Does wanderlust have you wistfully gazing out the window? Yeah, us too. Hit the virtual road with Times journalists and photographers, as they share never-before-seen video, photos and experiences from captivating spots around the globe, every Saturday. This week, we’re going on safari in search of Zambia’s stunning wildlife.
With special guest Marcus Westberg, photographer. Hosted by Amy Virshup, travel editor.
Filmed and Edited: Bevan Percival
The ‘lock down’ has given me some time to finally put some footage together and share it on line. All these scenes were shot over the last 12 months when I was really trying to work out the best way to shoot full holy grail time lapse scenes, some of these started out that way but ended up as shorter sequences when something in my rig failed or something else got in the way.
Visit some of the West Coast’s most popular National Parks with Google Earth! Travel from the peaks of Washington’s Mount Rainier to Joshua Tree’s cholla cactus gardens in California.
From the Wall Street Journal (April 17, 2020):
As the coronavirus pandemic upends work, travel and home life, the rules are shifting for what people can and can’t do in their daily lives. The WSJ is continuously updating advice and information on how to stay safe, healthy and connected, and how to help others.
Aid to a Friend Caring for a Coronavirus Patient
“Because I am organized in my job and day-to-day life, I took on my husband’s care thinking I would have it all quickly in hand. But things didn’t turn out that way,” writes Leslie Yazel, whose husband came down with coronavirus-related pneumonia. Here, she offers what she learned about the best ways to help those who are caring for someone with coronavirus.
Get a Good Night’s Sleep
Filmed and Directed by: Carsan Choong
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected many people’s lives all over the world. This short film is focusing solely on Edinburgh, showcasing the situation and how the daily lives in the city have been affected. Inclusion of some positivity and optimism too in this short film.
My own old stock footage as well as some aerial footage from third-party suppliers were used. New current footage were shot without flouting the lockdown rules, only done so in conjunction with essential travel.
Music: Nicholas Britell – End Credits Suite (Moonlight – OST)
Edinburgh is Scotland’s compact, hilly capital. It has a medieval Old Town and elegant Georgian New Town with gardens and neoclassical buildings. Looming over the city is Edinburgh Castle, home to Scotland’s crown jewels and the Stone of Destiny, used in the coronation of Scottish rulers. Arthur’s Seat is an imposing peak in Holyrood Park with sweeping views, and Calton Hill is topped with monuments and memorials.
The fifty independently owned and operated hotels in this book make up the best of 
what the United States can offer: extraordinary locations, exquisite design, fantastic food, and boundless comfort. These first-class establishments are run by American hoteliers with a passion for proper American hospitality.
Over the course of the last two centuries, the American hotel has become a fixture of the modern lifestyle and a concept that has revolutionized travel, created subcultures, and given new meaning to locales both urban and remote. A superior hotel is much more than a place to spend the night: it is an institution, a cultural center, an icon of luxury. Since the 19th-century opening of the Tremont House—America’s very first five-star hotel—the great American hotels have come to symbolized style, opulence and social distinction to well-heeled travelers from around the globe.
Amerifine, a discerning voice of American luxury, has endeavored to curate the finest, most iconic expressions of American hospitality currently in operation. Without exception, each hotel pictured here fulfills and transcends the great responsibility of the modern hotel: to turn each visitor’s experience of their destination into something truly memorable.
Faye Mythen was born in London but lives between the USA and Europe. She is a passionate Ameriphile and founded Amerifine to promote the most ambitious and well-loved American luxury brands and hotels and experiences. Mythen’s career spans 25 years as a entrepreneur, uncovering new businesses, several of which embody America’s proud history of excellence, craftsmanship and great design.
SWEETS hotel is an initiative and co-creation of the Amsterdam based architecture office Space&Matter (known for De Ceuvel in Amsterdam), project development partner Grayfield and Seven New Things (Suzanne Oxenaar, Otto Nan and Gerrit Groen, founders of Lloyd Hotel & Cultural Embassy (world’s first 1- to 5-star hotel in Amsterdam – sold in 2018), Llove Hotel (pop-up hotel in Tokyo) and Hotel The Exchange (fashion hotel in Amsterdam)).
