Pushkin.

Hey, they're not lost, listeners.

It's Acelin Green, host of the acclaimed weekly podcast series Unpacked by AFAR, the podcast that helps you navigate the travel world, whether you want advice on an ethical dilemma or just to figure out where to travel next.

This season Unpacked, I'm speaking with seasoned travelers and industry professionals to unpack the most captivating and challenging topics in the travel industry, one conversation at a time.

Today, I am thrilled to share a special episode of Unpacked with you.

It's a roundtable discussion examining the twenty five most exciting places around the world to visit in twenty twenty four.

Featuring myself and AFAR editors Saraka Bunsel, Tim Chester and Billy Cohen.

We chat about everything from the sites to see in Rome that are beyond your normal tourist activities, reasons why travelers visiting Africa for the first time should go to Lamu Kenya, and the best destinations to view twenty twenty four solar eclipse.

Needless to say, Unpacked is the perfect companion podcast and not lost, especially if you're looking for another podcast that dives into the heart of travel, so make sure to follow Unpacked on your favorite podcast app.

With that said, here's the show.

Hi everyone, Welcome to Unpacked.

Welcome back to Unpacked.

Thanks so much for tulling us.

We're just so excited to be here to talk about where to go.

I know and you are fresh off making this list happen.

It's burned into our brains.

We're all very excited for twenty twenty four to happen so we can start taking these trips we've been writing and editing about for months.

Before we start talking about the list, I'd love to just start with having everyone introduce themselves and say where they are in the world.

Sarka, do you want to start?

Hi?

I'm Saraka bunsel I am the editorial director.

I'm based in Nairobi, Kenya.

There's been a country wide power outage of the last twenty four plus hours now, so I have a bit of a cobbled setup right now.

Luckily we do have like a good solar power backup and everything, but but I feel very like I'm glad I'm here by the string of my teeth.

It is very impressive that you're here given all of that.

Thank you.

And Billy hop at you.

Hi.

I'm Billy Cohen, executive editor, and I'm based in New York and you have power and we have power.

Yeah it's not too.

Yeah, yeah, if it is not summer right where everything?

There are a ton of brownets in the city.

But yeah, seems to be doing okay.

We have construction though, So if you hear any of that out out of my back window, that's what that will be.

And Tim, that leaves you.

Hi, I'm Tim Chester, I'm deputy editor.

I'm in a very sunny power field southern California, thousand Oaks near LA where I always am when we do these.

I thought I was a traveler, but I always seem to be as podcast time.

So yeah, we need to plan the next recording for when you are somewhere really fascinating.

Yeah, maybe someplace on the list.

Yeah all right, Well, let's dig into this wonderfulness that you've put together.

I mean it's a big one.

How did you approach this this year?

What was your mindset going into it?

I think a couple of things that we tend to look for when we start getting pitches in are Of course, there's just no shortage of great places to go.

Ever, and I know that these lists can sometimes feel a little bit random.

One of the things that we really try to filter for is like what's new in a place or what places are really having a moment, and that can be you know, one of many things.

If there's a cultural opening, or if there's something exciting happening regarding conservation, or if there's just some big event happening that is a reason to go specifically next year.

That's one thing that we really typically try to look for.

And then we also really you know, are looking to get a good geographical mix, so you know, we don't want to just focus a bunch of places in Europe, but really want to try to get around the globe and give people reasons to go, maybe back to places that they've already been, and also consider some places in the world that they may not have ever heard of.

And I think our list has a nice mix of both of those.

One hundred percent.

My favorite part of making the list and working on this, apart from when the issues just left the building, is right at the beginning, when we solicit pitches and we have writers and contributors all around the world and all sorts of places and getting back in touch with them, finding out where they are, where they're recommending, what they're excited about.

We kind of get all these ideas in like well over one hundred, couple of hundred ideas and divide them up by continent and then have a look at them together.

And it's just really interesting to sort of take the post the travel writer community and see what's exciting everyone, and then the hard work of kind of narrowing it down, you know, all a list comes in.

Yeah, And I love that we're working with writers and our staff who've actually been in these places with their feet on the ground.

Some of them are live in these places.

So we get all these pitches and we get all these ideas, and sometimes they are locations that surprise us because maybe we wouldn't have thought of that, but because that person is very familiar with that location, they're able to give a new spin on it that we think is really interesting and will be really interesting to travelers as well.

I love that.

I love that there's so much knowledge and kind of intimate experience with these places going into the list.

