The Morning: Why we travel

February 5, 2022

Good morning. I'm excited to introduce Melissa Kirsch, the host of the new Saturday edition of The Morning and your guide to the world of culture. — David Leonhardt

By Melissa Kirsch

Good morning. We travel not just to escape, but to find novelty, new heights and new sensations.

Melanie Lambrick

Taking flight

It's a pleasure to welcome you to the new Saturday edition of The Morning.

I come to you from the department of Culture and Lifestyle at The Times where, until recently, I wrote the At Home and Away newsletter, which was devoted to helping readers lead full lives during the pandemic. I'm excited to bring you closer to the world of culture, to offer suggestions for how you might spend your time and to contemplate all the wonder and strangeness and possibility of the current moment.

Speaking of wonder and strangeness, I traveled across the U.S. by plane recently, for the first time in two years. I was focused on my destination: waking up someplace else, a window with a new view, vacation and its promise of rest and renewal. The flight itself was an uncomfortable but necessary interlude. I just had to endure it, I thought, to get to the good part.

But I was surprised to find that each dreaded step, from leaving home in the predawn cold for a 7 a.m. flight to passing through security (my mask pulled down briefly for the ID check), from negotiating overhead bin space to picking up the rental car, was, if not exactly fun, then interesting. There was so much to take in — I felt as if I'd been watching the same show for two years and someone just changed the channel.

I found myself recalling that unexpectedly energizing experience while reading my colleague Shane O'Neill's report on Love Cloud, a Las Vegas company that allows you to charter a private plane for an hour or two in which you can avail yourself of various packages tailored to a romantic dinner, a wedding or an assignation.

My coach-class aisle seat with limited reclining ability was far from the satin sheets and heart-shaped pillows of Love Cloud's private cabin. But both my flight and Love Cloud's offerings reminded me of a fundamental premise of any long-planned vacation or Vegas attraction or purchase of a new brand of detergent: We are nourished by novelty. Too much sameness and the world goes gray.

You can orchestrate novelty on a grand scale, take a trip to someplace new, do something you haven't done. You can insert bits of it into your everyday. Some friends and I once experimented for a month with making small daily changes — wearing two different socks one day, eating only green foods the next — just to see the effect. The novel interventions themselves weren't what made the experiment rewarding. It was the vigilance the project awakened in us: We were looking for things to notice, alert to the ways in which our days might be different.

My vacation was lovely, as restorative as I'd hoped. Today, though, I'm thinking about the San Francisco airport. I filled my water bottle at a hydration station with multiple spigots, watching my fellow passengers filling theirs, marveling at the variety of bottles, the colors and shapes. I'm also thinking about landing late in New York, about how I'd forgotten that strange feeling of rushing through the airport to find ground transportation, eager to get home, about how you pass travelers at other gates waiting to begin their trips.

Novelty doesn't have to announce itself. Small moments of noticing small things, new or forgotten sensations that provoke new or forgotten thoughts — you don't have to travel very far or very high to experience them.

WEEKENDS ARE FOR …

🎞 Reliving the '90s: an era of baggy jeans and unselfconscious poses, now on Instagram.

🐟 Fishing: even in the middle of Los Angeles.

🖼 Seeing art: The figurative painter Chaz Guest has his first solo show in New York in 25 years.

🩰 Going to the ballet: A "Swan Lake" that took six years to get off the ground premieres soon in Miami.

😎 Coping: A 5-year-old's advice: "Even if it's a yucky day, you can get a hug."

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Spotify is responsible for misinformation promoted by Joe Rogan, even if it says otherwise, Joanne Lipman writes in Time magazine. The streaming service also has a deeper tension with musicians over compensation.
Whoopi Goldberg's Holocaust remarks, which prompted her suspension from "The View," offer lessons about the harm of antisemitism, PBS reports.
"Dune" and "The Power of the Dog" got the most nominations from Britain's top film awards. Here's the list.
The actor Sara Ramirez sees little of herself in Che Diaz, the most polarizing character in "And Just Like That …," HBO's "Sex and the City" reboot.
Did you see a cube made of 400 pounds of Nevadan gold in Central Park?
Rudolph Giuliani became the latest controversial guest on "The Masked Singer," prompting some judges to walk off set.
Opening night is nearing for "The Music Man" with Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman.
Slate explains how a long-running Dungeons & Dragons game became a fun, raunchy streaming hit.
The editor and author Jason Epstein introduced the quality paperback to Americans and planted the seed for The New York Review of Books. He died at 93.

