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The Spirit of Istanbul

An aspiring bluegrass fiddler from London discovers much more than music on a trip to North Carolina.

Habitat for Humanity in Portugal

From a lakeside view, Afar writer reviews the first five-star hotel to open on Lake Como in a century.

The Caribbean’s most comprehensive museum dedicated to the slave trade and the Middle Passage, Kurá Hulanda (meaning “Dutch courtyard” in Papiamento) is also the region’s largest anthropological collection on Africa. Founded by Dutch philanthropist Jacob Gelt Dekker, the museum opened in 1999 and is located on a former slave yard and merchant’s home. The hair-raising Middle Passage section begins outdoors with the replica of slave pillars for public flogging, and continues indoors to showcase Curaçao’s role as the epicenter of the slave trade, along with the tools used to trap, brand, and punish. For an additional $3, master storyteller Yflen Florentina takes you through the museum while sharing gripping tales from Curaçao’s darkest historical period.

Le Marais is a historic district in Paris, in the third and fourth arrondissements, that has variously been the city’s medieval aristocratic quarter, home to a large Jewish community, and a dilapidated working class neighborhood. Nowadays, thanks to a decades-long restoration policy that began in the ‘60s, Le Marais is hip and happening—home to numerous art galleries, boutiques, and high-end restaurants, and a center of Parisian LGBTQ culture. Into the mix can now be added La Jeune Rue, an ambitious development project spearheaded by French entrepreneur Cédric Naudon. The aim is to create a kind of chic foodie village along Rue du Vertbois in the north of the district. Naudon has bought up a bunch of buildings that are rapidly being converted into restaurants, bars, and artisanal food stores—think butchers, bakers, fishmongers, and the like. However, the kicker is that the focus is not merely on quality and sustainability of produce, or experimenting with alternative modes of agriculture, but also on the design of the venues themselves. The plans include some 20 businesses, including a fishmonger by Tom Dixon, a speakeasy by Ingo Maurer, a tapas bar by Jasper Morrison, and a Korean street food spot by Paola Navone. New places are opening all the time.

Dreaming of chasing fresh, untrammeled powder? Then Tsaina Lodge, widely regarded as the birthplace of the Alaskan freeskiing scene, is for you. Its location on Thompson Pass, a gap in the Chugach Mountains known for its record-setting snowfalls (averaging over 700 inches a year), and dramatic slopes combine for epic heli-ski exploits on runs that average a steep 3,500 feet. Come summer, the repertoire of helicopter-assisted adventure excursions widens: Fly out to fish, hike, or glacier trek the seemingly limitless surroundings. Après-activity luxuries await back at the lodge, which is situated on the grounds of what had once been an avalanche-safe roadhouse, built in 1949. The dilapidated building was bulldozed and rebuilt in 2012, and the result is a boutique hotel that stands out for its modern, contemporary design. Floor-to-ceiling windows look out onto either glacier or forest from each of the 24 rooms, and there’s a gym, yoga space, and spa—along with a fine-dining restaurant with a focus on local seafood, meat, and game, and the reopened Tsaina Bar, legendary among early freeskiiers.

Tucked away on the less-trafficked slopes of Mount Portofino, above the picturesque waterfront town of Camogli and scenic Riviera di Levante, Villa Rosmarino is that Italian friend’s vacation house you’ve been dreaming of. Owners Mario Pietraccetta and Fulvio Zendrini left Milanese corporate life to transform this dilapidated turn-of-the-century palazzo into a midcentury-style oasis with touches of Italian modernism, then moved in permanently, inviting others to experience their personal brand of la dolce vita. The library is outfitted with stylish armchairs, warm wood ceiling beams, and a collection of art and travel books that spans the walls, and the living room’s well-stocked honesty bar is the backdrop for friendly nightcaps. Rooms aren’t numbered, and the sprawling gardens are easy to get lost in. Mario and Fulvio are likely to chat guests up while lounging by the pool or sipping espresso on the balcony, offering their insider knowledge about the area and arranging one-of-a-kind excursions, from visits to secluded beach clubs to rides in their wooden motorboat.

If you’ve come to Siem Reap, you’ve already got architectural wonders on the mind. And though you’ll spend your days learning about a 1,000-year-old civilization, a stay at Viroth’s Villa allows a more recent era of Khmer creativity to be contemplated: the 1960s. The decade saw the arts flourish in newly independent Cambodia, most notably in the modernist New Khmer Architecture style.

