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U.S.A.

It’s a great matchup on paper, with the NFL’s top quarterback (Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs, a number 10 draft pick) against San Francisco 49ers signal caller Brock Purdy, a kid taken last in the NFL draft in 2022, 262nd overall. It’s also a fun matchup of cities that are quite unalike; one smack dab in the middle of the American heartland and solid as Midwestern rock; the other perched on the edge of the continent and known for its breezy, live for today attitude. Here’s a look at the two cities. Full disclosure: I grew up in Read more

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A look at where Canadians want to go for domestic trips this year, as well as surprising destinations for foreign visitors to Canada. Today’s post also looks at where to see the Northern Lights and how young people are looking for “roamance” on the road. CANADIAN HOT SPOTS FOR 2024: Moncton, Windsor, Vancouver and Richmond Hill? 2023 was, by many reports, considered the “return to travel”, with tourism reaching nearly 90% of pre-pandemic levels*. With travel showing no signs of slowing down, Canadians are eager to explore their own country, and far beyond, this year. Without further ado, here are Read more

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A little bit of this and a little bit of that today. SAFEST EUROPEAN CITIES A story at InsiderMonkey.com lists the safest cities in the world, which is an important topic any time but seemingly more so now given global events. Using data from the Global Peace Index, they assigned cities with a safety score. In this, the lower the number the more safe the city is deemed to be. Here’s the top 25 in descending order 25. Vilnius, Lithuania, 1.671 24. Rome, 1.662 23. Bucharest, 1.649 23. Madrid, 1.649 21. Sofia, 1.643 20. Warsaw, 1.634 19. Stockholm, 1.625 (very Read more

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The annual Trip Advisor Best Beaches List is out again, and there’s plenty to like. For the world, Trip Advisor users named Baia de Sancho on the idyllic island of Fernando de Noronha in Brazil as the top beach, followed by Eagle Beach in Aruba and Cable Beach in Broome, Western Australia. I haven’t made it to Cable Beach, but I can tell you that beaches in Western Australia are some of the best – and least crowded – in the world. In world voting, Grace Bay in the Turks and Caicos was fifth, Varadero Beach in Cuba ninth and Read more

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Kudos to Canada. And a nod to Hawai’i, as well. A study by Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection has anointed Canada as the safest country on the planet for 2024. Montreal came second in the world for safe cities, beaten only by Honolulu. Berkshire Hathaway nalyzed the responses of 1,702 travelers who were polled between August 24 and September 13, 2023, along with third-party data sources to evaluate concerns such as terrorism, weather emergencies, health measures, and the safety of underrepresented groups. The Berkshire Hathaway rankings also take into account data and information sourced from the U.S. State Department, The Economist, Read more

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