The Best Places to Go in 2026, Part 1

And welcome to the Fromer Travel Show.

I'm your host, Pauline Fromer.

We have a very special show today.

In fact, it's going to be a trifecta of shows because it's that time of year again.

We being myself, fromers.com's editor in chief, Jason Cochran, and fromers.com's managing editor, Zach Thompson.

Hi, Zach.

Howdy.

Thanks for having me.

Hello, Jason.

Nice to see you.

It's nice to be seen.

Yes.

As always.

So every year this is a big, big project.

I felt like last year, because of my father's death, we kind of had a way that we wanted to frame the list, and we talked a lot about my father last year.

This year, Jason, you wrote the introduction.

What spurred you to write what you wrote?

Essentially, I think a lot of people I know are sort of spinning in their own minds.

You know, we're all sort of.

We're in a holding pattern of sorts, waiting for what's next in the narrative of history that we're living through.

And I think a lot of us could use a little bit of a mindset reboot or at least a different way of seeing things and seeing possibilities that could be coming to our lives.

So I wanted to approach travel, or at least my own travel the next short term in those terms.

What can I do and where can I go to sort of see things anew, see things differently, see more possibilities and potential, and unplug from whatever circular mindset that I might be going through at home?

And I know a lot of people feel the same way.

They need it.

They need a fresh perspective.

And that's how we approach this list this year, finding places and the best Places to go list that'll give you a fresh perspective because they found one, or it just introduce you to a place that you really ought to know about to give you the press perspective.

2026 is a big year for some places, but it's also a great year to escape to some places.

And these are all reasons we chose these places for our list.

Yeah, I love that.

I also liked some phrase you used.

Like I think you said travel gives you a way to renovate your perspective.

And what I love about that is it gives you a chance to see how life is lived in other places and to sort of connect with other people.

And.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we did what we always do.

We sent out a request to all of the Fromers contributors all over the world.

Zach, do you know how many suggestions we got from them?

Not off the top of my head.

We got a lot.

But it was a lot.

It was a lot.

There were a lot of different places that could made the list and sometimes we even smush two suggestions together into one like we did.

Well, you'll see which one we did that with.

But let's get to the list itself.

We're doing this in no particular order, just like the list itself, but we're going to talk about Asheville, North Carolina first.

Jason, why don't you lead us off?

You know, Asheville is interesting.

We put it on our list, I don't know, maybe about 10 years ago because it's an up and coming destination.

There's a lot of interesting people there doing interesting things.

There's a community vibe and lots of music and beer and books and you know, it's just a really cool place to be in the mountains of western North Carolina.

And then a year ago, Hurricane Helene stomped through there and just it drenched the entire mountain area to such a degree that many low lying areas were washed away, including some roads, including entire business districts.

And it forced out some of the people who work in the service industry there.

They've spent about a year not just rebuilding, but I think coming together, sort of deciding, no, we want to stay here.

This is a great city and we know what makes it a great city and we're going to prove it by amplifying those things even more.

And this was a year of rebuilding.

And there are also some new things that are going to be going on there like the new very, very famous Biltmore estate, which is this grand multi room mansion that actually is the site of one of my biggest regrets.

I was in Asheville in my early 20s and it was expensive to go to the Biltmore estate.

And so I didn't go.

And to this day I've regretted that.

You know, I think you should always spend on seeing things.

Yeah.

The Biltmore Things was built by the Vanderbilt family.

It's an incredible Gilded age mansion if you're into gilded age type stuff.

Yeah.

But they've been strugg lately as you, as you suggested.

You know, the prices are high and in the summertime they would have to close in the middle of the afternoon simply because for a lack of visitors or staff.

But they're gearing back up.

They're put up their tree, I think on the Today show this past week.

And one of those new ways is they're doing what looks like to be a very interesting and very high tech light show on the front of the mansion, which is more like a movie on the front of the mansion because it isn't just being lit up in different ways.

They're actually projecting different images of people from the history of the mansion.

It's all, you know, they created this show to work with the dimensions of the mansion and it really looks pretty amazing.

Yeah.

And they incorporate the gardens too.

I think somehow the lights, because the gardens are very elaborate and ornate, you know, because it's this gigantic.

I think it's the biggest residential home ever built in the United States.

Is that true?

Something like that.

Anyway, so the gardens are very elaborate and you don't get to see them at night usually.

But they have ways to light them up with the projection mapping that's very popular.

There was that Van Gogh show that uses that, but that was indoors.

