. Then we kept walking.

Corniglia is the village most people skip and the one I remember most clearly. It sits high on the cliff rather than at the water’s edge and feels measurably less visited than the others, more actual residents going about actual lives, fewer people photographing the same corner from the same angle. There is a particular authenticity to a tourist destination that has not yet been fully consumed by tourism. Corniglia still has that. I hope it keeps it.

The stretch from Corniglia to Vernazza is long and I stopped more times than I can count, not because I needed to rest but because the view kept changing and I kept wanting to photograph what the Ligurian hillside looked like from one more angle, then one more.

Vernazza is where I had the lunch that justified the entire walk.

The restaurant sits perched on the cliff face beside the trail, its terrace jutting out over the water with a view of the harbor and the colored buildings below that is so perfectly composed it looks staged. Ristorante La Torre Vernazza, you have to earn it, reached only by continuing up the trail above the village rather than descending into it. The terrace looks down over the entire village, the medieval tower, the harbor, and the Ligurian coastline stretching in both directions further than you can see. I cannot tell you exactly what I ordered because I was too busy looking at the view. I can tell you that it was fresh, local, and exactly right, and that I sat there longer than I should have and did not regret a single minute of it.

Monterosso: The Finish Line Has a Beach

By the time I reached Monterosso al Mare I had earned the beach lounger and I knew it.

Monterosso is the largest of the five villages and the most resort-like, which after an entire day on a trail felt like exactly the right reward. I found a spot at one of the beach clubs along the iconic stretch of sand with its orange and green striped umbrellas, ordered a spritz, and lay down in the sun feeling the particular satisfaction of a body that has done something physical and knows it. I watched the sun drop behind the mountain from that beach lounger and felt something that is difficult to describe but that every traveler knows - the specific contentment of a day that went exactly as it needed to go, including all the parts that were harder than expected.

The train from Monterosso back to Santa Margherita Ligure, then back to Portofino, felt like returning to a different world. Which it was.

Two Places, One Coast, Entirely Different Lessons

Portofino teaches you how to be still. How to sit with a coffee in a quiet harbor at seven in the morning and let a beautiful place just exist without trying to extract everything from it. How to order the pasta the fishermen ate and feel the particular pleasure of eating something that came from the water you are looking at.

Cinque Terre teaches you that the best things require effort. That a trail with steep inclines, lunch on a cliff, and the village most people skip, is often the ones most worth remembering.

I left wanting more time in both places, which is exactly how every trip should end.

Stayed: Villa in Portofino, walking distance from Piazzetta di Portofino. Cinque Terre trail: Riomaggiore to Monterosso al Mare, full trail approximately 12km. Best meal: Vernazza cliff terrace, believed to be Ristorante Belforte. Do not miss: Castello Brown at sunrise, Paraggi Bay from above, Corniglia if you want the village that still feels real.

Marrakech is a place people often believe they understand before they ever arrive. It carries an almost mythical presence - vivid colors, rhythmic movement, the scent of spices woven into desert air. And at first glance, the city greets you exactly as advertised: bold, charged, and unapologetically alive.

But what surprised me most about Marrakech wasn’t the sensory intensity everyone talks about. It was the discovery of another Marrakech entirely, one that doesn’t perform, but reveals itself quietly, intimately, and on its own timeline.

There is the Marrakech you expect. And then there is the Marrakech you are invited into.

A City that Hits You all at Once

Your introduction to the Medina feels like stepping into a living tapestry. Motorbikes buzz past like desert insects. Vendors call out from overflowing souks. Narrow alleys twist and turn until you surrender completely to the maze. Brass lanterns glow from every corner. Saffron, turmeric, and paprika rise in feathered plumes from market stalls, creating a palette as vibrant as the city itself.

It’s intoxicating. It’s also overwhelming. Marrakech is a sensory symphony and the volume is set high.

Djemaa el-Fna square pulses with its own magnetic energy - musicians, storytellers, grill smoke, and a kind of ancient electricity that seems to live inside the walls themselves. This is the Marrakech most travelers photograph. The one that fills Instagram feeds. The one that earns the reputation.

But it is only one version of what truly exists here.

Behind the Riad Walls

The city transforms the moment you step through a carved wooden door.

