Best in Travel 2024

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All of Best in Travel 2024

Condé Nast Traveler

Everything You Need to Know About Planning a Trip to Paris This Summer

Everything You Need to Know About Planning a Trip to Paris This Summer

By Lane Nieset

How to Do Napa Without Breaking the Bank

How to Do Napa Without Breaking the Bank

By Shana Clarke

How We Pulled It Off: A Beachside Wedding in Goa With a Side of Bossa Nova

How We Pulled It Off: A Beachside Wedding in Goa With a Side of Bossa Nova

By Kaitlin Menza

The Best Hotels in Amsterdam

The Best Hotels in Amsterdam

By Amber Port

A Muay Thai Retreat in Thailand Taught Me to Embrace My Fifties

A Muay Thai Retreat in Thailand Taught Me to Embrace My Fifties

By Abby Ellin

Women Who Travel Podcast: Three Photojournalists on Revealing the Human Side of Conflict

Women Who Travel Podcast: Three Photojournalists on Revealing the Human Side of Conflict

By CNT Editors

7 International Flights Launching From the US This Summer

7 International Flights Launching From the US This Summer

By Jessica Puckett

In Jordan, a Community Disrupted Awaits Travel’s Return

In Jordan, a Community Disrupted Awaits Travel’s Return

By Yulia Denisyuk

This New Book Celebrates Black Rodeo Culture in the US

This New Book Celebrates Black Rodeo Culture in the US

By Sarah Enelow-Snyder

Trending Stories

Turkey Just Launched a Digital Nomad Visa&-Here's How to Apply

By Hannah Towey

The Best Sleeping Pills for Flights&-And When You Should Take Them

By Moira Lawler

Destination Guides

Mexico City Travel Guide

Mexico City Travel Guide

Cape Town Travel Guide

Cape Town Travel Guide

Paris Travel Guide

Paris Travel Guide

Boston Travel Guide

Boston Travel Guide

Bali Travel Guide

Bali Travel Guide

New York City Travel Guide

New York City Travel Guide

Gold list 2024.

The Best Hotels and Resorts in the World: The Gold List 2024

The Best Hotels and Resorts in the World: The Gold List 2024

The Best Hotels and Resorts in the US, Canada, and the Caribbean: The Gold List 2024

The Best Hotels and Resorts in the US, Canada, and the Caribbean: The Gold List 2024

The Best Hotels and Resorts in Mexico, Central, and South America: The Gold List 2024

The Best Hotels and Resorts in Mexico, Central, and South America: The Gold List 2024

The Best Hotels and Resorts in Europe and the UK: The Gold List 2023

The Best Hotels and Resorts in Europe and the UK: The Gold List 2023

The Best Hotels and Resorts in Asia: The Gold List 2024

The Best Hotels and Resorts in Asia: The Gold List 2024

The Best Hotels and Resorts in Africa and the Middle East: The Gold List 2024

The Best Hotels and Resorts in Africa and the Middle East: The Gold List 2024

The Best Hotels and Resorts in Australia and Oceania: The Gold List 2024

The Best Hotels and Resorts in Australia and Oceania: The Gold List 2024

The Best Cruise Ships in the World: The Gold List 2024

The Best Cruise Ships in the World: The Gold List 2024

Women who travel podcast.

Women Who Travel Podcast: An Astrologer Predicts Our Travel Plans

Women Who Travel Podcast: An Astrologer Predicts Our Travel Plans

Women Who Travel Podcast: Bear Encounters in Nevada and Chasing Poachers on the Masai Mara

Women Who Travel Podcast: Bear Encounters in Nevada and Chasing Poachers on the Masai Mara

Women Who Travel Podcast: Amelia Earhart and Bessie Coleman's Record-Breaking Flights

Women Who Travel Podcast: Amelia Earhart and Bessie Coleman's Record-Breaking Flights

Women Who Travel Podcast: Love, Loss, and Noodles in Cambodia

Women Who Travel Podcast: Love, Loss, and Noodles in Cambodia

Women Who Travel Podcast: Director Lulu Wang Isn't Compromising

Women Who Travel Podcast: Director Lulu Wang Isn't Compromising

The future of travel, bright ideas in travel 2023.

Digital Nomads: Are They Crowding Destinations or Reviving Them?

Digital Nomads: Are They Crowding Destinations or Reviving Them?

By JD Shadel

The Future of International Travel Is Passport-Free

The Future of International Travel Is Passport-Free

Sailing the Aegean Sustainably&-Just Like the Ancients Did

Sailing the Aegean Sustainably—Just Like the Ancients Did

By Elissa Garay

AI Chatbots Want to Plan Your Future Trips&-Should You Let Them?

AI Chatbots Want to Plan Your Future Trips—Should You Let Them?

Can Aviation Ever Be Sustainable?

Can Aviation Ever Be Sustainable?

California Is Getting ‘World-Class’ High-Speed Trains

California Is Getting ‘World-Class’ High-Speed Trains

These Major Airlines Just Flew Planes Powered Entirely by Sustainable Aviation Fuel&-So, What's Next?

These Major Airlines Just Flew Planes Powered Entirely by Sustainable Aviation Fuel—So, What's Next?

By Rachel Chang

Wedding Guest Essentials 

43 Spring Wedding Guest Dresses for Every Type of Ceremony

43 Spring Wedding Guest Dresses for Every Type of Ceremony

By Meaghan Kenny

The Most Comfortable Heels to Pack for a Wedding

The best garment bags for travel, tested and reviewed, tested and reviewed: the best travel steamer to take on the road.

By Erinne Magee

The Best Packing Cubes to Keep Your Suitcase Organized

By Kristi Kellogg and Meaghan Kenny

35 Beach Wedding Guest Dresses to Pack This Summer

Experiences.

Train Journeys

Train Journeys

Ski & Snow

Ski & Snow

Road Trips

Adventure Travel

Wellness & Spas

Wellness & Spas

Safari

Condé Nast Traveler will inspire your travel wish list with the best kept secrets of today's top tastemakers — from designers and architects, to writers and restaurateurs.

Cond Nast Traveler  Travel Reviews News Guides  Tips

More from Condé Nast Traveler

Rapper Nadine El Roubi on the Afro-Arab Storytellers That Inspire Her

Rapper Nadine El Roubi on the Afro-Arab Storytellers That Inspire Her

By Boutayna Chokrane

17 Best Hotels in the South of France

17 Best Hotels in the South of France

By Sarah James and Lanie Goodman

The Best Airbnbs in Italy, From Venice to Sicily

The Best Airbnbs in Italy, From Venice to Sicily

By Madison Flager and Caitlin Morton

The Best Hotels in Hong Kong

The Best Hotels in Hong Kong

By Lee Cobaj

Chasing Adventure on a Dog Sledding Trip Through Swedish Lapland

Chasing Adventure on a Dog Sledding Trip Through Swedish Lapland

By Pam LeBlanc

Falling Into the Rhythms of La Pitchoune, Julia Child's Home in the South of France

Falling Into the Rhythms of La Pitchoune, Julia Child's Home in the South of France

By Rebekah Peppler

How Great Trips Are Made

How Great Trips Are Made

15 Best Passport Holders to Protect Your Documents While Traveling

15 Best Passport Holders to Protect Your Documents While Traveling

By Lauren Dana Ellman

Ask a Local: Where to Go for Indigenous Art and Fashion in Santa Fe

Ask a Local: Where to Go for Indigenous Art and Fashion in Santa Fe

By Ashley M. Biggers

17 Best Airbnbs in Boston, From a Beacon Hill Townhouse to a Charlestown House Boat

17 Best Airbnbs in Boston, From a Beacon Hill Townhouse to a Charlestown House Boat

By Andrew Sessa and Todd Plummer

10 Cities With the Best Public Transportation, From Medellín to Stockholm

10 Cities With the Best Public Transportation, From Medellín to Stockholm

By Laura Walsh

After Prison, I Went to Miami to Reacquaint Myself With Freedom

After Prison, I Went to Miami to Reacquaint Myself With Freedom

By Ryan M. Moser

In His New Cookbook, Palestinian Chef Fadi Kattan Honors the Flavors of the West Bank

In His New Cookbook, Palestinian Chef Fadi Kattan Honors the Flavors of the West Bank

By Anastasia Miari

65 Mother’s Day Gifts for Every Travel-Loving Mom

65 Mother’s Day Gifts for Every Travel-Loving Mom

By Meaghan Kenny and Paris Wilson

On a Babymoon in Mexico, Embracing an Identity Shift

On a Babymoon in Mexico, Embracing an Identity Shift

By Mercedes Bleth

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Best of the Best Destinations 2024

Best of the Best Destinations

From lesser-known cities to new escapes, these places are on the up and up. You heard it here first.

The Travelers’ Choice Awards Best of the Best title celebrates the highest level of excellence in travel. It’s awarded to those who receive a high volume of above-and-beyond reviews and opinions from the Tripadvisor community over a 12-month period. Out of our 8 million listings, fewer than 1% achieve this milestone.

Tokyo

Palawan Island

Sapa

Kuala Lumpur

Jeju Island

Jeju Island

Viti Levu

Chennai (Madras)

Puebla

Panama City

Huaraz

Port Ghalib

Brasov

APRIL SALE Extended:   Book now for   up to 60% off!

Fully Guided Tours & Trips

TourRadar has collected the best Fully Guided trips. There are 30798 adventures to choose from, visiting 193 different countries. Tours range in length between one day in length, and 131 days.

250+ Fully Guided trips with 253,327 reviews

3 Days High Atlas Mountains and Sahara Adventure Tour

  • Christmas & New Year

3 Days High Atlas Mountains and Sahara Adventure

Amazing tour! Saïd was very knowledgeable and friendly, and made sure we had everything we needed. Lots of driving, but well worth it - we learned so much about such a beautiful country. Can’t wait to come back.
  • 10% deposit on some dates Some departure dates offer you the chance to book this tour with a lower deposit.

5 Days Private Golden Triangle India tour from New Delhi Tour

  • In-depth Cultural

5 Days Private Golden Triangle India tour from New Delhi

The trip was very well organised and covered all the major tourist attractions. The tour was at a good pace and we didn’t spend to long in each place.
  • Book With Flexibility This operator allows you to rebook your dates or tours with them for free, waiving change fees.

