The Paris Air Show, the commercial aviation industry's annual fair, is well underway—and, for the most part, totally over our heads. But flight-world blogger (a title that apparently exists) Runway Girl is filing dispatches from the event, including this intriguing bit on Panasonic's iPod merge technology, which—as soon as this fall, potentially—will allow fliers to fully access their iPods and digital cameras and view content on an IFE (In-Flight Entertainment) screen. The gadget-blog commentariat is already in a huff (further kowtowing to Apple, say the anti-Macs; don't give the loud guy in the seat next to me more power, say the misanthropes), but we think it looks pretty cool. Judging from the picture released, the system looks decidedly non-coach. That's bruising egos, too, but just call it one more reason to aspire to first class.

[via Gizmodo]

If you've never heard of Andrew Harper, it may be because he doesn't exist. Harper is the nom de plume of the secretive editor of the monthly travel newsletter The Hideaway Report, which swears to accept no comp trips and pay no favors in its reporting. (Paying your own way is easier when you're running a "Premier Class" subscription business to the tune of $500 in initiation fees alone.) To celebrate the 30th anniversary of his gentlemanly travels, "Harper" is teaming up with Dunhill (no lark in the travel department) for a limited line of luggage. The three-piece collection consists of a holdall, a document case (with linen/cotton canvas laptop sleeve), and a backpack in Italian grained leather with brass fixtures. (It's also got enough interior pockets, zippers, and locks to head off any fear of baggage handlers and their sticky fingers, so you can go ahead and check it—if you fly commercial, that is.) The collection is both rugged and refined luggage, and will only get better with age (and miles). It's also extravagantly (to put it kindly) priced: less for the gentlemanly traveler than the traveling gentleman of leisure.
Holdall, $3,070, document case, $2,050, and backpack, $1,285, available this summer; for more information, visit dunhill.com; Andrewharper.com

Great writers are not renowned for their expansive properties, as anyone who's paid a visit to Thoreau's cabin will know. But Gore Vidal did better than most. (Then again, he isn't just a writer—journalist, provocateur, critic, TV talking head…) This summer, you can visit the proof: Transracial reports that, after years of delay, La Rondinaia ("the swallow's nest"), the author's villa in Ravello, is opening as a luxury hotel at last. Fans can even visit his writing room, preserved just as he left it—if, that is, they can tear themselves away from the seaside views.
villarondinaia.it

Up in New York, Billy Reid is known for his refined take on a Southern gentleman's (and lady's) wardrobe, his appreciation for bourbon of all proofs, and the consistent hospitality at his Bond Street store. I'm happy to report that down in his adopted hometown of Florence, Alabama, he's beloved for those very same reasons. I spent the weekend in the Shoals—Florence, Muscle Shoals, and its surrounding area, famous for its blues legacy—for the opening of Reid's new store. (The upper floors will house his offices and design studio.) Of course, Billy being Billy, through the weekend, the space did double duty as concert hall and moonshine watering hole, too. In celebration of it all (and of a long-awaited sunny weekend after a week straight of rain), Florence held a party for its adopted son: Bands played on the street and in the office, ranging from Those Darlins to Billy's own the Seersuckers.

As for the new store, it shares a design scheme with the other locations and, as I discovered, the guy's own house. The floors and beams are reclaimed wood; the ceiling is pressed tin; and the decor features an abundance of antique china, taxidermy, and furniture, here complimented by artifacts and family heirlooms from the Florence community. Within walking distance is its inspiration: the 1860's manse Reid calls home, overhauled by the man himself. As Reid said over a dinner of shrimp and cheese grits, "We gutted it, laid everything out in front, and then put it back together." After checking out the town's attractions, from Ye Olde General Store (no, that's not ironic) to the pre-World War II ice-cream parlor, I was half ready to find one of my own and do the same.

Click here for a few pictures from the store, the house, and the city >

The Hotel Missoni Edinburgh doesn't open officially until next week, but a recent press shot (that's matriarch Rosita Missoni, center), gives us a clue to the dress code (or at least the staff uniforms): Check out hotel waiters in Missoni aprons, right.

