I recently reconnected with my college friend Cindy, whom I'd scarcely seen since the summer after graduation when we traveled for a month throughout Italy and France . She reminded me of the time we raced back to the youth hostel in Verona after an open-air concert in the amphitheater to make curfew. I can still hear the clapping of flip-flops on cobblestones behind us and the hopeful lilt of Australian accents calling for us to hold the doors open. We made plans to meet those same Aussies in Avignon later that month, the logical coda to an easy kinship born of averted misadventure. That night, we all slipped into our travel sheets, money belts safely stowed, and slept the deep hummingbird sleep that only relief brings. <\/p>\n
Nostalgia sparked a conversation about our shared lifelong wanderlust, the places we have yet to visit, and the bittersweet sense of a foreshortening future at middle age. \"My working theory is that we have a better (or worse?) sense of time now, because we know the next thing's coming and the next,\" she wrote to me in an email. \"We always see the horizon line, so we don't have that slow unfolding we once had as kids.\" Add to that our compulsive need to document and share every sunset and avocado toast , and there are few occasions when we actually allow a moment to play out. <\/p>\n
Except, of course, when we travel. While we may have moved from American Express Travelers Cheques and postcards to Apple Pay and Facebook Live, what doesn't change is the way in which walking into a medieval hilltop town square in Liguria at the golden hour, or diving through a pristine wave in Sumba, reminds us how lucky we feel to be alive, and changes our perception of time. <\/p>\n
In the age of TMI, and the deafening chorus of self-anointed expertise across digital and social media, we've almost come full circle in our desire to narrow the universe to those recommendations we trust most. When Sir Harold Evans launched Cond Nast Traveler 30 years ago, he did just that, creating a publication that drew a hard line between travelers who crave genuine connection to place and mere tourists ticking off a bucket list. <\/p>\n
Thirty years later, we still believe that the very best kind of travel comes when we are armed with the right information, itineraries, on the ground inteland, yes, technology to move through the world with a confidence that allows for serendipity. I know I should be less concerned with timing the afternoon light so it reflects off the church steeple just so for my Instagram. But I am also keenly aware that what took me off the highway in pursuit of that church in the first place was a description I read by my favorite food writer (and confirmed by a local bartender), its corresponding Insta geotag, and Google Maps. It takes both vulnerability and confidence to follow the recommendation of a no-frills osteria meal over an acclaimedif overratedMichelin-starred one. But it is only in stepping outside of our comfort zone, permitting ourselves to move toward something we can't quite picture, that we allow for the slow unfolding of memories in the makingand, yes, for that horizon line to inch back just a little further. <\/p>\n
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Editor's Letter: The Evolution of Travel - Cond Nast Traveler<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently reconnected with my college friend Cindy, whom I'd scarcely seen since the summer after graduation when we traveled for a month throughout Italy and France . Continue reading