When the characters of the Sex and the City universe leave New York, it almost always spells disaster – that is usually when they make their most ill-advised, impulsive decisions, fall for the sleaziest men, throw cantaloupes through glass windows and, um, Poughkeepsie their pants. Still, it’s impossible to look away from those particular vacation episodes, and the equivalent portions in the two films: the fashion is often more elevated and experimental, and it’s endlessly fascinating (if also incredibly cringe-worthy) to see Carrie and co navigate different cultures, customs and languages. Below, we present a ranking of every Sex and the City holiday, from the borderline criminal to the truly magical.
8. Abu Dhabi
The cartoonish stereotypes, the terrible Middle East-themed one-liners, Miranda butchering the Arabic language, the observations about women in niqabs, Samantha’s public shaming, that painful karaoke scene – honestly, the less said about the quartet’s ill-fated jaunt to the United Arab Emirates in Sex and the City 2, the better. Oh, and don’t even get me started on that scene where the Emirati women whip off their burkas to reveal feathered cocktail dresses and then lend them to the girls so that they can escape the souk, only for them to have to – wait for it – flash an ankle in order to hail a cab. Just no.
7. San Francisco
Remember when Carrie and Samantha go on a flying visit to San Francisco? No? Exactly. This largely forgettable season five episode features our single and fabulous heroine heading to California, ostensibly for her book tour but with the ulterior motive of visiting – and, crucially, sleeping with – Big. For reasons that don’t entirely make sense, she drags poor Samantha along on a cramped and hot-guy-free cross-country train ride; finally arrives at her reading to find that she’s opening for a celebrity dog; and then unceremoniously removes Samantha from her hotel room (while she’s having a bubble bath!) so that she can have sex with Big… except, he’s now read her book and wants to dissect their relationship. Thankfully, he does eventually relent, Samantha buys them first class flights home, and this trip is never spoken of again.
6. Mexico
After Big leaves her at the altar in the first movie, Carrie is unable to cancel her honeymoon to a spectacular Mexican resort – so, the girls tag along instead. Considering she’s grappling with complete heartbreak and total humiliation, it’s understandable that Carrie chooses to spend the holiday hibernating, lounging by the pool and sipping margaritas at the restaurant while being serenaded by a mariachi band – with only one brief outing, to sit on a cliffside and hurl her phone into the water – but the trip is over in a flash and feels like something of a wasted opportunity. That hotel, with its palm trees and ocean views, could basically have been anywhere in the world.
5. Suffern
Aidan’s, shall we say, rustic cabin in the aptly-named village of Suffern, a short drive upstate from Manhattan, forms the setting for two hilarious season four episodes. When Carrie, the self-confessed “bona fide city girl”, reluctantly agrees to, as she puts it, become a “hick town hostage”, we see her dragging her fashionable luggage up rickety wooden stairs in five-inch heels; screaming bloody murder when she sees a squirrel; driving to New Jersey to get a phone signal and fast food; and then falling in the mud when moving railroad ties with Aidan. She calls it a day and heads back to the city after that, but then returns, closely followed by Big. His muddy fight with Aidan and their subsequent reconciliation over brunch provide the perfect ending for this foray into the country. An utterly awful holiday, but excellent TV.
4. Atlantic City
As standalone holiday episodes in new locations go, season five’s “Luck Be an Old Lady” is surely the show’s best: the one where the girls decide to celebrate Charlotte’s 36th birthday by joining Samantha and her then boyfriend Richard Wright on their weekend break to Atlantic City. After their arrival at the fittingly tacky, cigarette smoke-filled Taj Mahal casino, they all go out to dinner, and Charlotte begins to spiral when Miranda buys her an “Old Maid” card game. Cue a very Atlantic City makeover for our prim Park Avenue princess, complete with a super-tight, low-cut, cowl-neck halter dress and a big blowout, as she tries to get her mojo back.
