Eating Polar Bear and Gawkin g at Greenland’s Vast Expanse

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Hello all,

We hope you had a great Labor Day weekend, especially those of you who braved the travel rush. Over the holiday, we featured Paul Richardson’s awe-inspiring dispatch from Greenland—the latest in our It’s Still a Big World series—where he camped above an iceberg-dotted fjord, gawked at the vast wilderness, explored a ghost town at the edge of the world, and dined on pan-fried polar bear meat.

“It hardly seems a decade ago that the coolest, most talked-about new Nordic destination was Iceland,” he wrote. “But… in 2023, telling people you’re off to Iceland is unlikely to raise more than mild interest and a quizzical eyebrow. Whereas an upcoming trip to Greenland still gets you a serious ‘wow.’” However, as Richardson found, Greenland seems poised to break out from being a deeply under-the-radar destination—for good or bad.

Elsewhere, David Shortell took us to the tiny Mexican state of Aguascalientes for the Feria de San Marcos, a nearly 200-year-old annual festival that pairs cockfighting with performances from international pop stars. The weeks-long party, he wrote, was “like if a Ringling niece had a blowout quinceañera.”

Enjoy!

— Andrew Kirell, Senior Editor

Eating Polar Bear and Gawking at Greenland’s Vast Expanse

Greenland, with its massive wilderness and left-field gastronomy, is one of the world’s vanishingly few destinations where simply being there feels like endless adventure.

The Mexican Carnival Pairing Cockfights and Latin Pop Stars

The Feria de San Marcos is like if a Ringling niece had a blowout quinceañera—a wild combo of international music icons, rodeos, and cockfights.

These Baja Towns Are Your Gateway to All Things Wet and Wild

Little Loreto and La Paz are splendid Baja Peninsula alternatives to the more famous Cabo San Lucas.

Tourists Are Destroying Athens’ Most Beautiful Neighborhood

Overtourism in the last couple years has made Plaka's residents wonder if their world-famous views are worth it any more.

“No doubt in a few years Greenland will no longer seem distant or exotic and New Yorkers will think nothing of a long weekend watching the glaciers melt in Disko Bay. For the moment, however, this is still a destination—one of the world’s vanishingly few—where simply being there feels like an awfully big adventure.”

—Paul Richardson on the vast Greenland as it stands on the precipice of major changes.

This Suitcase Simplifies Travel

The Zipper Carry-On Max is, first and foremost, shockingly lightweight—which, the more I think about it, is how every suitcase should be. It’s hard-sided, which I personally love because that means it can fit in the overhead bin no matter how much you stuff in it. Trust me when I say I really put this to the test. It has four wheels which are extremely quiet—thank god, because there’s nothing I hate more than the clickety-clack of wheels going down airport walkways.

—Scouted by Daniel Modlin, Scouted Contributor

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Travel to Art Deco Chicago With This Book

In part due to Instagram, architectural tourism has never been bigger. Few cities anywhere in the world can compete with Chicago for architectural splendor and variety. It’s river architecture tour is considered a must-do—even by travel snobs. Wright, Burnham, Sullivan, Gang, van der Rohe, S.O.M, Gehry, and Bofill—all have iconic buildings here. But for us, the most visually alluring period of skyscrapers is Art Deco.

So, this week’s highlight from Just Booked is Robert Bruegmann’s Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America published by Yale University Press.

It’s a deep dive into not just the explosion in Art Deco architecture, but also its effects in fashion and industrial design. Some pages will leave you wistful for masterpieces that have been destroyed, while other hidden gems highlighted in it will have you adding them to your architecture bucket list.

Don’t miss our other selections for our series on gorgeous travel-related coffee table books, Just Booked.

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