It’s Jimmy time. Yes, while many of you are gearing up for the deep freeze at the Winter Classic with the Maple Leafs or Red Wings or toasting the new year at a posh hotel in New York or Jamaica, I’m home in Toronto counting my blessings and staying close to my overtaxed radiators so I can stay warm while I type up my list of Jimmy Award winners for the year that’s about to come to a close. I was immensely lucky in this past year and was able to visit some astonishing places and do some amazing things. Read more
California
SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA – Beautiful views. Fabulous food. Colourful culture. And a great, chic hotel. This has always been one of my favourite towns, with truly iconic sights and just about anything you could ask for in a vacation spot. We started our weekend with a visit to the unbelievable farmers market on Arizona Ave. There were organic vegetable of just about type and size; leeks and limes, Japanese turnips, ripe orange persimmons, giant bush-sized bunches of romaine lettuce, crisp apples and strawberries as red as a shiny fire truck. They put a lot of pride on organic products in Read more
Newfoundland’s Fogo Island Inn nabs prestigious Mr. and Mrs. Smith hotel award Nice to see some Canadian content in the inuagural Mr. and Mrs. Smith Hotel Awards! Newfoundland’s Fogo Island Inn, a high-end property that works with artists in a pretty remote part of the province, was this week named “Best Newcomer” in an awards ceremony held in London. Nearly 50,000 people from around the world voted for their favourite boutique properties in the Mr. and Mrs. Smith Awards, after which a shortlist of 10 hotels in each of the categories was put to a panel of 36 specialist judges. Read more
LONDON – It’s an impressive world in here. You can chat with a 10-foot-tall penguin from the Falkland Islands, relax in the first-class suite of an Emirates Airline A380 and pretend to sit behind the wheel of a tuk-tuk in Thailand. You also can get a massage in Indonesia, chat about trips to Montreal and get all weepy looking at giant posters of perfect, white sand beaches in Maui, Mauritius and the Maldives. The annual World Travel Market in London is a crazy, wild, impossible scene with tourism boards from around the globe meeting with buyers and journalists to nail Read more
SAN FRANCISCO – For years I’ve been getting nudges from the San Francisco tourism folks to check out the Mission district. It had gone from something akin to derelict to a trendy, fun area and was well worth investigating, I was told. Even our former mayor, David Miller, mentioned it in passing one day when we chatted about his travels. I finally got around it on a recent visit, and had a great time. Mind you, it was one of those postcard-perfect spring days in the city; about 18 or 19 Celsius with hardly a whisper of wind and the Read more