Tim, you mentioned it started as a pretty big list, and this year we have twenty five destinations on the list, which still feels like sometimes more, how did you wind up with twenty five?

Well, it couldn't be twenty four twenty four.

That, No, we don't go in for that kind of numerical puntery.

Other funds are five but not rest totally.

Wait till we start talking about Bruno.

First, obviously obviously.

This second question you beat me too.

What we're talking about?

Should we just talk about that joke?

Now there's one of the places, Yeah, go for it, and it's felt Brno, which is obviously Bruno without the you and believe you want to explain.

Why that.

Because of Encanto And so the minute it got pitched, I just started making that terrible pun every time it came up.

I was like, let's talk about Bruno.

Let's talk about Bruno.

And then I enlisted him to ask him to repeat the joke every time he was talking about it too, and he very gamely agreed.

So here we are, and here all the listeners get to get to know the high jinks behind the scenes and my love of puns.

I think with the list, we did get it down to sort of a dozen, and then and then we kept having places that we really wanted to have in and so it went up.

Oh yeah, sort of doubled in size, isn't it.

And obviously some of them are rounded up in thematic pieces.

Yeah.

Yeah, we started seeing some places like, for example, Paris has the Summer Olympics going on, so it felt like an obvious inclusion, but we also didn't want to give it so much space in the magazine because the Summer Olympics could be for a lot of people a reason not to go to Paris next year, but we didn't want to not mention it.

So it became like we had a few places like Bruno, che Chechia and a bunch of others that we were really excited to feature, but then there were some others that also just felt like there were important enough things happening there, or they were capitals of something like the European Capital of Culture and whatnot that felt, you know, really interesting and important to mention, but then we didn't want to give it as much space in the print magazine.

Yeah that makes sense.

Well, you mentioned events, and that does seem to be a bit of a theme throughout the list.

We'll talk about some in particular a little later on.

But why was that a focus and what are you most excited about.

I'll jump in.

One of the big events for twenty twenty four is the solar clips that's happening on April A.

Across the staff at AFAR, we're all seemed to be obsessed with these eclipses.

So that was in Texas.

So the idea was raised by one of our colleagues, Mah Hamilton, that Texas and the hill country in Texas would be an ideal place to experience the eclipse coming aprillly, so we knew we wanted to do something on that, and then using that as an opportunity to talk about that area of the country where there's also a lot going on.

There's a lot in the wine scene, there's a lot of small towns with a lot of culture to visit.

It seemed like a great way to talk about an event but also make it more about a place that people could experience beyond that one day.

Another way that we were thinking about events not just go and have the event and experience the event, but what can we share with people about the location that that event has taking place in.

I think that really comes out nicely in Texas.

On the choice of photography, when I thought of that piece, I imagine just big, wide open text and plane at night with some stars or something obvious about the eclipse.

But actually what we've got is this lovely shot of two girls swimming underwater at one of the swimming holes and a truck driving through the kind of wildflower meadows.

And that's one of my favorite things about writing for a magazine, especially, is when the art team bring it to life and it just it's just amazing.

I love it.

Yeah, an unexpected look at the place.

Why do you think so many people are drawn to traveling for solar eclipses?

It feels like a nerdy phenomenon that's still cool and you can everyone can still appreciate the enormous power of it.

I think it's also a moment to just feel connected with this much broader galaxy that we live in, and to just realize that we are quite quite small.

I felt that for sure.

I got to see some really far away galaxies in a telescope, you know, very powerful telescope, and just that feeling of being really small and reminded of, you know, that we are just little dots.

Kind of an amazing feeling.

I think it just brings people together.

Yeah, and the fact that we all get to witness it together.

I think there are some really special about that.

Astric tourism seems to be a big thing at hotels everywhere nowadays.

I mean a number of places.

Someone at a hotel, someone's rolled out a telescope and has been an impromptu stargazing type experience.

I think people are just traveling for that all the time.

So obviously the eclipse is like the big festival, you know, dramatic version of that.

Absolutely.

Well, what else surprised you on this year's list.

I don't want to give, but I know too much of the limelight, And obviously Prague is the more well known city, and great story from Emma John about just the arts and culture and the vibe of that city and some of the really interesting things going on there like cabinet moots, this vegan cafe by day and banned venue at night, Museum of Fine Arts with floating chairs and as part of the exhibits, cocktail bar where you take part in the story, and a hotel that's only twenty six feet wide.

I think in that piece she really brought out all the sort of interesting curiosities of that place and definitely made me want to visit, which is obviously the point of these pieces.

I'll say two things generally that surprised me about the list.

