Top Travel Days of 2025, Eye to Eye with Polar Bears in Churchill, Manitoba

It was 7:30 am and still dark outside when our group of 16 entered the polar bear rover, a massive bus on monster truck sized wheels built specifically for driving atop the arctic tundra. Then the yellowish-red sun started to rise on the horizon and we stopped to get our first of many majestic photos that day. Within an hour we would spot our first polar bear strutting along in the distance and as everyone scurried to grab their long lenses, I was regretting my decision of solely bringing along my iPhone 16 Pro. Yet, all it took was another hour of anticipation before my trusty smart phone zoomed in on a polar bear sleeping blissfully on a bed of kelp. We stayed on him for a long while, until he woke from his nap and walked directly to our vehicle. If I could bottle the enthusiasm in that rover as this huge mammal waddled over to us, it would be like uncorking champagne. People were snapping photos like paparazzi chasing Princess Di. And yes, my iPhone performed brilliantly in that situation creating both photos and video that I’ll always cherish.

We were on Day Two of the 6-Day Polar Bear Adventure offered by Natural Habitat Adventures. Upon our arrival, we dropped our bags off in the Churchill Motel and soon were on a 4-hour night ride with dinner on the tundra. We would spot the rare gyrfalcon, only found in the Nordic locales, zipping by us along with a northern harrier hawk. But we only had faint sightings of polar bears long in the distance. The next day, that would change dramatically as we not only encountered our sleepy bear up close and personal, but mothers and their cubs walking and playing in the marshy terrain, dotted with the occasion black and white spruce tree.

Our guide, Giulia, taught us everything we ever wanted to know about the polar bear, including the latest number in these parts, around 600 to 700 polar bears. We were also blessed with a wonderful driver, Derek, a 5th-generation Chuchillian, who could spot a polar bear long before anyone else. I have to admit that it was a rather sedentary trip for me, spending a good deal of time in the polar bear rover. So when Giulia walked around with pen and paper asking people to write something about their experience, I penned this poem:

My Bum is Numb
I shift my weight around from left side to right
Uncomfortably squirming, shifting and fidgeting to try to make it right.
Every bump shakes my bladder, makes me want to pee, try not to drink more coffee to increase the agony.
I’d be counting steps if I were home or biking with some Peloton babe, instead I sit here and bide my time, try not to go insane.
But once I see that glimpse of fur, my body jumps to stare, no longer obsessing about petty inaction or my increasingly rotund rear.
As the white bear takes shape, my heart accelerates and my mind finally becomes still, a magical encounter that might be gone in an instant, but will take years to distill.
Then I sit back down, ready to endure another bump, knowing full well that the best things in life comes with the occasional thump.

It’s been so much fun to relive my travels of 2025 with you! Look forward to sharing more of my adventures with ActiveTravels in 2026, starting with a flight to Kenya to go on safari with the family a week from today.

Top Travel Days of 2025, Biking to Santenay in Burgundy

When I ran into Andy Levine, owner of DuVine Cycling, after a Grateful Dead show at the Sphere in Las Vegas, I told him I’d love to go on another Duvine trip, but not sure where. That’s when he sold me on Burgundy, where he first fell in love with the idea of creating a bike company that took you on the best rides in the region and wined and dined you at exemplary local restaurants before spending the night at a top-shelf property not usually known by the masses. For me, Burgundy always felt too much about the wine and not enough about the biking. Wow, was I wrong

On our first full day of biking in Burgundy this past August, we departed from the former 12th-century abbey, Abbaye de la Bussiere which is now a Relais and Chateaux hotel replete with a small pond, rose garden, ponies walking the grounds, and monastery turned restaurant where we had a gluttonous 5-course feast the night prior. Soon we were on a slow climb, cresting a hill that at the top opened to a vast vista of meadows dotted with dairy cows and horses. Then we were sweeping downhill on a run through small villages and its requisite stone farmhouse, thickets of forest, and glorious fields of sunflowers, several weeks past its prime. As the backcountry road leveled off, we got our first sight of the legendary Grand Cru Burgundy vineyards. The last part of the ride was on a bike trail next to a canal where we followed the flight of herons and the occasional barge going through the locks. All and all, it was a 45-mile ride with some 3800 feet of elevation gain, worthy of a refreshing swim in a nearby river.

