MSN has posted a pretty good list of the world’s top cultural destinations for 2026. There’s always room to quibble with most “best of” lists, as they’re generally based on someone’s personal experience or preferences. I’m sure people look at some of mine and think, ‘Dude, WHAT are you thinking?” Anyhow, this latest MSN cultural list seems pretty good to me. Here are their top 10 choices for this year, with a short excerpt from their comments, And, for places I’ve visited, some of my own thoughts. SINGAPORE “Modern yet deeply rooted in tradition, Singapore offers a mix of cultures Read more
new cruise ships
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
A new study of downtown Toronto commerce shows the tourism industry has bounced back nicely from the pandemic. But we’re not out of the woods yet. The Toronto Star on Thursday ran a story that talked about a University of Toronto School of Cities study that looked at cellphone usage in the city centre to determine the number of daily visitors to various types of buildings. Looking at 2019 levels versus 2023, the study found that Toronto’s hospitality buildings had a 100% recovery rate in terms of visitors. The recovery rate for office buildings was only 69%, and for retail Read more
