At airports and land borders across the country, tourists and other visitors coming to the United States have reported being caught up in the Trump administration’s campaign of “enhanced vetting.” Even legal immigrants, like green card holders, and naturalized citizens have been pulled aside for additional questioning and searches.

This has prompted questions about best practices for crossing into the United States, travelers’ rights at the border, and the legality of device and luggage searches.

Here are some things to know before you visit or return to the United States, as a tourist, legal resident or citizen.

Are you a visitor with a visa or ESTA? It should align with your travel plans.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, U.S. border officials have “wide-ranging discretion” to deny entry. That decision can be made based on suspicion that the person is entering the country for a purpose other than what their visa or Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) says — for example, they have a tourist visa, but it seems like they may be planning to work.

“We’ve seen people detained just for saying they’re ‘Open to Work’ on LinkedIn,” said Michael Wildes, the New Jersey-based immigration lawyer who handled Melania Trump’s immigration to the United States. “That serves as proof that they’re not just going to Disneyland or to a wedding.”

Cheryl David, an immigration lawyer in New York City, stressed that no rules have changed when it comes to entering the United States, but she said, there is now a clear “zero tolerance policy.”

This year, the family of Becky Burke, a 28-year-old British tourist, said she was stopped at the U.S. border in Washington State on her way to a work-exchange trip, where she planned to trade house chores for free accommodations. While no money changed hands, those arrangements could still be seen as work, which would violate the terms of a tourist visa. Ms. Burke ended up detained for 19 days before she was deported to Britain.

While detaining prospective tourists is rare, deportations because of incorrect travel documentation is not.

If questions arise regarding passengers’ travel documents, border officials can pull them out of line and submit them to additional screening, at which point luggage and electronic devices such as laptops and cellphones can be searched.

Even green card holders and naturalized citizens may be subject to more screening.

U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents cannot be denied entry to the country for refusing to hand over their devices, but such a refusal could still lead to a longer customs process, the A.C.L.U. said.

Catherine, 67, a naturalized citizen who moved to the United States 45 years ago, said she had never been selected for additional questioning when coming through immigration, but that since the start of the Trump administration she has been stopped twice for reasons that remain unclear to her. Catherine asked to be identified by only her middle name, because of her fears that her naturalized status could be revoked for speaking out.

Most recently, Catherine was returning from Argentina when she and her husband were stopped at an airport in Dallas. Border control there was automated, with passengers scanning passports to get through gates, but when it came time to take a photograph, a big red X flashed on the screen for Catherine. Her husband spoke to border officials, and the couple eventually got through.

Travelers’ social media, text chats and other history on their devices can be searched.

Because border control technically exists outside the United States, travelers with visas or those with ESTAs have limited ability to push back against searches of their electronic devices, according to the A.C.L.U., and if they do, they risk being denied entry.

There are generally two types of searches of an electronic device: manual and advanced, said Tom McBrien, a lawyer with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an internet privacy nonprofit in Washington. Manual searches involve looking through an unlocked phone. Courts have generally seen this as equivalent to going through luggage and have allowed manual searches to proceed without obtaining a warrant, Mr. McBrien said.

An advanced, or “forensic” search, involves hooking up an external device to your phone to scan its contents. Some federal districts require a warrant for this, while others do not, Mr. McBrien said.

Mr. McBrien and other privacy experts recommend deleting anything you wouldn’t want someone to read or see from your device before your arrival.

Mr. McBrien also said that he recommends his clients disable the Face ID or Touch ID features on their iPhones, so that it takes more than an officer waving a phone in front of their face or placing their finger on it to open it. Even better, he said, is to turn off your phone before going through border control, because phones tend to require your full passcode when turned back on.

If you refuse to unlock your phone when asked, authorities can seize it and will most likely need to obtain a warrant to open it, he added. However, visitors can be denied entry to the United States for refusing to unlock their phone.

However, Mr. Wildes, the New Jersey-based immigration lawyer, said that the main thing border patrol officers look for is consistency.

If a forensic search shows a deactivated social media account, officials may ask for it to be reactivated, Mr. Wildes said. If an email account was recently deleted, they can request to access it.

Social media has become a major issue, he added, for “so many people who don’t realize how actionable it can be.”

Ms. David, the immigration lawyer, recalled a client with a student visa who was denied entry to the United States during the Biden administration because he had photos on his phone of him posing with guns, which officials interpreted as a threat to the United States, she said.

The best thing to do, Mr. Wildes said, is to be honest and also be aware of the laws.

If you do get in trouble at the border, he said, the best move for visitors may be to withdraw your intention to enter the United States. In most cases, you can return to your home country.

