Letter from the Editor
Take Me With You! is a luxury travel newsletter run by me, Jennifer Leigh Parker. I’m an American journalist based in New York, a city I love to flee… and invariably return feeling ever more grateful for the Big Apple.
If, like me, you’re obsessed with the world’s best hotels and travel experiences, via private plane, luxury train, supercar or mission-built ship — then, this is the newsletter for you. It is as much about how we travel as who we meet when we get there, and what happens along the way. Lately, I’ve got an insatiable desire for the great outdoors, having discovered a new sensitivity to the bounty nature brings. Where better to muse on the meaning of life than chest-deep in a Montana river, or atop the summit of an Azorean island? If you ask me what my favorite destination is, it’s usually the one I’m in (I’ve just driven from the apple orchards and botanical gardens of the Newt in Somerset, down the coast to Cornwall. The Cornish Seabreeze in July is tough to beat.)
A bit of background: Since 2011, the year I graduated from Columbia University, I’ve been lucky to find enough work as a journalist to keep me going. My first role involved churning out corporate earnings reports for CNBC.com before learning how to report economic news ‘The Bloomberg Way’ (there is actually a handbook), which enshrines in its followers a “culture of urgency.” The book should be pressed deeply into the palms of anyone ever attempting to run with Wall Street bulls. It took a few years, but eventually my focus evolved into something that better suited my adventurous, romantic (okay, dramatic) spirit. That is: what’s new and next in travel. My travel stories have appeared in print, online and have even been broadcast on the radio a few times. I’ve produced two glossy magazines as editor-in-chief, titled Centre and Huge Moves magazine, which can be found on certain stylish coffee tables and my home office bookcase, keeping me company as I write the next piece.
My raison d’être is captured in this quote:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” — Mark Twain "Innocents Abroad," 1869
Why subscribe?
If you stick with me, I’ll teach you something new about the world you’ve never known before. As a travel curator (with pretty amazing access to the world’s top spots), I’ll help you parse the good from the exceptional by sharing destination features, exclusive interviews, and detailed hotel reviews. Each piece evokes the senses, helping you see, smell and taste what it’s like to ‘be there’ and hopefully be inspired to discover these places yourself.
This personal newsletter will appear twice-monthly, as my full-time freelance gig requires five fresh pieces per month. My byline appears in most frequently in Forbes, but has also appeared in Lonely Planet, Bloomberg Pursuits, Skift, Surface magazine, Washington Post and Saveur magazine.
By the Way: Writing is a lonely art, so if you like something I’ve written or think I should be covering a certain newsworthy person or place, for heaven’s sake tell me! Or, if you’ve got biting criticism for me, at least make it witty: takemewithyou@substack.com.
