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Hello Reader,

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🧭 Where in the World?

January is that peculiar month when we are looking both forward and back. It’s supposedly a good time to review and reevaluate, maybe even learn some lessons.

So we checked back on our 2024 travels and found out that we were away from home more than a third of the year, some 130 nights. Tom and I visited 14 countries on four continents. That means we slept in a lot of hotel beds ... and motels and guest houses and lodges, plus a ship and under the stars.

Here are our annual hotel awards to recognize some of the stand-out facilities and experiences from our travels in 2024.

🧳 Our Latest Posts

Bratislava, Slovakia was one of a half dozen cities we visited for the very first time on our tour in late 2024. Only an hour from Vienna, Bratislava is a great vantage point for learning about the region’s history, and a fun city of museums, good food, and walks beside the Danube River. Read about the top things to do with three days in Bratislava.

🇩🇰 🇳🇴 Travel Past 50 Tours

We still have spots remaining for our custom tour of Scandinavia, September 18 – 29, 2025. We’re limiting the group to 14, so book soon. You’ll find all the details here through our partner, GoAheadTours. If you have any questions for them, just call 1-800-438-7672 and mention "Travel Past 50". Or contact us directly. There's a $100 discount, btw, if you sign up before January 31.

Our October tour to Ireland with Ireland in Focus is sold out, but if you are interested in it, please let us know and we’ll add you to the wait list.

🗞️ Travel News From Around the Web

• Icelandair and Southwest Airlines have announced a new partnership, so look for new routes serving you to Iceland and beyond to Europe, particularly from Baltimore, Denver and Nashville.
• No one is immune to the effects of the steadily growing presence of Artificial Intelligence in our lives, including Travel Past 50. Here’s a thorough article by our colleague Amanda Williams about how AI affects travel bloggers – and not just in short-circuiting our web traffic – but by sucking up energy and water resources. Good food for thought as you start sampling your travel search results via AI.
• We share this report of studies by the United Nations, NASA, and the European Commission on climate effects of tourism. It ain’t pretty. UN Tourism projects emission from within travel and tourism will rise by 25 percent by 2030. (It’s estimated that tourism contributes 8-9 percent of annual global emissions.) Of course, air travel accounts for the bulk of that, but we can pay attention to best practices in our accommodations and ground transportation, too. According to this report, Radisson has committed to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half by 2030.

💸 This Week's Best Deals in Travel

• Osprey makes our favorite travel and outdoor backpacks, and they have a 40 percent off sale on last year's packs going on now through January 27. Hurry up to get the one you want before they're gone.

📖 What We're Reading

Kris tore through Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner, a good new novel about the life of one sister (Amy) as she survives the chaos dropped on her family by the other sister (Ollie).

Tom is still sailing through The Wide Wide Sea, by Hampton Sides, a history of the last voyage of the great British explorer, Captain James Cook in the late 18th Century.

For our previous book recommendations, check out this list.

❝Travel Quote of the Week❞

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. — Søren Kierkegaard

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Happy travels,

Kris and Tom

​ Tom Bartel and Kristin Henning ​Travel Past 50​ ​ Connect with us: Facebook, Threads, Instagram, ​ Join our Facebook community.

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