THE LATEST NEWS

Dinigeer Yilamujiang, left, who has Uyghur roots, and Zhao Jiawen lit the cauldron.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

In a provocative move, China chose an athlete with Uyghur roots to help light the Olympic cauldron. See the opening ceremony's key moments.
President Xi Jinping met with Vladimir Putin of Russia in a display of solidarity against the West.
Russia is not yet capable of invading Ukraine, but parts of its army appear to be in the final stages of readiness, a Ukrainian military assessment said.
The U.S. added 467,000 jobs last month, defying projections of a Covid-prompted slowdown.
The Republican Party declared the Jan. 6 attack "legitimate political discourse," then later insisted that did not apply to rioters.
Mike Pence said Donald Trump is "wrong" that he had the legal authority to change the 2020 election results.
Nearly 900,000 Americans have died of Covid-19, a milestone that comes as declines in cases and hospitalizations offer hope.
The death of its leader is a blow to the Islamic State but hardly the end for the group, experts warn.
The lawyer Michael Avenatti was found guilty of stealing from his former client Stormy Daniels.

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REAL ESTATE

Clockwise from left: Courtesy of Forrest Gregg, Virtuance, Ryan Theede for Premier Sotheby's International Realty

What you get for $700,000: a Tudor Revival in Dallas; an 1896 Victorian in Portland, Ore.; or a cottage in Fairview, N.C.

The Hunt: For a one-bedroom on Manhattan's West Side, did they choose the co-op overlooking a courtyard, the high-floor apartment with a city view or the one-bedroom facing the street? Play our game.

Pandemic regrets: Recent buyers wish they'd held out for more space or cheaper prices before racing to buy in the frenzied housing market.

FOOD

Fried soft-shell shrimp at the Mosquito Supper Club in New Orleans.Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times

Cajun food under threat: One New Orleans chef is trying to preserve Louisiana's vanishing wetlands and make a sustainable restaurant thrive.

Hotlines gone cold: Restaurants are abandoning phones.

Churros and hot chocolate: The combination is a hallmark of winters in Miami.

Dairy alternatives: The benefits of other milks.

LIVING

Paola Saliby

Wedding boom: Couples should expect competition for venues and bottlenecks for supplies like flowers and invitations.

Affordable city housing: Safe, dignified homes are possible, our critic writes.

On the trail: Hikers with disabilities are partnering with parks and pushing for more access to the outdoors.

Master your miles: Consumers really can come out ahead on loyalty rewards, The Points Guy says.

Valentine's gifts: From the ordinary to the over the top. (You can also go on a date in the kitchen.)

In the garden: Stop using peat.

The wit of the staircase: Give your stairwell some personality.

GAME OF THE WEEKEND

Training in Beijing.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Short-track speedskating: The Beijing Olympics have begun, and one of this weekend's highlights is a new event: the mixed team relay race in short-track speedskating. The short track makes for a hectic race, with skaters jostling and often crashing. In the mixed relay, two men and two women will race for each team, giving one another hard shoves as they trade places. 8 a.m. Eastern today for the gold medal race; NBC will also broadcast it in prime time. Here's how to watch the rest of the Games.

For more:

This will be the first Winter Olympics where athletes compete almost entirely on artificial snow.
Meet ski racing's power couple, Mikaela Shiffrin and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde.
Sign up for our newsletter for daily Olympics updates.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

The pangrams from yesterday's Spelling Bee were cloaked, deadlock and deadlocked. Here is today's puzzle — or you can play online.

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week's headlines.

If you're in the mood to play more, here are all our games.

Before You Go …

"The Trojan Horse Affair," a Serial podcast (from The Times), makes you feel "as if you're inside" an investigation of a British hoax that set off a panic over Islamic extremism, New York magazine writes.
Don't miss Elisabeth Goodridge's account of reef diving in Honduras.
Check out this fascinating look at gender and language.
Looking for weird old books? Try Weird Old Book Finder.

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.