6 Beaches for Budding Swimmers, Surfers and Castle Builders

Jun 13, 2024 • 13 min read

Good morning from Skift. It’s Thursday, June 13, 2024. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Summer is here and that means one thing: summer road trips. And luckily, gas prices have been dropping just in time to plan an epic cross-country adventure.

Disneyland in Southern California is known as the Happiest Place on Earth, but the experience is a whole lot happier for visitors who come prepared. Visiting a Disney theme park can be complicated, confusing and expensive. With the right strategy, however, you can dodge a lot of lines and spend less than the average guest.

If you’ve been stuck on the tarmac or stranded at the gate for what seems like an eternity, you’re not alone. A new study by travel website Places to Travel reveals which U.S. airports are the biggest culprits when it comes to lengthy flight delays. Places to Travel analyzed data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics for nearly 2 million delayed domestic flights from January 2023 through February 2024 to find the airports with the longest average delay times.

Last October, my extended family spent a week in Todos Santos, in Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, for a wedding. All went well, but when I got back, I noticed an unusual charge on my credit card: $1,500.49, made on the day we flew home to the United States from San José del Cabo. The merchant appeared to be a restaurant in Mexico City. I recalled that when we went to fill up the rental car at a Chevron station near the airport, the attendant placed the card in a hand-held machine and then told me it had been rejected, requiring me to use a second card. Nothing else unusual happened that day, and reviews on Google for this gas station contain eerily similar accusations of fraudulent charges from other tourists. I disputed the charge, but Wells Fargo repeatedly denied my claim, even when I asked the Better Business Bureau to intercede. Can you help?

As two Central American titans of tourism, how do you choose between Costa Rica and Panama? Both have incredible landscapes teeming with wildlife, beautiful beaches dotted along both the Pacific and Caribbean coastlines and a vibrant local culture. 

Normandy Tourism, with the support of the Normandy Region, is proud to announce the launch of the “Explore Normandy Pass,” dedicated this year to Remembrance Tourism to mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy Landings. This innovative digital solution offers an enriched exploration of the cultural and historical wealth of Normandy. Michael Dodds, Director of the Normandy Regional Tourist Board, emphasizes the importance of these remembrance sites: “These places of remembrance, which welcome visitors throughout the year, are still the best way to understand the historic events that shaped our present. This Web App is part of our desire to contribute to remembrance and transmission. We hope that these visits will be an opportunity to celebrate, reflect and remember, as well as a special moment that visitors can share with their families and the younger generation.”

A volcano in Iceland has erupted for the fifth time in three months.

Not long after my 48th birthday, in August 1999, my husband Barry invited me out for a margarita at Compadre's, a Mexican restaurant near our home in Palo Alto. It turned out he had an agenda.

The shortlist for this year’s world’s best aerial photography has been chosen, featuring five nominees in each of the nine categories. The winners of the Drone Photo Awards will be announced at a ceremony in Siena, Italy on 28 September 2024. The annual competition is open to professional and amateur photographers and is judged by a jury of five international professional photographers, filmmakers and curators.

A friend recently said that living in Southeast Asia was akin to winning one of Willy Wonka's golden tickets. And it's impossible to dismiss a long list of advantages that include the cuisine, cultural heritage, diverse landscapes, low cost of living, and generally friendly, laid-back hosts.