Okay. I didn’t get out as much as I normally would. Not even close. But I did manage several trips this year, including visits to Switzerland, California and several cool spots in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. Here’s a look at my annual Jimmy Awards for best travel experiences of the year. Today is focused on food and drinks; later I’ll write about hotels, experiences and attractions. Cheers, and here’s to a better 2022! Best U.S. Winery: Darcie Kent Vineyards in Livermore, California. Superb reds and great, friendly people. Best U.S. Salad: The Farmer’s Super Food Salad at Danville Harvest Read more
Europe
A new tourism/travel product called Roamies combines the social hostelling experience with small group adventure travel . Hostels have long been a cornerstone of the tourism eco-system, making travel accessible and affordable, and fostering a sense of community and camaraderie amongst young people keen to explore together. It’s this sense of community and joint passion for innovation that has led Hostelworld and G Adventures to join forces on Roamies, which brings a new style of travel to 18 to 35-year-olds. This new collaboration launches with a collection of 38 tours in 15 countries staying across more than 50 hostels, and sees Read more
I knew something was wrong. But I didn’t expect this. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. this week moved France and Portugal to level four, the highest risk category on its travel health notices website page. As of Tuesday, the CDC travel site lists France and Portugal in level four, which indicates a “very high” level of COVID-19. The other three levels used by the CDC are “high,” “moderate,” and “low.” The Canadian government travel advisory site has four categories, “avoid all travel, ” “avoid non-essential travel,” “exercise a high degree of caution,” and “exercise normal Read more
Two of the most popular destinations for Canadians and Americans are putting new testing rules in place. Tourism Ireland said today that all arrivals into the Republic – whether vaccinated or not – will need a negative Covid test result from tomorrow (Dec. 3) onwards. Those travelling with an antigen test result will need to have obtained it within 48 hours of departure, and it will have to be professionally administered. No self-administered tests will be accepted. Those with a PCR test result will have a longer pre-travel window of 72 hours. Persons arriving into the state from overseas who Read more
Here we go again. Japan today (Monday) announced that it’s closing its border to international travellers due to fears of the omicron variant of COVID-19. Japan will bar entry to foreigners from midnight on Monday, and Japanese returnees from specified nations will have to quarantine in designated facilities, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters. ABC News reports that the Israel Health Ministry said the country’s coronavirus Cabinet had authorized a raft of measures, including red-listing travel to 50 African countries, banning entry by foreigners and mandating quarantine for all Israelis arriving from abroad. Australia today said it’s delaying the Read more
