These UK Seaside Towns Just Introduced the Country's First Tourist Tax

Neon Japanese characters pulsed on centuries-old pillars. As the techno beat dropped, the golden statue of Amida Buddha seemed to dance in the strobe lights.

To encourage travelers to Japan to get off the beaten path, delve deeper into the country’s cultural heritage, and venture beyond the popular tourist destinations, Japan Airlines is offering complimentary domestic flights all across the archipelago.

When most Americans think of cruises, they probably think of island-hopping in the Caribbean or cruising by glaciers in Alaska from afar. That may be appealing for some people, but for others, the idea of being lazy on a ship of thousands of people for a week doesn’t sound like much of a vacation.

For those of us who travel to hear stories, it’s hard to beat small Midwestern towns. Everyone, everywhere, has a story to tell, but Midwest folks take the time to tell you theirs.

“I have been five days in Wiesbaden and already I have lost everything, the whole lot, even my watch,” Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in the fall of 1863 to a fellow Russian novelist, Ivan Turgenev. It had been only a few months since Dostoyevsky had played his first round of roulette at the casino in Wiesbaden, Germany, and already he had cycled several times through a sequence known to gamblers everywhere: Win big, and then lose bigger.

Sep 22, 2024 • 4 min read

“We all begin with seaweed blindness,” Roushanna Gray tells us, peering over the vast kelp forests of Cape Town’s False Bay from the shore. To the average beach-goer, the many varieties of seaweed are often mistaken as just one—but for Gray, these underwater jungles are a powerful source of sustenance, both for the earth and ourselves. “There are over nine-hundred species here, and only one is inedible.”

Edinburgh is set to become the first city in Scotland to introduce a tourist tax after Scottish government granted powers to local authorities to introduce visitor charges. 

When booking a cruise to Greece, most travelers picture themselves walking along serene alleyways between white-washed buildings, having freshly caught meals at seaside tavernas, or sunbathing on a tranquil beach.

As a former social media editor and now travel editor, I’ll be the first to admit that my dedication to taking aesthetic holiday content often goes too far. On holiday with family Kefalonia earlier this summer, I racked up over 1,500 photos and videos in just one week. On a five-day trip to Tuscany with friends, I returned with just under 1,000. My camera roll is filled with curated restaurant tablescapes, postcard-perfect sunsets and highlight reels of recent trips.

Daytime Bangkok is an industrial opera—flashing tuks-tuks, hectic motorbikes, and dogged taxis whizz by the end of a side street, creating a soundtrack of car horns and engines, which then layer onto an Adele playlist blasting out of one of the many gay bars along Silom Soi 4 road. But hidden at the very end, where the noise of the traffic becomes a dull hum, is the Stranger Bar, its black facade bleeding into the other buildings on either side. Come nightfall, a quick metamorphosis begins—it's nondescript no more as the crowds funnel in, waiting for the night’s five drag acts to dazzle inside the bar-cum-threater.

Norwegian citizens will no longer need a visa to enter China for visits up to 15 days. The policy shift sees China place Norway in a select group of nations as part of a wider relaxation of visa rules for inbound visitors.