The Best Places to Go in 2026, Part 2

You are listening to the Fromers Travel Show.

To help me do that, I have the Fromers dream team.

I have Zach Thompson, who is the managing editor of fromers.com hello, Zach.

Hello.

Thanks for having me.

And I have Jason Cochran, who is our intrepid editor inchief@fromers.com.

hey, Jason, what do you know?

Hey, let's talk best places.

Let's talk best places.

Okay, I'm going to start.

Let me just recap last week.

If you missed it, you should listen.

But we talked about Asheville, Patagonia, Azul, which is a new massive park in Argentina that sounds spectacular.

Ulu Finland, Kruger national park in South Africa, and Albuquerque.

This week we're going to start with the only country on the list.

And we decided to feature this entire damn country because we wanted to reframe the way people go to Peru in recent years.

I mean, probably in the last 20 years when people have gone to Peru, they've gone for one reason and one reason alone, and that is to see the iconic city, ancient city of Machu Picchu.

But that has meant that it's just become over loved and a target, frankly, for anybody who's angry with the government there.

There have been a number of actions in Peru that shut down the tourist train that goes to the gateway to Machu Picchu.

And so people have been stranded there.

Folks have had to change their itineraries at the last minute.

It's been kind of a mess.

And we've seen these actions many times over the last couple of years.

But the truth is Peru is much more than just Machu Picchu.

There is so much to see and do there, as our author Heather Jasper, who actually has lived in Peru for many years, told us when she pitched this idea.

So if you go to see these magnificent ruins, you will be one of the first non archaeologists to see that spectacular ancient city.

Even more spectacular, there's a place called Kuelap, which is a fortified citadel.

And you actually have to take, you have to take a gondola to get up to it, which Heather says beats the train that you take to Machu Picchu for thrills.

It's really, really fun to arrive via gondola.

This city is about from 500 A.D. so a little bit Newer, but it's in a cloud forest.

It's known for bird watching because there is a really aptly named bird called the Marvelous Spatula Tail hummingbird.

I hope I'm pronouncing that right.

I can picture a spatula tailed bird.

Yeah.

It's very evocative.

Right.

And this is the only place to see it.

Or you can go to a place like Ayacucho, which is a colonial city, where you can go to contemporary artists studios, artists and artisans, and get a taste of contemporary Peruvian culture that way.

And go to these extraordinary ruins left by the Wari people who were here from about 500 to 900 AD.

There's also religious pilgrimages you can make.

Believe it or not, you can see where Pope Leo came of age as a church leader.

It's a place called Chiclayo.

And you can see what his life is like.

There's great beaches to visit in Peru and a lot of people go to try an ancient form of surfing.

It was this reed built craft called Caballito de Totoro.

And you can actually still surf the way the ancient Peruvians did.

And for those who like mysteries, there are what is called the Nazca Lines, which are these very big lines in different patterns that nobody knows who put them there as well.

60% of Peru is a rainforest with really extraordinary biodiversity, with eco lodges and river cruise tours where you can see pink dolphins, sloths, 52 species of monkeys and thousands of of different types of birds.

And of course there's Lima, which has become one of the top foodie destinations in the world, which has extraordinary shopping and nightlife and a very, very sophisticated contemporary scene.

So we put in Peru as a country just to try and refocus people.

Too many people are just going for Machu Picchu and that's become problematic.

As I said at the beginning in recent, it's time to start exploring the rest of this electric country.

I'm still stuck on the fact that there's a gondola to this ruin.

Yeah, I mean, I had to take 26 miles of Incan stone steps to get to Machu Picchu.

I think a gondola would be preferable.

So it sounds like people who aren't up for doing a hike to Machu Picchu might be able to consider these places and they might not have Been able to before.

Although you don't have to hike to Machu Picchu.

Not everybody.

It's either you hike there or you take the train road combo.

That is.

Is problematic politically sometimes.

Right, right.

What did you think of the rest of Peru?

Did you see other places as well, Jason, when you were there?

I was.

Yeah, sure.

It's a.

It's.

I want to see more of it because as you were just hinting in what you were talking about, it's incredibly diverse.

There's a lot going on.

And, you know, we talk about the rainforest, but there's a lot of coastal traditions, too.

There's just.

It's a groovy place.

And I think the foodies discovered it especially about 10 years ago, 15 years ago in Lima.

But the rest of the country is still sort of, you know, ripe for discovery by Americans.

I think they invented ceviche in Lima, didn't they?

And the Pisco Sour.

There is a great.

