Longer pieces

Journal

A pink and white Gothic palazzo facade rising from a Venice canal, with striped mooring poles in front and plainer buildings alongside

Architecture

New Hotels in Old Italian Palaces, 2026

In Rome the Bank of Italy's vault is now a spa with two small pools, and in Venice a palazzo of 1436 has finally, after nearly six centuries, become a hotel.

View from a hotel balcony under a red-tiled eave, over a beach of white umbrellas to the lagoon and Dubai Marina skyline

Winter sun

Where to Travel in November

In November Dubai has a sea at 27-28°C and the sun down around half five, Cape Town has light past seven and an Atlantic at 15-16°C, and the choice is which you would rather do without.

Delicate Arch, a free-standing arch of red sandstone on bare rock, in the early evening, with two people walking beneath it and the desert running away to low ridges under a pale, broken sky.

Road trips

The Long Way from Bozeman to Denver

On our first June morning in a tent outside Yellowstone the phone read 3°C and snow showers, and Denver was six days and most of Utah away.

A covered terrace outside a room, with two woven chairs and a tiled table, a lounger on the grass beyond and the sea past the trees.

With children

Where to Sit While They Sleep

A family hotel is decided at two in the afternoon, when someone small is asleep and the grown-ups need somewhere within earshot to sit.

A thatched lodge with a long pool and a lawn in front, below a rocky mountain in evening sun.

Where to stay

Where to Stay in Cape Town and the Winelands

In Cape Town the first question is which side of Table Mountain to wake up on, and the second, a few days later, is which wine valley.

A round pool under a reed canopy on a clifftop, with rocky headlands, pines and the open sea beyond.

Where to stay

Where to Stay in Ibiza

Which end of Ibiza you sleep at decides which Ibiza you get: twenty metres from a quiet north-coast cove, or five minutes from the walls of the old town.