Travel

Ten magical places to connect with female empowerment.
While the world is filled with enchanting destinations connected to ancient fairy tales, many of these original stories haven’t fared well in our post #MeToo era. However, if you sweep aside the tales of old, with damsels in distress waiting for their prince to arrive, there are many woke tales of female empowerment, set in spectacular destinations that no fourth-wave feminist would be embarrassed to visit.

There are few cities on earth that tantalize the eye quite like Palm Springs. Cruising into this quirky city, via the bone-dry desert, it soon becomes clear that Palm Springs simply refuses to do bad buildings; whether it’s the high-impact housing of the rich and famous, or the mundane everyday buildings of finger-lickin’ drive-throughs, gas stations, banks or sci-fi-tastic convenience stores, everywhere the eye lands offers up a design masterclass.

“Christmas is not a date. It is a state of mind,” so said the author Mary Ellen Chase. To some this could be a throwaway comment, but to The Inn at Christmas Place, a left field hotel that lavishly celebrates the holiday season every single day of the year, it’s nothing short of a mission statement.

Have the current travel restrictions left you yearning for a dose of adventure? Thankfully, our British shores offer plenty of fantastically quirky staycation options. Zoey Goto rounds up the best unusual minibreaks, from bedding down in a safari park to playing king of the castle at a regal sleepover.

As an urbanite British mother, I’m probably not the most obvious dude ranch enthusiast. My natural habitat is the concrete jungle of London, rather than riding the range astride a horse. So why did we decide to pack up our family of four and hot-hoof it to a Texan ranch, when we could easily have unwound on a fly-and-flop beach holiday or enjoyed the cultural stimulation of a city break?

Memphis Tennessee is at the root of contemporary music in America. Although the USA is rich with inspiring musical cities from New York’s gritty hip-hop beats to Nashville’s country twang, if you want to go all the way back, you need to head to Memphis to discover the city that gave us rock and roll, soul and the blues.