mustvisit

Travel giant Expedia has shared its top 10 destinations of the year, which are powered by real-time data from daily visitors to its site and app

If you fancy exploring hidden gems, these top 10 spots revealed by the travel giant might be perfect for your upcoming getaway. Expedia’s 2026 destinations of the year list draws on real-time data from daily visitors to its site and app.

The announcement coincides with the travel giant launching its Unpack ’26: The Trends in Travel report. It showcases where worldwide interest is surging rapidly.

This year’s selection features France, Italy, alongside more distant locations in Canada and Mexico.

Six of these emerging hotspots also satisfy the requirements for Expedia’s fresh Smart Travel Health Check, which acknowledges destinations that actively manage tourism sustainably, reports the Express.

Ariane Gorin, CEO of Expedia Group, said: “Some of my most unforgettable travel moments come from immersing myself in local cultures, supporting local economies, and exploring less-travelled destinations.

“With one billion average monthly travel searches, Expedia Group isn’t just a travel marketplace, we’re a catalyst for positive change.

“We have a responsibility to shape the future of travel: one that’s smarter, more sustainable, and deeply respectful of the places we go.”

Big Sky, Montana, U.S.

Nestled within the Rocky Mountains’ core, Big Sky in Montana provides year-round activities.

During winter months, the area becomes a snow enthusiast’s haven, whilst summer brings spectacular walking routes.

Okinawa, Japan Okinawa

Japan’s southernmost island chain, offers a blend of turquoise waters, coral reefs and a unique Ryukyuan heritage. Once a kingdom in its own right, the region now provides a mix of hospitality, history, and a relaxed island lifestyle.

Sardinia, Italy

Sardinia is a hidden jewel in the Mediterranean, offering crystal-clear waters, ancient history and untouched landscapes. From glamorous beaches to a bustling city, Sardinia provides an Italian getaway without the crowds.

Phu Quoc, Vietnam

Located off the southwest coast of Vietnam, Phu Quoc Island boasts white sandy beaches and emerald waters. Once a tranquil fishing hub, it’s now a fusion of beach resorts and night markets.

Savoie, France

Tucked away in the French Alps, Savoie is home to world-class ski resorts, making it perfect for a winter holiday. In summer, anticipate hiking, cycling and sailing, as well as indulging in cheese fondue and alpine wines.

Fort Walton Beach, Florida, U.S.

North Florida’s Gulf Coast is a region of exceptional natural beauty, with picturesque beaches and nature walks where you can explore the state’s native parks. It’s the ideal spot for those who love the outdoors, with activities such as snorkelling, hiking and dolphin watching.

Ucluelet, Canada

Visitors to Ucluelet can enjoy surfing, kayaking, and spotting whales and sea lions just offshore. There are also plenty of land-based activities like rock climbing, ziplining, biking and wildlife watching.

Or, if you prefer to relax, there are numerous top hotels and holiday rentals available.

Cotswolds, UK

The Cotswolds, one of England’s most scenic regions, is home to quaint towns like Bourton-on-the-Water and Stow-on-the-Wold. Here, you can wander through historic gardens, savour a pint in traditional English pubs and tearooms, and admire the iconic Cotswold stone.

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Tucked away in Mexico’s central highlands, San Miguel de Allende is a compact city boasting stunning architecture, ancient religious structures and cobbled streets. It’s renowned for its community of artisans and artists, with some of their finest works on display at the Fabrica La Aurora galleries and studios.

Hobart, Australia

Once notorious as a penal colony, this harbour city has transformed into Tasmania’s cultural heart, drawing food enthusiasts and nature buffs from around the globe. Hobart serves up some of the country’s most inventive cuisine, and its beer, wine and produce are celebrated across Australia.

Majorca is known for its beaches, nightlife and sunny weather, but one woman decided to try something a little different by riding a vintage train through the Spanish island

Majorca is one of Spain’s stunning Balearic Islands, renowned for its pristine beaches boasting crystal-clear waters, secluded coves, and vibrant nightlife scenes, particularly around hotspots like Palma and Magaluf. The island’s sunny and warm climate consistently attracts British tourists seeking the perfect European summer getaway.

Lauren Jade abandoned life in the UK to embrace full-time travelling and is currently exploring Majorca in Spain. She documents her journeys across social media platforms and has created detailed travel guides to help fellow adventurers in planning their overseas escapades. The 30-year-old Brit recently shared a TikTok video showcasing an experience her viewers might not have discovered.

