Introduction of Le Carnet De Nadine

I was born into travel the way some people are born into music. In 1952, my father, Halim Kurban, opened the doors of Kurban Travel in the heart of Beirut — and growing up around his work, I discovered early what would become my own passion.

I grew up among tickets and timetables, among maps spread across desks. Our dinner table conversations were about cities I hadn't seen yet. I learned the names of airports before I learned my multiplication tables. And somewhere in those early years, watching my father work, I understood something I have never forgotten: travel is a matter of trust. People confide in us their plans, their occasions, their details — quietly, and in full confidence — and it is our duty to honor that discretion. Someone hands you their dream, and you are responsible for it.

So I dedicated my life to the art of travel — because it is an art, though few treat it that way anymore. Over the years, I have curated thousands of journeys. Honeymoons, family summers, first trips and last trips, journeys of celebration and journeys of healing. Each one different, because each traveler is different.

People sometimes ask me how we did it before the internet — before Google, before reviews, before you could see a hotel room on your phone before setting foot in it. And I smile, because we had our own ways. We traveled to the great travel exhibitions, met the hoteliers and the tour operators face to face, and came home with suitcases full of brochures — we studied them until we knew destinations we hadn't yet seen as if we had. And whenever we could, we went. We walked the streets, tested the distances, watched the sunsets. Today, research is at everyone's fingertips — and that is a wonderful thing. But someone who spent decades learning the world this way carries something no search can offer: the exposure, the instinct, the eye.

This carnet is where I open those years to you. Each entry is one journey — a place I have come to know deeply, told the way I would tell it over coffee. The addresses I return to. The details worth knowing before you go. The little moments that never appear in any brochure but are, in the end, the reason we travel at all.

My father taught me that a journey begins long before the departure and ends long after the return. Seventy years later, in the same city where he started, I am still living by those words.

Welcome to my carnet. I'm so glad you're here.

Nadine Kurban Boutros