What a year for traveling! With 2023 just about over and 2024 on the horizon, we asked three of our best-traveled contributors to unpack their favorite memories from crisscrossing the globe.
In the meantime, we're starting to put together our annual notables list of the best trips, treks and travel destinations for the new year. Look for that in the first week of January.
David Prior
Just back from hosting a group trip to Oaxaca during Day of the Dead celebrations, PRIOR’s founder is now planning a new slate of 2024 trips to Seville, Paris and more for the next iteration of PRIOR x Capital One’s programming partnership.
STAY
In April, I had my 40th birthday at Trasierra, a private stay set in Spain's Sierra Morena hills, during Seville’s Feria (April Fair). A home, really, not a hotel in any traditional sense, the Scott family's dream of Andalucia is simultaneously dramatic and serene: A whitewashed hacienda in a fragrant garden, perfectly imperfect, except, that is, the food overseen by Giocanda, which was entirely perfect. I took it over with 25 friends, and it was the happiest of days. Frankly, I have never had more people ask about a place I’ve been to in the years I’ve been traveling. And it couldn’t be more PRIOR.
SAVOR
I remember Rene Redzepi of Noma once said of the stalwart (and I use this word sparingly), legendary Australian chef Neil Perry that he’s "perhaps the world’s best restaurateur." There is definitely a case to be made on that front with his legacy of bold restaurants, like the various iterations of his original Rockpool eateries in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
Though, I think his magic is actually his abilities a fulcrum and definer of what elevated dining can be in Australia. But he has now done a full 360, leaving the empire behind and opening a few back his family-run restaurant Margaret in Sydney’s once-stale, very-80's a harbourside eastern suburb Double Bay. Seafood is the star here. In fact, two of the most beautiful things I have eaten in years were the King George Whiting with nothing but olive oil and a Coral Trout with XO sauce. It takes gusto to do the former, especially one so bracing in its simplicity. And the coral trout, well, this warm water fish with a pan-Asian embellishment said something about the boldness and brightness of flavor that I hope returns to Australia's restaurant culture that he shaped so powerfully over the years.
SIP
An Outback Steakhouse is to Australians what I am sure an Irish Pub outside of Ireland is to the Irish, i.e., a kind of parody bearing no resemblance to the real thing. Ballycotton is a tiny coastal town in East Cork not far from one of my all time favorite family-run hospitality compounds, Ballymaloe House and Darina Allen’s Ballymaloe Cookery School. There’s a little pub there called McGraths that serves a solid stout, but for me, the historic watering hole was a reminder that these original haunts, by turn mournful and raucous. make their mark with the locals people they draw, not the sprawling beer gardens and gastropub renovations. Places like this are still the soul of the nation, magical and unlike anything elsewhere.
SHOP
Pictured are the real marigold garlands from a beautiful ofrenda I saw during PRIOR"s Day of the Dead event in Oaxaca in October. But I love to take home the fake garlands of marigolds from the cheap souvenir stores and holiday markets in Oaxaca. When strewn near candles (preferably from Casa Viviana), they glow orange and warm up my house. Marigolds are so evocative of Mexico and of course, India that I feel like I can really bring something ‘alive’ home —even if these are the cheapest there’s an authenticity (apparently the word of 2023, sadly) in their inauthenticity.
