September 2025. After Oscar came to London in June 2024 and I joined him there for a day, I’m now going to his hometown of Denver in Colorado. My second trip to the United States in 2025, after visiting my uncle and aunt in Wilmington, North Carolina. No, Denver is is not on foreign tourists’…
Tag: Pacific Ocean
66 countries criminalise gay sex
The number of countries where consensual same-sex sexual relations are illegal has risen to 66 following the adoption of a new anti-LGBTQ law in Niger in June 2026, marking a reversal after years of gradual global decriminalisation. Specialist on the subject is the blog 76 Crimes. When Colin Stewart started that project, the list contained…
REVIEW | The Railway Museum, Ōmiya, Saitama City, Saitama Prefecture
Autumn 2025. We – Sam and Danny, Michel and Wille, and Timothy – are travelling to Japan for a quite classic tour of the Land of the Rising Sun. We are flying separately as we used miles. On the planning: Tokyo, Kanazawa, Shirakawa, Osaka, and Expo 2025, Hiroshima, Himeji, Miyajima, Kyoto, Nara, Nagoya, Hakone, and…
TALLINN | Lennusadam Seaplane Harbour Estonian Maritime Museum
August 2025. We’re travelling to the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and more specifically their respective capitals Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. Are they interconnected by rail? Yes, but not in the most straightforward or userfriendly way possible. The Rail Baltica project should remedy this. Unsurprisingly though, this megaproject faces political and budgetary hurdles. It…
JAPAN | A visit to Ito on Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture
Autumn 2025. We – Sam and Danny, Michel and Wille, and Timothy – are travelling to Japan for a quite classic tour of the Land of the Rising Sun. We are flying separately as we used miles. On the planning: Tokyo, Kanazawa, Shirakawa, Osaka, and Expo 2025, Hiroshima, Himeji, Miyajima, Kyoto, Nara, Nagoya, Hakone, and…
WILMINGTON | USS North Carolina – Costco – Tidewater Oysters – Lewis Strawberry Nursery and Farm
Easter 2025. I’m visiting my uncle and aunt in Leland, North Carolina. It’s my first trip of two to the United States in 2025. I haven’t seen them live since February 2020 just before the first lockdown and I haven’t travelled to this area since 2019. I’m flying with SAS and Delta. The itinerary: Brussels…
Travel in 2024: Spain, France, USA, China, Mexico lose ground and Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, UAE to grow market share
In 2024, Google and consultancy giant Deloitte wrote the paper ‘NextGen Travellers and Destinations‘, studying the the before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, the paper was written before 2025, which has proven to be a year of turmoil the world hasn’t experienced in many decades.
UN WORLD TOURISM BAROMETER | International tourism recovers pre-pandemic levels in 2024
With 1.4 billion international tourist arrivals recorded globally, 2024 marked the recovery of international tourism from the worst crisis in the sector’s history. A majority of destinations welcomed more international tourists in 2024 than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic, while visitor spending also continued to grow strongly. For 2025, more growth is predicted.
REVIEW | The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana
June 2024. For our first visit to the United States of America since the COVID-19 pandemic, we flew to New Orleans via London Heathrow with British Airways. After two days of exploring NOLA, Amtrak‘s Crescent overnight train brought us from Louisiana to New York, where we we stayed one night only before flying home.
REVIEW | ‘Eurasia – A Landscape of Mutability’ exhibition at Antwerp’s M HKA modern arts museum
On Friday, the ‘Eurasia‘ exhibition opened at Antwerp‘s modern arts museum M HKA or Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst in Antwerpen. As museumPASSmusées holders, Thanh and I visited the exhibition on a beautiful autumn Saturday.