Morocco Tours 9 Days Tour from Casablanca Tour

Morocco Tours 9 Days Tour from Casablanca

Great mix of actions, places visited; the tour was answering to our expectations. This was our 4th “Morocco tours“ trip and there will be more.

4 Days / 3 Nights SAHARA EXPERIENCE Tour

4 Days / 3 Nights SAHARA EXPERIENCE

I submitted my first review before it was finished - Ali from Morocco Joy was a wonderful guide, so helpful and knowledgeable about the history of Morocco. We were travelling as a family of five, 2 adults, 3 kids aged 17,15 and 12 , and he was great at chatting with all of us and keeping the kids interested. The tour was amazing. The first day we drove from Marrakech through the high pass in the Atlas Mountains, visited a Berber village and had mint tea with the locals and learned so much about their way of life, stopped in Ouazarzate for a lovely lunch, then went on to visit an ancient kasbah (very interesting tour brought to life by the tour guide there), then drove through the lush Dades valley to a beautiful hidden hotel where we had a gourmet 4 course dinner on the terrace. We were also able to have a swim in the outdoor pool in the morning before breakfast. That hotel was such a treat! Day 2 we went further into the Dades gorge, unbelievable views, then on to the stunning Todra Gorge, before heading out towards the desert, stopping for headscarves, a traditional costume photo opportunity and lunch en route. The desert experience started with a swim in a lovely outdoor pool to cool down our body temp (bearing in mind it is August and well over 40 degrees C in the desert. We then got on our camels early evening and rode out into the Sahara for a unforgettable experience including sand boarding and standing up on our camels (!), returning to the Berber camp when it got dark for a good meal. The tents are basic but comfortable, the camp was very nice and there was a toilet and shower block there too. After the meal, the Berber camp guides entertained us with traditional drumming. It was very hot in the tents - again to be expected in August - in fact, some people slept outside. We got up around 6am so we could walk up the dunes to see the sunrise - despite being a bit hazy, it was worth it and we got amazing photos of the dunes. Day 3 - after breakfast and showers at the Berber camp, we set off again with Ali, visiting a large souk on market day in a local town (so much nicer to visit with Ali than wander around the Marrakesh souks without a guide!) and then drove through the palm tree valleys back to Ouazarzate, where we were staying the night. The riad hotel was clean and comfortable and had a small indoor pool which was very welcome after our travels. We had a nice evening meal there - as there were 5 of us we were able to order 5 different Moroccan dishes (tagines, pastilles, coucous) so we could share and taste a bit of everything. Day 4 - first stop Atlas studios on the outskirts of Ouazarzate, this is where films such as Gladiator and Ben Hue were filmed. We had a great tour of the film sets with another very knowledgeable guide. We also shot a mini film on the Cleopatra set on the phone of one of our tour group, so now everyone in the group has that as a fun souvenir of the visit! It was optional to visit the studios but it was a great tour so I would recommend doing this as an extra - definitely fun for the family. We then went on with Ali to Ait Benhaddou - again the scene of Gladiator, Game of Thrones etc- a spectacular kasbah. Ali suggested we climb up a hill just beside the kasbah to get the best views and photos, which was a great idea. He also had lots to tell us about the history of Benhaddou. After this vsiit, we headed back to Marrakesh via another very scenic route to the high pass through the Atlas Mountains. I would definitely recommend Morocco Joy - it’s a a family run company, we immediately felt so comfortable with Ali, he’s a very cool, chilled out guy, he took great care of us, he was fun to travel with, letting the kids choose songs on Spotify in the car, stopping at the best photo spots and taking photos of our family - which is fab as we usually don’t get photos of all 5 of us. He taught us so much about Morocco, the Berbers, the history of the country and its culture. His English is excellent. I do not think we could have found a better tour or guide. We’d love to go on another Morocco Joy tour soon!

7 Days Morocco Tours From Casablanca Tour

7 Days Morocco Tours From Casablanca

Fantastic service! Extremely helpful team. Especially Aissa. I would heavily recommend everyone to pick him as the driver. He not only took us around wherever we wanted to go, he also gave us recommendations of places to go and things to look out for. He always went the extra mile for us, something that we didn’t expect especially during Ramadan. He would always make sure that we were feeling safe and comfortable. If you want an unparalleled experience, I would definitely recommend Morocco Top Travel and Aissa.

Cambodia to Vietnam: Night Markets & Noodle-Making Tour

Cambodia to Vietnam: Night Markets & Noodle-Making

I’ve had an amazing trip with G-Adventures! Our CEO, Dollar, has done an amazing job! He’s simply the best guide I’ve ever had!

Queen Cleopatra  - 7 days Tour

Queen Cleopatra - 7 days

I had a once in a lifetime holiday with this tour, so much help and love. I felt safe and cared for the whole time. Taher got me settled and organised, Ehab navigated me through Cairo, on and off trains. And Muhammad! Suhila was such a thorough guide the absolute best! Anas went above and beyond for all of us, so sweet and patient with us lol. We dragged him out in his free time. The food and accommodation so so good, the boat I miss already. So much time was put into making this work and I’m so grateful, we covered so much of Egypt, See you guys again xx

Wanderlands Bali & Lombok - 13 Days Tour

Wanderlands Bali & Lombok - 13 Days

The Trip was alright. I was in a nice group and my group leader Stacia did a great job! Always high energy and good mood! To Wanderlands program: I feel like I paid a bit too much for the activities we did. We got great accommodation though and the transport from place to place was covered, but the least I expect is to finish the trip at the place we started, which is the Bali.
  • €145 deposit on some dates Some departure dates offer you the chance to book this tour with a lower deposit.

5 Day Cusco Travel Package: Cusco, Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, and Maras Moray. Tour

5 Day Cusco Travel Package: Cusco, Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, and Maras Moray.

Great experience and very accommodating! Really worked with me to make it the best experience and tour guides were very knowledgeable!.

PERU EXPRESS - 10 days (Lima- Cusco & Puno) with Domestic Flights Tour

PERU EXPRESS - 10 days (Lima- Cusco & Puno) with Domestic Flights

When I inquired about the hikes to Humanitay Island & Rainbow mountain, I was given the impression it was easily doable as there is plenty of time & horses could be hired. No mention was made about the problems that could arise due to the high altitude & that there were steep sections that we would have to navigate ourselves. Assurances should not have been so easily given without mentioning the specific difficulties of altitude acclimatisation and the inability to depend on horses for the whole trip. Otherwise well planned and reliable.

Bali Bucket List Original 10 Day Tour Tour

Bali Bucket List Original 10 Day Tour

It was a great trip with a lot of different activities! Our guide Ali was amazing!
  • €55 deposit on some dates Some departure dates offer you the chance to book this tour with a lower deposit.

5 Day Skye & Highland Fling Tour

5 Day Skye & Highland Fling

Not too much, not too little, Goldilocks would take this tour because it is Just Right. Seriously, you see and experience so much during this tour, the pace is not overwhelming so you can soak it all in. I was a first-time solo traveller on this trip, and met so many awesome people, including our phenomenal tour guide, Branka! If you think this trip might be for you, I bet it is, and you will love it!

Morocco 7 Days Tour From Casablanca Tour

Morocco 7 Days Tour From Casablanca

We thoroughly enjoyed this itinerary of touring Morocco, as it showed us how diverse the landscape is and gave us a taste of several different things which really made us fall in love with the country. Hamid was our driver/main guide, and although his English was a little broken at times, he was still a lot of fun and an excellent driver. Mohammed Anouar was our local guide in Fes and did an outstanding job providing information, plus he was another fun guide. One thing to note regarding the structure of the tour is that although we loved our driver, the information/educational aspect of the tour was far greater with the local guide in Fes than it was during the remaining stops with our driver alone. It might be nice to have a certified tour guide accompany the driver on more of the stops. Overall, we would highly recommend this tour and would definitely do it again.

7 Day Cusco Travel Package: Cusco, Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, Humantay Lake, and Rainbow Mountain. Tour

7 Day Cusco Travel Package: Cusco, Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, Humantay Lake, and Rainbow Mountain.

Glad I used Tour Radar! It was my first time using this website for my trip and it didnt disappoint me. I’ll definitely be a constant user of tour radar. The local tour agency that I used was Kantu Peru Tour agency. The tour was phenomenal. Kantu Tours really exerted their best effort to make my travel a lifetime to remember. They placed me in a a very nice hotel in the heart of Cusco. The daily itineraries were crafted well. There’s always a communication that Wadhir send at the end of the day to check how was my day and to give me a heads up on what will be the expectations the following day. He was consistent throughout the 7day tour. I would like to give special mention to the tour guide and driver on November 21, which was my birthday - Jose and Freddy( as he call himself Freddy Krugger) ???? for Rainbow Mountain and also November 22 for Humantay lake ( Driver Eustavio and tour guide Freddy) They were very attentive to the needs of all the people in the van. They made sure that he offers help when needed. Freddy with his jolly self made the climb in Rainbow Mountain and Humantay lake a breeze. He is very knowledgeable on the history and facts of the place we toured. Another thing that was memorable was when Kantu Tours gave me a surprise birthday cake to celebrate my birthday and make it more memorable. Thank you Kantu Peru!!! It is my first time using Kantu Peru tours but i would say that this won’t be the last. I would definitely use it again and recommend to all my friends ( which i did already) Again, thank you Kantu Peru and Freddy and see you again!!

India\'s Bestseller - 5 Day Golden Triangle - Delhi, Agra & Jaipur (Guaranteed Departure) Tour

India's Bestseller - 5 Day Golden Triangle - Delhi, Agra & Jaipur (Guaranteed Departure)

For future tourists, please note Every tour is private, no other person share with you. The tickets total is less than 6000 rupees if not taking elephant ride (1300 rupees), majority of local guides are good and professional. Please do NOT buy anything, you will pay big premium on it. If you want to buy something wait to buy at airport, better quality and better price, learned hard lessons. Also do not touch anything, if you touch it you are forced to buy it. For my tour, the driver is nice and friendly, the local guide at Taj Mahal is very good and an excellent photographer.