Everything softens. Courtyards open to the sky, shaded by orange blossoms and palms swaying in the desert breeze. Light filters through latticework in perfect geometric shapes. Fountains murmur in tiled basins. Mint tea arrives in delicate glasses with a ceremony that feels both effortless and deeply intentional.

We stayed at Dar Kandi, a calm, lush sanctuary tucked inside the Medina that felt worlds away from the streets just outside its walls. Each room uniquely styled, rich textures, thoughtful details in every corner. Mornings began with a beautifully presented Moroccan breakfast on our private patio overlooking the central courtyard. Evenings ended on the rooftop terrace with panoramic views, cozy loungers, and a plunge pool that made the desert heat feel like a distant rumor.

This is luxury in Marrakech, not extravagance, but intentional calm. Handcrafted beauty. Hospitality rooted in tradition and offered without performance.

For those researching where to stay, La Sultana offers one of the most atmospheric hammam experiences in the city. Royal Mansour is an unparalleled display of Moroccan artistry, each private riad a masterpiece of craftsmanship. El Fenn blends contemporary design with ancient architecture in a way that feels genuinely soulful rather than styled.

The People Who Shape It With Their Hands

To truly understand Marrakech, you have to move past the surface of the souks.

It’s one thing to admire handmade leather bags, brass lanterns, and rugs that spill into alleyways. It’s another to step into the workshops behind them, where artisans have spent decades, sometimes generations, perfecting a single craft. A weaver who learned from her mother who learned from hers. A metalworker whose hands move with the kind of unhurried precision that can’t be taught quickly. These are the people who hold the city’s soul in their fingers.

In these spaces, Marrakech stops being chaotic. It becomes layered, dignified, and deeply human.

Worth seeking out: Beni Rugs Studio for a modern interpretation of ancient Berber weaving. The ateliers of Sidi Ghanem, Marrakech’s design district, for fine ceramics and handcrafted lighting. And the YSL Museum and Majorelle Garden, a true testament to artistry, color, and the beauty of preservation for a slower, more contemplative afternoon.

Buy directly from the makers when you can. The difference between a souvenir and something that carries meaning is almost always the story behind who made it.

The Moment the City Stood Still

Some of the most extraordinary experiences in Marrakech aren’t ones you plan.

One evening we were on the rooftop at DarDar - lantern light glowing against the darkening skyline, a DJ easing the room into the evening with warm, rhythmic music, glasses clinking, conversation floating through the air. It was vibrant and beautiful and exactly the kind of night you hope a city will give you.

And then the call to prayer began.

Without instruction, the music faded. Conversations softened. Locals, staff, travelers, all of us fell into a shared stillness as the muezzin’s voice rippled across the rooftops of the Medina. For several minutes, the city held its breath. No one moved toward the bar. No one reached for their phone. We simply sat inside the sound together.

When the last note dissolved into the evening, life resumed, but with a softness, as if the city itself had breathed deeply and quietly invited us all to do the same.

That moment has stayed with me longer than any meal, any riad, any souk. It was a reminder that the most profound luxury in travel has nothing to do with what you’re spending. It has everything to do with whether you’re paying attention.

Arriving as a Guest, Not a Consumer

Marrakech’s rising visibility on every travel list comes with a real responsibility, especially for those of us drawn to beautiful, culturally rich places.

Sustainable travel here isn’t a trend or a checklist. It’s a posture. It means choosing locally owned riads over international chains. Buying from artisans rather than mass-produced market stalls. Dining at restaurants that source from community farms. Engaging guides who offer genuine cultural context rather than a scripted performance. Choosing hammams that support women’s cooperatives.

Marrakech does not need to be reshaped for tourism. It needs travelers who value what it already is and arrive with enough humility to let it be exactly that.

The Marrakech That Stays With You

Most travelers experience the first version of this city, dramatic, cinematic, dazzling in its chaos. And that version is real and worth every moment.

But the Marrakech that changes you is quieter. It’s behind the wooden doors and inside the courtyard. It’s in the workshop of a craftsman who doesn’t need to explain the value of what he makes. It’s on a rooftop at dusk when a voice rises over the city and everyone, without a word to each other, goes still.

That’s the Marrakech you carry home.