One is a lot of places that we chose are places that you had I mean, of course, we do have the Burgnos and a few others that I think will be quite new for a lot of readers, but we do have quite a few places that I think people have heard of and may have traveled to before, but we have sort of fresh reasons to visit.

Two examples that come to mind there are Rome, Italy and Los Angeles, California, and both of them are pretty well known destinations.

In the case of Rome, there are a lot of new, beautiful looking hotels that I think will be a draw for people to come and not just come in and try to see the coliseum and try to do all of the bucket list type of things Rome is famous for, but also just try to stay and enjoy the city and experience a lot of the other piece of the city that may be overlooked.

There are also a lot of archaeological sites that are being breathed new life into and I think that that just gives a lot of people who maybe have been to Rome once before on a europe trip at some point a reason to go back and really try to explore the city afresh.

In Los Angeles, there's a really large black art movement that's going on there, a really large space that's opening up, and also a ton of new restaurants that I think a lot of our readers would be excited to check out.

And the second thing that surprised me about our list is that a lot of destinations we chose because of their sustainability and conservation commitment.

This is true for places like Fiji where a lot of hotels have strong commitments to help preserve ocean life, places like Norway where there's just so much green transport and ways to get around the country, and many others too that I think that really have done quite a lot on the environment, which was one of our factors and choosing it.

Yeah, some of the places that we chose had a cultural sustainability and a cultural aspect that was coming up obviously events and festivals.

But one of the places that surprised me or that I learned something about was Saint Kitts.

The pitch came in from a writer we've worked with Rosalinda Cummings Eats, and she had been there and met two people who were sort of bringing back the legacy of rom in Saint Kitts.

Now it's in the Caribbean, and I think people sort of widely know that there was sugar plantations there during the various colonial eras of those islands, and Saint Kitts had been a British colony for a very long time where there were a lot of plantations that were farmed by enslaved African peoples.

And recently there's this movement to reclaim that really painful and complicated past, but through local residents, local coetitions they call themselves.

So there's two companies that are doing that to sort of bring back that history and talk about it in a new light, really re evaluating that history and sharing what it meant to the local people who were living there and their descendants now and I think especially in the Caribbean where maybe people are just thinking about it as a sun and beach destination, to learn that there are points of cultural connection that are available, that was surprising and exciting to me.

That's so cool.

And you can taste the rum, yes, you can.

You can go to these places.

The two companies.

One is run by this guy, Jack Whittison.

It's called Old Road Rum Company.

And he grew up on in a state that was a sugar plantation and when he was like a teenager, they are archaeologists who found the ruins of an old distillery on it.

They dated it back to the sixteen hundreds and they think it's the oldest rum distillery in the Caribbean.

And he was like fourteen when they found this, and so then he grows up and he's like, you know what I'm going to do.

I'm going to start our own company.

He's trying to rebuild that distillery actually so that they can for the first time long time, you know, make rum actually on the island.

But in the meantime he's blending RUMs from the region and inviting people to the property where he does tours and lets the taste and talks about this history.

So yeah, you can go, and there's a tour you can take called the Sant Kids rum Master's Tour, so you can go and visit the Old World Rum.

And another company called Hibiscus Spirits and Taste and learn how to make Saint Kits Cetician cocktails and Caribbean influenced cocktails and really hear the story and learn about the history and a new perspective.

Well, one of the other things that I'm hearing you say, I think all three of you, is that you learned so much through making this list.

Is there anything in kind of a broader sense that you feel like you learned kind of putting this list together?

How many places there are in the world that I cannot wait to visit?

You know, it's never ending, which I mean, thank goodness.

I think also we have a lot of focus on arts and culture this year, and a lot of our stories like Los Angeles that I had mentioned before, Saint Kits, There's many others to Manchester, England, which Billy wrote, and they all seem so specific their art scenes.

You can get to some things that feel like, you know, you could be anywhere, but all of the ones that we highlight, I feel like they seem very specific to the place, which I just I love.

That some of that really seems to come because many of the writers who wrote pieces this year actually live in these places or know them really well.

You mentioned Rome earlier, Sarka, and that was written by someone who lives there and has that kind of insider knowledge.

Right, Yeah, Laura, it's Goitz.

She first moved to Rome for a couple of years in two thousand and nine, and now she's lived there permanently since twenty nineteen or so.

It was so clear working with her just how knowledgeable she was.

One thing I really enjoyed while working on that story in particular, was she talks about some of the archaeological digs and these different sites that were uncovered first by Mussolini and then fell a little bit more into disrepair and then are now being brought back.

