The Great Barrier Reef is certainly the gem of Australia. When it comes to planning a Great Barrier Reef holiday, choosing the right port city to stay in can make a big difference in your experience. Even if you are staying on an island, you still need to get there, so you should plan on a mainland port city that offers something you are also interested in doing. Hiring a car with Apex Rent a Car Cairns  allows you the freedom of travelling on your own schedule and adding on any port city sigh

As the Spanish wine industry has grown and deepened in complexity in the past couple of decades well beyond Andalusia’s traditional sherries, oenophiles the world over have become increasingly familiar with names like Rioja, Penedés, and Rias Baixas. But to many, Majorca's Plà i Llevant and Binissalem-Mallorca might still require a wee bit of explaining.

Winemaking an Ancient Local Tradition

Actually, winemaking in the Balearic Islands goes back to Roman Hispania, a century before Christ (th

As a business owner with clients around the U.S., I occasionally hit the road for face-to-face confabs.  So when I needed to meet with a new client in Baltimore, I researched hotels in Charm City where I could stay while taking care of biz.

Given my affinity for hip boutique hotels, I checked out two popular properties:  Hotel Indigo and Hotel Monaco.

Hotel Indigo had sharp rooms, but the rest of the property looked kinda stiff.  And Hotel Monaco’s rooms, lobby, and overall feel - though attracti

Salvador da Bahia, the iconic city of Brazil's northwest, is most famous for its old quarter, Pelourinho, and its Afro-Brazilian culture. But visitors here should also not miss a chance to mix with the locals in one of their favorite going-out neighborhoods, Rio Vermelho, known for its nightlife and Bohemian atmosphere and full of live music, people and places to experience the city’s culinary delights.

If Pelourinho is full of churches, the coastal district of Rio Vermelho is teeming with bars o

Contemplating an escape to coastal Maine evokes images of Clipper ships, rugged beaches, lighthouses, and the most prized lobsters in North America. Kennebunkport is a fine example of where all this and more comes together. Where you stay has a big impact on the quality of your experience, and thankfully your search is now much simpler with Inns Along the Coast, a new coalition of eight historic inns also situated in Bar Harbor and Rockland Maine that all meet five-star standards like impeccably

The UK has so many wonderful destinations that are just waiting to be explored - including some you probably haven't even heard of!  Check out this quality quartet:

Edinburgh

Edinburgh has it all. It doesn't matter if you're a history lover, culture buff, foodie or just looking for a wonderful family break, there's no better time to visit Scotland's capital city. We can guarantee you'll fall hard for Edinburgh, which is steeped in history and complemented by a number of attractions and events,

In Costa Rica – a country renowned for its legendary sensational amount of plants and animals – it’s one thing to boast about having the greatest biodiversity. It’s quite another to have tons of scientific research to back up the claim.

Not only is the rainforest around Veragua Rainforest Eco-Adventure park in the Talamanca Mountains in Costa Rica spectacularly abundant with biodiversity, to date 11 new animal species have been discovered by the Veragua scientific research team and 15 endanger

by Cristóbal Ramírez


Geneva, Switzerland is in many ways an astounding city, with its restaurants offering lunch combination menus averaging 25 euros; traffic of Ferraris and Aston Martins that put Arab sheikhs to shame; businessmen closing multi-million deals behind gleaming office windows; watch brands such as Patek Philippe that most of us only see in magazines; perfectly dressed UN (and other global agency) officials that influence the planet’s fate and bankers surrounded by their bootlick

Why is it every so often we long to be spending time 'away from it all'?

Sure the pressures of modern life can be exacting on our system, but a good weekend usually sorts that stress out. To really get away from it all because something in you says "OK, time for a break" means more than getting away from the daily stresses of our lives - its a re-connecting to that part of ourselves which needs recharging. In a space that supports it, nature.