Lauren brought her viewers along as she went on a journey aboard a historic wooden train from Palma to Sóller.

She was completely mesmerised by the breathtaking scenery throughout the hour-long ride, including views of the magnificent Serra de Tramuntana mountain range.

At the beginning of the video, the globe-trotting content creator appears completely stunned as she gazes through the carriage window, with her mouth open and a hand pressed against her cheek.

In her post’s caption, she penned: “Majorca’s BEAUTIFUL train ride. This is the Palma to Sóller train and it traverses through the incredible Serra de Tramuntana mountains, citrus groves and tunnels carved by hand.”

Lauren captured the spectacular scenery as she travelled past the towering peaks and green woodlands, absorbing nature’s magnificence.

The railway’s official website characterises the journey as “an hour-long journey that takes you to another time and another Majorca”.

The travel influencer continued: “It’s a 1-hr journey on a vintage wooden train that has been running since 1912(!) and it’s still one of the most scenic ways to explore inland Majorca.

“It’s perfect if you’re not renting a car as Sóller is one of the MUST visit places in Majorca you simply can’t miss.

“It drops you right in Sóller town – where you can explore and then hop on the vintage tram to Port de Sóller (which I highly recommend).”

Sóller sits near Majorca’s north west coastline and is frequently dubbed the ‘Valley of the Orange Trees’ thanks to the stunning citrus orchards that surround the town, forming a significant part of both its heritage and economy.

The town is also well-known for its centre, boasting beautifully maintained historic buildings and the charming heritage tram that Lauren highlighted.

According to the official website, the Palma to Sóller train features lacquered wooden floors, walls and ceilings, alongside traditional sash windows, ornate gilded light fittings and leather-and-metal seating.

Passengers can adjust their seat positioning to face either towards or away from their travel companions, depending on the journey direction.

First-class carriages offer enhanced luxury with comfortable sofas replacing standard seating.

Lauren advised her TikTok followers to choose the left-hand side when departing Palma for the “best views.”

She also suggested purchasing tickets in advance online, warning that services become particularly crowded during the summer months.

The video has attracted more 60 comments, with one user, a seasoned visitor to Majorca, confessing: “Wow I didn’t know about this and have been so many times!”.

They continued: “Defo on my list Thanks for sharing.” Another user enthused: “Absolutely one of my favourite trips! Should be on everyone’s list to visit.”

A joint ticket for the journey from Palma to Sóller by train and then tram to Puerto de Sóller is priced at €32 (£27.68) and is available for purchase online.

Finding great Mexican food in unexpected places. Losing the city of L.A.’s oldest restaurant. A guide to the vegan ice cream boom. The Italian potatoes that changed Jenn Harris’ mind about fat fries. And “some guy on Tripadvisor.” I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.

Salbute salute

Salbute with Yucatan-inspired racado negro chicken at Sanchez in Copenhagen.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

As Angelenos, we don’t think twice about eating Mexican food one day, Thai food the next and Korean food the day after that. Weekend breakfast with friends is as likely to be Chinese rice porridge as it is a plate of buckwheat pancakes or chilaquiles. In fact, we rarely bother to break down our dining choices by cuisine. It’s more, let’s go get some ramen or birria or boat noodles.

But when we travel, we tend to eat more conservatively. With limited time in a new place, we usually stick to what we perceive as the food of the country we’re visiting. Trying to find decent Mexican food in Italy, for instance, while not impossible, isn’t easy in a country that prizes the joys of hyper-regionality. You take a risk ordering pasta alla carbonara (a seemingly simple dish that’s hard to perfect if you don’t take your time with the guanciale) outside of Rome or tortellini en brodo in any Italian region other than Emilia-Romagna.

And yet, when I landed in Copenhagen late last month, with all the glories of smørrebrød and cutting-edge Nordic cuisine to explore — including two places in the city (Noma and Geranium) named at different points the No. 1 restaurant in the world on the World’s 50 Best list — the first place I headed was a Mexican restaurant.

