One of the world’s best beaches is getting bigger. Much bigger. I recently caught up with Brian Lowack, president and CEO of Visit St. Pete/Clearwater; one of the top destinations in Florida. He told me a beach renewal project that stretches from Sand Key on Clearwater Beach to St. Pete Beach will add 2.5 million cubic yards of sand, with roughly 200 feet of width. “It’s already great, but it’s going to be the most beautiful beach in Florida,” he told me in Toronto, where Visit St. Pete/Clearwater hosted media and travel agents at a Blue Jays-Yankees game. The cost Read more
Japan
This is a fun item. A website called Radical Storage took a look at nearly 100,000 Google reviews from the top 10 most-reviewed tourist attractions in 100 cities around the world and looked for words like “overrated” or “disappointing.” They then came up with a list of the ten most underwhelming/disappointing/overrated destinations around the world. They also published a list of the ten most surprising/underrated destinations. Here’s a look. OVERRATED/DISAPPOINTING Cancun, Mexico Antalya, Turkiye Punta Cana, Dominican Republic Beijing, China Orlando, Florida Mumbai, India Honolulu, Hawaii Johor Bahru, Indonesia Kyot0, Japan Playa del Carmen, Mexico UNDERRATED/SURPRISING Guangzhou, China Lima, Peru Read more
For many years, The New York Times has been delivering a solid, -thought-out list of the 52 best places to go in the world for any given year. For 2025, their list includes a few of my fave places in the world, including Western Australia, Sydney, New York City and the Trent-Severn Waterway in Ontario, Canada, where my wife and I piloted a 42-foot craft from Le Boat on our own last June (and survived). Also making the list was Detroit, which the Times noted has undergone a remarkable renaissance, something I witnessed on a visit in July of last Read more
The travel boom continues for most of the world, and 2025 is shaping up to be a great year. But where to go? Well, that depends on what you like and what you want to pay and how tolerant of crowds you are. If you like Europe, please go. But don’t visit in summer when it’s packed with tourists. Instead, go in spring or mid-to-late fall. If you want to go to a place where the Canadian dollar is relatively strong, try Australia, Japan, or New Zealand. Of course, flights there can be expensive, so you have to take that Read more
Expedia has come out with its list of top world destinations for 2025, and there are some great picks. Here’s their top nine for the upcoming year. A Catalonian culinary haven Girona, Spain As Catalonian capital Barcelona hits the headlines for record-breaking tourism numbers, conscious travellers are keeping visits short and sweet, basing themselves primarily in nearby Girona, a hill-top medieval showstopper just 40 minutes away via the new Avlo high-speed train service. In gastronomic circles, Girona has been an insider secret for years, with 12 Michelin-starred restaurants in the region, snapping at San Sebastián’s crown as Spain’s culinary Read more
