Europe

We’re only six weeks from summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, and that has a lot of people feeling better about things. If you’re in the travel and tourism business, there are some pretty good reasons for optimism as well. I’ll look at a new poll in my FUTURE OF TRAVEL blog today, as well as optimistic TSA numbers and comments from airline officials. There’s also some news from Jasper National Park in Alberta and some not-so-hopeful comments out of France. THERE’S A GOOD MOON ON THE RISE First up, the good news for a Sunday. A report on novacancynews.com Read more

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