Mountain City's Travel Blog

Many of us have spent hours of our own childhoods or alongside our favorite kids immersed in stories like the Snow Queen, the Emperor’s New Clothes, the Princess and the Pea, the Nightingale, and the Little Mermaid, either in timeless storybooks or Disney movie incarnations.Now, the author who created these immortal works is being reinterpreted and remembered in a new...

Miami has always been one of the hottest destinations on the continent, with art, design and architecture creds, a blistering beach/ party scene, vibrant cultural scene that reflects the city’s status as a Latin American hub, and a celebrity/ jet set appeal that never seems to die down. This summer, the city’s getting even hotter, with three hotel openings set to...

This month, English fans of ‘footy’ had lots to celebrate. Despite a heartbreaking loss in the finals of the Euros, it was England’s best performance ever in the continent’s biggest game. Soccer, that is. Britain is the birthplace of the modern sport that has traveled around the world to become the most popular in the world. It’s also morphed into...

It’s one of the biggest trends in cruising. Not getting bigger, but getting out there. In style. Expedition cruises used to be only for the most intrepid travelers. You would join a working research vessel on its voyage to a very distant destination, tolerating the discomfort for the once-in-a-lifetime experience of getting up close and personal with the unique and fascinating natural...

Holy-moly it's hot!

New Zealand is in celebration mode in July with the arrival of Matariki. It's a constellation of stars that rises in New Zealand skies, shining their brightest in the first week of the month. Known to astronomers as Pleiades or the Seven Sisters, Matariki is believed to have formed more than 100 million years ago, and this pre-historic cluster of...

They are among the Caribbean’s best kept secrets. The forty islands and cays that make up the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) are favored by travelers in the know for their pristine waters, picture-perfect white sand beaches and conch and lobster fisheries that make local dining such a joy. TCI’s archipelago is strung out along the sea at the tail-end...

It’s official. Cruising has returned to ports in the U.S. While many cruise lines have already started sailing with North American guests from offshore ports in the Caribbean and Europe, there’s been no cruising from ports we can drive to. Until now. Between the end of June and the holiday weekend, three ships have set sail from three different American...

Every year on June 29th, eighty-one million people in 14 European countries celebrate the single river that ties them together and provides drinking water, food, power, recreation, jobs and transportation. Danube Day annually marks the signing of the Danube River Protection Convention, which facilitates collaboration between the countries of the Danube River and the rivers that flow into it to...

It’s news that marries two of the fastest-growing styles of travel: river cruising and family heritage travel. AmaWaterways has partnered with Ancestry, the company that specializes in genomics and connecting people to their family history. The river cruise line has done family-heritage themed cruises before, but now, you’ll be able to uncover specific details about your own family. That’s because...

 In Japan, it’s called the ‘Castle in the Sky’, but international travelers who’ve discovered historic Takeda Castle have compared it to another mountain-top historic ruin half a world away in South America. Peru’s Machu Picchu has made most intrepid travelers’ bucket lists of adventures. But Japan’s Takeda Castle (pronounced: ‘tah-kay-dah’) - that's about the same age as Peru's Machu Picchu...

Get out a sharpie – there’s a new ocean to label on your map of the world. Or globe, if you have one. You might have to update your travel bucket list, too. If you’ve already ticked off ‘visit all the oceans of the world’, you’ll have to uncheck that box. Even if you’ve seen, swum in, or sailed upon the...

On some islands, they like to tell you how many beaches they have, or days of sunshine. On Nevis, it’s how many different varieties of mangoes they have. The answer? Officially, nearly four dozen – and unofficially, it’s estimated nearly 200 different varieties of mangoes grow on this tiny Caribbean island.Nevis makes up the other part of the twin-island nation...

The pleasures of this past years’ travelling has largely been via Netflix, YouTube and other online video sources. We’ve seen some darn spectacular corners of planet earth. Please join Martin Aldrich, John Houston and myself onboard an a-day-in-the-life-of expedition cruise to the breathtaking Canadian High Arctic.We’ll also take a glimpse into the life, the culture, dance and the timeless art...

It’s been quite a year!

Are your heartstrings pulled by a deep curiosity to immerse in a faraway culture? Do you have a desire to learn about your Ancestry and family roots? Has the past year found you dreaming of taking your children and grandchildren on a memory-making adventure? Maybe your reason to travel is to improve on a language whilst cooking with locals in...

“Living well is the best revenge,” said a 16th-century poet, and that line may be the inspiration for one of the latest trends in travel. Over a year of travel shutdowns has reminded us of how precious the privilege to explore the world is – and how we can’t take for granted that the special trips we’ve been dreaming about...

The leaders of the world’s seven biggest democratic economies are meeting in Cornwall, England, and it’s putting the Southwest region of the country under a spotlight. Maybe you’ve heard of ‘bleisure’ travel? It’s about tacking on a leisure vacation to a business trip. We’re not sure if the leaders of the Western World have the time for a little independent...

If you’ve never put the words ‘luxury’ and ‘water park’ together in a sentence before - let alone a vacation - now’s your chance. Baha Mar is a thousand acres of Bahamian paradise on world-famous Cable Beach near Nassau. The exquisite white sands are home to not one, but three luxury beach resorts: Rosewood, SLS and Grand Hyatt. Now, in...

This is something we can get on board with! A few years ago, Spain declared the third Thursday of June ‘World Tapas Day,’ which in 2021 falls on June 10. Tapas comes from the Spanish verb ‘tapar’ or to ‘cover’, and story goes that back in the day, ‘tapas’ was simply the piece of bread or maybe meat that you used...