Beyond Borders

BEYOND
BORDERS
where not all who wander are lost
September 2018
Off the Beaten
Track in Venice
Italian Authenticity in a Tourist Town
BACK TO NATURE
WITH EUROPE’S
REWILDING CAMPS
SIP YOUR WAY
THROUGH COLUMBIA’S
COFFEE TOWNS
TAKE A DEEP DIVE
INTO CARNIVAL’S NEW
CRUISE LINE

Adventure
IS OUT THERE.
September 2016
30
contents
Off the Beaten
Track in Venice
Beyond its touristy
exterior, discover the
local authentic culture
of Venice, Italy.
— by Maria Shollenbarger
46
Sip Your Way
Through
Colombia’s
Coffee Towns
Sour The future of
Colombian coffee can
be found in an authentic
journey into the past.
—by Bill Fink
55
Back to Nature
A tourism experiment
known as “rewilding”
brings parts of
Europe back to its
undomesticated state.
—by Darrell Hartma
photo credit: pixabay.com
VISITCOLORADO
www.colorado.com
12 Food & Drinks
19 Travel News
25 Hotels & Resorts
29 Attractions
37 Style
43 Culture & Design
departments
50 Trip Ideas
55 Destinations
61 Weekend Getaways
68 Travel Tips & Intel
72 Cruises
85 World’s Best Awards
60
Take A Deep
Dive into Fathom
Multi-day volunteer
missions in areas such as
the Dominican Republic
and Cuba will allow
cruising passengers to
create a social impact.
—by Kenrya Rankin Naasel
features
September 2017 | BEYOND BORDERS
3

Food & Drinks
The crowd at Jeni’s in
Columbus, Ohio.
LEFT: Ice cream sundaes
from Amy’s in Austin, Texas.
photo credits: pixabay.com
WEST
EAST
CALIFORNIA
OREGON
DC
MASSACHUSETTS
United
States of
Ice Cream
LIKE YOU, WE PLAN ON SPENDING
AUGUST IN HOT PURSUIT OF THE
BEST ICE CREAMS, SO WE ASKED
OUR FACEBOOK FANS TO VOTE FOR
THEIR FAVORITE PARLORS ACROSS
THE COUNTRY. PLUS, WE ATE OUR
WAY THROUGH DOZENS OF PINTS TO
REVEAL THE BEST IN AMERICA.
BY JULIA HEFFELFINGER & CHRISTINE QUINLAN
BI-RITE CREAMERY,
SAN FRANCISCO
biritecreamery.com
Marin County’s Straus Family
Creamery, the first certifiedorganic
dairy in the West,
supplies all of the milk and
cream for Bi-Rite’s ice creams.
Top scoop Black Sesame with
Sonoma Honey
McCONNELL’S, SANTA
BARBARA
mcconnells.com
This parlor pasteurizes its own
milk and cream to make a rich,
thick custard base.
Top scoop Churros con Leche
SWEET ROSE CREAMERY,
SANTA MONICA
sweetrosecreamery.com
Ingredients come from the local
farmers’ market, one of the best
in the country.
Top scoop Strawberry
SALT & STRAW, PORTLAND
saltandstraw.com
Famous for its collaborations
with chefs as well as sweetsavory
combos like Fish Sauce
Caramel with Palm Sugar.
Top scoop Arbequina Olive
Oil
WASHINGTON
LICK PURE CREAM, SEATTLE
lickpc.com
Inventive flavors like the malty
M2 fill the Lickwich, made with
grilled doughnut halves.
Top scoop Orchard Peach
MOLLY MOON, SEATTLE
mollymoon.com
It’s not just the customers who
are happy here: Employees get
free health care, paid leave and
living wages.
Top scoop Stumptown Coffee
ICE CREAM JUBILEE,
WASHINGTON, DC
icecreamjubilee.com
Victoria Lai, a former
member of the Department
of Homeland Security, gets
creative with milk and cream
from nearby South Mountain
Creamery.
Top scoop Chocolate Matzo
Crack
MAINE
MT. DESERT ISLAND ICE
CREAM, BAR HARBOR
mdiic.com
Ice cream artisan Linda Parker
shows her local pride, as when
she adds Maine sea salt to
caramel ice cream.
Top scoop Butterscotch Miso
TOSCANINI’S, CAMBRIDGE
tosci.com
Decadent varieties like B3
(brown butter, brown sugar
and chunks of fudge brownie)
share freezer space with perfect
versions of the classics.
Top scoop Hydrox Cookie
NEW HAMPSHIRE
ANNABELLE’S NATURAL,
PORTSMOUTH
annabellesicecream.com
In an alley on the waterfront,
this shop serves rotating
seasonal choices and more than
30 regular ones.
Top scoop New Hampshire
Pure Maple Walnut
photo credit: pixabay.com
September 2017 | BEYOND BORDERS
13