Our ride two days later from the heart of Burgundy, Beaune, was another gem and arguably my favorite day. We biked through the nearby vineyards and ascended the Cote d’Or hillside, standing atop a cliff wall that looked down at the villages below. We were soon riding past one of those towns, Orches, which clung to the hillside and was recently named the most charming village in France. We were biking through the white burgundy region, places like Meursault, where pickers already started to harvest the grapes. We stopped for a memorable wine tasting at Domaine Evenstad, (so good that I bought six bottles to be sent home) before biking a little bit further to the best meal of the trip, a restaurant called Le Terroir in the town of Santenay.

My typical lunch is a slice of turkey breast on one slice of Dave’s Killer Bread. Here we started with escargot, where I dipped the heavenly bread into the hot butter. That was followed with fois gras and the best coq au vin I’ve ever tasted, all washed down with exceptional white and red wine. Then we went outside in the hot sun to bike back to Beaune. If I was riding my regular Trek bike back at home, I would have found the next ten miles to be a challenge. But since I was riding a spanking new Specialized E-bike, I simply turned on the Sport button and zipped back to my home for the night, the lovely Cedre Hotel in Beaune. I actually fell in love with the E-bike on this trip, biking on the lowest speed, Eco, for most of my rides to give me a great workout over the week. Then boosting to Sport after our wine-soaked lunches when I needed the extra push. That’s a vacation!

Top Travel Days of 2025, Beach Day in Bermuda

If you live on the East Coast, you know that Bermuda is only a two-hour flight from Boston, New York, Philly, and DC. But it’s not until you step off the plane on this island located 600 miles due east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, that you fully understand the allure. Plant your feet into the soft pink sand on one of the renowned South Shore beaches like Horseshoe Bay and you can feel your body de-stress with every footprint. The shoreline is exquisite. Beaches are buttressed by jagged cliffs to create sheltered bays ideal for a dip. This was certainly true of the private beach the Hamilton Princess shuttled our family to in late May on a blissful 4-night getaway to the island. Just down the road from Horseshoe Bay, the pink sands provided the perfect welcome mat and the ocean water was already warm for the summer season.

It had been over a dozen years since I stayed at the Hamilton Princess, the grand dame of Bermuda, which first opened its doors in 1898. And wow did it change! The new owners are avid art collectors, and their impressive bounty of works cover the walls of the resort and lead to massive sculptures outside including a bronze gourd by Yayoi Kusama and a two-story high Mickey Mouse work by KAS. We did a docent-led hour-long tour of the collection and saw works by Picasso, Magritte, Julian Opie, Banksy, Ai Weiwei, numerous Warhol’s, and many others.

The resort also added a heavenly infinity pool overlooking the Hamilton Harbor, and two wonderful restaurants on either side of the resort. It’s hard to tear yourself away from the infinity pool, but you’ll be justly rewarded if you take the free shuttle to their private beach about 20 minutes away. An added bonus is that the beach has waiter service and food options, which makes relaxing that much more effortless.

Top Travel Days of 2025, Seeing the Caillebotte Show at the Getty Center


When I worked full-time as a travel writer, I tried my best to help promote cities after devastating circumstances reduced tourism in those destinations dramatically. I visited New York after 9/11, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and Nairobi after a horrific mall bombing scared many travelers away. And there I was again in early April, this time in LA after wildfires destroyed the communities of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena. Unless you make a concerted effort to drive to those neighborhoods, you really didn’t see the impact the fires made on those regions of the city. But you certainly felt it when talking to people who live in LA. It seems like everyone knew someone sadly affected by this latest disaster.

The city was a glorious escape from the cold out East, with uninterrupted sunshine and temperatures reaching the upper 70s. We dropped our luggage off in our spacious suite at the Maybourne Beverly Hills, where every room has recently been renovated and its rooftop restaurant, Dante, is one of the hardest reservations to get in the city. We headed over to the Farmers Market, where I used to have meetings as a budding screenwriter, to dine on tasty Trejo’s Tacos, owned by actor Danny Trejo. Then we walked some ten minutes to the LACMA, which housed three excellent exhibitions on Mesoamerican Art, African bead art, and an Asian calligraphy show where the artists used abstraction to create exciting ink-based canvases.

This only whet our appetite for the Caillebotte retrospective the next morning at The Getty Center, the real impetus for making our way to LA. On its first stop before heading to the Art Institute of Chicago this past summer, the show was a mesmerizing look at the changing boulevards and bridges of Paris through the eyes of this gifted painter. Under clear blue skies, the Getty looked better than ever, especially walking around the gardens in bloom, before viewing the Getty’s permanent collection and its bounty of riches. The weather was so sublime that we next headed to Santa Monica Pier, rented bikes, and cruised along the ocean on the bike trail to Venice. Heavenly!