And it only reveals itself to the travelers willing to slow down long enough to receive it.

Visited: [Summer 2023]. Stayed at: Dar Kandi. Don't miss: Djemaa el-Fna at dusk, dinner at DarDar, and at least one afternoon completely lost in the souks with nowhere to be.

There are places you can understand from land - the kind you stroll, taste, photograph, and tuck neatly into memory. And then there are places like Croatia, whose story only fully reveals itself when you step onto a boat, loosen your grip on the predictable, and let the sea redraw the edges of your day.

I didn’t expect to fall for Croatia the way I did. I thought it would be another postcard-perfect escape, the kind people rave about without ever scratching beneath the surface. But from the moment our boat pulled away from Split and the city dissolved into a watercolor wash of terracotta and limestone, I realized this trip was going to feel different. Croatia didn’t demand anything from me. It quietly invited me to slow down, pay attention, and let the Adriatic set the pace.

What I learned out there between sun-bleached coves, tiny island villages, and nights anchored beneath a sky full of stars, was that the water doesn’t just show you a destination. It shows you a different way of moving through the world.

Sailing as Surrender

Sailing is a lesson in letting go, especially for someone like me who prefers a firm sense of control over her travels. On land, you can plan. You can overthink. You can anticipate and adjust. But on the water, you follow the wind. You release precision. You accept that the most memorable parts of any trip are almost always the pieces you never scripted.

On our first long stretch between islands, the hum of the boat slowed my thoughts in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. The water shifted from deep cobalt to a clear, impossible turquoise that didn’t seem real. Croatia has a way of exhausting your vocabulary - how many ways can you describe blue before you simply stop trying and just look?

Every hour looked a little different. Every island carried its own personality. And somewhere in that quiet transformation, something softened in me. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t an epiphany. It was simply the feeling of letting the day unfold without expectation.

Milna, Brač: Where Time Stops Keeping Score

Milna was our first real pause, a small harbor town on the island of Brač where the water mirrors the sky and the boats bob as if keeping time. I stepped off the boat barefoot and jet-lagged, my body still swaying even though the ground was perfectly still.

Milna is the kind of place that has earned its slowness. Its sheltered bay has drawn sailors for centuries where Venetian fleets once sought refuge here, and the stone houses lining its waterfront carry the quiet weight of that history in every worn corner and sun-faded facade. Walking its streets, you feel the accumulated patience of a place that has never needed to perform for anyone.

In the harbor cafés, nobody rushed. Conversations drifted. A glass of local wine became a bottle. The evening unfolded as if we had nowhere else to be because, for once, we didn’t.

I had to consciously remind myself that stillness is not wasted time. Sometimes the entire point is to sit, watch the boats slide in and out, and let your senses finally catch up to your surroundings.

Hvar: Where Energy and Elegance Meet the Sea

If Milna was the exhale, Hvar was the inhale.

Energetic, glamorous, and sun-soaked, Hvar is where the Adriatic dresses up. People often call it lively, but that’s too small a word. It’s charged with its own particular frequency that you feel before you can fully explain it.

You feel it in the waterfront promenade lined with bars and cafés. You feel it in the clink of wine glasses at sunset. You feel it in the effortless way locals move through a place they’ve always called home, unbothered by the attention their island draws.

We spent the afternoon wandering narrow streets, getting lost in the soft golden light that hits the stone buildings just before dusk. Hvar has been inhabited since prehistoric times, shaped by ancient Greeks, Romans, Venetians, and Austrians, each culture leaving its mark in the architecture, the wine, the food, the particular ease with which beauty is treated here as simply ordinary. By the time we made it back to the boat, the harbor shimmered with reflected lights and the sounds of an island that had absolutely no intention of going to sleep early.

What struck me most was the balance. A place buzzing with energy that still felt rooted in something real. Hvar knows exactly what it is and it doesn’t need your validation to feel confident about it.

Šćedro and Mrčara: The Islands That Don't Need to Be Found

This is the part of the trip I think about most.

Between the larger islands lie smaller ones that don’t appear on most itineraries - and shouldn’t, perhaps, because part of what makes them extraordinary is that they remain genuinely undiscovered. Šćedro is a nature reserve of dense pine forest and hidden coves where the water is so still and clear it feels intrusive to swim in it. We anchored there in silence and stayed longer than we planned, which felt exactly right.