off the
beaten
track
in Venice
Looking beyond its touristy veneer,
Maria Shollenbarger goes on a quest to
uncover Venice’s authentic, living culture.
On a particularly pellucid afternoon last June,
at the tail end of the opening of the 55th
Venice Biennale, I am chatting with Bianca
Arrivabene Valenti Gonzaga in her garden
by the Grand Canal. We sit in the shadow
of the Palazzo Papadopoli, the beautiful
16th-century palace that is the ancestral home
of her husband, Giberto; shards of light glint off
the gently ruffled water and reflect on its newly
plastered façade.
photo credit: pixabay.com
Carefully tended gravel borders a
preternaturally perfect lawn at the
garden’s center. Sleek, bleached-oak
tables and steel-wire chairs line its
perimeter; mirrors in dark wood frames
are leaned, one precisely equidistant
from the other, against an immaculate
brick wall. In a city whose reputation
was built on extravagant displays of
wealth—not least among them the
palazzo towering next to us, still one
of the largest privately owned ones on
the Grand Canal—and whose beauty
today is more of a crumbling, decadent
sort, this is a curiously austere space.
But then, the garden isn’t precisely
Arrivabene’s anymore. It is now under
the management of the Singaporebased
Amanresorts, and her husband’s
ancestral home goes by a new name:
Aman Canal Grande.
Not long ago, Arrivabene recalls,
things here skewed decidedly more
toward the shabby chic-end of
the maintenance spectrum, with wisteria
growing in unchecked profusion. No
longer: shabby chic—an aesthetic with
which Amanresorts, as anyone who
has visited one will know, has exactly
zero truck—has left the building. In its
place has come an unassailably tasteful
merger of 21st-century design and
neo-Renaissance and Rococo splendor.
Layered in ornate cornices and original
Murano chandeliers, Aman Canal
Grande’s public salons and 24 suites
were painstakingly refurbished in an
18-month renovation requiring an
average of 100 artisans on site daily.
Elaborate plasterwork and freshly
abluted gilt contrast with angular,
contemporary furniture in gunite
gray, studio white, and other shades
on the not-quite-color wheel. In my
suite, chubby gambol across frescoes
attributed to the school of Tiepolo; on
the piano nobile they are the work of
the master himself, crowning a dining
30 BEYOND BORDERS | September 2017 September 2017 | BEYOND BORDERS 31

