What to Know About the Proposed Tourist Fee in Hawaii

Night falls fast in the Maldives; the dying sun going down in a blaze of glory. Here, the ending of each day brings a different painterly scene. Some evenings, for a few minutes only, the sky glows with amber and gold streaks, as if Monet had just stroked the skies with his paintbrush. Other times, it’s as though someone has scrawled over the heavens with pastel crayons: candy pink and baby blue strokes running artistically into each other, Caravaggio-style.

When traveling abroad, the top concern for many Americans is safety.

Volcanic activity in Iceland has been rumbling on for months, centred around the Reykjanes Peninsula near Reykjavík, in the southwest of the country. After multiple earthquakes, the most recent series of eruptions kicked off at the end of 2023, when an explosion along a 2.5-mile fissure sent lava into the air a couple of miles northeast of the fishing village of Grindavík; another followed shortly afterwards.

Well, we’d recommend water. But I’m assuming you want a longer answer here, so what about Chartreuse — a legendary liqueur that’s been made by Carthusian monks, deep in the French Alps, since the 18th century. The recipe is based on an ancient manuscript, entitled The Elixir of Long Life, bestowed upon the monks by a marshal of King Henry IV, François Annibal d’Estrées. The exact origin of the manuscript — an alchemic labyrinth of secret symbols and cryptic codes — remains unknown, and it took the Grande Chartreuse monastery more than a century to decipher it and begin distilling the enigmatic elixir. Secrecy still surrounds the recipe, with only three monks allowed to oversee the production of the yellowy green liqueur — with each one only being privy to two-thirds of the recipe and bound to a vow of silence.

In a small, enclosed room, people sit side by side on wooden benches. Water thrown on hot stones releases clouds of scalding steam and temperatures soar to a scolding 80C. This is sauna bathing, a ritual believed to date back as far as 7,000 BC in Finland and a practice that’s become a cornerstone of local culture, woven into the very seams of society. In Finland, nobody disputes the powers of the löyly, the name given to the steam that rises from the sauna stove.

An image of a young polar bear napping on an iceberg is focusing minds on vanishing polar habitats.

Hawaiian Airlines is seeing a stalled comeback in one of its largest international markets: Japan.

The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection‘s first ship, , saw sold-out bookings in its first summer at sea, so the brand’s executives are now discussing further fleet expansion.

Temporary closures, parking issues, and entrance delays are to be expected at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park as it's about to undergo a “major” construction effort.

It might be January, but there are still millions of Americans taking to the skies. With vacationers seeking the winter sun and business travelers shuttling between major hubs, there’s little time for the nation’s airlines to hibernate. 

* Sources: theguardian.com/i-came-by-train/2024/jan/12/i-came-by-train-sources-and-methodology

I was one of the first guests to sail on Royal Caribbean's newest vessel: The $2 billion Icon of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship.