Summer 2023

AFAR

AFAR magazine - Where Travel Can Take You

AFAR2 min read
Afar
FOUNDERS Greg Sullivan & Joe Diaz VP, EDITOR IN CHIEF Julia Cosgrove EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Sarika Bansal @sarika008 CREATIVE DIRECTOR Supriya Kalidas @supriyakalidas DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL CONTENT Laura Dannen Redman @laura_redman EXECUTIVE EDITOR Billie C
AFAR3 min read
Contributors
Photographer Brad Ogbonna is drawn to photographing quiet, intimate moments between people. For Family Ties (p.41), he set up his camera at Tanoreen, a popular Palestinian restaurant in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, run by mother and daughter Rawia and Jumana
AFAR1 min read
The Hardest Part? Deciding Where To Start.
Overrun with Blue Jays and Raptors. Well, their fans, anyway. Also known for its world-class dining, electric nightlife, and the kind of locals who take a lot of pride in sharing them. Filled with wildlife, trails, lakes, starry skies, and countless
AFAR2 min read
Leave No Trace
I LOOKED OUT the airplane window and saw an endless stretch of white: miles of glaciers, snow, and ice, blending harmoniously with the clouds on the horizon. The sky looked impossibly blue by contrast. I was about to land in Svalbard, the archipelago
AFAR3 min read
On Display
STANDING IN THE British Museum’s Ethiopia and Coptic Egypt gallery in 2013, I wondered if I was doing the right thing: paying money to see items that the country of origin asserted were acquired illegally. It was my birthday, and I was decked out in
AFAR6 min readGender Studies
Gay Paris
THE FACT THAT I wanted to stay at the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris because of the French TV show Dix Pour Cent tells you a lot about me as a lesbian. In the penultimate episode of the series, aired as Call My Agent! on Netflix, Sigourney Weaver travels
AFAR3 min read
How Can Travel Preserve and Honor Cultures?
When I think back on my favorite trips, it’s the cultural moments that stand out: the shake of feathers on a Black Masking Indian’s Mardi Gras outfit in New Orleans; the laughter I shared with Fijians around a kava bowl. To me, the most rewarding par
AFAR9 min read
Family Ties
ONE AFTERNOON SOME 25 years ago, Rawia Bishara gathered her dearest girlfriends at her home in Brooklyn for a meal that would shift the course of her life. It was like any other Friday: She filled her table with stacks of red snapper she’d fried in v
AFAR5 min read
The Art of Hospitality
BARELY 48 HOURS after landing in Nairobi, I’m on a leafy terrace with a multinational crowd of Ghanaian businessmen, European architects, and Kenyan artists—some just home from the Venice Biennale, others on their way to Frieze Miami. The setting is
AFAR3 min read
The AFAR Guide to Brooklyn
Ace Hotel Brooklyn Boerum Hill The Ace hotel group opened its second New York City outpost directly across from the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station in 2021. Built from the ground up, the 13-story building features a brutalist facade and interiors by
AFAR5 min read
Made in Mongolia
MONGOLIA GETS COLD. Really, really cold. In the depths of winter, temperatures can drop as low as–40° (which, someone is bound to cheerily inform you, is the same in Celsius and Fahrenheit). It wasn’t nearly that frigid as I walked around the capital
AFAR6 min read
Antarctica
THERE IS NO WAY to truly know Antarctica: It’s too vast, too un-predictable, and too treacherous—a place so unlike the tamed world we live in that it might as well be another planet entirely. Still, dozens of cruise ships strive to provide a glimpse
AFAR2 min read
The Rhine River
I’M OUT OF BREATH and panting, somewhere near Heidelberg, a historic German city located near the foothills of the Odenwald. My cycling group and I are pedaling toward Schwetzingen Palace, renowned for its Versailles-like gardens, about six miles awa
AFAR2 min read
Galápagos Islands
THE SEA LIONS were showing off. As I was deep-sea snorkeling with my fellow cruise passengers, the friendly mammals entertained us by performing curlicues in the water. They weren’t alone: Schools of fish came into view as penguins paddled by. A corm
AFAR10 min readWorld
The Capital Of Cool
ON THE NEARLY 190-mile train journey from Athens to Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, my partner Barry and I share a compartment with a middle-aged Athenian couple. Soon, they are plying us with homemade spanakopita (spinach and feta pie).
AFAR3 min read
The Afar Guide To Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki’s past is present in the design of this Marriott Autograph Collection hotel, which opened in 2022, one minute by foot from Aristotelous Square. Its sleek 91 rooms and 9 suites feature arches and mixed textures; colors, too, nod to the By
AFAR5 min read
A place To call home
Minnesota has sizable populations who have roots in Scandinavia, Germany, Ethiopia, India, and Mexico. The Twin Cities are home to the biggest Somali community in the U.S., as well as the highest urban concentration of Hmong people, who have links to
AFAR4 min read
Afar’s Guide To The Twin Cities
In summer 2022, Minnesota welcomed its first five-star property, Four Seasons Hotel Minneapolis. Local flourishes abound, from the regionally stitched Faribault blankets draped over elegant sofas in the suites to the sculptural installations livening
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The Afar Guide To Mumbai
Cultural offerings abound: Buy tickets for a show at the National Centre for Performing Arts or the Prithvi Theatre, which specializes in Hindi works. Check out contemporary art at Project 88, or visit smaller galleries in the Kala Ghoda area, known
AFAR8 min read
My Mumbai
IT IS MUMBAI IN NOVEMBER, WHICH IS TO SAY: HOT. I HAVE STOOD WHERE I AM STANDING MANY TIMES BEFORE, IN ALL ERAS OF MY LIFE—AS A BABY WOBBLY ON MY OWN TWO FEET, AS A BESPECTACLED KID WITH SCRAPED KNEES, AS AN AWKWARD TEEN TUGGING DOWN THE SKIRT THAT A
AFAR1 min read
The Runway Show Before the Runway Show
By the goodwill of the gods, every now and then I get invited to fashion shows—and get to experience the strange and wonderful slice of New York City they occupy. Before the runway stomping begins, guests can depend on a delightful display: Fashion m

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