Culture Lounge Podcast Episode I: TRAVEL with Melinda Stevens and Poppy Delevingne

Their First Trip Together

Stevens: I think that has to be at my step mother's and your step granny's beautiful villa in Cap Ferrat. And, being on that little shingle beach.

Delevingne: We always went in search of treasures, for the little pieces we thought were emeralds, which of course were just glass. Little bits of glass that had been worn away. We would just spend endless hours on the beach with our buckets, searching for these little pieces of treasure in jelly shoes. 

Stevens: Those were definitely my sort of happiest holiday memories spent with you.

The Trips That Changed Their Lives 

Delevingne: I've been lucky enough to go to some incredible places in the world with Save the Children, such as Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo and most recently, Turkey, that suffered two major earthquakes where almost 3 million people were displaced. When you go on these trips they’re incredibly humbling. You get to meet people that have experienced so much...they've suffered overwhelming destruction and displacement, but they have so much hope and resilience and strength.

Stevens: A group of school friends and I went to go and visit Borneo with Bella. We went to visit her where she'd been living for a year in a longhouse right up river, miles away from anywhere. And it was that first time when I realized how people's perspective on the world was so incredibly different.

Their Best Travel Tips 

Stevens: I think if you have a very, very good tour operator, it can change everything. Two trips that I've done recently, one was to Egypt with Abercrombie and Kent. I mean, if you're going to Cairo and Luxor and you're sailing down the Nile on the Nour El Nil boats, you want to really understand the country and really understand where it's been and where it comes from.

Delevingne: I totally agree. It's that sort of thing that you think it's like a sort of cop out to get some operator or someone who knows and can create an itinerary and do all of that. But when I went to Japan, we had that with Triptych Travel, and they organized this trip from Tokyo to Kyoto to Osaka, and it was organized within an inch of its life.

Melinda Stevens is the author of Hotel Esencia, Secret Stays, and Chic Stays, published by Assouline.

The Culture Lounge podcast is a production of Assouline and Pineapple Street Studios.
Senior Producer: Emmanuel Hapsis
Recorded and mixed by: Pedro Alvira
Head of Sound and Engineering: Raj Makhija
Executive Producer: Bari Finkel

The video companion to the Culture Lounge podcast is a production of Assouline and Vacationland.