And I almost felt like as I was reading the story, I was getting the type of tour that she was talking about in Rome that so many tourists don't do because they're just focused on hitting up the coliseum, going to the forum, then you know, booking it to the Amalfi coast so they can take all their Instagram photos.

And this was just such a just even the process of reading the story, I felt like, oh, I get what she's talking about, and every question that I had for her, she would just write these long paragraphs and then say, well, if this doesn't work, then we can try this site and she would just tell me all about the history of that site, going back to like Julius Caesar, and it was a little bit of a European history primer that I was getting.

You need to put that out there somewhere for listeners to read.

I also wanted to talk about sustainability.

You mentioned it earlier.

Is there anything else that you want to add about how this list was framed for a climate conscious traveler.

Yeah, So a couple of things that come to mind for me and Billy and Tim please add.

One is that we do have a decent number of domestic destinations and the list as well, so people don't have to travel halfway around the world in order to get to experience something magical, like we do highlight a few great American cities, including places like Philadelphia and Seattle and Charleston that are having moments right now, and other North American cities too, like Toronto and Los Angeles.

So all of these places I think are much closer for a lot of our readers to actually get to.

So that's something that of course, like you know, the actual act of traveling somewhere uses a lot of the carbon and then a lot of the hotels that we mention throughout the piece.

They also have really strong climate initiatives.

For example, for getting back to Rome again the sixth Senses that we mention as one of the hotels there that's recently opened, they actually are on one hundred percent green power.

So you know, guests can feel a little bit better about staying at places that have such strong climate commitments, and so you can make your trip greener growth than how you get there, and then once you get there, where you stay.

Like, all of these things sort of add up and you can have a much lighter footprint than maybe a more traditional traveler wide.

Yeah, I think you covered it.

I mean, obviously we're always trying to help people find lesser known, lesser touristed places, or if they're going somewhere like Rome, to stay longer, and I think there's plenty of ideas in their own piece for making a longer trip supporting local businesses.

I will say, I talk about what we learned making the list.

I realized I need to see a lot more of La which is just down the road.

Obviously, Destination Crench or the Black Art Project is finally opening next year, but there's loads of small businesses in that piece I could go and support and check out some great food options.

It's also just while we're on LA the one hundredth anniversary of the Hollywood Sign as well, so as well as everything new there, there's a lot of heritage obviously to enjoy.

And I went for a walk up to the letters with the Hollywood Sign Trust chairman.

It's very it's very vitigenous.

Hi, I'm not one for heights.

He was giving me a long story of the history of the sign while I was kind of like holding onto the piece of wood that used to hold up the l for the land when it was Hollywood Land.

And yeah, some great history there.

And you can walk all the way out behind it and see the sign and the city behind it.

So sustainability wise, what do we miss?

There are three locations in particular on the list that are notable for their sustainability efforts, and those Refiji, which Tim wrote about, and he could talk about Norway and Bhutan.

Norway it's almost, I won't say behind the scenes, but there's a sort of a countrywide effort to honor the beautiful nature that's there.

Right obviously they have fjords and beautiful water and mountains, and they know it right, but they also know, hey.

We have to protect this.

So the public transportation options, they're working on hybrid electric trains and fully electric trains.

The country is phasing out internal combustion cars, so like I think one in every five cars is an electric vehicle.

Very easy to rent that, So the sort of day to day of your trip, if you were traveling there could be respectful of the nature that you were seeing, and we wanted to recognize that.

Tim, you want to talk about Fiji, there's a similar kind of thing going on there.

Yeah.

What stopped me about fijis there's obviously lots of high end resorts there, but a lot of them are taking ocean conservation really seriously and letting guests help with that.

So you can help plant coral, you can plant mangrove saplings, So mangroves is obviously the kind of plant superheroes when it comes to carbon sequestrian sequestration.

How what is the word then, putting going down carbon and also acting as flood barriers and habitat.

So yeah, I went there a year ago to stay at Nanuku Resort on the south coast of the main island Viti.

Levu.

Yeah, it just met some really passionate people there who just doing lots of great things in the ocean and on the land.

I thought that was so cool that their resorts have marine biologists on staff.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's amazing, right, not just for sustainability but for nerdiness, Like now I want to go to Fiji and just hang out with the marine biologists.

Yeah.

And they're doing great work with local communities as well, helping them come and see the project, get involved, and they're planting these mangroves near the villages to help sort of flood protection there rather than you know, building big concrete walls and putting bricks down.

The other thing that struck me about Fiji is very few people go there from the States.