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The ferry ride from Helsinki’s city center to the island of Pihlajasaari takes only 10 minutes and deposits visitors at a playground of beaches, trails and rocky shoals excellent for sunbathing. But I had a different mission: to speak to a tree.

This was meant to be a therapeutic exercise, one championed by the Finnish biologist Adela Pajunen. Finns, she’d told me, sometimes share their worries aloud to trees or birds. Occasionally, they may even sing to them.

On shore, I followed a gravel path in search of the perfect tree. I ruled out several pines before spotting a short black alder. I clambered onto a rock and began to tell the alder my woes: I’d been romantically involved with someone who just told me he wasn’t ready for a relationship. Still, I told the alder, I was hopeful things might yet work out. He and I had kept in touch, sending voice messages back and forth. The alder’s leaves rustled in response, a sign I interpreted as sympathy.

I had come to Finland to see whether I could bring happiness back to America with me. Finland has topped the World Happiness Report for the past eight years, a merit largely attributed to the Nordic welfare state, trust in the government, and public policies like free education and universal health care. Under these criteria, living in the United States (No. 24 on the list) is practically a recipe for misery. But the Finns also find contentment in more attainable ways, such as their close relationship with nature (74 percent of the country is covered by forest) and visiting the sauna daily (there are three million saunas for a population of 5.5 million).

Visit Finland, the country’s tourism agency, uses the happiness ranking to entice travelers. And it appears to be working. Tourism is up to almost five million visitors in 2024 from about two million in 2022. Last June, it hosted its second “Find Your Inner Finn” master class, awarding winners chosen from a social media challenge a free trip to Helsinki to learn from five locals known as “happiness hackers,” including Ms. Pajunen and D.J. Orkidea, a top Nordic electronic music performer.

I didn’t enter the contest, but I liked the idea. Like many other Americans, I’ve struggled with unhappiness since the pandemic hit, sometimes experiencing anxious dreams, feelings of dread and crushing loneliness. So I sought out some advice from the happiness hackers, and planned a trip to Helsinki last June to put it all to the test.

The hackers armed me with various solutions, both for the trip and to use on my return to the United States. Luka Balac, a co-owner of the zero-waste restaurant Nolla, gave me a list of local dishes (including licorice ice cream and savory rye-crusted Karelian pies) that would tie me back to nature. Lena Salmi, a vibrant 71-year-old who skateboards and swims, spoke about her intense focus on the diving board. And Tero Kuitunen, a ceramist, suggested doing something, anything, by hand — read, pick berries, fish, knit. And several told me to visit the saunas.

These activities each contained similar goals: Stay present and strive for a communal, minimalist lifestyle that relies on the earth. Frank Martela, a happiness expert and assistant professor at Aalto University, just outside Helsinki, explained that Finns often brag when their summer cabins aren’t equipped with dishwashers, or even running water.

“That would be considered almost cheating,” he said.

A Nordic Education

Shortly after landing in Helsinki, I dropped my bags at the Hotel Fabian and headed to the waterside sauna and restaurant Loyly (which means “steam”). I’d expected the place to be quiet and calm with tinkling music; instead, I came upon a loud group of Finnish men drinking beer in their swim trunks.

As is custom, I alternated between short stints in the wood-fired sauna and the Baltic waters, frigid even in June, reached via a ladder from the sun deck. Research has shown that cold plunges have physical benefits, but Finns also view the activity as a mental exercise — a way of staying present. I set a goal of 30 seconds. The water was so biting that all I could think about was counting to 30. Did that count as staying present? I pawed against the chop, trying not to drown.

When I emerged, a rush of accomplishment overcame me. I repeated the circuit twice, and by the time I left, I felt a sense of ecstasy as my skin seemed to glow and my mind decluttered.

Happiness came in waves and troughs over the next few days, though. I got a hit of endorphins at a different and more tranquil sauna, Lonna, and unwound while eating salmon soup recommended by Mr. Balac. Then I found myself crying in the hotel room after ruining my shoes in the rain, overwhelmed by the elusive promise of happiness in this faraway country where I knew no one. Had I fallen prey to a marketing ploy?

On my final morning, I took a 20-minute ferry ride to the rugged island of Vallisaari, intending to take one last relaxing forest walk along a 1.8-mile trail. But as the boat puttered away, I began having a panic attack. “Today is the perfect day to be happy,” a painted wooden sign read, but loneliness and isolation had followed me halfway across the world.

That night I’d planned to hit a karaoke bar to test out one of D.J. Orkidea’s happiness hacks — communal dancing — after having dinner at the sustainable, Michelin-starred restaurant Gron. But I slipped into bed instead. As I wrote in my journal, “Sometimes happiness is a hotel bathrobe and snuggling under the covers.”

