The dahabiya felt less like a tour and more like a private invitation to a more authentic version of Egypt. The version where the Nile glides by your window at dawn, palm trees line the shore in painterly silhouettes, and the only thing scheduled is wonder.

Not all mountain lodges are created equal. Some are rustic, some regal. And then, nestled in an alpine valley in the Dolomites, there’s a place that seems to exist not so much in Italy as in some dreamlike annex of it. You don’t stumble upon San Luis. You arrive as though summoned.

In the early 1960s, John D. Rockefeller Jr. stood at the edge of a remote bay on the island of Virgin Gorda and declared it one of the most beautiful places he had ever seen. He could have built a palace, or worse, a golf course. Instead, he built a sanctuary.

The kasbah stands watch over the Ourika Valley like a benevolent fortress, framed by olive groves, terraced gardens, and the snow-streaked drama of the High Atlas beyond. The air smells faintly of orange blossoms and warm clay. It smells like nowhere else.