Top Travel Days of 2025, Biking Killarney National Park

After days of gray skies and drizzle, the sun finally made an appearance at the most important time on our trip to Ireland in February, just as we were about to jump on bikes and ride into Killarney National Park. We woke up to a glorious vista from our balcony at The Europe Hotel, overlooking the blue waters of Lough Leane and the highest peaks in the country on the opposite shores. This stupendous view would be by our side all day as we pedaled on trails (no car traffic) alongside the lake past a herd of red deer nestled together on a golf course.

The narrow path then led us though a forest of oak to 15th-century Ross Castle, perched on the shores of the lake. Next up was a mountain estate called the Muckross House, once visited by Queen Victoria in 1861, and worth touring the interior to see works of art by one of its former owners. To top off one of the most memorable day rides I’ve taken, we pedaled over to the raging Torc Waterfalls, and then backtracked to our final stop, the ruins of Muckross Abbey, started by Franciscan monks in 1448. A massive centuries-old yew tree still stands majestically in the middle of the structure to add to the allure.

I was prepared for the nightly dose of live music at practically every pub in the country, and the steady diet of fish and chips, but was surprised to find the bevy of architectural wonders like the 12th century Rock of Cashel, its limestone round tower a small part of the building that still stands valiantly, Kilkenny’s Medieval Mile which links the gothic 13th-century St. Canice’s Cathedral with a Norman castle, or the Bee Hive stone huts on Dingle Peninsula, which early Christian monks used as homes. These structures of yore are even better appreciated when you slow down on two wheels, get off the bike, and stroll around both the castle and the maze of walls still standing within the abbey.

We returned our bikes with the concierge at The Europe Hotel, who had arranged the rentals in advance. Then headed to the hotel’s indoor/outdoor hot tubs and pools to soak our tired bodies and take in the glorious lake and mountain views.

Top Travel Days of 2024, Living La Villa Life on Mexico’s Rivera Maya

In October, I headed to Mexico to meet up with my Largay Travel Family, hosted by Villas of Distinction. But first I needed two days of Me Time to unwind, get a spa treatment, swim in the ocean, dine on great food and enjoy some spicy margaritas, all at the fabulous all-inclusive adults-only property, Le Blanc Spa Resort in Cancun. Then it was off to Rivera Maya to jump into cenotes, zipline, dance with a mariachi band and snorkel, as they wined and dined us in style! Our group stayed at four different gorgeous villas which were linked together and lined the beach. Each villa had an authentic Mexican style and were adorned with art and each had a pool overlooking the beach. One even had a pickleball court in its large courtyard! With an amazing chef and staff, the villas offered us a wonderful place for lounging and enjoying each other’s company without a care in the world. One night’s entertainment meant that I even got a chance to pretend I was in The Blue Man Group!

–Lisa Leavitt

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Top Travel Days of 2024, A Whirlwind Tour of Stockholm

Stockholm was the second stop of a 10-day trip to Scandinavia in mid-November organized by the tour operator we love to work with in this part of the world, 50 Degrees North. We didn’t have much time in the city, sandwiched between stops in Copenhagen and Swedish Lapland, near the Arctic Circle. We dropped our bags off at The Lydmar, a small boutique property where the walls are covered with large photographs of anything from Iggy Pop to a wet dog. The location is ideal, smack dab in the center of the city, an easy stroll to Stockholm’s Old Town (Gamla Stan) and even less time to catch a ferry to one of the many nearby islands.

We caught a short ferry to the island of Djurgården, where we would find one of the highlights of the trip, the massive Vasa warship that sank in 1628. You really can’t understand how huge this 68-gun ship is until you see it. But once you do, you’ll understand why it sank almost as soon as it launched from being top heavy. It remained intact on the bottom of the Baltic Sea until the 1960s, when they finally had the engineering skills to miraculously get it on land. Also on the same island is the ABBA Museum, where you can follow the history of the band members as they made their way from playing small folk festivals in Sweden to becoming one of the most legendary pop bands of all time. Remarkably, they only toured for 6 years, but they amassed quite an empire through the hit play and movie, Mamma Mia, and now “ABBA Voyage,” a hologram spectacle in London that sells out nightly. According to Samuel, the GM at the Lydmar, Benny Andersson from the group still works out regularly at a gym next door to the hotel and you can see him roaming the city like a humble guy.

