AWAY WE GO

Many a friendship has been cemented or demolished on vacation. Jetsetting with companions is one of life’s great pleasures, but only if you can master its rhythms and rigors. Best of luck.

- MARISA MELTZER, EMILIA PETRARCA , ANDRE ACIMAN 

A User’s Guide to Traveling with Friends
Practice the fine art of shuttle diplomacy. Don’t bicker over breakfast. Include a wildcard. Aperitivo is Italian for bottomless brunch. Drop the intermittent fasting. And do not, for heaven’s sake, Splitwise.

David Prior, the vacation guru and founder of the namesake travel club, has planned trips for Gwyneth Paltrow and normies alike. He can organize a group of strangers to have the time of their lives in India for Diwali, and he has an 80 percent return rate to prove it. But this year he has taken on the daunting task of planning his own trip.

For his upcoming 40th birthday, Prior, whose previous jobs included assistant to Alice Waters at Chez Panisse and stints as a writer and editor, is planning a trip for about 25 of his closest friends to Andalusia. “There are people coming who are 25 and 80 and everything in between,” he says. “There will be food people, fashion people, people I went to school with,” including the illustrator Luke Edward Hall and the designer J.J. Martin. “It’s a mixed bag.”