Getting There and Around
There are nonstop flights to Venice from New York, Philadelphia, and
Atlanta. Otherwise, you’ll have to make connections through Milan
or Rome. Once there, you can travel by ferry, water taxi, or bus.
The city of Venice, Italy.
Piazza San Marco
room covered in vermilion damask
and hung with portraits of Arrivabene
ancestors.
For anyone who’s been paying
even perfunctory attention to Venice’s
evolution over the past several years, a
slick, Asian-based hotel group taking
over the Palazzo Papadopoli makes
perfect sense. It’s a pivotal moment here
right now: at one end of the tourist
profile are the rarefied spectacles of the
Biennale and the Venice Film Festival,
which see the Guidecca
Canal grow thicker every
year with super-yachts,
and certain quarters of
the city teeming with
VIP’s from Beverly Hills
and Basel, Kazakhstan
and Kuala Lumpur. This
year’s Biennale is the
biggest to date, with 88
countries exhibiting.
Luxury hoteliers have responded,
establishing presences (as in Aman’s
case); debuting new properties (like
“
The future, here,
is as much in the
hands of those who
visit as of those
who call it home.
Francesca Bortolotto Possati, the
Venetian-born owner of the venerated
Bauers hotels, with the exclusive Villa
F); or upping their game with ambitious
multimillion-dollar renovations (among
them the venerated Gritti Palace
and the Hotel Danieli, both flying
Starwood’s Luxury Collection flag).
A
t the other end is a less
glamorous, more worrisome
phenomenon: the thousands
in the Piazza San Marco and on the
Riva dei Schiavoni jostling for their
photo of the Bridge of Sighs to post to
“
photo credits: pixabay.com
Pinterest (or, increasingly, Weibo). Most
are day-tripping cruise passengers and
tour groups, and their numbers increase
by an alarming amount each year. Fears
that this demographic doesn’t spend
enough to compensate for the damage
their aggregate droves are doing to
historic Venice—flood-prone; weak of
foundation; as physically vulnerable as a
metropolis can be—are growing.
This is why the future, here, is as
much in the hands of those who visit
as of those who call it home. Between
the art diva and the day-tripper, there
is room—indeed, there’s the need—for
the tourist who partakes of another
Venice: the living city that hums with
modern culture, local artisanal cuisine,
craftspeople keeping traditions alive,
and authentic neighborhoods.
For though its geographic nature
is finite, Venice still allows
for felicitous accidents of
discovery—and even, surprisingly, of
solitude, despite a daily tourist influx in
the Centro Storico that outnumbers the
actual population. You can, for instance,
carve a route through the labyrinth
of calli radiating east from the Doge’s
Palace, and within 15 minutes be in
Castello, the once mariner-class sestiere
that surrounds the Arsenale. Its lowrise
houses and tiny squares are humbly
pretty, strung with laundry pirouetting
Stay
Aman Canal Grande 1364
Calle Tiepolo; amanresorts.
com. $$$$$
Oltre Il Giardino A sixroom
contemporary gem
in quiet San Polo. 2542 San
Polo; oltreilgiardino-venezia.
com. $$
Venissa Ristorante Ostello
On the island of Mazzorbo,
this stylish inn has a
Michelin-starred restaurant.
3 Fondamenta Caterina;
venissa.it. $
Eat
in the Adriatic breeze. Masterworks by
the schools of Tintoretto, Bellini, and
Veronese are casually sequestered in
churches and chapels like multi-carat
gemstones scattered across garden soil.
In the Via Garibaldi, you can stop
for a tiny tramezzino of baccalà and
artichoke purée at Bar Mio, or stroll
down to Serra dei Giardini, a hybrid
café-nursery-event space, for a glass
of Ribolla Gialla or a freshly blended
vegetable juice.
Similarly, over by the Rialto Bridge
and market—brimming sometimes
joyfully, sometimes claustrophobically,
with life—a handful of strategic turns
will take you deep into the quietude of
San Polo. Here, if your map (and/or the
directions from your hotel’s concierge)
has served you well, you’ll reach Antiche
Carampane, where diners convene
under rustic beams and lighting that’s
just a shade too bright, tucking in to
soft-shell crabs (sublime, when in
Alle Testiere 5801 Castello;
osterialletestiere.it. $$$
Antiche Carampane 1911
San Polo; antichecarampane.
com. $$$
Bar Mio 1820 Via Garibaldi;
39-041/521-1361.
CoVino 3829A-3829
Castello; covinovenezia.
com. $$$
Il Ridotto 4509 Castello;
ilridotto.com. $$$
Do
Fondazione Giorgio Cini
864 Dorsoduro; cini.it.
Fondazione Prada
2215 Santa Croce;
fondazioneprada.org.
Fondazione Querini
Stampalia 5252 Castello;
querinistampalia.org.
Palazzo Grassi Campo San
Samuele; palazzograssi.it.
Hotels
$ Less than $200
$$ $200-$350
$$$ $350-$500
$$$$ $500-$1K
$$$$$ >$1K
Restaurants
$ Less than $25
$$ $25-$75
$$$ $75-$150
$$$$ >$150
season, in late spring and early fall)
and a signature berry pavlova (deadly
delicious, year-round). Antiche
Carampane shares an ethos of local
products and traditional preparation
with a handful of other restaurants,
recently gathered into a loose
official alliance known as La Buona
Accoglienza (“the warm welcome”).
They include some of the city’s all-stars,
such as tiny Alle Testiere, with its fish
dressed with tender violet Sant’Erasmo
artichokes or tart radicchio from organic
allotments on the island of Vignole.
And also Al Covo, whose Italo-
American owners, Diane Rankin and
Cesare Benelli, have just opened a new
bacaro, CoVino, where you can sample
what they call terroir dining: small
courses from all small-scale producers,
. . . Continued on page 95
Left to Right: St. Mark’s Square; Venice
Farmer’s Market; the Rialto Bridge;
Restaurant along the Venice canal.
32
BEYOND BORDERS | September 2017