When I went from LA it's a direct flight.

You have to take an overnight flight both ways, which is the downside.

But the plus side is in twenty twenty two, seventy thousand people went from the US and seven point seven million went to Hawaii.

So if you're looking for somewhere with a lot of tourists and a lot more space to enjoy all this natural beauty, then I recommend it.

I love I loved it.

Well.

We talked a little bit about events earlier.

One that really cut my eye was I think the whimsy of it was the Kite Festival.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the Chinese city that hosts.

It, Yeah, I Fang.

I've never been there myself.

I've only been to Beijing, but it's about halfway between Beijing and Shanghai, about four or five hours drive from each and next year is the culture city of East Asia.

It's sort of one of the places that has a claim to be in the birthplace of kites, but it's definitely known as a kite capital of the world.

And they have this festival every April International Kite Festival.

It draws in tens of thousands of people and as you can imagine, all the kind of colorful kites, and they have a World Kite Museum.

I don't know if you guys flown kites.

For me, it's like half an hour of untangling and for three minutes of fun.

So I imagine it's amazing to see experts beautifully made, you know, handbag kites.

The sky is full of them.

It does sound so cool.

Yeah, White Fang's also Unesco creative city of craft and folk arts, so it's not just kites.

The visitors there can earn about clay modeling for cutting, wood, block printing.

It just sounds like a very interesting creative city and apparently has a great night food market scene as well.

Well.

I think it kind of came up naturally earlier.

But you know, because Tim, you've been to Fiji, But have you been to any of these places recently?

I mean, Billy, I know you were just in Estonia and loved it.

Yeah, I'm gonna say I won't bore you all with it, but I will bore you all with it.

I loved it.

I loved it Estonia.

I didn't know much about it.

I think most US travelers familiarity with it is Talent in the capitol, which is a stop on Baltic cruises.

So that's the port that people go to, and they don't really get out of that city, and that is just a missed opportunity.

The country's small, it's phenomenal, it's gorgeous.

You've got this beautiful UNESCO World Heritage old town in Talent, which is gorgeous.

It's like fourteenth century castles and walls and things and then you can go two hours outside and in a couple of national parks.

I went hiking in a bog which was like walking on snowshoes on Imagine a carpet of peat moss, like a foot thick, and it just kind of sinks slightly and you're on converted snowshoes, so you're sort of walking on water and it's just gorgeous.

So I got to do that and hike through a forest and you can pick your own mushrooms because everything is like fresh and natural and all of it.

Everything's like two hours apart, and it's super modernized, like the roads in the highways, everybody speaks English.

There's Wi Fi everywhere, like the country is really committed to internet access and digital education and stuff, so it's very easy for travelers to experience.

And then in Tartu, which is the second largest city, it's only about.

One hundred thousand people, so it's still pretty small.

They are one of Europe's cultural capitals for twenty twenty four, So there we talked about events, but all year long in twenty twenty four, they're going to be various things that people can go and experience and get to know that city.

Which is also surprised me because you get to the main town square and it looks like something out of like Nice, like it looked like southern Europe.

It's like a cobblestone town square with a statue in the middle and these beautiful, colorful, stately buildings around and open air cafes everywhere and a river running through it.

So it has this very European feel that my guess is people don't associate with that far north in Europe.

And it was just cool.

And so there's all this like very sort of classical europe feeling stuff, but there's also leftover Soviet era relics and that was really interesting to see.

I had a blast.

I've met so many cool people and I can't recommend it enough.

Go to Estonia, Billy, What makes you want to go there in the first place.

I'd read an article in BBC Travel where a writer had interviewed this man who lives in the area where they do the bog hiking, and I think the writer hadn't even gone because it during the pandemic.

But you can cut all this out Acelin, but.

There is in this region of Estonia where it's all bogs, like it's all marshes and stuff.

They have what they call a fifth season that happens in March when all the snow melt from the surrounding areas.

There's no real mountains in Estonia, but there's a lot of rivers, so from the surrounding areas floods these rivers, and every couple of years like cars sink, you know, like the water rays is really high, and everybody has to get around on canoes.

And I just thought that sounded so interesting, and it was such an interesting climate story.

It was such an interesting cultural adaptation story, and I just thought it was fascinating.

So I was like, well, I want to go there.

And then the rest of the trip happened, and then I got to meet that man who does the canoeing in the box.

He's the one who took me hiking.

So you never know, people read our stories and then years later they go to these places.

And then it turned out because Tartu was going to be the one of the twenty twenty four European Capitals of Culture, it was like, okay, well now it's there's a moment happening.

