Trip Advisor has a top ten beaches of the U.S. list out, and Florida has been knocked out of the top spot. Hapuna Beach, located on the north Kona coast on Hawaii Big Island, takes the top spot this year, while Siesta Key in Florida took the silver medal. Casey Brogan, senior communications specialist at Tripadvisor, told CNBC that a Florida beach had finished first in the last eight polls. “So for Hawaii to pass it, this is actually the first time Hawaii has had the number one beach in the U.S. since 2014,” he said. (EDITOR’S NOTE: DO YOU Read more
Oregon
Another busy year in the old rear-view mirror, with fabulous memories of cliffside walks on laid-back Molokai to terrific tours of Wrigley Field and buttery biscuits in Chicago. Not to mention a wonderful Bordeaux wine cruise, crazy beautiful mountains in the south of France, awesome ice cream in North Carolina and one of the most memorable meals of my life on the border between Napa and Sonoma counties in California. Here’s a look at my favourite experiences and photos from the U.S. and the rest of world for 2017. Best Hawaii hike: A short walk along the cliffs of northwest Read more
KEY WEST – The Florida Keys have always been a favourite for me. I’ve always driven down from Miami in the past and enjoyed watching the colour of the water change and checking out the odd tiki bar along the way for a beer and a blackened fish sandwich. Usually I drive, but this time I flew in with some other Canadian travel writers, landing on the short runway at the airport in Key West. Someone on our very short bus ride into town was telling me they find it hard to describe the feeling of coming from a cold Read more
I got news of a remarkable study the other day from Resonance Consultancy, which did a report on 121 U.S. cities and ranked them according to their “experiential quality.” It strikes me as a bit of an inexact science, but the idea behind the study is a very good one that involved analyzing consumer comments on various websites to determine not just actual numbers of who goes where but the level of engagement and happiness people feel when they go to a destination. In a press release they sent, Resonance officials said industry folks know about visitor county,, spending and Read more