But it was Mrčara that left a mark I don’t think will ever fully fade.

A tiny, remote islet in the Lastovo Archipelago Nature Park, Mrčara is almost entirely uninhabited. We pulled up to a small dock no more than 40 meters long, room for two boats at most and stepped onto an island that felt genuinely untouched by time. A married couple lives there during the season, running a small rustic restaurant with a handful of tables and no menu. Dinner is whatever they caught that morning, grilled over open flame and served with olive oil. The vegetables come from the rocky garden behind their home. Wine arrives in a simple glass jug and is replenished without ceremony.

There is no curated experience here. No ambiance manufactured for guests. Just two people who chose a life on a remote island and, for one evening, quietly let us into it.

We laughed late into the night. They shared their personal collection of vodka long after the day’s wine was finished. Somewhere in the early hours, we swam from shore back to the boat, making the only ripples in water that had otherwise been perfectly still all evening.

I still follow them on Instagram. It’s my small way of staying tethered to people I meet in places that feel too good to be real. I hope they remember us. I know I’ll never forget them.

Korčula: A Medieval Heartbeat Wrapped in Island Calm

Korčula was the island that surprised me most.

The old town rises from the water like a stone crown, its narrow walkways carved with centuries of footsteps, its terraces spilling over with jasmine and late-afternoon laughter. We wandered through its medieval streets, each one offering a sliver of blue Adriatic framed perfectly between sandstone walls. Unlike the energy of Hvar or the silence of Lastovo, Korčula lives somewhere in between, refined but unhurried, proud but welcoming.

We ended the day at Massimo, a rooftop cocktail bar built into a historic castle tower, sipping Pošip, the island’s signature white wine, as fishing boats returned home for the night and the sun slipped behind the peninsula. There was something deeply grounding about Korčula that I didn’t have the words for at the time and still struggle to fully articulate. Some places settle into you quietly. Korčula was one of those.

What Croatia Gives You That You Didn't Know to Ask For

Every destination leaves you with something - a story, a moment, a shift in perspective. Croatia gave me something I hadn’t realized I’d been missing: presence.

Late nights on the deck, wrapped in a light breeze, listening to the soft rhythm of waves against the hull. Watching a coastline fall asleep under starlight, feeling both small and completely alive. And then there were the nights docked alongside a cobblestone street in Bobovišća Na Moru, falling asleep to the sound of locals in a nearby bar, only to wake up the next morning to find a tabby cat had quietly claimed our boat as its own overnight accommodation.

Croatia is beautiful from its cities. It is breathtaking from its islands. But from the water, with the wind deciding your pace and the sea offering no agenda other than the day in front of you, it becomes something else entirely.

It becomes unforgettable.

Sailed: Summer. Route: Split → Milna (Brač) → Hvar → Šćedro → Mrčara → Lastovo → Korčula → Split. Boat: private charter. Would I do it again: without question.

Welcome to Abroad Perspective Travel

where adventurous travelers and authentic luxury converge

I didn’t want to write about travel. I wanted to write through it.

I’ve always believed that travel is the most humbling way to understand the world and yourself. It’s where wonder and discomfort coexist, where luxury doesn’t just mean high thread counts or Michelin stars, but the privilege of perspective.

That belief is what Abroad Perspective Travel is built on.

Who I Am

I’m Heather, a Global Sales Director in the hospitality industry, mom of two, based in Chicago, and someone who has spent the better part of two decades moving through the world with curiosity and a camera. I’ve traveled constantly - sometimes for work across international markets, sometimes for escape, always looking for the moment when a foreign street starts to feel familiar, or a conversation with a stranger quietly reshapes something you thought you knew.

Friends and colleagues told me for years, “You should write about this.” I’d nod, smile, and tuck the thought away. The truth was, I wasn’t ready. I needed to find the right entry point, not a highlight reel, but something more honest. A space that captures what happens in the gap between observation and understanding.

This is that space.