Of course, the restaurant, Sanchez, is no ordinary Mexican spot. The owner, Rosio Sanchez, was the head pastry chef for Rene Redzepi at Noma for five years before opening her first Copenhagen taqueria, Hija de Sanchez, in 2015. She briefly returned to collaborate with Redzepi on Noma’s 2017 Mexico pop-up in Tulum. If a real-life version of “The Bear” character Marcus (Lionel Boyce) had been sent to Copenhagen for pastry chef training at the world’s best restaurant in 2014, Sanchez likely would have been his mentor, not Will Poulter‘s character Luca. Indeed, Sanchez appears in the series’ chef-packed Season 3 finale talking about why she loves to cook. And one of Sanchez’s former chefs, Laura Cabrera, has risen to lead her own kitchen at the zero-waste restaurant Baldío in Mexico City.

Chef Rosio Sanchez at the Kødbyen location of her Copenhagen taqueria Hija de Sanchez in 2016.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

When I first ate Sanchez’s Mexican cooking in 2016 at Hija de Sanchez, I was immediately struck by the skill of her tortilla making, not easy in a place where masa is not readily available, and the way she was able make food that felt completely Mexican while incorporating Danish ingredients — a fjord shrimp taco, for instance, or gooseberry salsa. Never mind that as she told Margy Rochlin in this paper during a 2017 guest chef appearance at the L.A. Times Food Bowl with Sqirl‘s Jessica Koslow, some of her first customers in Copenhagen called tortillas “pancakes.” Or that when she saw Danes eating tacos with a fork and knife she had an illustrated and nonjudgmental “how to eat your taco” poster made. Since those early days, Copenhagen eaters have taken to her tacos. There are now five Hija de Sanchez taquerias across the city.

Al pastor, barbacoa and vegetarian tacos plus a glass of jamaica at the Torvehallerne food market location of Rosio Sanchez’s Copenhagen taqueria Hija de Sanchez.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

But Sanchez was not solely interested in exploring tacos. At the end of 2017 she opened Sanchez, a restaurant that elevates Mexican cuisine while still keeping it approachable. In its current form, the restaurant offers a five-course tasting menu for the rough equivalent of $82 with the option of an even more affordable three-course meal for about $59. If you want still more, you can add extra courses — such as an oyster with a sauce of habanero and sea buckthorn, or a slender bean, sheep cheese and cured egg burrito.

The oyster was a good, bracing start. And lime-cured langoustine ceviche, served aguachile style, with a verde sauce and fermented tomato water, kept the freshness going. But it was the salbute, with a jolt of intense corn from the puffed fried tortilla and layers of deep, complex flavors from chicken cooked in recado negro sauce, made with charred chiles, plus grilled bladderwrack seaweed in place of lettuce, a quail egg and a drizzle of habanero-árbol chile oil that showed how Sanchez is combining tradition, local ingredients and her own new way of approaching Mexican food.

Monkfish cheek, marinated al pastor style, beautifully charred and served with herbs on a lightly charred lettuce leaf came next. It all led to carnitas tacos that we assembled ourselves with freshly made tortillas, herbs, salsa, pickled jalapeño and onion, plus, because this is Copenhagen, green sea buckthorn.

The night’s most memorable dish, however, was dessert. The menu’s description was understated: chocolate mousse. But what is usually a satisfying but unexciting dish came out with a ring of salsa macha, crunchy with pumpkin seeds and preserved ancho chiles, a layer of whipped cream and, for good measure, roasted kelp and drips of olive oil. The mousse itself was made chocolate from Chiapas and hid a nugget of more chiles underneath.

Chocolate mouse with salsa macha, whipped cream and roasted kelp at Sanchez in Copenhagen.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

The spicy and sweet flavors felt both old and new. It’s the kind of dish that shows that Mexican cuisine even thousands of miles away from Mexico itself is still evolving. Now if only we could get Sanchez to open a branch of her restaurant here in L.A.

Loss and uneasy hope

Cole’s French Dip on 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles will close its doors on Aug. 2.

(Con Keyes / Los Angeles Times)

It’s been a tough week for L.A. restaurants. Karla Marie Sanford reports that Cole’s French Dip, which opened in 1908, making it the city’s oldest restaurant, will close its doors on Aug. 2. “By the time the Olympics get here, all these mom and pops will be gone,” said Brian Lenzo, senior vice president of operations for Cedd Moses’ Pouring With Heart, which took over the downtown L.A. restaurant in 2008. “Hopefully it’s a wakeup call for the right people to step up and figure out a plan.”

