the gold list
Condé Nast Traveler US|January - February 2024
Our 30th annual Gold List of the world's greatest hotels and cruises captures nearly a year's worth of work. This collection represents hundreds of hours of researching, scouting, and impassioned debating by our team of editors in seven cities across the globe. But more than that, it reflects our ongoing love affair with the places where we stay, which often become our gateways to entire destinations. Read on to inspire your next trip.
the gold list

BAB AL SHAMS DESERT RESORT AND SPA
Escaping to an Oasis Outside Dubai

FOR ALMOST TWO DECADES, UAE residents have made the 45-minute pilgrimage up AI Qudra Road-past outlandishly shaped man-made lakes, swirling cycling paths, and endurance horse racing tracks. They go to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries or just to enjoy an indulgent weekend at Bab AI Shams. The resort is a study of subtlety and slow reveal in a city that often focuses on the opposite. Its much-photographed infinity pool, which drops off into a vast sandy expanse in a stunning paradox of elemental opposites, is the draw for many.

For me, it's the quiet: all-enveloping and absolute. The resort comes into its own as the sun sets, the silhouettes of sand dunes framed in painterly pinks and mauves, bamboo torches flickering along the perimeter, and lanterns creating a play of light and shadow in outdoor passageways.

It may be unassuming, but Bab AI Shams is not devoid of spectacle. At AI Hadheerah, the colossal, open-air restaurant, nightly performances serve up all the Arabian classics: a belly dancer, a whirling dervish, musicians, singers, a mini souk, and even a reenactment of a Bedouin caravan with camels and horses crisscrossing a bordering desert plateau. Live cooking stations serve up generous grills and regional specialities like lamb salona, harees, and chicken biryani, and the spirited Egyptian chef de cuisine Mohamed Ferjani takes great delight in showing me the underground contraption used to prepare his seven-hour slow-cooked ouzi lamb.

Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January - February 2024-Ausgabe von Condé Nast Traveler US.

Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.

Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January - February 2024-Ausgabe von Condé Nast Traveler US.

Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.

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THE STORY GOES that actor Marlon Brando first arrived on the 18-isle atoll of Tetiaroa by water-as in, he swam ashore.

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Jumeirah Burj AI Arab
Condé Nast Traveler US

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1 min  |
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Blackberry Farm
Condé Nast Traveler US

Blackberry Farm

BLACKBERRY FARM LOOMS in the consciousness of many travelers as an almost mythical Southern sanctuary in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, a place whose storybook perfection has to be experienced to be believed.

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1 min  |
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Fogo Island Inn
Condé Nast Traveler US

Fogo Island Inn

THIS 29-ROOM MODERN CLASSIC in Newfoundland is a model for place-specific hospitality, dreamed up by founder Zita Cobb and built by Shorefast, a nonprofit that supports economic and cultural resilience on the hotel's namesake island and runs artist residencies in four isolated, incredibly photogenic studios.

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1 min  |
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Condé Nast Traveler US

ALAN CUMMING on CROSSING THE ATLANTIC

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Condé Nast Traveler US

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Condé Nast Traveler US

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Condé Nast Traveler US

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Condé Nast Traveler US

ALLIN

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Condé Nast Traveler US

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