How is this country going to embrace that and show off you know, their arts and culture.

Scenes for the rest of the world.

Was that true?

Man?

That is one thing I just love about our list in general is just hopefully, even if people aren't able to go this year, it just plants a seed somewhere that hey, this is the place that I never really thought of before, and hopefully one day when I'm able to go somewhere that this may be someone on my list.

Yeah.

Absolutely, It's something that you kind of save, right like you saved this version of the magazine or bookmark the article online and hopefully use it as inspiration for years to come.

I was just thinking the destinations I wrote about, which is La mu Kenya, I think is hopefully going to be that for a lot of people, because I think many people who come to Africa for the first time the continent of Africa, which contains fifty four countries that they do typically go on safari to experience Africa's wild places, which are incredible, and I totally understand that.

At the same time, there is so much more to the continent than animals and wild places.

There's also just incredible cities, and in this case, the one that I've wrote about, this island with a really very unique and well preserved Swahili culture, which is this blend of Bantu like East African culture combined with Arabic and Persian and some European and Indian and Chinese cultures that have sort of made this melting pot.

And it's very you know, you wouldn't be able to find this architecture in many other places or a lot of other cultural facets that are very well preserved.

Again, Lamu Town, which is the main town on the island, is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site for that reason, and I think anyone who is planning a trip to the continent, I feel like it's it's also really worth going to places like this.

How far is it from you where you live.

It's about an hour flight flying is the best way to get there, and that's from Nairobi, and there's direct flights, and there's gorgeous hotels and guesthouses to stay at.

Like truly, you just feel like you're in a photo shoot all day.

Then the really anique thing about the island is that there's no cars, so and there's not really like any like street signs or anything, so you just kind of walk around and there's there's this they're like meandering alleys and you kind of find your way, you know.

That's the thing, Like you will get lost at some point, but then you'll be like, oh, yeah, I recognize that, I recognize that tree, or I recognize that donkey.

There's a lot of donkeys there, and you sort of sort of just like find your way again.

I mean, there's so few opportunities to get lost anymore.

I love that.

But still feel safe, you know, it's like you're you feel like you're still contained with this a small place, like you really can't go very far.

The donkey will take you, donkey will feel yeah, in distinct There actually is like a donkey rehabilitation site on the island as well.

Go and visit and see just you know, three like a donkeys that are being rehabilitated and all sorts of other things.

It's pretty cool.

So another African destination that we've mentioned in our list is another city on the other side of Africa, Tan Tier, Morocco, which is in the very very far north of Morocco.

I ended up learning a lot about the colonial history of the city and it used to be considered part of an international zone and it was managed by consortium of other countries, including like Italy and Spain, so it wasn't really considered part of Morocco for a long time, and it has a bit of an international edge to it.

Now the city is becoming a lot more connected to its Moroccan identity.

There's a lot of really creative Moroccans who are doing amazing things, like they're running restaurants and cultural programs and shops that are selling different types of home goods and beauty products that are all Moroccan led companies, and a lot of them are also run by young women.

So I think it's a really cool way to experience a city that has historically had this international, very also very artsy edge to it, but now that artsyness is being led by a lot of creative young Moroccans.

So it seems like a place that I would be really excited to go and kind of see both all Tangier and the New Tangier combined.

Yeah, there are so many great cities on this list this year.

Are there any that you feel like we didn't talk about that we should.

Yeah, I'll give a pitch for San Diego.

It's in our list along with Tijuana.

The two cities on both sides of the border are the World Design Capital twenty twenty four cities lots of design focused events and lots of great architecture to see there, which is you know, people think of San Diego and just beaches and tacos, and obviously there's a huge city and there's lots to sea in that regard, and I was there i think earlier this year, driving an EV around for an EV road trip for digital article, and so it's very easy to fly in and rent an eving and not have to have a gas power car.

And some of the design things are happening up in La Joya, which is this lovely neighborhood north of the city on the cliffs.

You can go see kayaking in the caves.

There's leopard sharks in the waters and bright orange caralbody fish and snorkeling and it's just beautiful, beautiful place.

So it's hard to recommend.

That I give a shout out to Philadelphia.

We put that in.

We're all pretty excited.

About Philadelphia this year.

People know Philadelphia.

Obviously it's a place for American history.

Castitution was written there, but the food scene is just on fire.

It won more James Beard Awards in twenty twenty three than any other city for the chefs and restaurants, and they're diverse and just so so interesting and varied, and it's a great reason to rethink and revisit that city this year.