What people love about Fully Guided Tours

Ali was an incredible guide and I would thoroughly recommend booking with Morocco Joy Travel. We travelled with our 2 kids (8 &9) and Ali made it such a wonderful adventure for our family. He was so warm and kind, knowledgeable and thoughtful. We opted for the luxury accommodation and it surpassed our expectations. There was a lot of driving but the vehicle was very comfortable and Ali was so knowledgeable and a pleasure to tour with. We are left with wonderful memories of sunsets, fossil digging, sand dune exploring, camel riding, drum playing, spectacular scenery, delicious meals…thank you Ali…we cannot wait to visit again!
Well organised and great guides - different guide in each city
Our tour guide, Hamid, was wonderful! He gets 5 stars!! About the tour….. READ CAREFULLY! If you are a lover of history and historic sites, this trip is for you! If you enjoy long car rides through the country, this trip is for you! You will stay in a different riad (hotel) almost every night, so pack lightly. You will drive to each new city every day for 3-9 hours depending on where you are headed. The riads are beautiful- bring your own wash cloths and wipes. There are several tours throughout the day. Sometimes tours end with a visit to the showroom with the expectation that you will purchase goods. The food is delicious! The Sahara Desert was the most memorable! The camel ride was an experience of a lifetime. The vendors sell the most beautiful goods. Try to get shopping done with the tour guide to avoid pushy vendors. Learn how to bargain and understand their money. I enjoyed Marrakesh and definitely want to go back there! My recommendation to Morocco Tours is to communicate more up front. Provide names of hotels, tour guide, phone numbers and changes ahead of time. More communication!!! Again, we LOVE Hamid!!!

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Nomadic Matt's Travel Site

Travel Better, Cheaper, Longer

8 Ways to Choose the Perfect Tour Company

Last Updated: November 3, 2023

tour group posing with Nomadic Matt during a hike in the hills

That idea of tours being bad is an old and outdated perception.

These days tour groups have become more adept at the changing landscape. They feature smaller groups, more authentic experiences, a better environmental impact, and more local guides.

I love group tours.

Even though I am an independent traveler, I find group tours super fun, a great way to meet people, learn more from an informed guide, go to places you normally can’t, and wet your feet in travel. My first trip overseas was on an organized tour. I didn’t know the first thing about travel and that tour gave me the confidence to travel on my own. It was the taste test I needed to become hooked on travel. Tours give a lot of people time to adjust to the “travel lifestyle.”

Unlike in the past, today’s tours are eco-friendly, cater to all travel styles, over cheap, and make a point to use local transportation and guides. And many destinations (like Halong Bay, the Galápagos Islands, the Serengeti, Machu Picchu, Antarctica, Everest) are virtually inaccessible without an organized group tour!

In this article, I am going to tell you how to find the best tour company so you get one that is inexpensive, eco-friendly, provides local guides, and gives back to the local community:

1. Research the costs

With tour companies, it’s not always true that you get what you pay for. Many tour companies nickel-and-dime you, while some are really good at maximizing value for your every penny. Ask how your money is spent to find out if you are really getting the best value for your money. How much of your fee is their overhead? Are you paying for top-notch hotels but staying in two-star guesthouses? You want a company that is transparent with why prices are the way they are.

Moreover, make sure you ask if there are added fees to pay when arrive. Many companies require you to pay additional money when the tour starts or don’t include park or attraction entrance fees. That cheap tour won’t be so cheap if you have to pay for everything while you’re there!

2. Make sure you are the audience 

Is the tour geared toward older couples? Young people? Families? You don’t want to end up on a loud Contiki tour full of drunk twenty-year-olds when all you want is a quiet holiday.

There’s a tour company for everyone — just make sure you don’t end up on one that isn’t yours. Most tour companies list their guest demographics on their “About” page, and you can usually see from the photos of their tours who goes on it.

You can also tell the audience based on accommodation: if it’s hostels or guesthouses, it’s usually for backpackers and budget travelers; if it’s fancy digs, it’s for older travelers and families.

This is very important because these are the people you’ll be traveling with so you want to make sure it’s the kind of people you are traveling with. I’m still friends with the people from my first tour in 2003 because they were people like me. The tour in Japan that was filled with older families? Not so much. We didn’t have much in common. Wonderful people but we didn’t connect.

So, I always look for tours that have my demographic in them.

3. Get local guides

Guides can make or break your trip. They are going to explain everything to you and keep the flow of the tour going. I don’t want them hiring some young kid, non-expert, or someone who doesn’t know the place well. I’ve been on tours where the guide was a walking encyclopedia, and on somewhere the guide was a glorified timekeeper.

Make sure the company uses knowledgeable, local guides. The guide should be a local or at least a long-term resident, know the local language, have travel experience, and know life-saving techniques.

If you are unsure about the guides, call the customer service line and ask them about their guides.

4. Safety record 

Make sure the company follows all the proper safety requirements and is accredited by the local government, the government where they are registered, and any other appropriate trade organizations.

5. A balanced schedule 

You’re paying for them to fill most of your day. How do they do that? Are they doing that? Do they have a lot of activities organized, or do they leave you to your own devices?

That said, you don’t want a schedule that is crammed with things to do. Make sure you get a schedule of all the activities and pick a tour that is balanced. Running around will leave you wishing you had a holiday from your holiday, but you don’t want to be sitting around all day, either.

I love taking small group tours because they generally have a good balance. Any tour that requires you to be on a huge bus and hits 6 cities in 5 days is not a tour to take!

6. Environmental impact

There’s a growing trend among travelers called ecotourism . It’s about more responsible travel, not only toward the environment but also toward the locals in an area. This means using local guides, hotels, and services, and making sure to reduce waste and your footprint on the local habitat.

Moreover, these companies tend to offer better and more interactive tours that also give you a good degree of autonomy.

I think it’s important to pick a company that provides great value and gives back to the place you are visiting. After all, did you go there to ruin it for others? Doubtful.

Check with groups like the International Ecotourism Society for a list of companies that have been certified “eco-friendly.” With so much money pouring into the industry now, you have a lot of companies fraudulently saying they practice ecotourism but end up being involved in terrible labor practices, animal abuse, and waste.

7. Group size

Tour companies that have smaller groups tend to be much more mindful of the environment and the impact they are leaving. It’s a lot easier to meet people in a group of 10-15 than it is in a group of 60. I don’t like to go on tours with more than 15 people on them. However, I have friends who love Contiki tours with 40-50 people. Know what you are getting yourself into, so you don’t find yourself with a group too small or too large for your tastes.

Just remember larger groups tend to stay at bigger, more impersonal accommodations (they can only accommodate the numbers), eat at more touristy restaurants, and tend to travel to more destinations quicker.

In my expert opinion, small group tours are the best.

8. Check their reputation

How have other travelers enjoyed their time? Look for online reviews to see what a company’s reputation is. It might not always be what they claim, and it’s important to find out the truth before you book.

Remember that MOST people only write a review if something goes wrong. Someone might give a tour company one star just because their eggs were runny. Find the average. Someone might hate a tour because the weather was hot. Seriously. These are actual negative reviews from the tour operator company, Thomas Cook:

“On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t like spicy food.”

“We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish.”

“We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price.”

“No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared.”

“Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers.”

“When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners.”

“We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning.”

So how can you trust the reviews you read online?

Take them with a grain of salt. You can read reviews on websites TrustPilot . The approval rating should look like a bell curve but with more A’s and B’s than C’s. I look for companies that average 85% or higher (or 4 out of 5 stars). If a company is that highly rated, the negative reviews are probably just outliers.  

My Recommended (Best) Tour Companies

Here are some of my favorite small, day-tour, or backpacker bus tour companies:

  • Take Walks – This is my favorite walking tour company. They run a wide variety of insightful and entertaining tours around Europe and the US. What makes them so good is they get you inside access to attractions and places you can’t get elsewhere. Their guides rock too!
  • Get Your Guide – A massive marketplace for tours, activities, and excursions. If you’re looking for something niche, you’ll find it here!
  • Devour Food Tours – My go-to tour company for tasty food tours around Europe and the US.
  • Kiwi Experience – A hop-on, hop-off bus tour company in New Zealand for backpackers!
  • Baz Bus – A hop on, hop off again bus tour company in South Africa for all travelers.
  • New Europe – Free walking tours throughout Europe.
  • Free Tours By Foot – Pay-what-you-like tours throughout Europe and the United States. They are one of my favorite free walking tour companies in the world!

THE #1 COMPANY FOR MULTI-DAY SMALL GROUP TOURS

When it comes to multi-day, multi-week tours (think trips through Morocco, sailing in the Galápagos, etc.), I highly recommend using Intrepid Travel .

Intrepid is my favorite and best small group tour operator out there! I really love their guides, their small groups, off-the-beaten-track itineraries, and their commitment to the local environment and community. I always have an incredible time on their tours. They are my favorite multi-day tour operator and the only one I use now (the picture at the top of this page is me on their Patagonia trip). Intrepid is environmentally friendly, uses local guides and transportation, doesn’t rush their tours, and are quite inexpensive. I don’t even consider anyone else when it comes to multi-day trips.

I love tours. They are a great way to meet people, get a local to add value and knowledge, and see places you can’t get to alone! I don’t take them often but I do take them. And, since I follow the above rules, I always have a good time. Some of my favorite travel memories were when I was on a group trip. If you follow my tips above, you’ll never go wrong either.

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Moscow Vacation Packages

Moscow vacations are always a great idea when it comes to traveling in Russia. Plan your trip to Moscow with a leading tour operator for Russia and enjoy the ease and pleasure that comes from it. You will stay at the centrally-located hotels, enjoy guided tours to Moscow's best sights with charming local guides, and, most importantly, feel relaxed and immersed in the Russian culture at all times. Wondering what the ideal way to see the best of Moscow is? Well, with a private tour to Moscow, of course! We will listen to your travel preferences and prepare a custom Moscow itinerary just for you. Let's start talking about your upcoming vacation to the gorgeous capital city of Russia.

Moscow Tour Highlights

Explore the capital of the largest country in the world, Russia.

Learn about the most visited sights in Moscow that are worth adding to your Russian itinerary. Create a fantastic tour to Moscow with a destination, choosing your wished activities.

