TRAVEL INSPIRATION

Britain has long been synonymous with one kind of glass — the amber kind, raised in a stone-walled distillery somewhere north of Inverness. That heritage is real, and we've written about it in depth. But Britain's drinks story has grown well beyond amber-colored glasses, and the experiences now available to travelers in England and Wales are worth a journey of their own.

There are places in the world where the landscape and what grows from it are inseparable — where the wine in your glass is essentially a portrait of the hills around you. The Douro Valley in northern Portugal is one of those places. When you arrive here for the first time, something shifts. The train from Porto curves east along the riverbank, the schist cliffs rising on either side, and slowly the valley opens into something that feels ancient and alive all at once.

When Time Out named the Picos de Europa the most beautiful place in the world, travelers who knew this corner of northern Spain simply nodded. Rising dramatically from the Cantabrian Sea, straddling Asturias, Cantabria, and Castile and León, their highest summit tops out at 2,650 metres. Cantabria wine and culinary travel offers a profound way to experience this landscape — not just as a vista to admire, but as a place that expresses itself through what it grows, pours, and p

Six wineries in two days. I expected them to blur together. How different could they really be? Same region, same Tempranillo grape, same process of turning fruit into wine. By the second afternoon, I thought, they'd all start to feel familiar. Ribera del Duero had other plans.

A generation of young Czech chefs reached back past Communism to the nineteenth-century cookbooks of Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová and Marie B. Svobodová, rediscovering flavors their great-great-grandparents had known. They call the movement nová česká — Nouvelle Czech — and it is producing some of the most exciting dining in Europe.

Here's what we've noticed after years of designing wine journeys: the travelers who return most transformed aren't necessarily the ones who arrived knowing the difference between Cabernet and Amarone. They're the ones who came with a passion — for food, for history, for movement, for beauty — and discovered that wine country had been quietly waiting to meet them there.

In December 2025, Italian culinary heritage became the first entire national gastronomic tradition to receive UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status—a distinction that goes far beyond acknowledging delicious food. The recognition celebrates what happens when a culture weaves its identity, values, and daily rituals into the fundamental act of preparing and sharing meals.

This is the essence of whiskey tourism: not merely sampling spirits, but stepping into the narrative of place, tradition, and transformation. It's about understanding how water, grain, wood, and time conspire to create something extraordinary—and how the landscape itself becomes inseparable from what's in your glass.

There's a particular kind of hunger Barcelona provokes — not for any single dish, but for the way the city eats: slowly, socially, with a glass of something cold and a quiet conviction that the afternoon has nowhere better to be.

The holiday season is a time to connect with loved ones and savor the rich flavors of tradition. For discerning travelers, it’s also the perfect chance to explore festive foodie destinations worldwide where culinary artistry, holiday spirit, and cultural immersion come together to create unforgettable experiences.

There are cities where food is fuel, and there is Paris. Here, a croissant is not a breakfast item — it is a daily act of precision, built from dozens of laminated butter layers and a baker who reads dough by touch. French pastry in Paris is cultural heritage made edible — the chance to taste centuries of refinement in a single, carefully composed bite.

There's a particular kind of memory that only food can make. Not the photograph-perfect vista or the landmark tick on an itinerary, but the moment a bowl arrives, steam curling above the broth, and the whole city seems to exhale with you.

Wine tourism has undergone a quiet revolution over the past two decades. What once meant a quick tasting and a gift shop purchase has transformed into multi-day immersive experiences that rival the world's most sophisticated cultural journeys. From the sun-drenched slopes of Tuscany to the fog-shrouded valleys of Sonoma, wine regions have recognized what thoughtful travelers have always known: the story behind the wine is as compelling as the wine itself.

There is a moment, usually near dusk, when a place finally lets you in. It rarely happens at a monument. It happens at a small table, with something cold or warm in your hand, as a city slows to the pace of the people who actually live there. Taste reaches somewhere sight cannot — a glass carries the agriculture, the climate, and the social grammar of a country in a single sip.