From the indescribable west coast sunsets at El Matador Beach to the fun and vibrant electric energy in Venice Beach, Los Angeles is home to some of Southern California’s best beaches.
27.07.2023 - 18:05 / smartertravel.com
In a single lifetime, no traveler could ever be done exploring America. Even if you relegated yourself to just roaming the nation’s cities—setting aside the 50 states’ vast open, unincorporated spaces—there would still always be more to see.
Still, there are a few cities every year that are a bit more worth visiting, either because they’re experiencing some sort of renaissance, they’ve been underrated or overlooked for too long, they’re marking a meaningful anniversary, or they’re so big and familiar that would-be travelers lean too heavily on assumptions when deciding to skip them.
Which is why I set about narrowing down the scope of the best U.S. cities to visit in 2020. The resulting list is lean, timely, geographically diverse, and realistic to do in a single year. So get out there.
Oakland, CaliforniaOakland’s relationship to San Francisco often inspires comparison to Brooklyn’s relationship to Manhattan: It’s the bigger city’s hipper, more relaxed neighbor, where creativity thrives and anything that buzzes tends to get its start. (I’ll refrain from using words like “hipster” and “gentrification” here.)
But Oakland is much more than San Francisco’s happenin’ sidekick. It’s a multi-cultural destination unto itself, with world-class attractions including Jack London Square, Lake Merritt, the Fox Theater, the Oakland Zoo, Children’s Fairyland, Temescal Alley, funky Telegraph Avenue, and the Coliseum (where the As play), adjacent to the Oakland Arena, where the Golden State Warriors saw their historic rise. No wonder almost 4 million people travel here every year.
And 2020 looks particularly promising for “the Town” to be one of the best cities in America to visit, what with the Oakland Museum of California poised to get a makeover in summer, and Oakland International Airport debuting 17 new eateries—including Brown Sugar Kitchen, Tay Ho, and A16—over the course of the year. It’s also the 130th birthday of the nearby University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley.
Related: 4 Great Ways to See Art in OaklandThese days, major companies call Oakland home, including Pandora, Kaiser Permanente, the Sierra Club, and VSCO, whose trendy app is giving Instagram a run for its money—and whose building offers a gear-packed, free-to-use studio space for social media-ready photo shoots. Other of-the-moment places to be in this town of more than 1,000 murals include Super Juiced, Swan’s Market, Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park, bars like Drexl, and beer gardens like Temescal Brewing and Lost & Found. Try to be here in early March so you can bring something home from the epic flea market that is the White Elephant Sale.
Where to stay: The Claremont Club & Spa, a Fairmont hotel, was built in 1915 to
From the indescribable west coast sunsets at El Matador Beach to the fun and vibrant electric energy in Venice Beach, Los Angeles is home to some of Southern California’s best beaches.
If you are contemplating traveling the Silk Road with kids, Uzbekistan should be the first destination on your list.
You pass so close to towering red rock canyons in southern Utah that you expect to hear scraping or see sparks as you glide by. They loom so dramatically over you that you stare without blinking. And if you’re on board the train Rocky Mountaineer, you have glass domed and sided coaches to take it all in, all of the majestic landscape on the Rockies to Red Rocks journey between Moab, Utah and Denver.
Get thee to New York's museums and get thee to them now. There's an end in sight to summer's dog days, and with the promise of cooler early-autumn days comes a fresh turnover in the exhibitions on offer throughout the city. Some of the big summer tentpoles—Africa Fashion at the Brooklyn Museum, installations at both MoMA and MoMA PS1—will run all the way into October, so if you haven't made your way to them yet, there's still time. Joining these holdovers are a myriad of newer options, the variety of which ensures that there's something for everyone. Find our guide below.
Germany, western Europe’s largest country, is a boundless feast for travelers. Its endless variety of historic cities, dark, romantic forests and contemporary cultural riches can leave visitors bewildered. But, while you can never hope to see all this fascinating country’s highlights, you can cut to the chase with our guide to eight of the very best places to visit in Germany.
What’s the most expensive airport in America? Here’s a hint: It’s not exactly in the continental U.S. If you guessed Guam then high five!
The Christmas travel season is upon us. While perhaps not as narrow and intense as the Thanksgiving holiday, Christmas is nevertheless an extremely busy time of year at airports across the country. In addition to an influx of travelers, late December is infamous for throwing weather curveballs that can further snarl already maxed-out airline operations.
Looking for a new museum to add to your travel to-do list? TripAdvisor (SmarterTravel’s parent company) has released the Travelers’ Choice Top 25 Museums of 2018, including the top 10 worldwide and the top 10 in the United States, with some surprising frontrunners. The findings also highlight bookable ways to see each winner—think VIP tours and scavenger hunts—with some offering the added perk of allowing you to skip the lines to get in.
Fall must be around the corner because every week seems to bring a fresh Thanksgiving travel forecast.
Looking for your next weekend getaway spot … or maybe your next place to live? Resonance Consultancy reveals America’s Best Large and Small Cities for 2018 in a recent report.
The esteemed Dr. Beach has released his annual list of America’s top ten beaches, and you’ll want to visit all of them this summer—doctors orders.
If you’re planning on visiting any of these destinations, you should read up on how to spot bedbugs in your hotel room (and what to do about it). Pest control company Orkin just released its list of the top cities for bedbugs, using data from both residential and commercial (i.e., vacation rentals and hotels) calls. Orkin noted which destinations had more bedbug outbreaks (Los Angeles, for example, moved up two spots on the list), and which had fewer (good job, New York, dropping four places).