Plus, the arts scene has always been great, and there's amazing institutions of art like the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Barnes Foundation.

But also the gallery scene has long been thriving and.

It still is.

They still do a First Friday every month where the galleryes stay open that's actually expanded.

It's near New York, so I've been there a lot, so I'm very excited.

You know, when you said it has more James Beard Award winners, I was reaching for the handclapping emoji to pop up on the I think I've spent too much time on Microsoft teams.

I'll also give a shout to Toronto, which is I did not know this that it is by many measures the most diverse city in the world, even more so than New York City and London.

There are upwards of one hundred and eighty languages spoken there and just this year.

One of the reasons why it became included on our list this year is because they elected their first mayor who's a woman of color, Olivia Chow, who has talked a lot about diversity.

And the piece takes you through several of the neighborhoods where you can go to a little to and have momos.

You can go to Koreatown and go, you know, seeing karaoke there.

You can go to a neighborhood where there's a lot of Somali people and there's also similar to Philadelphia, there are also some more high end gastronomical experiences to have, and also just a lot of cultural events happening throughout the year.

The Caribbean Festival in August draws us I think a million people, and then there's a Contemporary Arts night in October that's an all night affair and just brings in Torontonians from all stripes.

Amazing, and we're going as a company in March.

I'm so excited.

I know, I've actually, like, you know, I feel like the entire essay for that is basically just like my to do list of all the different restaurants, neighborhoods, taking it to check off.

It is we have much more to eat than we have time for.

Unless we can extend or come early now.

Thus do all our things at the rest of lash first.

Dinner or second dinner.

Yeah, we had a great run of digital stories on Toronto earlier this year as well.

So you look at the Toronto Guide on the website.

We do this thing with My Perfect Day and it's a local runs us through how they'd spend a perfect day and won by Tiffany Ramsubic, who runs Owed, which is Towanso's only black owned boutique hotel.

We've got a lot to do.

We're going to need some extra time because we don't want to just be in meetings.

No, the meetings should be in the restaurants.

I think, well, we've talked a lot about these urban destinations, arts and culture.

What about people who like to travel for nature or to be outside.

Billy had briefly mentioned Bhutan.

I think that Bhutan is an amazing country.

I have not been myself, but Kathleen Rellahan she went last year and was one of the first people to hike the newly restored trans Bhutan trail that fell into disrepair in the sixties and just reopened last year and now just this year Bhutan is lowered.

It's always had a tourist tax, so that covers, you know, various things like lodging and a guy and whatnot.

It's recently lowered the tourist text to now one hundred dollars a day in order to spur more tourism.

And there's also a lot of new hotels that have opened, as well as the Transbutant Trail.

So the Transbutan Trail goes through the Boutanese countryside and you get to pass both the stupas and temples and all types of small towns and villages that were previously pretty much off limits entirely to foreigners.

So lots of really cool reasons to visit Bhutan.

It's also hugely conservation minded, so sixty percent of the country must be under forest cover, and it's the first carbon negative country in the world, so that's another cool reason to visit.

See how they did it.

Absolutely, yes, yes, we were all ready regular the clapping hands of thank you.

One of our roundups that we have in the book is classic spots that are potentially worth a revisit.

One of them is Machu Picchu, which is Peru's most popular destination with good reason.

I mean, Machu Picchu is a brilliant feat of Incan engineering.

The Sacred Valley, though more generally, is just it's one of the prettiest places in the world in my opinion, and Intrepid Tours has recently opened up a new hike that takes people to be able to see Machu Picchu but also see lesser visited sides of the Sacred Valley.

So it's called the Quarry Trail, and they're able to visit older Incan towns and also just see some waterfalls and some other sites that were previously a bit more off limits.

So definitely, I love the idea of revisiting a classic destination, but with a bit of a twist on it.

I would say, if you like your outdoors with a glass of wine, then head to Uruguay.

This year we had a lovely piece from Julia Buckley who wrote about this region called Maldonado.

It's a coastal region.

I think it's the next one along from montevide and kind of notice but anyway, it's very much the up and coming wine region of the country.

And there's a Somelia there who's worked on a Mappa Delvino, which is a map of all of the boutique vineyards in Uruguay, so you can follow that trail and it just looks beautiful land of al fresco food tastings and great red red wines.

And yeah, definitely added that to my list after working on that piece.

Well, I'd love to just pivot a little bit more broadly to kind of where we're traveling next year, how we're traveling.

You know, twenty twenty three, with such a busy travel year, do you have any predictions for twenty twenty four.