Moscow Tour Highlights

  • Moscow walking tour
  • The Red Square
  • St Basil's Cathedral
  • Moscow Subway ride
  • Tretyakov Gallery
  • The Red Square in Moscow
  • The Bolshoi Theater
  • Cathedral of Christ the Savior
  • Moscow's Kremlin exploration
  • 'Seven Sisters' Skyscrapers

Tips for Moscow Travel

Take a look at the good-to-know tips before visiting Moscow and have a fantastic time in the capital.

moscow

What to pack

Make sure to check the weather prognosis before your trip and pack accordingly.

When to travel

Moscow is beautiful all around the year. Choose traveling time according to preferred activities.

We suggest to always have some cash with you. You will need Rubles (RUB) for Russia.

How much to tip

Tipping is not required in Russia, but it's considered good etiquette, tip 10%-15% of your bill.

The average summer temperature is approx 18°C (64°F), and winter is around -6°C (22°F).

Some of the most popular souvenirs from Moscow are caviar, Krasnaya Moska perfume.

Best Moscow Sights

One of the highest points in Moscow and one of its most breathtaking places - the Sparrow Hills.

See the 344-feet Cathedral of Christ the Savior - the tallest Orthodox church in the world.

Enjoy masterpieces of Russian opera and ballet in Moscow's legendary Bolshoi Theater.

Being the most recognizable symbol of Russia in the world, Red Square is an absolute must see when in Moscow. 

The famous GUM is a large department store in the Kitai-gorod part of Moscow facing Red Square.

History and luxury is revealed inside the Kremlin as the Armoury Chamber displays treasures like Faberge Eggs.

St. Basil’s Cathedral is Moscow’s most famous artistic work of architecture set in the romantic Red Square.

The symbol of Moscow and entire Russia, the Kremlin is often described as the 8th Wonder of the World.

Moscow Metro is like a whole underground city that holds the world's largest collection of Stalinist Art.

I am very satisfied.

I have been using the Firebirds (Travel All Russia) services for a while. I am very satisfied.

WOW. From the choice of hotels to...

WOW. From the choice of hotels, an itinerary that ran to plan, the amazing Guides and drivers, and of course the stunning cities of Moscow and St Petersburg. No long queues for entry to museums, churches, and palaces.  I would gladly recommend using Firebird Tours (Travel All Russia) to anyone.

THANK YOU for making this happen for me !!!

I must say from the day I started to book my tip till the day I got home I had one GREAT trip and experience I always felt safe and cared for help was seconds away not that I needed any I will defiantly highly recommend your company to any traveler to Russia WELL DONE to the Whole team THANK YOU for making this happen for me !!!

We enjoyed the whole trip a lot

Overall we enjoyed the whole trip a lot. Moscow is beautiful and clean. Thank you very much for your patience and excellent organization of this tour. Everything ran very smoothly and according to schedule. The guides met us on time at hotels or at our train carriage on arrival. They all spoke good English, had a good local knowledge and were very kind and helpful.

The tour lived up to all expectations

I’m most pleased with Travel All Russia in arranging our ‘Volga Dream’ Russia tour, I would recommend using your services again as every aspect of our tour went off without a hitch. The communication between our tour representative was excellent as we required additional days on both ends of our tour. The visa process and the logistics were flawlessly implemented.

We had a great time in Moscow!

Everything was perfect and we are very satisfied with services and accommodations.

Loved my time in Russia

The trip was great. Especially want to mention the guides I had on the extra days were exceptional. Both guides and drivers worked out well. Thanks again for all your help and attention. Loved my time in Russia, and still haven’t stopped talking about it.

Exploring Magnificent Russian Capitals, June 2017

Just want to say that our guide in St Petersburg was really outstanding. You really felt like someone was looking after you. Very observant - knowledgeable. We really enjoyed time spent with her.

Exploring Vibrant Moscow, June 2017

The experience was great!!! We had an excellent guide. The hotel was fabulous.

Thank you for your help !!! was an unforgettable trip.

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Guía turística de Moscow

Planning a trip to Moscow? Our travel guide contains up-to-date, personal information on everything from what to see , to when to visit , where to stay , and what to eat !

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  • How to get to Moscow
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Why visit Moscow?

Majestic churches, impressive historic fortresses, and palatial buildings: Moscow is a fascinating city whose emblematic architecture reflects the turbulent history that has defined Russia throughout the centuries.

The traces of the USSR can be found around every corner of the city , side by side with the iconic relics of Imperial Russia , like the mythical Red Square , the imposing Kremlin , and the beautiful  St Basil's Cathedral . 

Discover a fascinating world of Cold War bunkers, golden-domed basilicas, world-class art museums, and the legendary "palace of the people,"  as the Moscow Metro has been nicknamed. Whether you fancy watching a classical Russian ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre , perusing the fine arts at the Pushkin Museum , or marveling at the sheer size of the monuments to the Soviet state's achievements at the  All-Russia Exhibition Centre , this travel guide will help you on your way!

Where to start?

If you're going to travel to Moscow and you don't know much about the city yet, the first thing to do is to dive into its legendary history - understanding the past will help you understand the present. Next, check out our practical hints and tips on traveling to the city before discovering which of its most important museums , monuments , and attractions pique your interest.

Looking for a place to stay?

Booking your accommodation in advance is the best way to get great discounts. Our detailed guide on where to stay in Moscow  will help you decide which neighborhood you'd like to look for hotels or apartments in, and our hotel search engine will find you the best deals!

Why is our Moscow travel guide the best?

Introducing Moscow is a  city guide written by travelers for travelers  and contains personalized advice to help you make the most of your trip to the city.

All the information in this guide is valid as of December 2022. If you find any errors or have any comments, please feel free to contact us .

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Russian Tours and Cruises from Express to Russia

  • Moscow Tours

Our 20 Best Moscow Tours of 2022

Join us on an unforgettable tour to Moscow, the capital of Russia. Imagine visiting Red Square, St. Basil’s the Kremlin and more. Moscow is one of Europe’s most vibrant cities and one of Russia’s most historical. All of our tours to Moscow are fully customizable and can be adjusted to fit any budget. Our most popular tours are listed below. Please click on the tour details to learn more or contact us for more information about our Moscow tours using the form at the side of the page. You can also schedule a call with one of our Russian travel specialists to learn more.

Moscow Kremlin, photo by Walkerssk on Pixabay

Classic Moscow

This is our most popular Moscow tour that includes all the most prominent sights. You will become acquainted with ancient Russia in the Kremlin, admire Russian art in the Tretyakov Gallery, listen to street musicians as you stroll along the Old Arbat street, and learn about Soviet times on the Moscow Metro tour.

Accommodation

PRIVATE TOUR

St. Basiils Cathedral, Moscow, Photo by vierro from Pexels

A Week in Moscow

This tour is a perfect choice for those who wish to get to know Moscow in depth. One of the highlights of this package is the KGB history tour which gives an interesting perspective on the Cold War. You will also have time for exploring the city on your own or doing extra sightseeing.

Photo by Andrey Omelyanchuk on Unsplash

Weekend in Moscow

This tour is a great way to get acquainted with the capital of Russia if you are short of time. You will see all the main attractions of the city, the most important of which is the Kremlin - the heart of Russia. The tour starts on Friday and can be combined with a business trip.

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Group Tour Moscow Break by Intourist

Russia's capital has so much to offer, from the Kremlin and the Metro to the Old Arbat street and the Tretyakov Gallery. Besides these sites, you will also visit a fascinating country estate which today is quite off the beaten path, Gorky Estate, where the Soviet leader Lenin spent the last months of his life.

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Kolomenskoye Tour with transport

The history of Kolomenskoye stretches back for centuries. In 1380, Dmitri Donskoi’s army passed through Kolomenskoye on their way to the Kulikovo battlefield, and it was...

Tours by car

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Kremlin, Red Sq., Cathedrals & Armory Tour

The Kremlin is truly a fascinating structure, at the same time it is an ancient tower, the city’s former military fortification, a palace, an armory, the sovereign treasury...

Walking tours

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Kremlin, Red Sq., Cathedrals, Armory, Diamond Fund Tour

travel and tours recommendation

Old Arbat walking tour

You will be told of the street’s interesting history and view the street’s artisan culture. You will also have the opportunity to view and purchase souvenirs from the...

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Tour to Sergiev Posad with transport

Considered by some to be the Russian Vatican, Sergiev Posad is the temporary residence of the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Trinity St. Sergius Monastery (Lavra)...

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Tour to Kuskovo with transport

The Kuskovo Estate often called the Moscow Versailles due to its perfectly preserved French park, is an example of an 18th century, luxurious Moscow summer residence. Its history...

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Tour to Tsaritsyno with transport

The Tsaritsyno Estate is located in the southern part of Moscow. The estate was constructed for Catherine the Great by the Russian architects Bazhenov and Kazakov in a romantic...

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Moscow Metro and Old Arbat Tour

The Moscow Metro is one of the largest and most grandly built metro systems in the world. It was meant to be a showcase of the Soviet Union’s achievements for both the Russians...

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Vodka Museum Tour with transport (excursion and vodka tasting)

Vodka is an important component of Russian life, an element of national identity and everyday culture. We invite you to visit the Vodka Museum and feel the atmosphere of long-gone...

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Mikhail Bulgakov Apartment Museum

This apartment museum located close to Patriarch Ponds became the prototype of the "bad apartment" described in the novel "The Master and Margarita." Currently the museum's...

Spasskaya Tower,Moscow Kremlin, Russia, image from Shutterstock

Kremlin, Red Sq., Cathedrals & Diamond Fund Tour

Portrait of Leo Tolstoy by Ilya Repin (1887)

The State Museum of Lev Tolstoy Tour

Take this opportunity to learn more about the Russian writer Lev Tolstoy. During the visit to the museum you will see part of a vast collection of exhibits connected to Tolstoy...

Novodevichy convent, Moscow, Russia, image from Shutterstock

Novodevichy Convent Tour with transport

Tour of the Novodevichy Monastery. Founded in 1524 by Grand Prince VasiliIoanovich, the original convent was enclosed by fortified walls and contained 12 towers. The structure...

