Travel hacks learned from a full year of globetrotting

Five continents, 15 countries, 52 flights and 2,500 points of interest-that’s my tally for this year, all in the name of research and development as I carry out worldwide reporting for Bloomberg Pursuits. Lots of people globetrot exhaustively for work, but I’m not sure that many people do it like we travel reporters do, three dinners per night and all.

After all, I don’t purport to be an expert on every place that I write about, be it in my Two-Night Minimum city guides or in longer features that delve deep into emerging destinations. Instead, it’s my job to talk to as many people as possible and learn about the places where they live. I like to ask them what makes their city tick, what are its moods and rhythms, how is it growing and changing, and, of course, what are its under-the-radar gems.

And then, after I’ve aggregated hundreds of suggestions, it’s time to hit the pavement and vet them all myself-sometimes more than once-to distill the very best of the best. (You should see the cacophony of pinpoints saved in my Google Maps.)

Here are some of the spots that I can’t stop thinking about from my year in travel-along with the travel hacks and trends they illuminate.

The best new restaurants aren’t restaurants at all.

Many of my favorite meals in 2024 were forged in unofficial eateries and supper clubs-a testament to how prohibitively expensive it can be to run a conventional restaurant these days.

In Singapore, I enjoyed a heaping portion of char kway teow with Shen Tan in her micro-restaurant (just one table a night) operating from an apartment in the country’s vast public housing system. She estimates there are some 3,000 businesses like hers across the city-state, as local real estate costs have continued to balloon over the last decade.

In Toronto, chef Ken Yau is also circumventing real estate costs in a creative way: After years of cooking under Heston Blumenthal at his restaurants around the world, he’s returned to his hometown to open a wildly popular weekend supper club. It’s based in an unlikely place: his ceramics studio. When he’s not busy designing dishware for some of the most notable restaurants in town, he’s whipping up Asian-accented mains such as a congee-esque onion soup with abalone as well as char-siu-style beef short rib with a Madeira jus.

If I had to give out an award for the single best bite of the year, it would go to a juicy morsel of flame-grilled steak at the Uruguayan-style Rincon Escondido in São Paulo. By now you may not be surprised to hear that this isn’t a normal restaurant either: It’s a speakeasy churrascaria tucked into a cloistered garden off a side street in the city’s Vila Madalena neighborhood. It opens around six to eight days per month with ticketed soirées during which guests can watch the grillmasters at work.

Taking 10,000 steps can lead to 10,000 new friends.

Despite a bevy of communication tools at our fingertips, people are lonely-a vestige of the pandemic, perhaps. As a result, many of the activities people recommended in 2024 were easy-to-join, low-pressure workouts designed to create community.

During my trip to Toronto, for instance, the founder of Hidden Rivers Tours, Matthew Jordan, told me most of the people joining him on his urban ravine hikes are locals looking for new friends. In Manchester, UK, Track Brewing hosts a weekly, no-judgment run club called One Foot Forward that starts and finishes in the taproom. And in Melbourne, Run the Tan is a great option for sprinters to take in the city’s lush botanical gardens en masse. At all of them, I found that sweating it out with strangers really is one of the most convivial experiences one can have-abroad or at home.

The best souvenirs can fit in your carry-on.

I’m a staunch minimalist except when it comes to two things: books and ceramics. My home office is maximally filled with both-they’re the things I collect on every trip. My most cherished ceramics from this year’s haul include a few convex, nature-inspired vessels from Estúdio Heloisa Galvão and a small, wheel-spun cup covered in dimplelike etchings from Melekeni Ceramics in Bogotá. At a time when checked luggage can cost you as much as a regional flight, these types of purchases feel like the easiest way to support local artists while fitting your wares into the carry-on-only lifestyle.