A lot of great food options in Lima, for sure.

Gosh, I love ceviche.

I wonder if they invented ceviche.

I don't know about that.

Well, they say they did.

They certainly do it well.

They certainly.

Yeah, definitely.

All right.

Our next destination is in Zach's home state of Arkansas.

I am delighted.

We have.

We picked one from Arkansas, my home state.

I don't think we've done an Arkansas one.

But the selection is Hot Springs, which is in the middle of the state.

It's about an hour's drive west of Little Rock.

I grew up in the northwest corner.

We thought of, like, Hot Springs as, like, the Sodom and Gomorrah.

Cause it's the resort area and it has a lot of, like, gangster history.

Like, Al Capone used to vacation there.

There's a horse racing place.

Bill Clinton spent his childhood there.

So it's this great resort.

Not in Hope, I thought.

He spent his childhood.

He was from Hope.

But then when he was a young.

A young child, like, I think a young teenager, he went to Hot Springs.

Like, that's where he went to high school, I believe, when his mother married Roger Clinton.

Anyway.

But the reason why Hot Springs, it takes its name from the thermal feature.

It's Arkansas's only national park, Hot Springs National Park.

And it's mostly noteworthy for this famous thing called Bathhouse Row.

And it's a string of historic bath houses you can visit for a Schwitz and for an Asok and needle showers, which are.

Those.

Are those things where the shower.

The water comes at you from a whole bunch of different directions, you know, and little jets.

You can do those things where you sit in a little cabinet and just your head pokes out, you know, like an old timey.

So if you want to do like old timey spa services, you can do that.

It's the only national park that has a brewery on on park grounds.

They make a great IPA and a stout.

And also it's in the Ouachita Mountains.

There's great hiking.

I worked on a story once on the most pet friendly national parks and it's the only one of the few where every single.

You can take a dog on every single hiking trail.

So it's very dog friendly, hike friendly.

There's a great, there's Garvan Woodland Gardens nearby, which has this beautiful timber and glass chapel that our writer Sarah Sekuloff said looked like came from Lord of the Rings.

There's a gangster museum.

There's just a lot of history, a lot of quirky history, colorful past, a lot of fun stuff to do.

And Arkansas is just a beautiful, perennially underrated state, in my opinion.

I'm delighted it's on the, on our list this year.

My mother will be thrilled.

Yes.

It's one of the three states I've never been to.

Are you serious?

I get that a lot.

A lot of people are always like, I've been to every state but Arkansas.

And sometimes people just go to check it off a list, you know, to have all 50.

And it's an outrage, really.

But I was stunned because I was the one who picked most of the photos in, in the article and I was stunned by how beautiful a city it is.

I mean, the nature areas are spectacular.

We actually start the entire article with a picture of a man hiking with his dog.

Just looks, it looks idyllic.

It looks like, I don't know, Colorado or Montana or one of those places that are known for their natural beauty.

I had no idea.

Well, you know, the nickname is the natural state.

They don't call it that for nothing.

Whenever I'm in other countries, I'll often be like, well, this is almost as pretty as Arkansas.

And I'll be in Ireland and everyone's like, oh, shut up.

So have you ever been to the running of the tubs?

I think that's what it's called.

No, but I wasn't that familiar with that event.

But I think it sounds like a lot of fun.

I guess what they do is teams decorate these bathtubs and they're actually filled with water.

They, I Don't know if they have a theme every year or what, but teams decorate them elaborately.

They're filled with water, and then they run them down one of the central avenues in town as one of those, like, quirky traditions in town.

It looks like a lot of fun.

Yeah.

I wonder who first thought of that.

I know.

So it seems like a tub got out of.

Probably got out of hand one day and then it became an event.

How does a tub get out of hand?

Good question.

I don't know where that came from.

All right, so that is the next one, Hot Springs, Arkansas.

And then we have a place in Greece that I'd never heard of before called Costa Navarino.

Jason, take us there.

Yeah.

This is a part of Greece that a lot of people don't go to.

I think people are more used to the islands south and southeast of Athens.

This is west of Athens and it's considered part of the mainland.

It's actually around the city of Messinina and it's an area of the Peloponnese.

So it's sort of like a big landmass, maybe about a four hour drive west of Athens.

But you can get there directly on flights from Europe or you can also take a ferry not too far away from the east coast of Italy.

So there's a lot of ways to get there.

And I think because it's sort of been off of the main up until now, it hasn't been a place where a ton of hotels have been built, but that's being changed very quickly.

