Meet Melinda Stevens, Editor-in-Chief of Conde Nast Traveller, London

How would you describe your home in one word?
Cabinet-of-curiosities-tropical-den

What makes a home in one word?
Cosy-delight

How would you describe your taste in hotels in one word?
Contrary

What made you first want to travel?
Smell

Describe your traveling philosophy?
Delight in the other.

Something you’ve never told anybody about your travels?
I can’t sleep the night before I fly

Your favourite souvenir in your home?
The shells collected in jam jars by my 3 daughters (but also mostly me) from every place they’ve been to with little coloured in place names

Your best travel memory?
Anywhere on a motorbike, with no agenda, passing through – Bali, Guatamala…

Your worst travel memory?
The train from Moscow to St Petersburg, the stench of the meatballs and with no meat and black tobacco and disinfectant, years before it opened up to tourism. Although, of course, I would suck that up in a second that now…