[via Hotel Chatter]

…here it is: Brioni just opened a new location in the Turkish city. The Italian suiting brand has been on the expansion plan over the last two years and has more global locations in the works. In the meantime, any travelers looking to make the already wide-ranging Brioni world tour will need a pretty open passport book: You'll be stopping in Cannes, New Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, Kiev, and Dubai, not to mention Baku and Almaty (Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, but you knew that).

When jewelry designer Evan Yurman told us about his recent high-speed supercar sojourn through the South for our road trips feature, he tipped us off to another sort of road-less-traveled destination that, frankly, we just didn't have the space for at the time. (There was also a certain, um, overblown media scare going 'round at the time about a porcine-related influenza outbreak that made a trip to the Yucatán seem foolhardy, if not death-defying.) Those problems now assuaged, we think it's high time to share what Yurman had to say. (And send a postcard, won't you?)

"My fiancée and I went to Tulum, which we ended up hating—so we just hit the road and started driving our rental car with the windows down to a place called Chichin Itza. It was about a hundred degrees, and there were all these cenotes along the way—natural waterholes, sometimes with underwater caves, that you can go swimming in. Some cost a quarter, some a dollar; some are free. We rolled the windows down and turned the air-conditioning off and just pulled over at every cenote we saw—probably eight or ten—and went swimming.

"When we got to Chichin Itza, we saw the ruins, and a guide there had this really unique gold ring on. I asked him where he got it, and he told me about this town called Merida. Very few people know about it. We got there and were trying to figure out where to stay; the information place directed us to a Hyatt, which was a total dump with about 200 rooms—so I thought I'd try to find the place with the fewest rooms. We ended up finding this place with seven. It was in the worst part of town, but once you got inside the doors it was like an eighteenth-century palazzo—just unbelievably beautiful. It was like staying at a private mansion in Morocco: five-star service, Four Seasons standards. I called in sick to work for four days.

"The roots of Merida date from the sixteenth century; later it became, briefly, the wealthiest city in the Americas because it supplied all the hemp and rope for Spain's huge fleet of ships. And then it all just died—so there's all these mansions in town which are mostly dormant; it's like a ghost town, with 20 or 30 mansions lining some streets, all of them unoccupied. You can buy them for $100,000 or so.

"The butler at the hotel was a ninth-generation Merida guy—his family owned about a third of the city, but he was interested in opening hotels—and he fed us these drinks made with this huge green leaf minced up with citrus and sugar in a blender, and it was like a natural amphetamine. Everything got very vivid—colors got brighter, your hearing got more on-point—and we'd go out and visit ruins and cenotes just tripping. He wouldn't tell me what the drink was—no locals would, either—but it was a nice body high that got you very toasty for your day but was still very manageable; there were no withdrawals, and you weren't drinking them every 20 minutes.

"We drove eight or nine hours to get to Merida from Tulum, because we took the local roads, but you could take the superhighway and do it in about two hours from Tulum or three or four hours from Cancun. It's the perfect three-day weekend. I highly recommend it." —Evan Yurman
Hotel Villa Merida, Calle 59 #615A x 80 y 82, Colonia Centro, Merida, Yucatán, Mexico; rates start at $235 per suite; (888) 737-2124; thevillasgroup.com

There's something inherently depressing about the rise of the staycation, especially when you could be jetting off to somewhere a little more glamorous than your apartment—like, say, the tropical Maldives. Beginning today, the islands' Soneva resorts are making resistance even more difficult: Stay in one of the hotels for two weeks, and they'll throw in a second two weeks free—on the condition that you do a few days of community service. Highway-side cleanup it's not. Four days of making brooms or teaching English buys you a free 14 in the conditions pictured—and, if you must, tell the guys back home the good works are court-ordered, following your illicit, booze-fueled dalliance with whichever starlet strikes your fancy.

[via Transracial]

Pictured: The newest employees of Washington's Fairmont Hotel—several of 105,000 Italian honeybees brought to provide honey for the hotel's restaurant. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Fairmont is the only hotel in the capital raising its own bees.
fairmont.com

Among a certain class of travelers, anticipation for the new Ace Hotel ran feverishly high—even as its opening, announced this past winter, got pushed farther and farther back. Now relief is here: Word from Hotel Chatter is that the much-delayed NYC branch is finally, irrefutably open. Have at those in-room turntables; as for us, we'll see you at the bar—opening, according to the PR, this Friday. (We hope.)