St. Basil's Cathedral, Moscow, Russia, image from Shutterstock

City Tour with Visit to St. Basils & Red Sq. with transport

Panoramic City Tour. This Moscow tour is a great start to your trip and the best way to get acquainted with many of the city’s major highlights. Our professional guide will...

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City Tour of Moscow

Head to the heart of Moscow with a professional guide on a 4-hour private walk through the city center. See Tverskaya and Old Arbat streets, Theatre Square with the world-famous...

travel and tours recommendation

Moscow Metro walking tour

The Kremlin, Moscow, Russia, image from Shutterstock

Kremlin, Red Square and Cathedrals Tour

travel and tours recommendation

KGB Tour with transport

This is a very interesting and insightful tour. You will visit places connected with Stalin’s terror - a time of great repression and fear. You will be shown monuments to...

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Soviet and Post-Soviet Moscow Tour

The tour begins with a drive or walk down Tverskaya Street – a Soviet masterpiece. In the years of Soviet power, Tverskaya began to undergo a transformation: it was widened...

Girl with Peaches by Alexander Serov

Tretyakov State Gallery Tour

This world-famous gallery contains masterpieces of Russian art beginning in the 10th century up until today. You will view exquisite Russian icons and paintings from the 18th and...

travel and tours recommendation

Jewish Heritage of Moscow Tour

This tour offers a detailed look into the history and present-day life of the Jewish community of Moscow. On the tour, you will visit sites connected with the cultural and religious...

Vodka, photo by Detonart at Pixabay

Vodka Museum Tour with transport (excursion only)

Customer

Lena, our guide in Moscow was excellent. She was very knowledgable and could answer any question we had for her. We liked that she could pick up on our interests and take us places we might not have thought of to go. When we realized that one of the places we had chosen to see would probably not be that interesting to us, she was able to arrange entry to the Diamond Fund and the Armoury for us. Riding the Metro with Lena was a real adventure and a lot of fun. In Saint Petersburg we found Anna well versed in the history of the Tsars and in the Hermitage collection. Arkady in Veliky Novgorod was a very good guide and answered all of our questions with ease. Novgorod was perhaps a long way to go for a day trip, but we did enjoy it. Vasily was a great driver to have and kept us safe with good humour and skill. We enjoyed ourselves so much, my daughter says she is already planning to return. We would both have no hesistation to recommend ExpresstoRussia to anyone we know.

Just wanted to let you know that My grandson Bruno and I couldn´t have been more pleased with our week in Moscow (6/15 - 6/21). We were absolutely enchanted with the whole experience, including getting lost a couple of times in the Metro during our free time. Although both our guides (both Eleanas) were excellent, I would particularly commend the first one (she took us to the Tatiakov, the KGB tour, and to that beautiful cemetery where so many great Russian artists, authors, composers, musicians, militarists, and politicians are buried). Her knowledge is encyclopedic; and her understanding of today´s Russia as a product of its past was, for us, truly enlightening. I will be taking another tour in Russia, with my wife, within the next two or three years. I will be in touch with you when the time comes. Meanwhile, I will refer you to other potential visitors to Russia as I meet them.

Tours to Moscow

Our Moscow tours are land only meaning that you arrange your own air travel to Russia and our expert staff meets you at the airport and handles everything else from there. Our online Airline Ticket booking system offers some of the most competitive rates to Russia available on the web so if you need tickets, please visit our Russian air ticket center . Rest assured that you will be taken great care of on one of our Moscow tours. Express to Russia has a fully staffed office in Moscow that will help to make your visit fun, informative and unforgettable. Please remember that of all these tours are private and can be adjusted to your taste. You can add, replace or skip some sights; you can add more days to the package or cut the tour short. Our specialists will be glad to help you create the tour of your dreams!

Novodevichy Convent, Moscow

Moscow, a City Like No Other

Moscow is Russia’s largest city with a population of between 12 and 13 million. It is also Europe’s largest city and when you visit Moscow, you can feel it. The layout and architecture of the city is eclectic, ranging from crooked, ancient streets and alleyways to wide, bustling boulevards, from medieval churches to Stalin skyscrapers and to modern, glass buildings towering over everything and of course in the center of it all is the Kremlin and the magnificent Red Square. Moscow is also home to a fantastic, efficient and very beautiful metro system – each station having its own special design. In fact, Express to Russia’s Moscow metro tours and excursions are some of our most popular attractions that we offer. On our Moscow tours, you will see this and more.

Moscow Kremlin in the times of Ivan III

Moscow Tours centering on Russian History

Moscow has a long and interesting history and has been the capital of Russia in many of its different iterations – capital of the Grand Duchy of Moscow , the Russian Empire and of course the Soviet Union (who could ever forget the Soviet Union?). Moscow, was founded in the 12th century by Prince Yuri Dolgaruki (Yuri of the long arms – he really did have long arms!). From that time on, it was home to the Russian Tsars until Peter the Great moved the capital to St. Petersburg in 1703. The city has survived invasions and sieges from the Mongols, the Tartars, the Poles, Lithuanians and Napoleon but has always persevered. Our Moscow tours will enlighten you on this great history and give you insights into Muscovites and their unique culture. Our Moscow tours show you what the city is like today but also brings to life the past. Moscow never seems to sleep and is bursting with energy. A Moscow tour with Express to Russia is truly the best way of getting to know Russia’s largest and most vibrant city.

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What is the best time to visit moscow.

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Tourism recommendation system: a survey and future research directions

  • 1209: Recent Advances on Social Media Analytics and Multimedia Systems: Issues and Challenges
  • Published: 21 April 2022
  • Volume 82 , pages 8983–9027, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

travel and tours recommendation

  • Joy Lal Sarkar 1 ,
  • Abhishek Majumder 1 ,
  • Chhabi Rani Panigrahi 2 ,
  • Sudipta Roy 3 &
  • Bibudhendu Pati 2  

2020 Accesses

10 Citations

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A Recommendation System (RS) is an intelligent computer based system which provide valuable suggestions to the user and are used in several domains. Social media platforms are the most common internet applications due to the large number of users. The numerous posts, likes, etc. have accrued on social media platforms and can be used in variety of recommendation systems. In this work, the primary focus is the tourism domain, where RS serves as a valuable tool for the tourist to plan his trip. Traditional RS systems only cater to the needs of the tourist by examining few factors. However, there are a large range of factors such as environment factors , actual geo-coordinates, trip destination, preferences of the user etc. that need to be taken into account in order to make a foolproof recommendation to the tourists. Tourism Recommendation Systems (TRS) provide suggestions to the tourists to identify the most suited transport (flight, train, etc.), accommodations, museums, special interest places and other items which are required for the trip. Several techniques are used and a thorough study of various techniques of traditional RS and TRS techniques have been done which are specially designed for tourism domain. Various Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques have been highlighted which are used to solve the tourist recommendation problem. Also, future research direction has been suggested which would improvise the Quality of Service (QoS) of the RS in tourism industry.

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Recommender Systems in Tourism

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Sarkar, J.L., Majumder, A., Panigrahi, C.R. et al. Tourism recommendation system: a survey and future research directions. Multimed Tools Appl 82 , 8983–9027 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-022-12167-w

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Tips to travel Iceland on a budget, plus travel expert-approved gear

Where to get local deals, take a dip in a hot spring and more.

Need some summer vacation ideas that won't break the bank? "Good Morning America" is off to Iceland and packing expert tips to help create the perfect travel bucket list on a budget.

From free dips in hot springs to the stunning Seljalandsfoss waterfall, ABC News' Ashan Singh explored the Nordic island nation and shared the top ways to enjoy every stop of the trip without overspending.

PHOTO: Tourists walk around Seljalandsfoss waterfall, Aug. 12, 2021, near Storidalur, Iceland.

"Iceland is a tremendous deal from the Boston area in particular -- flights are only about five hours in each direction -- you could take just a long weekend there and still get an action-packed trip," Eric Rosen director of travel content for The Points Guy, told "GMA."

TPG has seen deals for as low as $400 and for travelers who don't care where they're seated on the plane, some fares drop as low as $230.

When it comes to hotels, Rosen offered another simple tip, spend now on credit cards from brands like Hilton or Marriott that, once the spending threshold is reached, offer large bonus points.

"Hilton cards for instance, offer anywhere from 130 to 180,000 points typically as part of their bonus," he said. "And that's going to be good enough for two maybe even three nights at some of these hotels in Reykjavik. And that could be your whole trip right there."

Iceland activities on a budget

PHOTO: ABC News' Ashan Singh used the Reykjavík City Card to tour Iceland on a budget.

Get a taste of the city's culture with the Reykjavík City Card, which gives visitors access to multiple museums, art galleries, pools and even bus transportation for free.

PHOTO: ABC News' Ashan Singh takes a hike in Iceland.

Enjoy going home with a fashionable souvenir? Local knits are quintessentially Iceland, but with handmade sweaters priced up to $500, Singh sought out second hand store, Extraloppan to score a sweater as low as $50.

PHOTO: ABC News' Ashan Singh purchases a traditional Icelandic sweater from a second hand clothing store.

Rent a car. Singh found deals for as low as $86 a day.

Save on a more extravagant meal by finding a deal through the Dineout Iceland app, which for a small fee offers discounts all over the land of fire and ice.

PHOTO: ABC News' Ashan Singh enjoys a roadside hot dog in Iceland.

Looking for a cheap and quick local bite? Try a roadside hot dog for just $4.

Visit the free National Parks and take in sights like waterfalls and geysers, but Singh suggests skipping the Blue Lagoon, which can cost $350 for a family of four, instead opt for taking a dip in a local, free hot spring.

PHOTO: ABC News' Ashan Singh takes a dip in a hot spring while traveling Iceland on a budget.

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Milan art tour: top attractions, accommodation and dining tips.

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Milan Cathedral, Duomo di Milano, one of the largest churches in the world

While Milan is well known as a global fashion and design hub, it’s also one of the most exciting art cities in the world and art could easily keep any visitor fully occupied for days. Here are some of the best art museums to visit, highlights in each, along with suggestions of where to stay and eat.

Lucio Fontana masterpiece at Gallerie d'Italia Museum in Milan, Italy.