Still, I was optimistic that I could recreate the happiest moments of this trip back home in New York, even if I had to get creative — say, a forest walk in Central Park.

How hard could it be, really?

The American Reality

As it turns out, happiness is a luxury in America — a privilege, even. I was dismayed to find that most sauna passes in New York cost upward of $60. As a freelance journalist, I could not afford to steam like the Finns — many of whom have access to saunas in their homes or apartment buildings.

But I eventually found a place in Brooklyn that offered a reasonable deal and on Friday evenings began visiting its backyard barrel sauna, soaking tub and one-person cold plunge. It wasn’t Helsinki, but the space was tucked away enough to give an aura of serenity.

Because I was not about to forage for my own food like the Finns, I tried the next best thing: shopping at the farmers’ market. I also purchased a pot containing basil, thyme, chive and sage plants with the intent of becoming a gardener. Anna Nyman, a forager who lives about 30 minutes from the Helsinki city center, told me that she once grew produce and herbs on her balcony and therefore other city dwellers could, too. “I even had a watermelon growing,” she said.

My kitchen does not get much sunlight, so every morning I carried my little garden to the roof. Some nights I went out drinking and forgot about it. Summer storms soaked the soil. One evening I chopped the basil stem too low and was left with a barren nub. Everything eventually died, and someone tossed out the pot.

All in all, however, things were going pretty well. I even had a breakthrough one afternoon as I rushed through Central Park after an emotional therapy session and noticed a cluster of people staring at the ground. I flicked my eyes to the asphalt. A cardinal! I stopped to admire the bird’s red plumage before it flapped away. This was a win, I decided, for staying present.

A ‘Simple’ Discovery

Then in late July, the man I’d been involved with texted me to say he had started seeing someone. I soon learned that he’d actually gotten married.

I tried to channel sisu, a Finnish word meaning perseverance, but my mood fluctuated for weeks. Sometimes all it took was a brisk nature walk for the dopamine to kick in. Other times I ate very little or cried at random, once while chopping a farm-picked tomato I’d bought for the purposes of this experiment. Soon, even the sauna no longer lifted my spirits.

I was sitting at the beach one afternoon, wondering why nature was not making me feel better, when the answer hit me: I was trying too hard to live exactly like the Finns. I’d been so bogged down trying to find the time and money for the happiness hacks that I’d missed the point of what all the hackers were saying: Quiet the mind, and find pleasure in small acts and observations — like a cardinal taking flight, or talking to trees. “Simple things,” Ms. Pajunen had said. “This is at the core of what Finns have to offer the rest of the world.”

One Saturday, I forced myself to get dressed and walk my dog in Central Park. I said hello to the European lindens and northern red oaks as we strolled near the zoo. Immediately I felt better. But before we moved on, I carried out a small but comforting ritual I’d developed. I thanked the trees for listening.

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The police confiscated a kite on Saturday after it was flown near airplanes landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport, according to the airport police, and after a witness said he saw it make contact with a landing plane.

United Airlines said that it “was aware of reports” that a kite had been in the path of Flight 654 from Houston.

“The aircraft landed safely, customers deplaned normally and upon inspection there was no damage to the aircraft,” United said.

Officers with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Police Department received reports on Saturday of a kite flying at Gravelly Point, a park just north of an airport runway, Emily McGee, a spokeswoman for the department, said on Sunday.

Gravelly Point is a part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway and is overseen by the National Park Service. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.

Kite flying is barred at the park because of the low-flying aircraft in the area. Officers “briefly confiscated” a kite on Saturday, Ms. McGee said.

“That kite was returned to its owner shortly later, and no charges were filed,” Ms. McGee said.

It was not immediately known how high the kite was flying or what kind of kite was confiscated. The Federal Aviation Administration said on Sunday that it did not have a report about the kite.

Jamie Larounis, a travel industry analyst, said in an interview on Sunday that he had reported the kite to the airport police after seeing it make contact with the plane on Saturday while he was walking home from the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington.

He stopped to sit at Gravelly Park for 10 to 15 minutes. He described the park as a “plane spotter’s paradise,” where he sometimes sees people with air traffic control radios watching planes just before they land at the airport.

On Saturday, people were picnicking, cycling and flying about 10 to 15 kites, he said.

Most of the kites were flying relatively low, he said, but at one point he spotted a green, “run-of-the-mill kid’s kite” flying higher and higher. He said it looked as if two adults and a child were controlling it.

An incoming plane “was at the right height to come in contact with that kite,” he said, and he watched as the kite reached a side of the plane, between its fuselage and the engine.

The kite came down, tangled in itself, he said.