What You’ll Find Here

Abroad Perspective Travel is part travel journal, part cultural diary, part luxury guide for those who crave depth alongside indulgence. You’ll find destination stories that go beyond the obvious itinerary - the quaintest corners of the Mediterranean, the rhythm of a Southeast Asian city at dawn, the meal in a place with no English menu that you’ll never forget. Reflections on humanity sparked by encounters that linger long after I’ve returned home. And an honest lens on what it means to travel thoughtfully in a world that’s constantly changing.

Some posts will be lighthearted. Others will dig deeper. All of them will be real.

I’m not a travel influencer with a checklist of must-sees. I’m someone endlessly fascinated by how the world reveals itself one destination, one conversation, one unplanned moment at a time.

What “Abroad Perspective” Really Means

The name isn’t just about being abroad. It’s about looking outward and inward simultaneously, trading certainty for curiosity, and accepting that every encounter, whether across an ocean or across a dinner table, leaves you slightly different than before.

Real luxury, I’ve come to believe, isn’t found in exclusivity. It’s found in awareness. In the richness that comes from genuine connection - to people, to culture, to place. It’s the kind of wealth that doesn’t show up on a room rate.

An Invitation

If you’ve ever stood somewhere in the world and felt something shift, some quiet recalibration of how you see things, this space is for you.

Abroad Perspective Travel is an ongoing conversation between travelers, dreamers, and curious souls. My stories are one perspective among many. I hope yours becomes part of it too.

Welcome. Let’s go somewhere.

Heather Devitt is a travel writer, photographer, and hospitality industry veteran based in Chicago, IL. She shoots on a Fujifilm X-E5 and travels with a DJI drone, an open itinerary, and a deep suspicion that the best moments are never the ones you planned.

None of them are right. None of them are wrong.

Each has drawn their understanding from everything they know - and everything they don’t. What if, instead of judging the distance between those perspectives, we got curious about it? What if we asked why someone’s experience of the same moment was so different from our own, and actually listened to the answer?

That question is at the heart of everything I want to do here.

Why It Took Me So Long

I have aspired to write about travel publicly for years. Every attempt ended before it began.

It wasn’t fear of criticism that stopped me. It was something harder to articulate - a deep awareness that what I think and feel today may not be what I believe tomorrow. I’ve learned over time that my opinions evolve, my perspectives shift, and the more I see of the world, the less certain I become about the things I once held as fixed. In a world drowning in opinions presented as facts, I needed to figure out how to share my experiences honestly, not as truth, not as authority, but as a snapshot. A glimpse into how I see things at this particular moment, from this particular vantage point.

That’s all any of us can offer, really.

I am not an expert. I am flawed in more ways than I’d care to list. I have a raw sense of humor and an adventurous spirit that some people find refreshing and others find to be a lot and I’ve made peace with both. I’ve been lucky enough to travel extensively, to sit at tables I never expected to sit at, to hear stories I never would have encountered had I stayed within the comfortable radius of what I already knew.

That luck comes with a responsibility to pay attention. And to share what I notice.

What Perspective Actually Means

Perspective is something we talk about far too little, especially in travel.

We treat it as a destination, something you either have or you don’t. But it’s not. It’s a practice. It’s the ongoing, sometimes uncomfortable work of holding your own experience lightly enough to let someone else’s land.

I’ve come to believe that the more the world genuinely understands one another - not tolerates, not coexists with, but truly understands, the greater the chance that compassion crowds out ignorance. That’s not a naive idea. It’s actually the only one that makes sense to me after two decades of moving through places that look nothing like where I grew up.

Real luxury, in my experience, isn’t a thread count. It’s having your assumptions quietly dismantled by a place you didn’t expect to move you.

What This Space Will Be

Abroad Perspective Travel is where I write through all of it.

Some of what I share will be lighthearted - a sailing day on the Amalfi Coast, a boutique hotel worth every dollar, a meal I’m still thinking about six months later. Some of it will be more honest about what it means to put yourself out there in the world, to show up somewhere unfamiliar and let it change you.

I’ll bring my camera, my curiosity, and an open itinerary. I’ll share what I find. And I’d genuinely love for this to become a conversation, not just my perspective, but a place where yours has room too.

Because that, ultimately, is the whole point.

Heather Devitt writes about travel, culture, and the quiet shifts in perspective that happen when you pay close attention. She is based in Chicago and is rarely there.