A few nights ago I stopped by Hachimonjiya, famously Kyoto’s (and maybe Japan’s) dirtiest bar, with its mounds of tattered literature and a toilet that hasn’t been cleaned since … ever. It’s a popular hangout spot for the city’s creatives who gather to pay tribute to the owner, Kai Fusayoshi, a prodigious local photographer-many of the scattered books are compilations of his own work. A bound collection of photographs of people reading (very apt) is coming home with me.

The best hybrid work situation is also the most delicious.

The “work from hotel” version of “WFH” is never as comfortable as hoteliers would like you to believe-even after so many of them made pandemic-era upgrades to their in-room desk setups. So, when deadlines come a-knockin’, I usually hole up in a “third space,” like a coffee shop, instead. The benefit of that approach is dovetailing work with pastry and coffee crawls everywhere I go. It’s a method I highly recommend-one that can also be revealing of a city’s culture.

Manchester takes the prize for the most hangout spots per capita, thanks in large part to its roaring student population. I loved working at Pollen while snacking on their signature “cruffin” (croissant dough baked in muffin tins and filled with a rotating fruit curds like cherry or blueberry)-watch out, Dominique Ansel! I had to stop going to Siop Shop nearby, because their glazed doughnuts were too delicious-I could never just have one. Not to be missed is the city’s incredible legacy of libraries; the subscription-only Portico Library was my favo(u)rite-there’s a great nonmembers area right under the giant stained-glass oculus.

If I lived in Bogotá, Tropicalia would be my usual haunt, where cherry-bright coffee is served under a sun-soaked rattan canopy amid plenty of potted palm fronds. All stripes of well-heeled Bogotános gather here: yoga moms pushing strollers (with dogs in ’em), fashionistas taking breaks from perusing the boutiques next door and jet-setters brokering deals on their laptops. It’s a perfect place to get work done and get local flavor at the same time.

Additional shoutouts go to Indianapolis’ chic Cafe Patachou, retrofitted into the former headquarters of the Stutz Motor Car Co. Its fun, self-dubbed “student union for adults” mantra really holds true as brunchtime bustles with regulars who all seem to know each other’s names-the servers’, too. I also loved the energy at Flere Fugle in Copenhagen’s up-and-coming Nordvest neighborhood. It’s housed in a converted auto repair garage that now acts as a communal space dedicated to proliferation and preservation of democracy-very Danish.

The suburbs are in.

With travelers increasingly interested in veering off the beaten path, the coolest new thing to do is hit the suburbs. No, really.

In Reykjavik, escape the tourist hoards by heading to Hafnarfjördur, a small port precinct with brightly painted aluminum-sided abodes and old wooden vessels bobbing in the harbor. (It’s a 15-minute drive from Hallsgrimskirkja chruch.) Inside a functioning greenhouse, there is the fine-dining up-and-comer Sól, where diners sit at tables lofted over the same garden beds that supply the kitchen.

In Manchester, reverse-commute to Altrincham, a suburb at the end of the municipal tramline near the international airport. It’s where you’ll find the adorable 735-year-old Altrincham Market, which overflows with produce and craft vendors and features a vaulted food hall.

The ’burbs are also where you’ll find real-deal Cantonese and Szechuan food in Toronto. The staff of the excellent restaurant Sunny’s Chinese maintain a directory of their own favorite spots in Markham and Scarborough; it’s below the menu on their website, here. Consider it a cheat sheet worth bookmarking.

The best pizza is no longer in New York City or Italy.

Yes, you should always focus on the native foods in the countries you visit: ajiaco chicken soup in Bogotá or goya champuru stir-fried noodles in Okinawa. But when you need an escape hatch from out-of-your-comfort-zone dining, the move is no longer to order a club sandwich from room service. These days it’s all about pizza. Indeed, the best slices I had this year weren’t in Italy or New York City (gasp!): Ronan in Los Angeles, Savoy in Tokyo and Yoroshiku in Kyoto all blew me away with their faithful Neapolitan executions and perfectly charred crusts.