It looks very cool.

Yeah, I'll say that.

There's a lot more than just the Biltmore in Asheville.

I mean Biltmore Village, which was the low lying area that was originally erected for the service people who run the mansion or back when it was a mansion inhabited mansion, a lot of that was swept away or flooded by when the Swannanoa went way, way high during Hurricane Helene, as was the city, the River Arts District, which was the river district near downtown.

But it's low lying and that's where a lot of artists and antiquers and craftspeople and you know, beer halls had set themselves up.

And a lot of them were either severely damaged or destroyed.

But a lot of that is coming back Very, very quickly.

These low lying areas, of course, are always going to be where the major floods happen, but they're now rebuilding with much more, being much more, much more careful now realizing that, oh, no, floods are going to happen very often in these areas.

But one of the things that just happened in the last few weeks is a new place in.

It's called.

How do I describe this place?

It's called Marquis and it's this giant building where lots of craftsmen and people who trade and people who make art each have their stall.

So they don't have to pay for their own building, but they all can join together, dozens of them under one roof.

And it's sort of like a little party atmosphere in this place.

It's called Marquee and it's just reopened.

And it's one of the things that's proving that, no, the people and the artists who make Asheville as weird and as fun as it is decided they aren't leaving.

They're going to stay in town, they're going to rebuild and they're going to make it even weirder and bigger and bolder.

And I think we shouldn't forget that.

Part of the appeal of Asheville is, wow, what a setting.

I mean, you are in the midst of the mountains.

You're right off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

There's incredible climbing, there's horseback riding, there's river rafting if you want to get outdoors.

It is a superb gateway for that kind of activity too.

Yeah, and they're rebuilding a few of the trails, they're rebuilding pieces of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

But by and large, most of the roadways and riverways that had been blocked or impassable because of the land have all been repaired.

So if you're worried about that, if you're worried that they're not ready for you, that's not the case.

They're back at business.

Okay, so Asheville is back, which is great news.

And now we have a newer attraction which is called Patagonia Azul.

Zach, tell us about that.

Yeah, so this is Patagonia Azul.

It's in Argentina.

Azul means blue in Spanish, as you remember from elementary school.

And that's relevant here because I think when you think of Patagonia, at least I usually think of desert mountain ranges, maybe the Moreno Glacier, those arid grasslands they've got.

But this is very azul.

This is on the coast area.

So it's southeastern Argentina along the Atlantic Ocean.

And so it's a coastal and a marine area.

And just recently a chunk of it about the size of Yosemite National Park.

So it's gigantic.

Has been made a nature reserve called Patagonia Azul Provincial Park.

So it's a connection of like 60 islands, bays, coves.

And what really makes it stand out is it's just teeming with biodiversity, especially animals.

So some people have called this the Galapagos of Argentina, kind of an equivalent to the Galapagos over on the other side of South America.

So you know, there's whales, dolphins, a huge colony of sea lions, penguins, everybody loves penguins.

And a lot of those unique species that are only there.

There's an endangered duck that's down there, this type of animal, it's called a mara.

It looks like a rabbit mixed with a capybara.

There's a ruddy headed goose.

They all have great names, you know, so really it's just incredible wildlife.

While you're there you can go scuba diving and kelp forests, you can go hiking, you can go surfing in the bays.

There's a trail that connects them you can go mountain biking on that connects the little villages around there.

And it's very, at this point it's still very pretty much undeveloped.

I think there's only two eco lodges it's not hard to get to.

There's a city that is known for oil fossil fuel production called Comodoro Rivadavia and that's where you fly in.

So at this point it's still very remote and just unique.

And one of the cool things is pristine.

The people who set aside Patagonia Azul Provincial park are now going to be dedicating themselves to helping develop it and run it right.

So there's a lot of energy behind this new natural area for people to come visit.

So you're going to find a lot more support for that area than you ever would have before.

Yeah, that's a group called Rewilding Argentina and they're a nonprofit.

They buy land and then donate it to governments for provincial parks, national parks, nature reserves, that sort of stuff.

So it's a way to for.

And they're really dedicated to low impact eco tourism.

It's pretty amazing that a park that size would be new, that there was enough land that could be bought up.

Do you know, did they have to tear down any structures to rewild it or was it, was it pretty pristine nature?

It was pretty pristine to begin with, but now it's protected, you know, and I don't know if you've ever been.

You know, big chunks of southern Argentina are very uninhabited there.

