Viator Travel Blog

Happy 90th birthday to the Grand Canyon! Yes we’re a day late, hopefully the Grand Canyon isn’t offended that we forgot to call yesterday and sing it birthday greetings. No cupcakes or birthday cake either. Sheesh, what kind of birthday party is this? Let’s call it less of a party and more of an homage. After 90 years as an official National Park, the Grand Canyon continues to dazzle even the most jaded travelers.

My Mum turned 60 and wanted to go to the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show for her birthday, the trickiest part is getting tickets and everything else is easy. On the tickets front, just mail in your form early (I think I mailed it in October), download it at the Westminster Kennel Club website.

Beautiful tickets will be mailed back to you (seriously they are really pretty tickets) and you are set for two days of non-stop dog show action at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Here’s a recipe for adventure: a long weekend visit to family in Nakon Patom, Thailand. Naturally nobody has a map, but the general instructions seem to be, “head west to the big road, then head south; turn right just before you hit Bangkok“. Uh-huh. Great instructions to cover a 900km trip! So it’s 4am, off we set westerly into the darkness. Sure enough after an hour or two we hit “the big road,” and duly turn south. A few more hours, and the dreaded murmur begins to make its way around the car: “shortcut!”.

Barcelona means tapas. Well, it also means Gaudi, and Picasso and a whole lot more, but when evening comes and you’re starting to feel just a little peckish, tapas is the answer.

In Barcelona you are surrounded by tapas bars, and it can be a little daunting knowing how the whole process works, what the different tapas are, where the best bars can be found, etc. etc. So our Barcleone tapas walking tour is just the trick.

If you’ve ever wanted to run away from the world, a small Croatian island in winter is the place to do it. Mild weather, hours and hours of peace and quiet, with nothing to do but walk around the peninsula, look at the fishing boats, and read lots of books. There is something very romantic about living on a remote island. It’s like being swept into a time machine.

Everyone’s heard of Piccadilly Circus. It’s one of the most famous landmarks in London with its neon advertising signs, the statue of Eros, all those red double-decker buses swinging around. And it’s a great starting place to explore Piccadilly, the road which heads off down from the circus, towards Green Park across which crouches Buckingham Palace.

At the end of the last century Berlin was the world’s largest construction site – I suspect it still is. This city has been battered and bruised, divided but never conquered. It’s defiant, it’s determined, it’s open-minded. And it’s affordable. No wonder it’s full of artists.

After two years of living in Malaysia, I am consistently surprised how few tourists visit this beautiful country. Lying between the famous beaches of Thailand and the cosmopolitan splendor of Singapore, Malaysia falls into the “overlooked” and “maybe next time” categories for most travelers. And that’s OK. The fact that travelers tend to skip Malaysia makes the country that much more special.

Do you have kids? I have one. His name is Emmett. He’s nearly three years old. He loves penguins. And fish. And butterflies. And snakes. And jellyfish. And alligators. Most of the time we only get to experience these things in books. Which is why I was super-duper excited to check out the newly reopened California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco‘s Golden Gate Park.

No doubt you’ve been hearing about the tragic fires in the Australian state of Victoria. It’s been one of the worst years on record for fires, and already the death toll is approaching 200. Thousands of acres have burned, entire towns have been destroyed. It’s truly staggering to contemplate the destruction. We just had a call from one of our Australian wine-tour operators, based not far from Melbourne in the Yarra Valley wine region. They’re telling us, more than ever, the Yarra Valley and its award-winning wineries need our support.