Unpacked by Afar | Travel Smarter, More Responsibly

Feel-Good Friday: An Ode to Obama, New London Museums, and a Hopeful Ocean Story

Unpacked by Afar | Travel Smarter, More Responsibly

Show Notes

It’s Feel-Good Friday, and Unpacked host Aislyn and producer Nikki are joined by a guest they’ve been waiting weeks to record with: Afar senior editor Lucy Kehoe, who also edits our UK sister title, Suitcase. Three stories, all good news, landing fittingly on Juneteenth.

This week’s stories:

A landmark opening in Chicago lands right on Juneteenth: a nearly 20-acre campus on the South Side, a decade in the making, that’s less presidential library and more civic gathering place, right down to an Oval Office anyone can sit in.

Five new museums are arriving in one famously museum-rich city this year, from a vertigo-inducing glass storehouse where you can watch conservators at work to a love letter to teenage subcultures, Walkman included.

A newly protected stretch of the South Pacific roughly the size of the Amazon rainforest. One that's Indigenous-led, tourism-friendly, and home to about three-quarters of the world’s coral species.

Plus: Nikki’s very specific dream of finally meeting a dugong in the wild.

Tune in every Friday through June for a fresh trio of stories from Afar’s favorite travel writers and editors. We’ll see you next week.

Chapters

00:00:00 Welcome to Feel-Good Friday

00:02:00 You Are America

00:04:00 London’s Museum Boom

00:08:00 Protecting the Coral Triangle

00:11:00 In Search of Dugongs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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