That night, we would dine on reindeer in the same restaurant that Nobel Laureates dine after receiving their awards at City Hall. Surrounded by the ten women I was traveling with all week, the waiter, who had a sense of humor, would arrive with each dish, saying, “Ladies and Steve, this is your next course…”

Top Travel Days of 2024, Spending My 60th Birthday in Camden, Maine

I honestly loved every minute of the three-day weekend Lisa planned around my big birthday in mid-coast Maine this past August. Hanging out with 20 of my closest friends and family, we biked to Owl’s Head Lighthouse, walked the breakwater at Rockland Harbor, saw the Andrew Wyeth paintings at the Farnsworth, savored our lobster rolls overlooking the water at McLoons, and had many cocktails on the rooftop lounge of our hotel, 250 Main. But Lisa really outdid herself on my actual birthday, organizing a hike up Maiden Cliff in Camden Hills State Park and then renting a private schooner, the Schooner Olad, for some 6 glorious hours that afternoon. Our captain and crew were wonderful, gliding the century-old vessel out through the many islands that hug the shoreline. Thankfully, the weather was sublime, the waves were mellow, and we even swam when we docked at an island for our lobster feast. They cooked the crustaceans the old-fashioned way under seaweed on an open fire, and when bitten into, probably the best lobster I ever tasted! On the sail back to Camden, we savored the sunset, glass of Don Papa Rum in hand. That’s what I call a Dream Day!

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Top Travel Days of 2024, A Stop at The Rock of Gibraltar

As soon as we got our passports stamped, walked into Gibraltar, and met our gregarious guide, John Lopez, I knew we were in for a treat. Within moments, John was commenting on our daughter, Melanie’s latest purchase in Marbella, a sweater adorned with very large strawberries. “Ah, you’ll be easy to spot in a crowd,” John joked in his slight British accent.

The next four hours was a whirlwind of a tour on this unique spit of land at the southern edge of Spain, told by us by the best possible guide, someone born and raised in Gibraltar. Who better to explain the complex history of this British protectorate of some 38,000 people surrounding this jagged monolith that rises 1,300 feet high. As we drove alongside the Rock of Gibraltar, stopping to visit a long cave, a labyrinth of tunnels used by military from the 1800s through World War II, and, of course, see the adorable monkeys that Winston Churchill loved having here, John would weave rhapsodic tales of his youth combined with the rich history of this place (while placing those same monkeys atop our kid’s heads). We would learn that this was the spot where Britain’s hero Lord Nelson sailed his fleet directly into the Spanish cotillion winning the famous Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Gibraltar is also where the Spanish dictator Franco cut off this piece of land from 1969 until 1985, placing a lock on the border so no one could cross, upset that the British would never give the land over to Spain. That was during John Lopez’s youth, where he would spend his boyhood with friends going through every tunnel in the storied Rock.

Our family of four was on the sixth day of a 9-day trip that brought us to Barcelona, Marbella, Gibraltar, and Malaga in the beginning of April. Gibraltar seemed like the least interesting locale when we put together the itinerary. But our son, Jake, insisted on going and it ended up being memorable.

Top Travel Days of 2024, A Winter Escape to Troutbeck

After visiting every nook and cranny of New England and New York state over my lifetime, I thought I’ve seen it all. But I was wrong! One day last February, we dropped the kids off to ski at Catamount in the Berkshires while we climbed Monument Mountain, the peak Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne made famous when they made the same climb in 1850. Then we headed south for an hour into the heart of Hudson Valley’s farmland. I had visited the towns just over the border in Litchfield Hills, Connecticut, like Kent, Sharon, and Salisbury, but had never ventured into the New York state side to see Millbrook, Millerton, and Armenia, home to the 250-acre estate hotel called Troutbeck. We would spend a glorious winter weekend here, dining at their exceptional restaurant, playing games of pool, and reading by the freshly lit fires both inside and outside.

Come summer, this bucolic getaway, which has a rich history as being the site where the NAACP originated, is a serene getaway, replete with tennis courts, outdoor pool, fishing stream on premises, and nearby bike trail to take in the velvety green fields and mountains. Yet, we loved it in winter, especially exploring the nearby towns. We stopped at the well-known teahouse, Harney and Sons, a winter food market, wonderful Oblong Books, and a historic one-room schoolhouse in Millerton. Next stop was Salisbury and the classic White Hart Inn for a lunch of hot soups, salads, and freshly made breads. That night, we visited the village of Millbrook for an intimate dinner at Canoe Hill. Then it was back to Troutbeck for another game of pool and nightcap at the fireplace. We’ve sent a number of clients to Troutbeck over the years, so it was good to finally go in person and happily give it our stamp of approval.