Viroth’s Villa’s boxy, petite, two-story building is one of the Le Corbusier–inspired genre’s few remaining examples (there are others in Phnom Penh and Kep, on the coast), and its owners, Fabien Martial and Viroth Kol, went to great pains to honor its clean lines and honest aesthetic when renovating the dilapidated building in 2007. Rooms use local materials to modern effect, with dark gray tiled floors and polished terrazzo baths, woven water hyacinth mats, and teak doors. Decor is kept to a minimum—a single standing Buddha, a giant frond from an Elephant Ear palm in a vase—but expertly curated and placed, lending the property the feel of a Southeast Asian art gallery. The intimate, seductive style can also be found in the couple’s second, larger property, Viroth’s Hotel, a newly constructed 1950s-inspired space that opened in January 2015.

Behind the pristine mansions of the Pacific Palisades lie the vibrantly graffitied remnants of Murphy’s Ranch, an abandoned Nazi outpost from the 1930s. A 4-mile trail winds through Rustic Canyon and past structures in various states of dilapidation. From the fully standing concrete power house to the scrap metal of the collapsed machine shed, these remains have been given new life by local street artists whose neon decorations cover almost every surface. Explore them as much or as little as you like. I felt safe climbing ladders and walking through the buildings but peeking into dark corners and rooms was unnerving, so was finding a beehive!

Strolling down Marnixstraat you wouldn’t suspect it’s there, unless you notice a small sign near a stairwell adjacent to the Q-Park. From Nassaukade, there’s no access, but you can see the buzzing venue across Singlegracht canal: Waterkant, a tropical-themed bar and restaurant serving casual fare on the waterfront behind the twin towers of the parking garage. The brainchild of the catering team that brought popular Bukowski Bar, Café Kuijper and Maxwell to Amsterdam, Waterkant debuted to instant success in August 2014. Seemingly overnight, the trio transformed the dilapidated night shelter behind the Q-Park into a canal-side bar and restaurant perfect for a romantic date or evening out with friends. At colorful tables on an expansive terrace, you can watch boats passing by and the Nassaukade street scene over beer, snacks, lunch or dinner. Looking to Amsterdam’s colonial past, the new hotspot features a Suriname-inspired menu with specialties like peanut soup, curried duck spring rolls, fried dumplings and roti roll. If you’re starving, order the Jamaican Jerk ribs—a whopping 16 barbecued bones served with coleslaw and fries. Or blow the budget on a whole Canadian lobster for €25. Wash it all down with traditional Parbo beer or a local craft brew.

A stunning national park on the Pacific coast, Manuel Antonio has it all: nonstop beautiful beaches, lush tropical rain forest, and oh, the wildlife and flowers, everywhere you look. Monkeys abound on these beaches, and they are not timid around people. This is the place (the only place, thankfully), where a monkey pooped on my head. Ah, the memories... The Viewpoint Trail hike is an uphill climb to this lookout (mirador) with outstanding views of the coastline.

This cool spot in the the hip neighborhood of Getsemani right across from Plaza de la Trinidad boasts a retractable roof, making the tables open air, with a vista over the old dilapidated walls of the building that was in ruins when the owner, Bogota born artist Nick, came in to town. Creative tapas and his dog Socio (business partner) are among its strengths!

Aldeia da Pedralva is more than just a hotel. It’s an actual village hidden away among the wildflowers and beaches of Portugal’s Vicentina Coast. The owner Antonio Ferreira was looking for a career change and when he stumbled upon Pedralva village (at the time no more than a pizza place and abandoned, dilapidated houses) he began to buy them up and rebuild them. It took Ferreira and his wife Filipa more than two years to find the original owners and get permission to buy their homes. Today, Ferreira has turned a former ghost town into a destination eco hotel with a restaurant and grocery shop stocked with produce from the on-site vegetable garden. Each of the 31 restored homes has a rustic charm and was furnished by a designer friend of Ferreira. The best part of staying at Aldeia da Pedralva is that you feel like part of a community. Ferreira’s Newfoundland dog Urso often greets guests. Dinner often features fresh seafood caught that day and plenty of Portuguese wine. A stay here is a lesson in how satisfying simplicity can be.

Meandering along the streets of Casco Viejo is a walk down a physical timeline; with old Spanish ruins next to forgotten French architecture neighboring restored boutique hotels, this historical neighborhood manifests Panama City’s colorful past. The diversity in buildings reflects the array of people who occupy this peninsula, from hat-totting tourists to barefoot residents to the President himself. The energy of the place is packed between the thin streets, filled with shops, cars, pedestrians, and restaurants and then shoots out over the extensive coast line of the canal. My favorite people watching activity is to capture a drama in the making, and that is exactly what I caught between this boy and his elder. It is for these moments that it pays off to constantly lug around a SLR.