For starters, if you stay at the sumptious Hotel Principe di Savoia , you can enjoy one of the best art tours in the city. Fontana – Slashing Space walking tour has been exclusively created for guests of the hotel, part of the Dorchester Collection which offers special art tours in its other hotels too. At Le Meurice in Paris, guests can choose from art tours on Picasso, Rodin or Monet while 45 Park Lane features British sculptor Barbara Hepworth. The focus of the art tour in Milan is Lucio Fontana, one of Italy’s most revolutionary modern artists, known best for his slashed canvases. Art historian Olimpia Isidori has created a fascinating tour tracing Fontana’s story from his move to Milan as a child from Argentina, his studies at Brera Academy and his ultimate rejection of his prestigious Art Academy education to forge his own path. The tour includes a stop at a cafe frequented by Fontana, the art supply shop where he got his materials and a walk through the Brera Academy, where he studied in the late 1920s under the symbolist sculptor Adolfo Wildt. Fontana was the first known artist to slash his canvases – which he said symbolised an utter rejection of all art theory.

Prada Foundation, Milan

Continuing with modern art, Fondazione Prada is one of the most beautiful museums in Milan (designed by Rem Koolhaus). The current exhibition features Pino Pascali (on until 23 September 2024), an artist who is not so well known outside of Italy. It is a stupendous retrospective by an artist who had a very short career (he died tragically in 1968 in a motorcycle accident at the age of 32). Considered to be part of the Italian Arte Povera (Italian: literally “poor art”) movement that took place between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, Pascali was hugely influential, and this retrospective demonstrates why. Curated by Mark Godfrey, the show includes 49 works drawn from Italian and international museums, and private collections. Taking place over three buildings in the museum, this is a must see.

Nari Ward installation at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan

Pirelli HangarBicocca , which used to be a Pirelli tire factory, was converted into 10,900 square metres of exhibition galleries in 2012. Currently on show is Nari Ward, the Jamaican born American artist, who has recreated his installation Super Stud which he first made in 1994. Running until 28 July 2024, it is an enormous installation (in an enormous hangar), and features vast, colorful stringed nets suspended overhead, walls of discarded wooden pallets, bits and pieces of buildings, broken pianos, and curtains made of bottles and Budweiser cans. It is a cacophonous work using raw, found and ready-made material, that reminds us of the Arte Povera ideas you can see in Pino Pascali’s work.

'The seven heavenly palaces' by Anselm Kiefer is displayed at the Hangar Bicocca Contemporary Art ... [+] Museum in Milan, Italy.

One of the big draws at HangarBicocca is a permanent installation by the German artist Anselm Kiefer: a gasp out loud kind of work. It was created as a temporary work for the opening of the museum in 2004 but was so beloved by the Milanese that they decided to make it permanent. It consists of seven towers - each weighing 90 tons and rising to heights of between 13 and 19 meters, created from reinforced concrete using shipping containers. The towers symbolise the mystical experience of the ascent through the seven levels of spirituality in the ancient Hebrew Book of Palaces/ Sanctuaries , which dates back to the 4th-5th centuries A.D. Art can sometimes be overwhelming and sometimes, it is supposed to overwhelm. Art can also make one feel small, and again, it is sometimes meant to. Kiefer’s work at HangarBicocca does both those things, with a truly monumental work that is of Biblical proportions.

Your Best Look Yet At The New iPhone 16

Drake and kendrick lamar feud timeline lamar drops second diss track 6 16 in la, outlander finally comes to netflix with an incredible new season, classical art.

Milan, Pinacoteca Di Brera, The Marriage of the Virgin, 1504, by Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520), oil on ... [+] panel.

The Brera museum is the largest classical art museum in Milan, whose highlights include The Lamentation of Christ (1480) by Andrea Mantegna, with its famously extreme foreshortening, and a sublime Raphael, Marriage of the Virgin (1504), which places the architectural perspective (a new Renaissance trick) to the forefront leaving poor Mary and Joseph as just bit-players. There is also Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus (1605-6), a masterful demonstration of chiaroscuro and flailing hands, a later copy (by Caravaggio) of the one in London’s National Gallery.

Caravaggio 'Basket of Fruit' at Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan

And speaking of Caravaggio, the bad boy of the art world can be found in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, a less visited museum than the Brera but with just as many iconic works, we find his Basket of Fruit (1599), considered one of the first examples of still life in European painting. The hyper-realistic basket seems to teeter on the edge of the picture-space, in danger of falling out of the painting and into the viewer's space instead.

The other great masterpiece here is the largest Renaissance cartoon that has survived to this day and was made by Raphael as a preparatory work for his work The School of Athens (1509-11) in the Vatican.

Finally, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (your ticket gets you into both) houses the most extensive collection of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, the Codex Atlanticus . A rare chance to see his notebooks close-up on display. And don’t miss Leonardo’s rather lovely portrait of a musician (c. 1483–1487) tucked away in the basement!

The Last Supper

'The Last Supper', 1494-1498 at the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan

One can’t do an art visit to Milan without seeing one of the most famous paintings in the world, da Vinci’s masterpiece, The Last Supper, the scene of The Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples . On the wall of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the mural was commissioned as part of a scheme of renovations to the church and its convent buildings by da Vinci's patron Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. Although you can try to book tickets on the museum’s website, they are sold out months in advance. A better option is to book a tour with one of the numerous guides, thus securing access. A good choice is the tour company, Get Your Guide , who offer a Milan Guided Walking Tour plus Last Supper Visit.

Where to Stay

Hotel Principe di Savoia. Milan. Italy.

The chic five star Principe di Savoia , part of the Dorchester Collection, offers a quiet location near the Porta Nuova district, with a free car service to the historic center and the ultimate luxury stay in Milan. Open since 1927, this is one of Milan’s grand historic hotels. The common areas include attractive Art Deco features that will take you back in time while the guest rooms feature an appealing blend of 19th-century décor with contemporary touches including heavy Italian drapes, lavish wallpaper and beautiful ceramic tiling in bathrooms. The spa on the top floor offers gorgeous views across the city and the lavish breakfast is one of the city’s finest.

For smaller budgets, the four star NH Milano City Life is a large business friendly hotel with spacious, airy rooms, a substantial breakfast buffet and a rooftop pool beside a metro. Or, within easy walking distance of the city center’s main attractions, Sonder Missori is a chic choice, with 40 nicely appointed modern rooms.

Where to Eat and Drink

At Principe Savoia, Acanto Restaurant offers a modern Italian menu in an elegant setting. Delicious handmade pasta dishes and highly creative desserts make for a satisfying dining experience.

If you’re looking for a hip venue for cocktails and tapas , the sprawling Moebius in a former textile workshop near Central station, has an industrial chic vibe. It houses a vinyl store as well as two restaurants Sperimentale and Tapa Bistrot, plus live entertainment.

Since 1911, and still in the same family, Jamaica , a bar and cafe near the Brera Museum, has been a favorite watering hole for creatives over the years, including Lucio Fontana, Ernest Hemingway and Allen Ginsberg.

Joanne Shurvell

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The Best of South Africa, Botswana, Namibia & Zimbabwe

October 14 - 29, 2025

Victoria Falls

Group Size: 18 to 25 participants Price: Starting from $12,795 per person double occupancy, $19,490 single occupancy Co-sponsored with: Harvard Exclusive

Trip Overview

This South African adventure features culture, wildlife, natural history, and a three-night Chobe River cruise in Namibia and Botswana, offering uninterrupted views of Chobe National Park. Explore Victoria Falls, one of the Seven natural wonders of the world. Spend two nights at the acclaimed MalaMala Private Game Reserve, an unforgettable five-star African safari experience. Discover the rich natural and cultural heritage of Cape Town.

Schedule by Day

Overnight flight to Johannesburg, South Africa.

Arrive Johannesburg, remainder of the day is at leisure.

Overnight: Fairlawns Boutique Hotel

See Nelson Mandela’s home, Hector Pieterson Memorial, Apartheid Museum. Dinner, with hotel credit, at leisure at hotel.

Meals:  B, L, D

Fly to Kasane, Botswana, then transfer to the Chobe River, entering Namibia. Board the Zambezi Queen and enjoy game viewing.

Overnight: Zambezi Queen

Enjoy river-based safaris for game viewing.

Overnight: Z ambezi Queen

Transfer to Chobe National Park, then transfer to Zimbabwe and Victoria Falls.

Overnight: Victoria Falls Hotel

Meals:  B, L

Morning excursion to Victoria Falls, remainder of day at leisure.

Meals:  B, D

Fly to Cape Town. Afternoon discussion and introduction to Cape Town with David Bristow.

Overnight: V&A Waterfront Hotel

Discover the history of Robben Island and enjoy spectacular views from Table Mountain.

Visit Boulders Beach in Simonstown, explore Cape Point.

Meals : B, L, D

Travel the Stellenbosch Wine Route. Enjoy winetasting, special arranged lunch with wine pairings.

Meals : B, L

Fly to Skukusa Airport, transfer to Mala Mala Private Game Reserve. Afternoon game viewing.

Overnight: Mala Mala

Morning and afternoon game drives.

After morning game drive, transfer to Skukusa Airport. Depart for Johannesburg, then transfer to international flights.

Arrive in the U.S.

* On-tour flights are priced separately and are estimated at $1,250 per person (subject to change)

Accommodations

  • Two nights at Fairlawns Boutique Hotel
  • Three nights aboard Zambezi Queen
  • Two nights at Victoria Falls Hotel
  • Four nights at V&A Waterfront Hotel
  • Two nights at Mala Mala

What to Expect

This is a full, moderately strenuous program that is at times physically demanding and busy and requires you to be in good health and able to keep up with the group without assistance from tour staff. In order to make the most of what each locale has to offer, days will generally be long, with the daily program often beginning early in the morning and continuing into the early evening. We will cover rugged terrain and walks on daily excursions can range from one to two miles, often on uneven terrain in the warm sun, where handrails are not available. During the time in Johannesburg and Cape Town, travel will be by modern, air-conditioned motor coaches on paved roads. Land-based game drives will be by open-air safari vehicles, which can be dusty and bumpy, and that travelers will need to climb in and out of. The time spent at the game park includes early morning and late afternoon game drives, but there will be time midday to relax and enjoy a slower pace. Water-based game drives will be from small watercraft with chair-style seating; you will need to be able to get into and out of small watercraft with the assistance of tour staff and crew. Aboard the Zambezi Queen , there is no elevator, and you should feel comfortable walking on a rocking surface at times.

