Ya gotta love a country with a sense of humour. And that’s definitely Australia. I loved their Super Bowl commercial (it was great to see the American ones for a change) with Chris Hemsworth and Paul Hogan and other famous Aussies of both a human and animal nature. Good, cheeky fun, and with a nice message about one of my favourite countries. Turns out Tourism Australia is launching a $36 million campaign to lure more Americans Down Under and that the talk of a sequel to Crocodile Dundee was a bit of a gag. (Hopefully that’s not the same for Read more
Australia/New Zealand/PAC
Lonely Planet says folks should choogle on down to Chile next year. But they also should slide over to South Korea and check out Portugal, Djibouti and New Zealand. The popular travel guide and publishing company today (Oct. 24) issued its annual book of top places for experience-hungry travellers to dine in and explore in 2018. Last year Canada was all over these kinds of charts owing to 2017 being our 150th birthday. This year we’ve slipped off the radar and nearly disappeared, at least in the Lonely Planet Guide. Canadian destinations failed to appear in the list of top Read more
What a mess. As folks in Puerto Rico try to cope with flooding and the lack of electricity from the effects of Hurricane Maria, the post-Maria work continues for St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands and in poor Dominica, which bore the full force of the hurricane’s wrath earlier this week. The Caribbean Journal today was reporting that “Hurricane Maria clobbered Puerto Rico on Wednesday, sending it into a total island-wide blackout, with reports of significant property damage.” Top that off with the severe damage done by Hurricane Irma to St. Martin/St. Maarten, Barbuda, Puerto Rico, Anguilla, Cuba and Read more
An item on the Newsday website says that Toronto’s own CN Tower is the 11th most photographed landmark (or at least the 11th most hashtagged landmark) on the planet. That’s a bit surprising in some ways, as it puts what was once the world’s tallest freestanding structure higher on the list than such notable places as The Taj Mahal and even Buckingham Palace. Then again, it IS a very large tower and it’s in a huge city that’s very close to not only millions of Canadians but tens of millions of Americans who want to come up and take advantage Read more
Hong Kong makes sense. Certainly Tokyo. But Athens? And how does my home city of Toronto end up fifth best for food in Canada? Booking.com today released a list of the top destinations its travellers enjoy for great food. There are some obvious inclusions and some surprising exclusions, if you ask me. (Which you technically didn’t). Here’s what booking.com customers came up with for a ranking of the food scene in Canada: 1. Vancouver 2. Montreal 3. Halifax 4. Winnipeg 5. Toronto I don’t want to get all parochial here, but there’s not a chance Toronto is only the fifth Read more
