I moved to Japan from North Carolina with my husband and our young daughter in the spring of 2022. My husband is in the US military and this has been his first overseas assignment.
30.08.2024 - 22:31 / lonelyplanet.com
Aug 30, 2024 • 13 min read
Greenland is a real-life adventure playground where cultural exploration and wildlife watching are like nowhere else on Earth. Here there are towns with more sled dogs than people, scientists engaged in world-leading climate change research, streets where polar bears occasionally wander and welcoming local townships to visit. A visit here will reaffirm your love of the world and a sense of awe in nature; once you’ve been, there will always be a little chip of ice in your heart calling you back.
Day hikes take you to the edge of glaciers, boat tours weave amid icebergs under the midnight sun, dinners offer a taste of the edge of the world, and wildlife watching gives you new perspectives on whales, seabirds and bears. Some of the travel experiences here are intrepid – if that’s your vibe – but there’s plenty for soft adventurers too.
Travel in Greenland is highly seasonal. Summer's midnight sun gives you light all day and all night, allowing for extra hours of adventuring, fantastic photo opportunities (and the kind of light that makes every shot look exceptional), and nobody, not even nature, telling you when it’s time to go to bed. It’s not exactly warm – you could expect snow flurries and very cold winds from the north at any time in the summer months, depending on where you are – but the constant sunlight certainly helps. The summer is peak season and prices are at their pinnacle too. Note that it’s not possible to see the northern lights in summer; you’ll just have to come back when it's darker (the exact month depends on the region).
Some things to know before you start planning: Greenland is vast, and you cannot do it all in one trip. You can’t just drive across Greenland, either: communities cluster around the edges of the country with no roads connecting them (there's an ice sheet in the middle of this large island), so you have to take a boat, a helicopter ride, a ferry or an internal flight to get from place to place. Instead, our advice is to focus on a single region during your trip, so you make the most of it instead of spending all your time and money traveling. Each of the regions of Greenland has a slightly different flavor and there’s something to delight you in all of them.
Vibes: Greenland’s tourist capital, Ilulisaat, is a bustling hive of kayak tours, midnight sun iceberg cruises and inland icecap adventures during the summer months. Cruise ships arrive for day excursions, the town’s extraordinary number of sled dogs howl day and night, and the path to the beautiful Icefjord Center and its walkway down to the old settlement of Sermermiut is thronged with visitors.
Do: Take a day trip (or longer) to Qeqertarsuaq (Disko Island), which is a couple of hours by
I moved to Japan from North Carolina with my husband and our young daughter in the spring of 2022. My husband is in the US military and this has been his first overseas assignment.
Aug 28, 2024 • 7 min read
You might assume hosting the Olympics is great for a city's economy thanks to an influx of visitors staying in hotels, dining out, and enjoying the sights.
Six decades after hosting the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics — when Japan rapidly rolled out new infrastructure like its Shinkansen bullet train and accommodations like Hotel New Otani Tokyo to welcome the anticipated influx of foreigners — the country remains one of the most beloved leisure destinations in the world. According to the Japan National Tourism Organization, 17.78 million foreign visitors arrived in the first half of 2024, breaking 2019's previous record of 16.63 million. And there are no signs of a slowdown: Japan aims to nearly double 2019's end-of-year record of 31.88 million tourists to a staggering 60 million annually by 2030.
Travellers from outside the EU are getting ready for the launch of the new Entry/Exit System (EES) on 10 November, but are Schengen countries ready to welcome them?
There’s never a bad time to go to Paris, and Air France agrees, giving away a pair of roundtrip flights and a wardrobe incroyable so travelers can live their best French lives.
If you've used an AirTag for less than a year to track your luggage, you may not realize that the original AirTag battery only lasts for roughly one year.
Aug 30, 2024 • 7 min read
Holland America Line will open up grand voyages and pole-to-pole sailings to travelers hoping to book just a segment, making it easier to explore some of the coolest regions on Earth.
Driving between France and Italy this year? You may be forced take a detour as the Mont-Blanc Tunnel, which links the two countries beneath the Alps, is closing for 15 weeks for renovation work.
Universal Orlando Resort has rolled out a brand-new offer for dining options.Available to purchase now, the Dining Card Vacation Package applies to 4- or 5-plus-night on-site stays and includes park-to-park theme park tickets for Universal Studios Florida and Universal Islands of Adventure, the resort shared withTravel + Leisure. An option to add on Universal Volcano Bay is also available. The value of the dining card, up to $1,000, is dependent on length of stay and resort, and this offer can not be combined with any other discounts.
A residential cruise ship that was supposed to travel around the world has been stuck in Northern Ireland for the past three months.