Dance tips

For anyone who has experienced the Day of the Dead in Mexico, they understand how important this celebration is—one that combines tradition, spirituality, and culture. It is something that truly must be experienced in person.

Experiencing the Northern Lights in all their majesty is a dream for most travellers. Caused by solar-charged particles reacting with the Earth’s atmosphere, the mostly green dancing lights of this natural phenomenon are often spectacular. Seeing auroras is a thrill in itself, but getting a great photo might just be the crowning glory. Given their ethereality, this takes patience, the right kit and a fair bit of forward planning. And, with 2024 expected to bring some of the brightest Northern Lights displays in over 20 years, thanks to the approaching ‘solar maximum’ (a peak in the Sun’s activity), there’s never been a better time to try to capture them.

I’ll be ringing in the New Year in France this year… but I’m likely to be asleep well before midnight.

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If we adopted a child’s-eye view of the world, how would we choose to have fun? It’s likely to be about more than the usual incentives, such as an ice cream, suggests research from Nature Communications. According to the journal, children as young as four seek experiences that deliver positive results, guide action, answer questions about the world — and are just plain fun. Whether it’s getting up-close with crustaceans on a rockpooling adventure, diving into a good book at a literature festival, learning to surf, taking to the stage or gazing at the stars, these 12 UK-based experiences deliver hands-on learning and creativity. 

February may be the shortest month in the year, but you can pack some serious travel into it. In 2024 — a leap year — there's even an extra day for more adventure. The hardest part will be deciding where to go.

On New Year’s Eve, 1 million people will gather in New York City’s Times Square to watch an 11,875-pound geodesic hunk of Waterford Crystal be slowly lowered onto the top of One Times Square. Iconic? Yes. Worth experiencing in person? Not necessarily.

Dubai is one city with endless things to do and is home to some of the grandest activities. After all, it's where you'll find the tallest building in the world and a "seven-star hotel." So, understandably, it's hard to narrow the choices and budget them accordingly. Do you go shopping? Do you splurge on fine dining? Do you ride a 4x4 in the desert or go to a theme park? Well, I'm here to let you in on a tip: Emirates Airlines is making it easier (and cheaper) to experience the best of the city with the recently unveiled My Emirates Pass for a limited time.

Lonely Planet guidebook author Brian Healy loves seeking out warm destinations to escape to in January. This year, his quest led him from New York City to Guadeloupe where he experienced five days of swimming, hiking and dancing under (mostly) sunny skies. Here, he shares some insights and tips for those seeking to escape the winter blues with a similar Caribbean holiday.

They say you can never go back, but that’s only true in part, and doesn’t apply to travel at all. Visit a place a second time, and you go with a seasoned pair of eyes, and all the buoyancy and confidence of familiarity. My second time in Saint-Louis, Senegal, I was better at fending off the touts, better at finding the best grub, better at dealing with the heat. I picked a better hotel—the La Résidence, with its antique whiff of cigar smoke, its old-world comforts, and its rooftop views of the city. And this time, I would go further—I’d be spending a week gliding up the Senegal River, 125 miles from Saint-Louis to the trading town of Podor, on a river cruiser, the Bou el Mogdad.

With a lush tropical climate and more miles of coastline than any other country on earth (except Canada), Indonesia is the world’s ultimate beach destination. The beaches that line the shores of this enormous archipelago are famed for their black and golden sands, epic surf breaks, prismatic coral reefs and wild seaside parties. Indeed, there's a stretch of sand here for every type of traveler.

In Lima, the equatorial climate is never cold and it almost never rains, making it a perfect place for kids to play outside in parks and at the beach.

What do some of the most iconic pieces of architecture in the world—say, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Dancing House in Prague, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao—all have in common? Two words: Frank Gehry.

For most New Yorkers, Times Square is a place to be avoided at all times—especially and unequivocally on New Year’s Eve. The Ball Drop looks fun and exciting when watched from the warmth and privacy of your couch but in real life, it looks like a million people packed between police barricades and squished up against each other in the cold for way too many hours, waiting for a 10-second countdown. And there are no public restrooms.

Two Decembers ago, after years away, I went back to Oak Tree Road. That thoroughfare, straddling my New Jersey hometown of Edison and the neighboring Iselin, had been the site of my childhood in the early aughts. Sitting along that four-mile stretch were video stores with DVDs for Bollywood films you definitely couldn’t find at Blockbuster, sari boutiques with their dazzling display of color and pattern, and sweets shops whose indulgences ferried my Bengali immigrant family back to the country they’d left behind long ago.

I'm just back from Celebrity Ascent, Celebrity Cruises' newest ship and the fourth in its Edge Class of vessels. It's exactly what passengers have come to expect from the line, which offers a modern, edgy take on everything from food to entertainment.

When I first moved to Panama, I did what many might in an effort to lay down roots. I went to expat meetups on restaurant terraces, where I made small talk with other foreigners on warm, tropical nights. I joined pub crawls and rubbed shoulders with friendly strangers at networking events. I met nice people, but as far as meaningful connections go, nothing quite clicked. My three years of high school Spanish were enough to help me get by—but I wanted closer ties and a sense of community that it couldn't provide.

Detour Discotheque, a Studio 54-inspired pop-up nightclub that strives to bring “peace, love, and mirror balls to the world’s most beautiful locations,” is back for a third year—and this time the location is not just remote, it’s also nearly 10,000 feet above sea level. The three-day music festival will take place over the weekend of May 10-12, 2024, in venues across Switzerland’s Birg and Schilthorn mountains, with the highest stop right atop the latter, in the revolving mountain-top restaurant, Piz Gloria. Partiers will travel from their accommodations down below in the pretty Alpine villages of Lauterbrunnen and Mürren to the 300-person venue via four separate cable cars, a phenomenally scenic journey that takes 32 minutes each way.

The culture of the Highlands and islands dates back millennia, and what better time to embrace it than autumn. Kick off your trip by taking a deep dive into the artistic culture of Arran. Its Arts Heritage Trail encompasses 20 hand-carved sandstones that mark significant artistic locations on the island, culminating in a stop at the Viewpoint, where you’ll be rewarded with the breathtaking vistas that have inspired many major artists.

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