It's still going to be busy.

That's not going away anytime soon.

But don't let that stop you.

I think that's one of the messages of our list to you know, look to places off the mainstream path for example, you know in Europe, Estonia and Bruno.

In Africa, Lamu and Tangier, and then also rethink places that may be familiar to you, like a World or Toronto.

There's a actually there's another layer that we're trying to bring to the surface.

So maybe that will that will help people avoid the goat track of the main masses of tourism.

Yeah, the busy places are just going to get busy and climate will obviously play part, so be prepared for that.

In certain places, try and go shoulder season where you can.

You know, the pandemic was a big reminder that you never know what's around the corner, so travel where you can make the most of it, and that kitchen extension on Newcock can wait and you get out there to see the world.

Book your travel insurance.

We'll link to our episode about that well.

I'd love to end this conversation with where you are planning to go this year?

Where you want to go.

It could be places on the list, it could be other trips that you have planned.

Where are you editors going?

In part inspired by not our list, but a future story in our previous issue, our Epic Trips issue Over the Holidays, I'm going with my family to Oman, which I'm really excited about.

I'd know a bit about it, but didn't really know just how diverse it was in terms of the types of things that you can do there, from snorkeling or scuba diving, to mountain climbing to visiting the desert to of course like spending time in cities and eating lots of delicious Middle Eastern food.

So I'm really excited to be able to do all of that, and definitely was also additionally inspired by our future story, which is absolutely gorgeous.

The photographs as well, are just breath taking.

Some of these waddies, which are these big gorges, very sand colored and then they have bright turquoise blue water running through them.

They just look like they're, i don't know, out of a movie set or something like that.

They don't even look real well.

Link to that story as well, because it's such a good one.

It is one of my favorite.

Yeah, yeah, I should say the writing is amazing and the photographs are just kind of add to it even more so it's just like on both sides of it, you're just like, Wow, this place is just other worlds.

Got to go Philly.

How about you?

What's your list look like this year?

I'm heading to Kenya in February, so yeah, visits Tarca and then see if I can also get to allow move from our list.

And I often will travel for music or a like one random event, so Burno's on my list.

They have that free music festival in August and cool and Manchester has a bunch of stuff going on because they have also we were talking about arts and culture, have opened several venues, including the UK's largest entertainment basically concert venue is purpose built for music, and so there's concerts there I want to see and I've already got a couple on my list, including the citywide what's it called.

It's called the City of Floating Sounds and it's an interactive symphony project where there's music throughout the city of Manchester and then it'll guide you through it and then back to this new theater space called the Viva Studios at Factory International, which just opened this year, and the reasons that the city's on our list and then it'll end up there.

So that's in June and I want to go back for that.

Oh my gosh, Yeah that sounds I want to go to.

Come on second Company meeting.

Yeah, I wish.

I love your Manchester Peace, Billy how Obviously the city's so well known for its music scene, but there's so much more happening nowadays that people maybe not be aware of.

Yeah, yeah, and that was one of the reasons I went because it had that music history, but I was just floored by how much more there is, including amazing libraries, but that's another episode.

Tim, Where will you be podcasting from the next.

Time, I'll be back in my office at home.

My travel calendar is looking quite light, considering I've been working on this feature.

I'm going to Palm Springs in January and we have the trip to Toronto.

But other than that, I'm looking at a blank slate that's filling up with other things, so I need to get the travels slotted in.

I'd love to go to Peru.

I think there's a direct flight from la and the idea of doing a trail like the Quarry Trail really.

So yeah, we shall see.

Would you take your kids?

Do you think?

Are they still too young?

Very quick?

No, not even a moment of hiking.

And four year olds.

It doesn't sound fun to you.

We were going to We'll go back to England in the summer, but we just bounced it back to the next Christmas now and then.

Wow, I'm not looking for I look forward to seeing how your slate fills up.

Well, thank you so much.

I mean, the list is phenomenal.

The work that you did is really incredible, So thank you and thanks.

I feel very inspired to go to all twenty five and twenty four.

I think that's doable.

Right, where do you want to golett, I know what's on your list?

Well, all of them.

I mean Manchester the music aspect sounds wonderful, Toronto is obvious, we're going to do that as a company, and then I don't know.

I feel like Kenya would probably be the first one that I would pick if I were just to go anywhere tomorrow.

That means welcome to Kenya.

Yeah, that's right.

Yes for this power when you come.

No, that's okay, I appreciate that.

I'll just bring my solar charger.

Hey, it's Acelin again.

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