We will use commercial aircraft for the four on-tour flights: Johannesburg/Kasane, Victoria Falls/Cape Town, Cape Town/Skukuza, and Skukusa/Johannesburg.

Anyone with a serious medical condition or who has difficulty walking should not consider this trip. Please let us know if you have mobility issues that need special accommodation.

This promises to be a memorable journey, but as with all travel, a flexible attitude, a spirit of adventure, and a willingness to explore new areas will enhance your enjoyment of this program. You do not have to participate in all scheduled activities, except when traveling to the next destination. We are sure you will be pleased with the exciting educational program provided, but we want you to be aware of the pace and activity level.

Study Leader(s)

Mode of travel.

Zambezi Queen

Related Trips

For more information.

Please email [email protected] or call our office at 800-422-1636 or 617-496-0806.

36 Hours in Minneapolis

By Ingrid K. Williams May 2, 2024

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By Ingrid K. Williams Photographs by Jenn Ackerman

Minneapolis, with more than a dozen lakes and a sprawling urban park system, appeals not only to outdoorsy types but also to travelers seeking a robust cultural scene, top-notch restaurants and fun bars and breweries. In recent years, residents have struggled to recover from the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May of 2020 and the protests and rioting that followed. But visitors today will find a resilient city primed for discovery, from the trendy Warehouse District, where nightlife hotspots have taken root within industrial brick buildings, to the growing northeastern arts district. The city is at its most welcoming in the springtime, when nature blooms and there are community events like Art-a-Whirl , an annual festival of art , music , food and beer , held from May 17 to 19 across Northeast Minneapolis.

Recommendations

  • The Highpoint Center for Printmaking is a cultural hub with gallery spaces and a printmaking co-op for artists working in various media, from screen-printing to lithography.
  • Owamni won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in 2022 and has a singular commitment to using only ingredients native to North America.
  • Open Book , a three-story literary arts center, is a downtown destination for book lovers.
  • Marty’s Deli is a sunny shop in the Northeast with outstanding egg-and-cheese breakfast sandwiches.
  • Berlin , a polished new jazz club, hosts performers ranging from string trios to ambient bands.
  • Mixed Blood , a theater and social justice organization, stages plays in a former firehouse in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.
  • The Lake of the Isles , with leafy islands, marshy coves and a winding lakeside path, is a popular loop for a morning walk.
  • Bde Maka Ska is a larger oval lake with areas for fishing, swimming, biking and canoeing along a three-mile pedestrian path.
  • Bryant Lake Bowl , a classic eight-lane bowling alley, was originally built in the 1930s.
  • The Walker Art Center , the city’s preeminent arts institution, has an adjacent sculpture garden with a secluded bunkerlike installation by James Turrell.
  • Spoon and Stable is a bustling restaurant in the Warehouse District with a beautiful back-lit bar and lively see-and-be-seen atmosphere.
  • Meteor , a bar on an industrial block by the Mississippi River, serves excellent cocktails as well as boilermakers and hot dogs.
  • Laune Bread bakes hearty sourdough loaves, mandarin-marmalade Danish pastries, chocolatey babka knots and honey-sesame coconut macaroons.
  • Indeed Brewing Company is a popular brewery with delightfully unusual craft beers and an inviting taproom displaying whimsical artworks.
  • Pryes Brewing Company , an enormous brewery on the western bank of the river, has citrusy West Coast-style I.P.A.s and a lane for feather bowling (a game somewhat similar to bocce).
  • At Kim’s , a new restaurant from the chef Ann Kim, the Korean-American menu includes a tasty twist on mac and cheese.
  • Bronto Bar , down a mural-splashed alley, is a moody basement bar with fun cocktails.
  • Milkweed Editions is an independent publisher with a bookshop on the first floor of the Open Book arts center.
  • Minnesota Center for Book Arts has a shop filled with literary gifts, including quirky zines, letterpress cards and hand-sewn books.
  • The Weinstein Hammons Gallery is a well-regarded space specializing in contemporary photography.
  • Northern Clay Center displays wide-ranging ceramic artworks.
  • All My Relations Gallery showcases the work of Native American artists.
  • The Northrup King Building , a massive brick industrial complex in the Northeast, houses over 300 art studios, galleries and shops.
  • The Four Seasons Minneapolis , the city’s first five-star hotel, opened downtown in 2022 in a gleaming 36-story tower with 222 rooms and suites, indoor and outdoor pools, an al fresco bar and a restaurant run by the local chef Gavin Kaysen. Rooms start at $535.
  • The Hewing Hotel is a boutique property with a prime location in the historic Warehouse District, a neighborhood also known as the North Loop. In addition to 124 guest rooms, the handsome brick building also boasts a rooftop sauna and lounge, as well as a rustic Nordic-inspired restaurant. Rooms start at around $320 .
  • The Element Minneapolis Downtown is another solid option in the walkable North Loop area with 156 contemporary rooms, free daily breakfast, a panoramic roof deck and an attached parking garage. Rooms start at around $229 .
  • Look for a short-term rental in the Warehouse District, a safe downtown neighborhood with many modern apartments within walking distance of cafes, restaurants, bars and breweries.
  • There are two light rail lines, one of which connects the airport and downtown. But beyond that you’ll want a car . Parking is relatively easy; download the MPLS Parking app to pay where applicable. Those without wheels can take buses (fares from $2) and taxis . For now, there are also two ride-hailing options: Uber and Lyft ( but that may soon change ; both companies plan to exit the city on July 1, when a new ordinance requiring higher pay for drivers is expected to go into effect).

A person wearing overalls holds a colorful print in a workshop.

Highpoint Center for Printmaking

For a friendly introduction to the city’s engaging arts community, start in the southwestern Uptown neighborhood at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking . At this multipurpose cultural hub, staff gladly guide visitors through the gallery spaces and the printmaking co-op, an area with machinery used by local artists working in various media, including screen-printing and lithography. Don’t miss the small Highpoint Editions gallery showcasing fine artworks made on-site, including a series of haunting abstract screen-prints entitled “Corner of Lake and Minnehaha,” by the artist Julie Mehretu, who was inspired by a photograph taken at the Minneapolis intersection during the turmoil ignited by the killing of George Floyd in 2020.

Book an early table at Owamni , which earned the prestigious James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in 2022. The chef Sean Sherman, of the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe, has a singular commitment to using only ingredients native to North America, so expect no wheat flour, dairy or cane sugar. The menu changes seasonally and recently included an earthy tepary-bean dip with pepitas and wild-rice crackers ($12), smoked quahog clams ($40) and tender bison tacos with guajillo-chili salsa ($9). For a drink and something sweet, stroll up the street to Spoon and Stable , a bustling restaurant in the fashionable Warehouse District with a lively see-and-be-seen atmosphere. Grab a seat at the beautiful back-lit bar, which was remodeled earlier this year. A recent dessert stand-out was the almond cake with coconut and lime curd, pineapple sherbet and a sprinkle of ancho chile powder ($15).

Musicians, including a guitarist and keyboardist, perform on a stage with a curtain that appears red under the stage lights.

In addition to the Guthrie Theater , with its acclaimed repertory and modern geometric architecture, and First Avenue , a cavernous rock club where the hometown artist Prince performed in the 1984 film “Purple Rain,” Minneapolis is also home to several smaller stages worth seeking out. Across the street from Spoon and Stable, duck inside Berlin , a polished jazz club that opened in February with acts ranging from string trios to ambient bands (cover is usually $10 to $25). Or see if there’s a play running at Mixed Blood , a theater and social justice organization in a former firehouse in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. Admission is by donation, an effort to remove all barriers to attend performances, which recently included “The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington,” a satire by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames.

For cheap beer and a shot of whiskey, you’ll do fine at any of the many dive bars clustered in the Northeast, a historically working-class neighborhood. But there’s a more interesting option right across the Mississippi River. Meteor , which opened on an industrial block in late 2019, has the grungy patina of a bar that’s been around for decades, with exposed brick walls, checkerboard floors and a well-worn wooden bar. The friendly bartenders mix excellent cocktails — try the Secret Tiger, a spicy passion-fruit mezcal margarita ($14) — but they’ll also pour you a boilermaker (a shot and a beer; a tequila and Tecate is $9), to pair with a relish-topped hot dog ($6).

A flower bed with colorful tulips on a street on an overcast day. A person walks by, and a bare tree is visible in the background.

St. Anthony Main, a stretch of restaurants and a theater, is on a cobblestone street that runs parallel to the Mississippi River.

A person rides a bicycle on a paved path in a park during the daytime. They ride past trees that have pink blossoms.

The Grand Rounds Scenic Byway, near Lake Hiawatha

Many visitors start the morning with a stroll along the Mississippi River for views of the historic Stone Arch Bridge and the dueling Pillsbury’s Best and Gold Medal Flour signs, which are on opposite banks. Locals, however, prefer the lakes. Southwest of downtown, a string of lakes are encircled by walking and biking trails, a subset of the 51-mile citywide Grand Rounds Scenic Byway . Start at the picturesque Lake of the Isles , with its leafy islands, marshy coves and winding lakeside path. It’s an easy 2.7-mile loop that can be extended by continuing south to Bde Maka Ska , a larger oval lake with areas for fishing, swimming, biking and canoeing along the popular three-mile pedestrian path.

Skip the massive Mall of America, with its theme park, aquarium and hundreds of chain stores, in favor of a novel shopping experience at Open Book . At this three-story center of literary arts downtown, several book-related organizations are housed within the handsome brick building. Browse the titles at Milkweed Editions , an independent publisher with a bookshop on the first floor. Then cross the lobby to the Minnesota Center for Book Arts , a nonprofit dedicated to the art of book-making — letterpress printing, bookbinding, papermaking — with workshops, classes and a first-floor gallery space. In its shop , you’ll find beautiful marbled paper and letterpress cards, instructional guides to linocuts and printmaking, quirky zines and little hand-sewn books containing a single poem.