There's not a lot of development there, no matter where you go.

So there weren't.

Yeah, a lot of stuff to tear down anyway.

Interesting.

All right, so Patagonia, Azul, go now.

You can still get all the penguins to yourself.

We have a great photo that starts that section in the slideshow of a person just kind of sitting on the ground and a penguin coming up to her to look at her in the face, as curious about her as she is about the penguin.

It's a darling photo.

Leave it to penguins to steal the show.

Yeah.

So the next one I wrote up and I had so much fun researching this place.

It's called Ulu O U L U.

It's in Finland.

And the reason we're talking about it is the reason why we talk about usually one place a year.

This is a program that's been going on since the late 80s in which a different region or city gets this designation.

They know about five or six years before their year that they will be the capital of culture on that year, and so they often remake themselves.

The very first capital of culture was Athens.

But since then, or since the 90s, they've really gone out of their way to pick what I would call secondary cities.

Not the Paris's, not the Romes, not the Athens, but places that tourists often miss.

And so during that year they get transformed by artists of all types.

Artists who know years in advance that they'll be able to set up their artworks in town squares or against buildings or in the nearby nature areas.

Artists who create operas and ballets and different orchestral works around the theme that each destination gives.

And this year it is Ulu, which sounds like a hip and happening place.

I gotta say, they were best known up to this point for being the place where the World Air Guitar Championships take place every year.

And they're also known, I just learned today, for having these floating saunas.

I can't think of anything more Scandinavian.

They've got these boats that are actually saunas.

You get into them and you float down the river.

But this year there will be the capital of culture.

And it looks like all of Finland is gathering together to make sure it really works out for ulu.

So the majority art museum in the capital is loaning their masterpieces to Ulu.

You'll be able to see those there.

Photographiska, which is this multinational chain of photography museums, is going to have A special exhibit there.

They have something called the Arctic Food Lab, which actually happens every year, not just this year, but it's this foodie experience where you learn about the challenges of growing and cultivating and hunting and getting food in the Arctic region.

I would say Ulu is about 60 miles south of the Arctic.

Wait, no, that's not called the Arctic.

60 miles.

The Arctic Circle.

The Arctic Circle.

I knew I was missing a word.

60 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

So you go to this food lab, you taste new foods, you meet chefs, you visit farms.

They're also going to have an extraordinary light show.

It's just there's going to be so much happening.

I was going to say that when you brought up the Arctic Circle.

There, it's predicted to have very good conditions for seeing the northern lights.

Not just in Finland, but of course, if you want to go see the northern lights, go to this place in Finland where all these other amazing things are happening to up your chances of seeing the northern lights in the most interesting place possible.

Probably won't be able to go during the air guitar championships.

Those are in August, but you can always go twice.

Yes, absolutely.

And so you have all this art happening in the city.

It's a historic city.

There's going to be lots to see and do in that urban setting.

But then just outside the city you have deep old growth forests, you have the sea, which actually gets so frozen that far north that people use fat tire bikes and go on biking expeditions over the frozen sea.

There's ice fishing, there's snowshoeing, there's cross country skiing, there's moose safaris, they call them, so you can get deep into nature.

And another thing I loved about Ulu is it is one of the places in Finland that's a major capital for, for the Sami people.

We don't think of Europe as having indigenous people, but they do in Ulu.

About a thousand Saamis live there.

And so a lot of the art you're going to see will be about their culture.

There's going to be an opera, there's going to be different visual art exhibits.

So it just sounds quirky, it sounds fun.

And the Finns are an interesting people.

They are one of the most well read people on earth.

Maybe because it's so dark for so long every winter, but if you go in the summer, you can play golf at midnight.

They have three championship golf courses.

But the Finns are very, very well read, very intellectual, very into nature, very tough in a certain way, because you have to remember, Finland was kind of passed back and forth between Russia and Sweden for centuries.

Although they stood up to the Soviet Union, they were the country on the border of the, of the Soviet Union to keep their independence.

So I think any reason to go to Finland is a good one.

And especially this year, I think it should be really, really fun.

Yeah, those Nordic folks know how to have a good time, too.

I was going to say that, but I didn't think it.

I just want to make sure it wasn't impolitic to say that.

But, yeah, they know how to party, those Finns.

The nights go on for months and months.

Well, I guess when it's dark, that's.

That's what you do.

All right, Jason.

Kruger national park in South Africa.

Why are we shining a spotlight on that this year?