He disputed the description by the police of the kite being “briefly confiscated,” and said it remained in a police car while the family drove away from the park without it.

Mr. Larounis called the airport police to report what happened because he was concerned that the kite might have caused damage to the plane that had gone unnoticed.

He said he was also particularly sensitive to aviation safety after an American Airlines flight collided with an Army helicopter near the airport in January, killing 67 people aboard both aircraft. The F.A.A. has since closed the helicopter route involved in the crash.

Another concerning episode happened at Reagan National Airport on Friday, when four U.S. Air Force jets came close to a Delta Air Lines plane that was taking off. The F.A.A. is investigating.

The Mexican-born, Ridgewood, Queens-based sculptor Raul De Lara is aware of the irony of his choice of medium: wood. The most rooted of materials is a contrast to the precarity of his upbringing — he came to Texas at 12 with his parents, and remains here under DACA.

A meticulous carver who often uses traditional American and Mexican techniques, De Lara, 33, reimagines banal household items — snow shovels, chairs and spades, as well the Monstera deliciosa plant, a south Mexican native that has become an American houseplant cliché — as commentaries on labor and immigration.

His series “Tired Tools” evokes the exhaustion of invisible workers: A broom slouches against a wall; a pitchfork’s shaft hangs on a hook like a discarded garment. For “Soft Chair” (2022), a live-edge slab of Siberian elm is fashioned into what appears to be a cushy upholstered seat; “The Wait” (2021) and “The Wait (Again)” (2022) are round-backed rockers covered with spikes mimicking cactus spines. (In 2023, Hermès commissioned a version of the chairs shaped like a child’s rocking horse, outfitting it with one of its lavish saddles for the window of its Aspen, Colo., store.)

The artist, who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and has an M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University, likes to source wood from places in his past: Texas; Chicago; Provincetown, Mass., where he had a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center; and Mexico. Like Martin Puryear and Wendell Castle, whom he counts among his influences, De Lara — whose second solo museum exhibition opens on Sept. 12 at the Contemporary Austin — works with kiln-dried lumber (he prefers oak, walnut and ash) but also sometimes employs green wood, whose internal mysteries reveal themselves only during carving. “With wood,” he says, “you can see the passing of time on its skin. No other material shows you time.” — Petala Ironcloud

For nonalcoholic wine and spirits makers, creating complex flavors has always been the primary challenge. “You’re trying to mimic that alcoholic bite,” says Jens Christophersen, 45, the Brooklyn-based founder of Less Than 0.5%, a nonalcoholic beverage consulting firm and importer. Often, vintners start by removing alcohol from high-proof drinks using vacuum distillation or enzymes and then add water or grape juice to rebalance the taste — a complicated process with mixed results. Now, however, a growing number of makers are employing a different strategy, turning instead to the green, woodsy, often bracing notes of wild ingredients to give their products an edge. The Norwegian company Villbrygg, for example, uses mostly foraged plants in blends like Eng — the name is Norwegian for “meadow” — which includes vanilla-scented meadowsweet leaves and flowers, as well as tannic, black tea-like fireweed blossoms and foliage. Including multiple parts of a single plant delivers “different layers of flavor, which creates structure,” says the co-owner Vanessa Krogh, 34. The Minneapolis-based label Dry Wit takes a similar approach with its Pippi blend, steeping white pine needles and branches in water and then blending the infusion with verjus, rice vinegar and salt. “The needles are bright and citrusy, and the sap [from the twigs] adds depth and nuance,” says Peder Schweigert, 42, one of the brand’s co-founders. The Copenhagen-based label Muri also uses evergreens, foraging Douglas fir shoots from woodlands around the city for its Sherbet Daydream. Its top-selling blend, Passing Clouds, features dried woodruff, a ground cover herb that “provides a slightly marzipany flavor,” according to the founder Murray Paterson, 45. “I really believe that the future of non-alc isn’t copying or making de-alcoholized versions of existing drinks,” he says. “We’ve got to create something new.” — Ella Riley-Adams

Mosaic, an early form of decorative art, emerged around the eighth century B.C. in Anatolia in the form of floors set with smooth multicolored stones. Several hundred years later, the Romans realized that mosaics could run up walls in delicate bursts of color made from tiny pieces of glass called tesserae (the term is Latin for “cubes” or “dice”). But it was the Byzantines who perfected the use of gold and silver leaf in mosaics starting in the fourth century A.D., adorning almost everything with brilliant mirrored shards. Buccellati, the century-old Milan-based jeweler known for scoring and etching precious metals in a tulle-like web, celebrates the craft in this latest incarnation of its Eternelle ring. In 18-karat yellow and white gold, set with 10 carré-cut rubies, 20 faceted tsavorites and more than 200 round brilliant diamonds, it’s a luminescent homage to the wild embellishment of Byzantine style. Buccellati Mosaico Eternelle ring, price on request, buccellati.com. — Nancy Hass