First initiated in 2012 as an urban space project, SWEETS hotel is now 8 years in the making. 20 bridge houses are currently available for reservations, with more coming soon.
For 100 years Amsterdam’s bridge houses accommodated the city’s many bridge keepers who were responsible for opening these impressive structures for passing boat traffic. However, with the introduction of a centralised bridge control system the bridge houses became redundant.
In 2012 the initiators of SWEETS hotel presented a plan to the city of Amsterdam to transform the city’s bridge houses into tiny hotel suites. The vision: to introduce travellers to new neighbourhoods and unexpected experiences in the city.
With such names as ‘Paradise’ and ‘Super Paradise,’ the sands of these shores have captured the imaginations and hearts of industry titans, artists, and party-goers alike from all around the globe, marking it as a stable cosmopolitan destination and as a paramount it haven on the jet-set circuit.
Located in the Cyclades and surrounded by the blue-green water of the Aegean sits whitewashed, windmill-strewn Mykonos, the island of the winds. This ancient island and those surrounding it, mythologized as the bodies of gods felled by Hercules in the time of antiquity, are older than legend and have played host to countless cultures for more than millennia. At forty-square-miles and boasting a population of only ten-thousand, the ‘Ibiza of Greece’ has become prized for gorgeous architecture, welcoming and open-minded locals, and fantastic beaches.
This book chronicles the culture and society that has defined Mykonos over the past century—from its days as a hideout for such luminaries and elites as Le Corbusier and Antonis Benakis, to its moment as a sanctuary for the gay community,to its predominant party scene—all the while indulging the reader with the ruins and myths hidden there.
Lizy Manola is a Greek photographer. A freelancer, her focus is on documentary photography. For more than fifteen years, she has traveled and shot in distant places, where culture and everyday life preserve their natural authenticity. She has published two books with Assouline, Certain Realities and Ethiopian Highlands. Her work has featured in solo and group exhibitions in Greece and worldwide. She lives and works in Athens and New York. Thirty years ago, she bought a house on Mykonos; she has spent endless summers holidays on the island ever since.
Scenes from a day of weirdness in quarantine in Paris, France as Parisians socially distance to avoid spreading the coronavirus. The city’s landmarks and streets appear eerily empty while residents have taken shelter at home to curb the outbreak of COVID-19.
Overlooking the Aegean Sea, a charming string of coastal neighborhoods form the Athens Riviera, a serene escape from the constant activity in the city’s center. A selection of high-end hotels lines the pristine stretch of beaches down to the southernmost point of the Attica Peninsula.
The revamped Four Seasons Astir Palace, with a history of housing foreign dignitaries and film stars of the 1960s, is the most luxurious hotel in Athens, perhaps even in all of Greece. The night club, Island, is bringing back the glamour and excitement of the twentieth century bouzouki clubs reminiscent of names such as Melina Mercouri and Stavros Niarchos.
Athens is experiencing a revival—in art, night life and design. For a metropolis constantly associated with the past, the modern strides in development and culture are sometimes overlooked in favor of the ruins and artifacts from antiquity. When in fact, the juxtaposition only enhances the beauty of both. Athens Riviera puts the old-world beside the new-world and a deeper understanding of this ancient capital emerges. With one foot in the past and one foot in the future; access to both the electricity of city life and the tranquility of a beach side resort, Athens cannot be defined in simple terms. One just has to experience it for themselves.
Stéphanie Artarit began her career as a journalist, and worked as a psychoanalyst for many years in Tokyo. She then went on to write the novel Variations of the Devil in 2013. Today, she divides her time between homes in Athens and the Cycladic island of Antiparos, where she also operates her boutique, Petit Tipota, and represents several French fashion labels in Greece. In 2018, she began her company, The Gang of Style, which specializes in designing in-house boutiques for luxury hotels all over the world.
Boomers Daily 