All right, well, let me frame this by explaining what.

When people think of safaris, they're often thinking of game reserves.

You know, there's only a few places where you can take a safari.

Those are in national parks that nobody controls, where you just wander around looking for animals.

A lot of the things that are sold, especially to Americans and Canadians, are actually trips to game reserves, which are private areas, very large private areas that have stopped been stocked with wildlife often, not always, but, you know, sometimes they migrate in and out.

But it's a much more controlled luxury experience to be at a game reserve.

Now, why Kruger national park is important.

It is, like I say, a national park.

So it is a natural environment.

It is not stocked for the pleasure of luxury tourists.

And there are affordable places to spend the night.

And it's the hundredth anniversary of its establishment as a national park in South Africa.

And when I say it's cheap, this is what shocks people.

I tell people they can have a safari for prices that are pretty much under a hundred dollars a night.

You can rent a house in one of the many little areas there are.

This whole place is about the size of Connecticut.

And so you drive very slowly from point to point and you book.

I'll stay at this place one night, in this place, another night.

And as long as you're inside by, let's say, dusk, when they electrify the fence around the camp you're in, you can roam by yourself in a rental car on the paved roads of Kruger national park, looking for the big five Looking for all the animals you want.

No one with you.

You can go with a guide, too, if you want to do that.

But you can do it for, you know, very little.

I think it's maybe 30 bucks to get your car in the front gate.

You can stay overnight for less than 100, and you can drive the car there from Johannesburg airport, which is about three hours west.

So it's all incredibly doable on a budget, as long as you can get yourself to Johannesburg.

The prices really are not high.

And I think for that reason, we wanted to make sure people knew about it on its 100th anniversary, because it's a very important and cheap way for anyone to go see, go do that safari experience.

Yeah.

And let's make the direct comparison.

You say $100 a night.

It's not unusual to pay $4,000 a night.

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah.

When you see them listed online on from tour operators, it's always extremely expensive safaris.

So that is.

Most people think it's something they'll never be able to do.

It's also something that people of many different body types or limitations can do.

And this is important because some people can't tolerate being in a jeep on really bumpy, unpaved track for six hours a day looking for animals.

And that's what a lot of these game reserves require you to do.

You're going to be on tarmac, driving along.

As long as you stay in your car, you're perfectly safe because the animals know the shape of the car.

If you got out of the car, that would confuse them.

They'd probably want to attack because they don't know what that is, but they know what a rental car is, so they don't go after you.

It sounds wild.

Well, it is wild, but it sounds unbelievable.

But that's the way it can work.

You can be among the elephants and the buffalo and see lions and be perfectly safe and then drive away.

It's quite a remarkable place to be.

I remember when I did a safari, which I didn't do at Kruger.

I did an expensive one in Tanzania.

Our guide knew where to find the animals, and so that was part of the experience.

You're driving around.

How do you know where you're going to see a lion or zebras or elephants?

Well, the nice thing about Cougar, it is a national park.

So there are rangers everywhere and they're reporting where they're seeing the animals move.

So where you might get up for breakfast, go out of your little mud hut, that You've rented for the night, which is perfectly nice, by the way.

That's just made of mud, ultimately.

And you go to breakfast and there'll be a big board that said, oh, wildebeests have been spotted in this area yesterday afternoon because they don't move that fast.

You go near that area, you should be able to find them.

So there's a whole network of people who are reporting where the animals are at all times.

Now, in a game reserve, you're usually guaranteed to see the big five.

You know, you might have to do a lot of the legwork yourself in Kruger, but you've got a lot of space to do it in, so that's fine.

And that brings back some of the adventure of it anyway, to get to do some of it yourself instead of just being ferried around.

It's the.

But it's a detective work.

You become good at it.

By the end, I was there, I think, for maybe five days.

And by the end of the fifth day, I could spot, you know, the tiniest thing moving in the.

In the tiniest, tightest little bushes.

My eyesight became much more clear when I became used to looking for things on my own.

I find Where's Waldo?

In the heartbeat.

What all did you see?

I saw the Big five.

No, I didn't see.

I didn't see a leopard, but I saw the rest of the big five and the Cape.

The buffalo was a big.

You have to be careful.

They're wild animals.

So if you wander into a herd of buffalo, they're Cape buffalo is what they're called there.

You sit quietly in your car until they pass and hope they're gone by the time you need back at your camp.

But the nice thing is the camps are spread from up the top of Kruger all the way down.

