Europe
TONGARIKI, EASTER ISLAND – The hour of 7 a.m. is still a nasty rumour. To the east, in a distant sky, the sun is rising over a deserted Pacific Ocean. I’m carefully making my way through a thick field of grass wedged with bits of lava rock, my iPhone flashlight helping point the way in the pre-dawn darkness. Horses that appear to come from a nearby ranch nibble noiselessly in the black morning. I get too close to what looks like a chestnut-coloured colt and it bounds skittishly to its mother a few metres away. The horses aren’t aware of Read more
My wife and I have been blessed with wonderful travel experiences. We’ve taken trips to Australia, as well as Ireland, Hawaii and Hong Kong. We’ve somehow landed penthouse suites at luxurious New York City hotels and enjoyed palatial hotel rooms in Paris. But I’ve never seen the kind of look on her face that I did when we walked along the elevated pathway that took us to our thatched roof, overwater bungalow at the Four Seasons Bora Bora. Incredulous is probably the best word to describe it, a slack-jawed, wide-eyed and utterly bedazzled look that workers here are probably used Read more
A lenswear company called Lensbest has released a new, data-driven list of the best places in the world to watch a sunset. As someone who tries to watch a sunset whenever he can (okay, I’m a romantic), I got a kick out of this. The company surveyed travel journalists (myself included) around the globe and came up with the top 100. Santorini, Greece, was the most nominated place to view a sunset worldwide, followed by the Grand Canyon in Arizona and Mykonos Greece, giving two podium spots to the country that gave us the first Olympics. Some 600 global locations Read more
I get a lot of pretty boring press releases across my desk every day. But this one I like; a look at some places in the world that haven’t yet been overrun by tourists with selfie sticks. It’s from the folks at Intrepid Travel, who run great trips all around the world and know a thing or two about over-tourism. Here’s what they sent along today. I’d add a few other places to the list if anyone asked me, including The Azores (think Portugal meets Ireland meets Hawaii), Slovenia in Europe, Western Australia, the Hawaiian island of Molokai and, here Read more