And a lot of luxury resort developments are starting to go in.

Restaurants and other facilities are all sort of starting to appear along this area.

Because Christopher Nolan, whose movies always get a lot of attention, he did Oppenheimer, he just shot a movie called the Odyssey there with Matt Damon and Zendaya.

So I think there are.

People are going to be like wondering, where was that shot?

And it's.

It is, in fact, it's around the Costa Navarino area.

So I reckon we recommend that for people because, you know, people don't always want to go to the Greek islands.

They're a lot of work.

This looks like a little bit easier.

You can just take plane, plane and don't have to get on a ferry to be there.

And you can giant resort experience that you can't always get in lots of other parts of Greece which are much more boutique now there are boutique hotels Here that are even less than $100.

If you want that kind of experience.

I know a lot of people do.

This is a new part of Greece to look at that's not yet overrun with visitors.

You'll be among the first to get in on it.

And like the Greek islands that you were just discussing, you look out at this perfect cerulean sea, and there are craggy mountains and olive trees and all of the beauty that you find in other parts of Greece.

But less tourists, less development.

And I gotta ask.

So is Zendaya playing Penelope and Matt Damon?

Is he Odysseus?

No, Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer.

Slip there.

Nolan is famous for not releasing his scripts, even to his other actors in the show.

So I'm not sure we exactly know what this is going to be and who's going to be playing what.

But it's based on the Odyssey.

I'm assuming we must.

We can assume this, but who knows?

But anyway, the region has lots of other stuff to offer.

Zendaya will not be there.

You know, hiking and waterfalls and rock climbing and mountain biking and ruins and all the things you expect from Greece without the traffic, which people don't expect from Greece, but often encounter anyway.

Interesting.

So there are ruins there.

I didn't see photos of those.

Interesting.

Do you know what people they're from or what era?

No.

The Mycenaean period, like Pylos.

The town of Pylos is nearby and it has Nestor, the castles of Nestor, or I don't know whose people that is.

I remember Nestor from the Odyssey or actually from the Iliad.

Isn't he the old guy who gives the speech that cheers everybody up right before the big battle?

One of the many big battles.

It's been a while.

Yeah, I actually read that anyway.

I read it a couple of times in high school and college for no good reason.

All right, well, since Zach is talking, we're going to keep going with Zach.

And Zach, you are taking us to Jasper in Canada, in Alberta.

And this.

I thought this was a really interesting reason why we chose it this year.

Yeah.

The pitch was kind of like, first of all, much of the pristine landscape that the place is known for, like the, you know, shockingly blue lakes.

Banff has a lot of those too, which is also in Alberta.

But these shockingly blue lakes, the incredible forested mountains and the Rockies, they're pretty much what you know of it.

The glaciers remain unharmed from the fire.

But also Parks Canada, which runs national parks in Canada, and other tour operators nearby seize this opportunity to sort of teach people about fire ecology and sort of press home to tourists the nature's resilience and sense of renewal and our kind of our responsibility to protect it.

So there are these new tours and programming that shows off stuff like how wildlife adjust to wildfires and how the new flora, new plant life has emerged.

And it gives you a chance to kind of see these areas as no one alive has seen them before because of the.

The damage and as they continue to recover.

And it gives a chance to sort of see that evolution and ongoing recovery as Jasper continues to make a comeback.

And also, there's a pretty exciting thing in the Rockies.

The Rocky Mountaineer Train company.

Everybody knows, you know, it's famous for the sightseeing trains.

Most of Rocky Mountaineer routes end up in British Columbia and Vancouver, but Vancouver is hosting one of the North American cities hosting the FIFA World cup for soccer.

So to people who want to avoid those crowds can just stay in the Canadian Rockies the whole time.

And while you're there, you can extend your trip in while you're in Jasper to go to places like the Columbia Ice Field, which is a huge glacier field.

It's incredible.

It's a really incredible region.

Not too long ago, Fromers reviewed the Rocky Mountaineer train.

If you don't know, specially built carriages with giant, domed, clear windows so it's easy to take pictures.

It's a little.

It's a little expensive.

It's a luxury product, but it is all inclusive, including alcohol, so it's an easy way to get around.

And if you had taken the Ratmaki Mountaineer from Vancouver, you have to spend one night overnight in a city called Kamloops, which is near the border of Alberta.

And if you just do the Jasper Banff product that Zach was just describing, you avoid that and you sort of stay entirely with this Edenic, beautiful, astonishingly gorgeous national park zone between Jasper and Banff.

So are you saying Kamloop sucks?