Meanwhile, Miranda proves she’s great at gambling (and taking down body-shamers); Samantha becomes convinced that Richard is cheating on her with all of the hotel staff, and finally breaks things off; and Carrie, delighted at having brought the whole gang together, gets her wish of a new group photo, albeit whilst playing Old Maid and eating peppermint taffy in the back of a bus. Most incredibly, all of this happens in just 29 minutes.
3. Los Angeles
Season three’s two-part LA extravaganza is one for the ages: it’s got Sarah Michelle Gellar as a deranged development executive interested in optioning Carrie’s columns; Matthew McConaughey stanning Mr Big; Miranda ripping her shirt open while riding a mechanical bull; and Samantha hitting it off with a dildo model – and that’s only the first episode. Then comes Carrie’s fling with a chain-smoking Vince Vaughn, who pretends to be a high-profile agent when he is in fact Carrie Fisher’s house-sitter (the latter comes home furious, and mistakes Ms Bradshaw for a prostitute).
Samatha doesn’t get off lightly either – after going to the Valley in search of a fake Fendi, she takes her glittering new purchase to a very surreal pool party at the Playboy mansion, becomes convinced that a bunny has stolen it, and is mortified to discover that said bunny’s Fendi is actually real. One nod from (the real) Hugh Hefner and they’re escorted out. Bonus points, also, for Carrie’s mismatched sandals, the guy who offers to buy Charlotte new boobs, and Miranda’s date who chews and tastes each piece of steak before spitting it out. The girls said they needed a change of scenery and boy did they get it.
2. The Hamptons
The girls’ home away from home always delivers on the drama – season one’s “Bay of Married Pigs”, for instance, in which Carrie’s friend’s husband flashes her in the hallway of their beach house, leading her friend to kick her out, or season five’s “I Love a Charade”, in which Samantha throws a disastrous party at Richard’s Hamptons house. But, the reason the Hamptons overtake LA in our ranking? It all comes down to one particularly moving episode: season two’s “Twenty-Something Girls vs Thirty-Something Women”. In it, the gang go to battle with their younger counterparts: Charlotte scores them a shabby chic rental cottage, meets a dashing twenty-something on the jitney and, in trying to prove that she can keep up with women his age, gets crabs.
Meanwhile, Samantha is fuming at her former assistant who is throwing the party of the season (with the help of a stolen copy of Samantha’s own rolodex), and Carrie is being fawned over by Laurel, a wide-eyed new super fan. Just when she decides that twenty-something girls are harmless, though, she bumps into Natasha canoodling with Big, runs off to find Miranda and pukes on the beach while fireworks light up the sky. It makes for a gut-punch of an ending that lifts the episode above its competitors without the need for guest stars or glamorous locations.
1. Paris
The episodes which most effectively combine spectacle and emotion, however, are season six’s “An American Girl in Paris (Part Une)” and “(Part Deux)”. From the moment Carrie lands in the French capital in her Breton stripes and jaunty, pearl-embroidered hat, she’s on a rollercoaster ride: she meets Petrovsky’s painfully cool and visibly disapproving daughter, but then screams with joy when she sees the view of the Eiffel Tower from her balcony; and dons that Versace mille feuille ball gown, but finds she has nowhere to go. Over the next few weeks, she takes a tumble in Dior, has a slightly awkward lunch with her lover’s ex-wife (the impossibly chic Carole Bouquet), chain-smokes at Ladurée, wanders through the cold and rainy cobblestone streets with dog poop on her white Louboutins, and sits by the Seine as tourists film her on their camcorders.
These scenes capture a sense of place more effectively than anything the show has ever done before or since (aside from its depiction of New York, of course): it’s a showcase for the city’s ravishing, unparalleled beauty, but also an examination of the acute loneliness it can inspire when you find yourself cast adrift amongst its romantic gardens and baroque bridges. In the end though, after all her soul searching, Carrie does eventually get the Parisian happy ending she always wanted: she ditches her Russian for Big, who finally tells her that she’s the one while they embrace on the Pont des Arts. It’s the same bridge she returns to almost two decades later to scatter his ashes from in And Just Like That.