Whether that be a holiday on some tropical Island,

Have you ever stayed in a convent?  Surprisingly, many of our fellow travel fanatics out there have shared with us that they have, indeed, spent some time staying in converted nunneries or convents.  Besides the inherently peaceful aura that seems to surround these modernized convents, many of them are located in absolutely gorgeous locations, and offer the traveller a different perspective.  I'd like to share our experience at El Convento, a gorgeous hotel in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.  Read

I arrived in a quaint village in the French countryside and checked into a charming villa arranged by my travel agent.

Kobby Dagn


Way down South America way, one of the hemisphere’s most chichi beach resorts sits astride the Atlantic coast of one of South America’s lower-profile countries, Uruguay. On a narrow spit of land separating the Atlantic from the Rio de la Plata, Punta del Este is a 90-minute drive east of the national capital, Montevideo, and a 45-minute flight from Buenos Aires. Why do I mention the latter?

Because as popular as Punta is with many Uruguayans, it would be pretty much nowheresville wi

un

Yes, Bulgaria. This country has the fortune to lie on the beautiful Black Sea, and near the city of Burgas, a beach resort that began in the Communist 1950s as a getaway for the masses has found favor with a larger European public. Called Sunny Beach (Slanchev Bryag in Bulgarian), this country's largest resort boasts more than 300 days of sunshine per year and an average temperature of 28° Celsius during the summer months. It has a very small permanent population, but welcomes hundreds of thou

New Hampshire's Mount Washington Valley region is built on small business. Beyond outdoor tourism like skiing, mountain climbing, and whitewater rafting, more than 25 locally run inns and 70 restaurants, along with an array of local specialty food purveyors and farms, fuel a robust hospitality and culinary scene. This synergy is celebrated with longstanding festivals and special events. Two annual biggies held at the end of February are the Chilly Chili Cook-Off and the Mount Washington Valley

We established our base camp in Sestri Levante and settled into an eight-night vacation rental in the center of town.  On previous trips to this area we saw the white mountains surrounding the village of Carrara and made a note to someday add it to one of our itineraries… today was the day! 

Tunnels and Caves in the Hills of Carrara, Italy

The drive from Sestri was less than two hours, and when we arrived in Carrara, we were taken aback by the quiet mining village situated at the base of the crag

Ballota

Now that tourism to Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast is about to start heating up again for the summer, it’s a good time to cast a glance even beyond top dog Dubrovnik to other magical spots along these shores – and at the top of the list is a city with perhaps one of the world’s most unusual historic quarters: Split. It’s fair to say the mix of history, dining, beaches and more here is a mix unlike any on the planet.

Founded in the 6th century BC against a backdrop of high, rocky hills as the

by Suzanne Barbezat

Mexico's booming tourism industry got its start along a stretch of central Pacific coast that included then small towns like Acapulco and Mazatlan. But Puerto Vallarta, on Jalisco's beautiful Banderas Bay, struck a PR gold mine in Hollywood director John Huston, who upon visiting in the 1950s opined it was among the most beautiful places in the world and returned in 1963 to film Oscar-winning Night of the Iguana. Plenty of Tinseltown stars followed - Ava Gardner and Richa

I admit I am not much of a critic. I know what I like, and honestly I like just about everything, so don’t expect your standard, everyday review of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Twelfth Night.

I further admit that for me Shakespeare has too often just been words on a page – a cognitive exercise in appreciation of the work of one of the world’s great writers of the English language. In reading the words on a page I can appreciate both the talent it took to write them and the heart of the mat

When you visit Malpaís, on Costa Rica’s southern Nicoya Peninsula, be prepared to relax and unwind. This area of the country along the Pacific coast is so laid back that when you’re there it feels as if you’ve left the rest of the world off somewhere else, vaguely in the background. And that’s a good thing.

Besides being simply gorgeous – the beaches of Malpaís and Santa Teresa consistently are named the best beaches in Central America – Malpaís is a revered surf spot in Costa Rica. And the surf