Photo assistant: Pietro Dipace

A Grand Yet Intimate Hotel in Milan

One of the grandest new hotels in Milan, the nine-story Maison Senato, designed by the architect Massimiliano Locatelli, offers just a handful of rooms. Opened earlier this month in a postwar building at the northern edge of Milan’s fashion boutique-heavy Quadrilatero della Moda, it comprises five 1,800-square-foot, two-bedroom full-floor apartments and a two-story, 3,600-square-foot penthouse with a rooftop terrace and a plunge pool. The furnishings are by notable Italian designers: Gabriella Crespi’s bamboo armchairs, Gae Aulenti’s balloon-shaped lamps and several pieces from Locatelli’s own line, including solid cast-aluminum dining chairs, feather-stuffed sofas and wool rugs dyed in soft washes of color meant to evoke 17th-century watercolor paintings. A subterranean floor holds a spa and gym, and just off the lobby is a guests-only cafe, as well as a spacious patio concealed from the neighbors by trellises covered in English ivy and jasmine. “The idea was to create the feeling that you’re stepping into a space that’s been here for a long time,” says Locatelli, 58, “like a local Milanese has opened their own space to you.” From about $4,200 a night; maisonsenato.com. — Laura May Todd

Casey McCafferty’s life has followed a picaresque trajectory, so it’s unsurprising that the 35-year-old’s furniture and objects are wildly imaginative. Despite developing an early interest in sculpture — he started out making peculiar car speaker enclosures out of fiberglass — the Staten Island native studied finance in college. In his mid-20s, having grown tired of the banker’s life, he quit to do custom woodworking for architects in Los Angeles, experimenting on the side with the anthropomorphic pieces that are now his signature. These days, he works and lives in Fair Lawn, N.J., letting his subconscious guide him as he carves. On this chest, abstract facial features and geometric shapes seem to dreamily emerge from the undulating cherry surface. “I let it take me places,” he says of the piece. “For me, that’s always been the best way to go about things.” Gaeta Cabinet Low, $24,000, casey-mccafferty.com. — Nancy Hass

Photo assistant: Timothy Mulcare. Set designer’s assistant: Checka Lapierre

Belted Bags on the Runway

When Christina Cassotis, the chief executive of Pittsburgh International Airport, heard about the power outage that forced London’s Heathrow Airport to suspend operations last week, she thought of the workers who were frantically trying to manage the chaos.

But when an outage hits closer to home, she has a more restrained response: Keep calm and carry on.

For almost four years, her airport has been powered by a mix of on-site natural gas generators and solar panels. The airport estimates that the stand-alone system, known as a microgrid, has saved it about $1 million a year on its energy costs and allowed it to use the electric grid as a backup, Ms. Cassotis said.

“We did it because we wanted resiliency and redundancy,” she said. “Airports are critical transportation infrastructure. We should be able to operate no matter what.”

That level of energy independence is rare, especially among larger airports.

Many airports have backup generators to help them maintain critical functions like air traffic control and lighting during power outages. But those standard emergency measures have limitations. They may require refueling if an outage lasts for many hours or days, for example. That’s why most airports remain heavily reliant on external power to keep passengers and planes moving.

But U.S. airports are increasingly experimenting with generating and storing electricity on site — typically with solar power and batteries — to curb carbon emissions, prepare for future electricity needs, and manage rising disruptions caused by climate change and aging infrastructure.

Denver International Airport has multiple connections to the grid in case one fails, but it recently also put in place a solar-powered battery storage system to keep its underground trains running in an emergency. At New York’s Kennedy International Airport, a $19 billion overhaul includes plans to install thousands of solar panels and batteries to cut emissions and keep its new Terminal 1, which is expected to open in 2026, running during outages that can be very disruptive and costly for airports and everyone who relies on them.

“If you have a reliable, effective airport, you’re helping to support economic resiliency,” said Joey Cathcart, a sustainable aviation expert at RMI, a sustainability nonprofit in Colorado previously known as the Rocky Mountain Institute. He and his colleagues have helped to develop a federally funded guide for airports interested in microgrids like the one in Pittsburgh.

Power outages at airports are more common than many officials would like. A 2023 Government Accountability Office report identified 321 outages that lasted at least five minutes at two dozen U.S. airports from 2015 to 2022. Airports and other infrastructure, such as the electric grid itself, are also increasingly under threat by natural disasters, many of which are linked to climate change. The number of storms and other weather events that caused at least $1 billion in damage has steadily risen in recent decades, from five in 2000 to 27 last year, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information, a part of the U.S. Commerce Department.