And by the way, when you're at not in Kruger, there's interesting places nearby as well.

There's Johannesburg.

There's the country of Eswatini, one of the smallest countries in the world, just south of there.

It was until recently it was known as Swaziland.

You're right up against the border of Mozambique.

So if you wanted to make interesting tweaks to your vacation, there's other places where you can go from there, but you'll be a little bit more outside the net of the comfort and tarmac if you do that.

And you can see more of South Africa, which I know is one of your favorite countries, right, Jason?

Fascinating place.

It's a fascinating place, yeah.

All right, so Kruger national park is doable.

It's affordable.

Go.

We're also picking Albuquerque this year for somewhat of a sad reason.

In April, more than 3,000 Native American and indigenous dancers from 800 U.S. and Canadian tribes are going to gather for the 43rd, what is called the Gathering of Nations.

This is a massive powwow where people come in buckskin and headdresses and elaborate shawls.

They go to a vast arena where people perform.

There are drum groups, there are dancers.

And this year, for somewhat of a mysterious reason, the folks who run this have announced it is going to be the last Gathering of Nations.

I mean, this was a major, major event.

They didn't actually say why they are canceling.

There has been some whispering that in the past some of the performers got paid late or not paid at all, or that there were problems with the arena.

We don't quite know why.

But if you want to see this extraordinary event, make your way to Albuquerque this year, which is also a great place to see other indigenous sites.

So for example, there's the Albuquerque has a wonderful Indian Pueblo cultural center where they talk about 19 different indigenous communities.

You can go 60 miles west to Acoma Pueblo, which is probably better known as Sky City.

It's this adobe village that was founded in the 13th century and has been a place people live ever since then at the top of a sheer faced mesa.

It's the oldest continually inhabited community in North Americ.

So that's a great place to go.

And you know, for years Albuquerque has been a place that people have flown into to go to other parts of New Mexico.

And that's a shame because, yeah, it's somewhat of a hodgepodge.

It's not as picturesque as say, Santa Fe or Taos, you know.

Yeah, it has some adobe houses, it has some Art deco, some Pueblo Revival, and a hell of a lot of ugly strip malls.

I mean, this is the place you saw if you ever watched Breaking Bad.

But it also has great museums.

It has an offshoot of the Smithsonian, the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, which is one of the country's best science museums.

It's got the Albuquerque Museum, which is a top flight history museum.

And actually Route 66 goes right through the city.

And one of the best preserved sections of it is in Albuquerque.

Well, actually it's within the city's footprint, but it's not in the center.

There's Petroglyph national monument in Boca Negra Canyon, which has 20,000 petroglyphs.

And as well, Albuquerque has gotten known for its hot air balloon festivals.

It's an up and coming destination that a lot of people skip and they really shouldn't.

So Albuquerque makes our list this year.

I'm so not too far from Santa Fe, too.

If you want to make a circle of things in New Mexico and see a lot of things, yeah, you can.

Do Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos pretty easily.

In a good road trip, they just.

Don'T throw a pizza onto those people's roofs.

Walter White, there's a scene in Breaking Bad where he throws a pizza on his roof and a lot of people would go to that house and throw a pizza on the roof, but people actually live there, so don't do that.

I would never waste pizza.

I know.

What a.

That's a.

Seems like a crying shame.

So that actually happens.

People go to that specific house and throw.

When the show was.

I think it stopped.

They put the kibosh on it.

But yeah, people were doing that.

Oh, that's hilarious.

Oh, my goodness.

Wow.

All right, well, we are going to stop this podcast because we have many more places to cover, but we're going to cover them next week and the week after.

You will find much to dream over in our list.

So thank you so much, Jason and Zach.

Yeah, my pleasure.

And that is it for this week's show.

And if you are traveling, may I wish you a hearty bon voyage?

Sour candy on table.

Lazy afternoons in your sweatpants watching cable?

Well, it feels so far away?

All the channels seem the same.

Trying to remember all the songs we like to play?

Cause those lazy afternoons come so frequently these days?

Oh, it's been so long And I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the boathouse on the lake?

Oh, but I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it takes?

I can't get you off of my mind?

Looking out the window where we spend so much of our time?

Cause I miss the way it felt?

But I guess you can't control those damn cards with Babe.

I know the both of us are happy when we're free?

But would it be so hard to find your freedom here with me?

Oh, it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you a never coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the boat house on the lake But I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it take.

I.

Hate the way it tastes But I love it all the same.