An assortment of pastries.

Laune Bread began as a micro-bakery, delivering bread around the city by bike, before opening an airy storefront southeast of downtown in 2022. In addition to hearty sourdough loaves made from Midwestern grains, the bakery also offers a tantalizing array of sweet and savory baked goods, which recently included caramelized-onion-and-gouda tarts ($5.25), mandarin-marmalade Danish pastries ($5.20) and veggie-and-Cheddar sandwiches on sesame-crusted simit, a ring-shaped bread ($9.75). Don’t miss the chocolatey babka knots ($4) or a handful of the honey-sesame coconut macaroons ($2 each).

It’s easy to gallery-hop around this city, where it’s rarely more than a five- or 10-minute drive to the next locale. Start at the Weinstein Hammons Gallery , which specializes in contemporary photography, then check out the Northern Clay Center , with its wide-ranging ceramic artworks. Continue to All My Relations Gallery , which showcases the work of Native American artists. Or instead, you could easily spend an hour exploring the Northrup King Building , a massive brick industrial complex in the Northeast that now houses more than 300 art studios, galleries and shops. Many open to the public on Saturday afternoons, and although the quality varies, it’s worth seeking out the first-floor Galleri 167 with colorful abstract paintings and wall-mounted sculptures, and the second-floor studio where the printmaker Beth Dorsey , a Queens-born Minneapolis transplant, makes intricate lattice prints.

People sit at wooden outdoor tables drinking beer during the daytime.

Pryes Brewing Company

Across the train tracks from the Northrup King Building, Indeed Brewing Company draws crowds with delightfully unusual craft beers and an inviting taproom filled with whimsical art. Start with a few smaller pours to sample the range on tap, like the tangy mango sour, the aromatic pistachio cream ale and the refreshing sea-salt-and-lemon lager (from $4 for six-ounce pours). If the bar is packed, head over to Pryes Brewing Company , an enormous brewery on the western bank of the river. Order a soft pretzel ($10) and a pint of Glamorama, a citrusy West Coast-style I.P.A. ($8), and try your hand at feather bowling, where players roll a wooden ball shaped like a cheese wheel down a sloped lane to land as close as possible to a vertical feather at the other end.

People sit at a large wooden table with drinks and plates of food in a busy, warmly lit restaurant.

The Uptown neighborhood has struggled to regain its pre-pandemic vibrancy , but you wouldn’t know it by stepping inside Kim’s . The chef Ann Kim opened this casual restaurant with a rollicking energy last November in the same space as her former Mexican-inflected restaurant. Now, her Korean-American background takes the spotlight: a smash burger on a soft hotteok bun ($12), Korean fried chicken wings with ranch dressing ($16) and the dish my table fought over: a twist on mac and cheese with chewy rice cakes smothered in a cheese sauce spiked with gochugaru, a red-pepper powder ($15). Ask for a booth by the window with space for all the sharing plates, including bindaetteok (mung-bean pancakes, $12) and soy-glazed beef-and-kimchi mandu dumplings ($12), along with a few banchan (sides).

The exterior of a brick building with a large red neon sign that says "Bryant-Lake Bowl." A smaller red neon sign says "Open."

After dinner, head down the mural-splashed alley behind Kim’s to Bronto Bar . At this moody basement bar, which opened last year, settle into one of the soft couches and peruse the menu of fun cocktails, the best of which is By the Sea, a neon-blue concoction of shochu, Curaçao, pineapple and bitter Americano liqueur with a shark gummy candy garnishing the delicate stemmed glass ($13). Or hop over to Bryant Lake Bowl , a classic eight-lane bowling alley nearby that was built in the 1930s (and recently appeared on the cover of the Black Keys’ new album ). Soak up the old-school vibes — no automatic scoring or video screens here — with a Hamm’s Tall Boy ($4.50) from the bar while rolling a few late-night games ($5 each; shoe rental $2).

A bridge crosses a river and leads to a city downtown. The bridge is lit up with glowing lights against a darkening sky.

The Third Avenue Bridge leading to downtown Minneapolis.

A cheese, egg and meat sandwich, cut in half and wrapped in paper. A paper cup filled with black coffee sits beside it.

Minneapolis may be famous for the Jucy Lucy — a burger with molten cheese inside two patties. But it ought to be known for the outstanding egg-and-cheese breakfast sandwich at Marty’s Deli , a sunny shop in the Northeast that the chef Martha Polacek opened in 2023. What sets this sandwich apart is the fluffy house-made focaccia flecked with rosemary and sea salt, which is filled with soft eggs, melted American cheese and a schmear of garlicky aioli ($9). Pro tip: Order the hashbrowns on the side ($5) and cram bits into the sandwich for extra crunch. It’s best enjoyed with a cup of coffee ($3) at a table flooded with light from the wall of windows. Before leaving, grab a scotcharoo (the Midwest’s salty-sweet, chocolate-and-butterscotch-topped twist on a Rice Krispies Treat, $3.50) for later.

There’s always something new to discover at the Walker Art Center , the city’s preeminent arts institution (admission, $18). The latest exhibition, “Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody,” which opened last weekend, includes over 100 works and archival material from the American pop artist (through Sept. 8). And in June, the center will open “This Must Be the Place,” an exhibition of works from its evolving collection, with paintings by Edward Hopper and Franz Marc alongside new acquisitions from contemporary artists like Jennifer Packer. Outside in the adjacent sculpture garden (free), which will host its first art fair May 11 to 12, most visitors beeline to the supersize “Spoonbridge and Cherry” sculpture. Instead, climb the hill to enter a hidden bunkerlike installation by James Turrell, and watch clouds float across a square of blue sky overhead.

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How to Watch Madonna’s ‘Celebration in Rio’ Concert Online for Free

The Queen of Pop finishes her 'Celebration' World Tour in Brazil with a one-night-only performance.

By Tim Chan

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How to Watch Madonna's 'Celebration in Rio' Concert Online for Free

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Madonna is ending her critically-acclaimed Celebration World Tour in Brazil this weekend, with a one-night-only concert dubbed the “ Celebration in Rio ” show.

Madonna in Rio: Behind the Scenes of the Negotiation for One of the Biggest Shows in History

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A subscription to ExpressVPN starts at just $6.67 a month . NordVPN is another solid VPN service that will let you watch Globoplay’s Madonna live feed from outside of Brazil. Sign up for NordVPN here .

You can also livestream Madonna’s “Celebration in Rio” concert online free through Sling TV. Sling is a live TV streaming service which offers Globo as part of its international plans. Sling currently has a 3-day free trial that you can use to access Globo to stream Madonna’s Rio concert online for free. Continue on with one of Sling’s monthly subscription plans or cancel before your free trial is up to avoid being charged.

Saturday’s show is sponsored by Itaú bank, and the concert will mark Madonna’s first show in Brazil since 2012. This is also a free show, and tickets will be made available to fans on a first-come first-serve basis on the day of the event.

This is the last stop on Madonna’s Celebration Tour , which is projected to rake in more than $225 million when all is said and done. The tour kicked off in London in October, before winding its way through Canada, the U.S. , and Mexico City .

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Tour Expedition Leader Lindblad Buys Adventure Travel Group

Jesse Chase-Lubitz , Skift

May 3rd, 2024 at 12:39 PM EDT

The new partnership is just the latest in Lindblad's recent acquisition spree.

Jesse Chase-Lubitz

Expedition travel leader Lindblad Expeditions announced this week the acquisition of Wineland-Thomson Adventures , an award-winning adventure travel group, through its subsidiary Natural Habitat Adventures.

The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal.

The move is meant to strengthen Lindblad’s presence in East Africa, particularly Tanzania, with the addition of Wineland-Thomson’s most prized possession – Thomson Safaris. Four-decade-old Thomson operates experiences across the Serengeti.

Wineland-Thomson’s portfolio also includes Gibb’s Farm, a lodge on the slopes of the Ngorongoro Crater in the Eastern Rift Valley of Northern Tanzania.

Shared Values Fuel Acquisition

Lindblad and Wineland-Thomson say they prioritize “sustainable” tourism practices and education. 

“With the addition of Wineland-Thomson and its esteemed Tanzania-based travel offerings, and world-class team members, we are not only expanding our footprint but are also creating more opportunities to inspire, educate, and preserve the wonders of our nature world,” said Sven-Olof Lindblad, founder and CEO of Lindblad Expeditions.

An Acquisition Spree

Lindblad acquired three other tour operators in April, including Off the Beaten Path, DuVine Cycle and Adventure Co, and Classic Journeys. This most recent acquisition aligns with Lindblad’s strategy of acquiring established adventure travel companies.

“The strategic acquisition of Wineland-Thomson will allow us to further expand our land offerings in and around East Africa,” said Ben Bressler, Founder and President of Natural Habitat Adventures. “And with the addition of Thomson Safaris … we will tap into the growth potential of small-group safaris in the beautiful Great Plains of Tanzania and beyond.”

Wineland-Thomson will continue providing stand-alone offerings and leverage Lindblad’s resources to accelerate growth and take advantage of demand trends, executives said

Growth at Lindblad

Lindblad also published its first-quarter earnings reports this week. Its total revenue increased 7% year-over-year to $153.6 million, and bookings were 4% ahead of the same period in 2023. 

While its EBITDA for land experiences was in line with the same period in 2023, the company said that increased tour revenues were offset by higher operating costs, including staff, investing in more departure options, and increased marketing.

Cruise and Tours Sector Stock Index Performance Year-to-Date

What am I looking at?  The performance of cruise and tours sector stocks within the ST200 . The index includes companies publicly traded across global markets including both cruise lines and tour operators.

The Skift Travel 200 (ST200)  combines the financial performance of nearly 200 travel companies worth more than a trillion dollars into a single number. See more cruise and tours sector financial performance .

Read the full methodology behind the Skift Travel 200.

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Tags: acquisitions , adventure , adventure tourism , adventure travel , africa , lindblad expeditions , mergers and acquisitions , safari , Travel Experiences

Photo credit: Sunset on a private safari run by Thomson Safaris. Source: Thomson Safaris

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