Despite the ongoing pandemic, Condé Nast Traveler chose 21 destinations to travel to this year. Melides came third and was referred to as “a hidden Portuguese beach spot emerging from under the radar.”
Condé Nast Traveler added: “Think of Melides as Joshua Tree or Byron Bay before anyone else caught on; a remote creative haven untrammelled by travellers.”
The award-winning magazine also described Melides in a separate article as an “unexpected setting for a thriving creative community.”
Condé Nast Traveler added: “The peaceful region is characterised by rural towns, wild Atlantic beaches and raw landscape: vineyards, rice fields and forests tumbling down hillsides, the ocean a constant smudge of inky blue on the horizon.”
The article points out that French designers Christian Louboutin and Philippe Starck have second homes in Melides, as do German artist Anselm Kiefer, British painter Jason Martin and Belgian architect Vincent Van Duysen.
“All artists use self-appointed exiles in remote locations to be able to focus on ideas. There’s a real positive in solitude – it gives us a place to be inventive,’ Martin told Candé Naste Traveler. “I was deliberately looking for somewhere that was non-gentrified. This is an exotic corner of Europe – I feel like I’m living in a micro paradise,” he added.
In addition to Melides, the top 3 consists of Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom, and Slovenia came first with its “turquoise rivers, glacier-fed lakes and soaring, snow-capped peaks.”