SIPyour way
THROUGH COLOMBIA’S COFFEE TOWNS
BILL FINK DESCRIBES A NEW
COFFEE DESTINATION BEARING
FRUIT IN NORTHERN COLOMBIA.
Photos by FRANCESCO LASTRUCCI & PICJUMBO.COM
Something is brewing in the small
Colombian town of Minca. It
smells of caramel, bark, charcoal,
and chocolate. The source? Coffee beans,
fresh from backyard roasters, their sharp
burnt odor cutting through the humid
tropical haze.
Here in northern Colombia, the
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta range
rises straight from the shores of the
Caribbean. Long left undeveloped due
to political troubles, this now peaceful
area draws urban Colombians and savvy
international visitors to the palmfringed
beaches of Tayrona National
Park, the ancient archaeological site
of Ciudad Perdida, and the birding
paradise of the jungles around Minca.
Recently, Minca and the Sierra
Nevada have begun to attract
coffee-loving travelers, a collection of
connoisseurs and curious backpackers
eager to discover what Juan Pablo
Campos, general manager of the
Lohas Beans trade group, calls “the
most important Colombian region for
organic coffee.”
•
While coffee is not native to
Colombia, the plant has flourished
for centuries on the country’s steep,
shade-covered mountains, with rainfall,
altitude, and temperatures ideal for
In El Trompito, an indigenous
community on the outskirts of
Tayrona National Park, a Kogi
farmer harvests mature coffee.
growing the mellow, medium-bodied
arabica-style bean. Colombia has been
exporting coffee since the early 1800s,
and in 2015 alone shipped 840,000
tons of coffee beans. Represented by
the fictional ambassadors Juan Valdez
and his trusty burro, Conchita, “Café
de Colombia” has become known
worldwide.
Colombia’s better-known “coffee
triangle” in the country’s southwest
now supports a well-trod tourist
track between luxury lodges and
Sierra Nevada still offers an
authentic journey into the past
and a taste of the future
of Colombian coffee.
standardized plantation tours, but the
Sierra Nevada still offers an authentic
journey into the past—and a taste of
the future of Colombian coffee. In
remote highlands, indigenous tribes of
Kogi and Arhuaco lead
the way in organic coffee
production, developing
a sustainable farming
network that combines
traditional spiritual beliefs
with modern planting
knowledge. These farms
embrace generations-old
techniques and tools to
produce sought-after
organic blends, with many
beans “triple certified” as
organic, fair trade, and rain
forest-friendly.
•
The gateway to the region is the
sunny Caribbean seaside city of Santa
Marta, where the bitter street blend
of tinto (from the Spanish word for
ink) black coffee is sweetened with
spoonfuls of sugar. Coffee aficionados
will skip the tinto, as well as the
ubiquitous Juan Valdez chain stores,
and head to Santa Marta’s smaller
shops, such as Ikaro Café.
Exploring the area’s coffee culture is
best done during harvest season, from
about November through February,
and can be as simple as hiring a taxi for
the approximately 40-minute, 15-mile
bumpy ride from the sea to the hills.
Visits to tribal lands require special
permission or an organized trip from an
approved local operator such as Wiwa
Tour.
A stop at Hacienda la Victoria above
. . . Continued on next page
46 47
BEYOND BORDERS | September 2017 September 2017 | BEYOND BORDERS

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