In late 2017, an electrical fire caused a power outage at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, disrupting flights nationwide and costing Delta Air Lines, the largest airline at the airport, tens of millions of dollars. That and other outages prompted Ms. Cassotis to ask her team to look into microgrids.

“We basically just started the process of investigating,” she said. “Can we even have one?”

The airport, which sits on the natural gas deposits of the Marcellus Shale, solicited proposals to design, build and operate a microgrid at no upfront cost to the airport. By July 2021, the microgrid was up and running. Today, it produces 23 megawatts of energy: three from a solar array on top of an old landfill and the rest from five natural gas generators. At peak demand, the airport, which served nearly 10 million passengers last year, only uses about 14 megawatts, selling the excess to the grid.

Establishing the microgrid, which is owned by two energy companies, has already paid off for the airport, which locked in low electricity rates for years and has cut carbon emissions by more than six million pounds annually, Ms. Cassotis said.

It has also spared the airport from disruptions. Heathrow’s closure on March 21 disrupted global travel, leading to more than 1,000 canceled flights and stranding thousands of passengers. It began with a fire at an electric substation and, weeks earlier, something similar happened near Pittsburgh’s airport, according to Ms. Cassotis. Fires near substations had disrupted some of the power feeds to the airport. The airport disconnected those feeds to prevent problems from spreading to its microgrid and continued operating as usual.

“There’s an actual tangible value in terms of dollars saved,” Ms. Cassotis said. “And then there is the peace of mind.”

Resilience isn’t the only reason that airports might want to generate and store electricity on site.

Aviation accounts for 2 to 3 percent of global emissions and is a particularly difficult industry to decarbonize because there are few emission-free alternatives for jet fuel. Setting up arrays of solar panels, like the thousands that the Denver airport has already installed or those coming to J.F.K., can help reduce an airport’s carbon footprint. They can also help to supplement rising energy needs as airport vehicles, shuttles, rental cars and, eventually, small aircraft shift to battery power.

Denver’s airport is served by two dedicated electric substations, each of which can power the whole facility, providing redundancy in an emergency, according to Scott Morrissey, senior vice president of sustainability at the airport. The airport also has backup generators.

“Once we have all of these sources electrified, we want to make sure that that electricity supply is as reliable and resilient as it can be,” he said.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees J.F.K and the other two large airports serving the New York region, is also pairing sustainability with resilience. At Kennedy, which also has redundant power sources and generators, Terminal 1 will include a massive array of rooftop solar panels, fuel cells and batteries.

“To not have to deal with that disruption is obviously very advantageous from a business continuity perspective,” said Jessica Forse, the lead project manager overseeing a broader airport overhaul, which includes the terminal revamp. “In a large, international airport — Heathrow, J.F.K. — those disruptions are seen everywhere. They ripple broadly across the airspace, domestically and internationally.”

For now, such ambitious projects are limited, but interest is rising. The Federal Aviation Administration has provided airports grants to explore such options. Airport officials have also been seeking advice from Ms. Cassotis and others who were early in adopting solar panels and microgrids.

“As this market has developed over time, there’s a range of options that should work for different types and sizes of airports,” said Lauren Shwisberg, who leads research and projects aimed at switching to less carbon-intensive electricity at RMI.

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After a tumultuous few years, Colombo, Sri Lanka’s largest city, is once again beckoning tourists. Shaking off the political upheaval that followed the country’s 2022 economic collapse, the city is proving its resilience and putting on a more democratic and left-leaning face. While most visitors know Colombo, with a metropolitan area population of about four million, for its monumental lotus-shaped tower and sprawling array of temples and mosques, there’s now a distinct interest in the revival of its cultural heritage. The recent arrival of new fairs like the Ceylon Literary & Arts Festival and the Matara Festival for the Arts have brought a more international focus to Colombo and the southern fort cities of Sri Lanka. And in February, Jagath Weerasinghe, one of the country’s leading authorities on art and archaeology, co-founded a new gallery called MIAC, or Millennium Art Contemporary, just outside of Colombo, in the suburb of Athurugiriya.

There’s also more appreciation internationally these days for the art and design that have emerged from Sri Lanka’s unique circumstances over time, from the Tropical Modernism style of the late architect Geoffrey Bawa to the male erotica of the Colombo-born photographer Lionel Wendt. Among the country’s many contemporary talents is the fashion designer Amesh Wijesekera, who works with artisanal craft textiles and dead stock fabrics left behind in Sri Lankan factories to produce boundary-breaking pieces that address South Asian gender and sexual identity. Sri Lanka’s first international tourism campaign in more than a decade and the expansion, since 2023, of its visa-free entry program have contributed to a rebound in visitors, with more than two million arrivals last year, a 38 percent increase. Many of them are finding Colombo’s gallery and restaurant scenes and its newer designer hotels to be as tempting a draw as Sri Lanka’s famous tea trails and southern surfing beaches.