Another downtown loss: David Schlosser announced that his rigorous Japanese-focused restaurant Shibumi — last year he recreated a 1789 Japanese banquet — will permanently close on July 19.

Senior food editor Danielle Dorsey reports that Alisa Reynolds’ soul food bistro My 2 Cents, on The Times’ 101 Best Restaurants in L.A. list, will close on July 31 after 12 years on Pico Boulevard. Reynolds plans to focus on catering, pop-ups and collaborations.

And Lauren Ng reports that Melody, the Virgil Village natural wine bar that hosted many pop-ups during its nearly 10 years in business, will close this weekend, though owner Eric Tucker will open a temporary “Bar Band-Aid” pizza spot on July 16 until the Craftsman bungalow space can be sold.

Members of the Morfin family eat tacos and drink agua frescas at El Gato Night Market.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

But there are some signs of resilience even in this tough climate. Ng spent time at the recently reopened El Gato Night Market, which shut down for two weeks after ICE raids heated up in Los Angeles. Though more than half of the market’s 70 to 80 vendors had not returned in the first days of the reopening and business was slow at first, the crowds started to return after a few days. “Vendors, many of whom worry for their safety and the future of their businesses, show up for work out of necessity,” Ng writes, “but also to provide comfort and familiarity for customers, most of whom are Latino and often bring their young children.”

Maria Sanchez, known as “Maria la de los Burritos” sells $5 burritos in Watts out of the trunk of her car.

(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)

Meanwhile, when Maria Sanchez, known on social media as “Maria la de los Burritos,” was asked to leave her usual burrito-selling spot outside a Home Depot after ICE raids started happening, she was undeterred. She packed her gold-foil-wrapped burritos in the trunk of her car and found eager customers at construction sites. Her carne asada burritos typically sell out in 30 minutes. Contributor Madeleine Connors profiles the maker of these internet-viral burritos that are also doing some good for L.A. workers.

Also …

Awan offers more than a dozen flavors of the fully vegan ice cream made with coconut cream and Balinese vanilla.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

• The days of chalky, grainy, barely sweet plant-based ice cream are in the past, says contributor Omari Allen, who writes about the blossoming of vegan ice cream in Los Angeles and put together a guide to 10 of the best shops serving great dairy-free ice cream.
• How Steve Samson‘s thrice-fried potatoes at Rossoblu changed Jenn Harris’ mind about fat fries.
• Hawa Hassan, author of “Setting a Place for Us” and “In Bibi’s Kitchen,” made arnabeet mekleh — Lebanese fried cauliflower with tahini — in the Times Test Kitchen. Watch how she did it and get the recipe.
• Deputy food editor Betty Hallock has 15 ways to make the most of summer melons.
• If menu prices are feeling too high, here are 19 affordable picks from critic Bill Addison‘s 101 Best Restaurants in California guide.
• Restaurants, bars consider turning off music as licensing fees skyrocket, report Ashley Carman and Aruni Soni.
• The Country Kitchen in Malibu is just one of the businesses recently reopened after the Palisades fire struggling to regain customers even in peak tourist season, reports Caroline Petrow-Cohen.
• Kraft Heinz Co. is preparing to break itself up, reports Crystal Tse, Liana Baker and Kristina Peterson.
• Jewel Thais-Williams, founder of L.A.’s Black lesbian and queer nightclub Jewel’s Catch One, has died at the age of 86. “Jewel’s Catch One became a kind of West Coast Studio 54,” writes August Brown. “People came from all over the world to party there. Europe, South America — they’d come straight from LAX and leave their bags at coat check,” Thais-Williams’ sister Carol Williams told Brown. “The club was universally known for its acceptance.”

And finally … a word from ‘some guy on Tripadvisor’

The sign outside Sliders in Copenhagen: “Try the worst sliders some guy on Tripadvisor has ever had in his entire life alongside enjoying our ‘terrible service.’”

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

Restaurants handle negative customer feedback in different ways. Some, as this sign seen outside the burger bar Sliders in Copenhagen, embrace it. The invitation: “Try the worst sliders some guy on Tripadvisor has ever had in his entire life alongside enjoying our ‘terrible service.’ ” It certainly got my attention. If I hadn’t already filled up on smørrebrød, I would have stopped in for a “lamb za’atar spectacular” or “decadent Dane” (beef patty, melted Danish cheese, caramelized onions and pickled apple) slider.