Basically, it's like a, you know, it's like a kind of a quieter cow town type of thing.

It feels more Western than it does feel like you're deep in the Rockies with the trees and the lakes.

So it's a completely different vibe.

It's just an overnight.

You have to get off the train.

You don't spend the night on the train if you take the Rocky Mountaineer.

So it's just one added step that some people, you know, that's great views on either side of it, but some people just don't want to go through all that.

They'd rather stick to where their destination is.

And we should say that if you do, it is possible to cobble together a rail trip through that region by using via, which is Canada's answer to Amtrak.

There.

It's much more affordable.

It's not as luxurious and glamorous as the Rocky Mountaineer, but it is a cheaper option if you want to go.

Through or just go to the national parks on your own.

Of course, you don't have to do this rent a car way of doing things right.

Absolutely.

And I think we should underline the fact that most people who go to Jasper today will not see the damage.

I mean, there's still so much beauty there.

But I think it is so smart and so much of the moment that they are embracing what is happening to many communities and trying to educate people about fire, about climate change, about what is happening to our world and the best ways of managing it.

I think that's brilliant.

Brilliant.

Especially wildfires feel more intense over the years.

I'm sorry to step on you there.

Scientists say as things go on, it's great to be armed with knowledge.

As a.

We mentioned Asheville last week as a place that is worth going to because it's being reborn after a disaster.

And they too are talking a great deal about how to rebuild sensibly, like not on floodplains and better architecture and better, better infrastructure.

So it's something that both destinations have in common, that their rebirth is actually also a re education and they're living better now.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I was so excited about that one.

And the photos are just gorgeous.

What a gorgeous place.

Oh, my goodness.

Another gorgeous place that Jason is going to discuss is in Fiji.

Vitu Levi.

Tell us about that.

You know, you said earlier that not every, some, that Peru was the only place that was a country on our list.

Technically, Viti Levu is the largest island of Fiji.

So it's what a lot of visitors to Fiji think of as Fiji.

So this is a hedge, but we're talking about the main island, Viti Levu of Fiji.

One of the biggest reasons it's on our list is because it's often been kind of difficult to reach from North America, which is of course where we're based.

But Fiji Airways is going to be flying from Vancouver, Louisiana, San Francisco, Dallas and Honolulu next year.

So it's gonna be so much easier to get there.

And that makes a big difference because it's a long way away.

It's sort of northeast of Australia and very west of the Galapagos Islands in the Southern Pacific.

But it gives you that South Pacific thing that you want.

You know, you want, you want the reefs, you want the mountainous islands that are thick with jungle.

But there's an interesting culture in Fiji that a lot of the other places like Cook Islands don't have.

And it's sort of this, it's sort of an Indo Fijian culture.

You get the Fijian people, the indigenous folk, and.

But you also had some people come over in the history that were some Chinese people and some people from India.

And so there's this interesting mix of cultures happening in Fiji and it affects not just the religion and the temples that you'll see, it affects the cuisine and it makes for very interesting multicultural society in the middle of the South Pacific, which you don't always expect.

Obviously they have the great resorts there that you know, the Intercontinental and other things.

But there's a lot of boutique places too, family run places.

In fact, the majority of places to stay in Fiji, it's going to be going to the pocket of someone who either owns it or is, you know, part of the community, which I think really important and we don't really mention it in what we write, but next year they're going to be airing Survivor's 50th season.

For the last, what, 10, 12 years or so, Survivor has been filmed in Fiji off the, off the south, wait, northwest coast of this main island that we're talking about.

And in the off season when they're not shooting, there are tours.

You can go and see the areas where they film Survivor, but if you're there between mid April and mid July, that's when they're filming 51 and 52 next year.

But if you're a Survivor fan, you already know Fiji very well.

Yeah.

I can't believe they've had 50 seasons.

My Lord.

They do two a year.

And plus.

Okay.

I remember when it started.

Oh, God.

And I remember also, Jason, when you and I were both working for Budget Travel magazine.

Fiji had some political unrest that made it a no go zone.

But I think it's important to say it's fully peaceful once again.

It's not a place you have to worry about anymore.

Yeah.

It was one of those coups that didn't destroy the country that they just sort of reorganized and went forward.

It happened during, I think, one of the season's productions of Survivor, even.

So that does happen from time to time, but that's not unusual among smaller countries.

They just sort of regroup and then things happen again, and the tourists were never in danger because these people know very well that tourism is the lifeblood of Fiji, and nobody wants to destroy that.

Yeah.