Here, four Colombo insiders offer a tour of the places that are driving a renewed sense of optimism in the city. “As an archaeologist, I can tell you this island has been receiving international people since at least the third century B.C.,” Weerasinghe says. “This has been a cosmopolitan place for centuries, for millennia, so it’s written into our cultural genes.”

The Insiders

Trained as an architect, Shayari de Silva is the chief curator of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust. She also runs a ceramics practice called Clay Bodies.

Colombo-born Rishi Naleendra is the chef behind Singapore restaurants Cloudstreet, Kotuwa and Station by Kotuwa, the last of which opened in the first week of March.

The artist and archaeologist Jagath Weerasinghe co-founded the Colombo-based Theertha International Artists Collective, which promotes experimental art in Sri Lanka, in 2000.

The fashion designer Amesh Wijesekera moved back home to Colombo in 2024 after five years in London and three in Berlin to set up his own studio.

Illustrations by Richard Pedaline

“The Geoffrey Bawa Trust is a nonprofit that generates its operating income through visits and stays. It’s very special to stay at Lunuganga, Bawa’s former country estate [about two hours’ drive south of Colombo] and to experience the garden at different times of day; it’s magical at sunrise in one spot, and then later you see the sunset from across the lake. There are 14 bells located on the property, each of which has a distinct sound, that Bawa used so that staff in the main house could locate him as he moved through the garden over the course of the day.” (Rooms from about $410 per night)

“There are also some really interesting homestays throughout Colombo, including Number 11, Geoffrey Bawa’s former home, which has a guest suite containing two bedrooms. Staying here is such a special and immersive way to understand Bawa and his world. Highbury Colombo is a homestay with a wonderful urban garden. There are also homes that have been converted into charming boutique hotels, like Ishq, a beautiful house that was designed by Channa Daswatte.” (Rooms from about $250 a night at Ishq; rooms from about $70 at Highbury Colombo; suite from about $350 at Number 11) — Shayari de Silva

“A newly built hotel called Cinnamon Life at City of Dreams has more than 900 pieces of Sri Lankan art in its collection, including one of mine. It’s a wonderful hotel in a building designed by Cecil Balmond, who was part of the team that engineered the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing. (Rooms from about $138 per night) — Jagath Weerasinghe

“Tintagel is a boutique hotel in a historic house where a lot of important political moments took place. The interiors are very grand [and are] by the family behind the Paradise Road Gallery Café.” (Rooms from about $250 per night) — Amesh Wijesekera

“About a year and a half ago, three brothers opened a restaurant called Gini, [whose name] means ‘fire’ in Sinhalese. Most of the food is grilled or features a fire component in the way it’s prepared. They serve dishes like oysters with herb-infused coconut cream and Malay-style beef cheek pie, and there’s sometimes a fancy version of a s’more on the dessert menu. They have the best arrack sours in Colombo [arrack is a liquor made from the fermented sap of coconut flowers].

“The Gallery Café, located in a fantastic space that was Geoffrey Bawa’s old office, has been a Colombo favorite for decades. The black pork curry is one of their best Sri Lankan dishes. I think they also have the best desserts in Colombo.

“Palmyrah Restaurant is in the no-frills basement of the Renuka City Hotel, but it has amazing food, including lots of northern dishes such as kool (seafood stew) and Jaffna crab curry. The best crab and shrimp dishes are from the north. The spices tend to be roasted more, and there’s less coconut milk or grated coconut in the dishes.” — S.D.S.

“You can’t talk about Colombo without talking about Ministry of Crab. Sri Lanka is well known for our giant mud crabs (also known as lagoon crabs), but funnily enough, we don’t often get to eat them in Sri Lanka because [most of the catch] gets exported to Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan. So if you want to try the highest quality of Sri Lankan crabs here, Ministry of Crab is the place that you should go — sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll get a crab that weighs one and a half or two kilos.

“Club Ceylon in Negombo is convenient to the airport if you’re catching a flight. Liz Norris is a half-English, half-Sri Lankan chef cooking in a colonial house a four-minute drive from Lellama, which is the best fish market in the country. She handpicks whatever she wants to cook that day and prepares it with a Mediterranean feel.