But it's fine now, as you're saying.

Yeah.

Yes.

Moving from a little country to a huge one.

I'm talking about the United States.

It is our 250th birthday, and there are going to be celebrations across the United States.

And this was a tricky one to write about because unfortunately, some of the celebrations, it looks like, are becoming quite partisan and have less to do with history than they do with current events.

However, people have been planning for this since well before the current moment.

And we have a lot of historians and civic leaders of small towns and cities who are putting on what should be historically accurate, joyous, nonpartisan celebrations.

So, for example, in Boston, they are redoing the Freedom Trail to bring in more stories from women and from indigenous people.

Both Colonial Williamsburg and Mount Vernon, home of George Washington in Virginia, are coming up with brand new ways of telling the stories they tell so well about the Revolutionary era period and the period right after that.

So lots of exciting things in Virginia.

New York City always has a great fireworks display, and now we have two really great local history museums.

There is the New York Historical, and that's the name, which I hate.

It used to be the New York Historical Society, but they lopped off society, so now it's the New York Historical.

What?

Not the New York.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just.

It's just weird.

Anyway, they still do a good job, and they're going to have a whole year's worth of really intelligent exhibitions on things like women's roles during the Revolution.

They'll have revolutionary artifacts.

They'll have a lot to see and do there.

The second museum is the Museum of the City of New York.

And it's mounting a 7,000 square foot exhibition about the British occupation of New York City during the war, which was quite a dramatic time.

The colonists purposefully burned down Trinity Church because that was the tallest building in the city and it was a landmark.

And they knew without that church would be harder for the British to find their way around.

So they purposefully burned, burnt it down.

So lots of drama, lots of interest in those stories.

And apparently rumor has it that Hamilton, the Broadway musical, is going to be doing something special, but we don't know what yet.

I'm thinking they're going to add tap dancing to the show.

It's about time.

That would be revolutionary.

Right.

And you have.

And of course, Philadelphia will be doing a lot of things, but you also have cities that weren't in the original colonies that are also launching 250th celebrations, like at Epcot and at Disney California Adventure.

They're doing a new version of Soaring or Soarin.

Right.

Because it's Soarin.

Drop the G during flight.

Right.

So how would, how would you describe Soarin?

What is Soarin?

It's Grandma's favorite ride.

It's.

You basically sit on a bench and then you're lifted up in front of a screen and it feels like you're flying on a hang glider with beautiful smells and wind and stuff.

It's.

Everybody loves it.

And you see different parts of California, but now it's California.

Then they did a version of places all around the world, but they're doing a third new version, a brand new one that hasn't been revealed or hasn't been shown yet.

And you were going to describe that.

That's for next year.

Right.

And that's going to be all the top places of the United States.

I'm sure Disney will be one of them because they always end in Disney.

Yeah.

And Branson, Missouri is going to try and set a Guinness Book of World Records because, yeah, they're.

Branson, Missouri.

They're going to try and display the most flags ever displayed in one destination.

I'm not sure if that's a reason to go, but it's kind of interesting.

And Wyoming is going to have statewide what they're calling historic reflections, like an indigenous audio tour of the Wind River Canyon and a traveling exhibit of Western craftsmanships from the Cowboy Trades Association.

Did you know there was a Cowboy Trades Association?

And what do you think they specialize in?

Spurs.

Good question.

Making, I don't know, beans over a fire.

I don't know.

What are the cowboy trades besides, you know, wrangling cattle?

Cattle rustling.

I don't know.

Anyway, you know what I find really cool and interesting is a lot of these exhibitions and plans that are being made are commemorating history.

They're about the revolution that began everything and why we decided that a revolution was necessary.

You're seeing that common thread among many of the things that are being announced for the 250th.

So I think a lot of Americans are going to learn for the very first time about the roots of their country and how it was established.

Absolutely.

A government of the people for the people, as I think Lincoln said, was at the core of our founding.

And relearning the history at this particular time.

Time, I think, is a very, very important exercise.

So do a job that schools haven't done a great, great job in civics classes lately.

People are going to be learning through these celebrations instead.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'm actually really happy these celebrations are happening next year.

I think the timing couldn't be better.

And on that note, we will say stay tuned for the final destinations that you should go to next year.

We will talk about those next week.

Thank you so much, Zach and Jason.

Thanks, Pauline.

All right, that's it for this week's show.

I thank you so much for listening to those who are traveling.

May I offer you a hearty bon voyage.

Sour candy on the 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 don't 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 boathous on the lake oh, but I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it.