“In Sri Lanka we call everyone an uncle or an auntie, so it’s hard to not want to go for a drink at a bar called Uncle’s. The drinks change often and [the bartenders] use a lot of local ingredients. It gets really busy some nights, and the music is always good — it’s a vibe.

“There’s this crazy tradition we have at Galle Face Hotel when a bagpiper, dressed in a kilt, comes to play at the lowering of the flag every day when the sun goes down. I’ll go to In on the Green, a pub in the hotel, and have a beer and a little bite — we never have a drink without a bite — and usually it’s hot butter cuttlefish or spicy fish croquettes. It’s not the most Sri Lankan experience, but it’s a tradition that’s been going on for over a hundred years.” — Rishi Naleendra

“If you want good Jaffna food [Jaffna is the largest city in northern Sri Lanka], Olai in Wellawatte is a small family-run restaurant. Many Jaffna people are vegetarians, and Olai’s dishes include puttu — a cylindrical rice cake made of steamed grated coconut and rice flour — served with different curries.” — J.W.

“Barefoot [originally called Colombo Gallery] was started [in the 1960s] by Barbara Sansoni, a textiles designer who had been approached by Mother Good Counsel of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd [an order of Catholic nuns] looking for ways to promote social empowerment projects in rural parts of the island. It’s one of the most interesting places to take somebody to understand Sri Lankan crafts. There’s a gallery and a fantastic cafe as well.” — S.D.S.

“Several stores support young Sri Lankan designers. PR is a very high-end concept store started by Annika Fernando of Paradise Road, which is the iconic store that has a bit of everything. The Design Collective (the main entrance is inside Gandhara, a high-end furniture and interior design store) has a wide range of designers.” — A.W.

Take Home

“The country is really known for producing black tea and spices. The best cinnamon comes from Sri Lanka as well. You can get beautifully packaged ones at Paradise Road and Barefoot, but you can also find them in grocery stores. There are certain canned condiments that I still take for my friends every time I go to New York, like pol sambol, which is grated coconut with spices and umbalakada, or Maldives fish — dried, cured tuna that has a distinct taste.” — S.D.S.

“My wife loves the tapioca chips salted with chili and roasted cashew nuts [found at supermarkets] and I always bring home lamprais — short-grain rice cooked in stock and then added to mixed-meat curry, ash plantains, caramelized onion and a fish cutlet. It’s all wrapped in a little packet with banana leaf. The best place to get them is from the Dutch Burgher Union, [which will sell them to you] ready frozen. Preorder in advance and they’ll have them ready for you to pick up. They’ll keep for a couple of months in the freezer. Whenever I miss home, I’ll steam one up in the oven and when I open the banana leaf, it’s an amazing smell.” — R.N.

“Urban Island [sells] homewares, organic spices and a bit of everything, almost all [grown or] designed in Sri Lanka.

“Kala Pola is a big open-air art fair that happens on the street once a year [normally in February] where all the artists from across Sri Lanka come to show their work in booths set up around the Viharamahadevi Park. You can meet the local artists and find their work at its raw source, before it gets to the shops.” — A.W.

“The Colombo National Museum is one of my favorite places because you could literally be the only person in this massive building. A lot of national museums tend to be pretty heavy on narrative, but somehow here, you can take it in more on your own terms.” — S.D.S.

“The best places to see art are the Sapumal Foundation, which was the home of one of the members of the ’43 Group, the avant-garde modernists of Sri Lanka, and the galleries of Saskia Fernando [PRSFG] and Dominic and Nazreen Sansoni [Barefoot].” — J.W.

“Kelaniya Temple is a beautiful Buddhist place with lots of 18th-century and early 20th-century Buddhist murals by Solias Mendis. In Thimbirigasyaya there are two temples, Asokoramaya and Isipathanaramaya, built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries [and] fully painted by M. Sarlis, whose teacher, Richard Henricus, was a painter of murals and theater backdrops. The results were extremely kitsch and colorful renderings of ancient palaces. Also from the early 20th century is Gothami Viharaya, a 15-minute drive north, with murals by George Keyt. Mendis’s work in Kelaniya, the temples in Thimbirigasyaya and Gothami Viharaya were all painted during the same period for the same audience but in three different styles, showing the cosmopolitan nature of Sri Lankan society.” — J.W.

“Getting lost is the best way to explore the Pettah Market because you never know what you’ll find. One alleyway leads to little toy shops, another to electronics shops with the craziest things. Then you’ll randomly go upstairs and enter a bridal boutique. In the center of the market is the Red Mosque, which combines Islamic, Gothic and Neoclassical influences. The surrounding architecture is also historic, with many British colonial constructions, like the Cargills Building.” — A.W.

These interviews have been edited and condensed.