20 travelers for 2016
Each year brings exhilarating reasons to travel: new air routes, off-the-beaten-path destinations, hedonistic museums and musical dates that invite you to join the party. All this information can be collected at the Madrid Tourism Fair (FITUR), which is held from January 20 to 24 at the fairgrounds (Ifema).
1 London with crests
40 years ago, the young John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten (Juanito Rotten), led the group Sex Pistols in a subversive musical style full of crests and piercings: the punk. His ruthless lyrics and his irreverent nihilism have not prevented institutions such as the British Library or the Museum of London from joining the 40th anniversary of the punk movement today, with a program of exhibitions, concerts, parties and street events.
www.punk.london
2 Vietnam
Air routes between Spain and Vietnam are increasing, at affordable prices, from companies such as Emirates, Qatar or Turkish Airlines. The latter will offer circular flights to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) from June 27, which will facilitate travel through a country as cheap as it is varied. Since July 2015, EU citizens do not need a visa for stays of less than 15 days. Fabulous places await such as Ha Long Bay, to the north, one of the most beautiful landscapes in Indochina, or the mythical Mekong Delta, to the south, with its floating markets, canals, stilt houses and barges that take us back to Marguerite's novels. Duras and Graham Greene.
www.vietnamtourism.com
3 Réunion Island
The Indian Ocean hides unknown territories such as Réunion Island, a French department east of Madagascar and west of Mauritius where races, vanilla crops, beaches and landscapes are mixed as amazing as the Trou de Fer, seven waterfalls of more than 100 meters that fall together through a huge drain, or the volcano Le Piton de la Fournaise. Air France flies to Saint-Denis, the island's capital, via Paris, from 629 euros.
www.reunion.fr
4 The Bay of Kotor
“Kotor is beautiful from any angle”, according to Lonely Planet, which has chosen this walled port on the Adriatic as the best city to visit in 2016. Its bay, lined with mountains, is one of the most photogenic in Europe. And it has not yet been taken over by cruise ships and mass tourism, two other reasons to discover this secret corner of the Mediterranean now.
www.kotor.es
5 Yellowstone
August 25 marks the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, the federal agency that manages all 409 national parks, natural monuments, and historic sites United States, an exemplary example of management of protected areas. To celebrate it, trails, viewpoints and network infrastructures have been rehabilitated, more than 340,000 square kilometers of amazing landscapes such as Yosemite, Yellowstone (where the Yogi bear lives) or the Grand Canyon.
www.nps.gov/index.htm
6 Benguerra
Another destination making its way onto the African Indian Ocean shores is Mozambique. The former Portuguese colony, bordering Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and South Africa, seduces with almost virgin islands such as the Quirimbas, or the island of Benguerra, in the Bazaruto archipelago, where the chain & Beyond has just opened a luxury ecolodge. Mozambique also claims its culture of Arab and Portuguese influences, and wildlife reserves such as Manda, where you can see elephants, lions, leopards, buffaloes and other large mammals.
www.visitmozambique.net
www.andbeyond.com
7 Wine in Bordeaux
In June 2016, La Cité du Vin (City of Wine) will open in Bordeaux, an interactive museum dedicated to the world of wine and its culture. The building, an undulating, golden structure by the XTU architectural firm, is part of Bordeaux's urban renewal plan, admirably promoted by the mayor, Alain Juppé, which has enabled the haughty capital of Aquitaine, in south-western France, to regain its splendor (since 2007 it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and become the second favorite destination in France, after Paris.
www.laciteduvin.com
www.bordeaux-tourism.es
8 Kenya, the year of the lion
There are few experiences as impressive as hearing the roar of a lion in the African night, and one of the most evocative places to do so is Meru National Park, in Kenya, the home of the lioness Elsa, the feline protagonist of Born Free. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the film's premiere, the Born Free environmental foundation has declared 2016 the Year of the Lion, an awareness campaign to save these superb cats at a critical time for the species: of the 250,000 copies of lions that existed less than a century ago in Africa, today only 20,000 remain.
magicalkenya.com
9 Cardiff and Roald Dahl
The centenary of the birth of the writer Roald Dahl in Cardiff (Wales) overlaps with the premiere of the film The Great Good-natured Giant, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on one of the tales of the Welsh author, who knew how to capture the imagination of children with stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Stories in Verse for Wicked Children. Highlights from the celebrations agenda include The City of the Unexpected, a theater festival that will bring Dahl's surreal and subversive universe to the streets of Cardiff. Another appointment for children: more than 40 models of robots, cyborgs and androids from film and television will be from January 23 to April 17 at the Life Science Center science museum in Newcastle, England.
www.roalddahl.com
www.visitbritain.com
10 Alsatian Route
Through the vineyards of Alsace there are some of the most beautiful villages in France, places like Riquewihr, Eguisheim, Turckheim, Hunawihr or Colmar. In Colmar, the extension of the Unterlinden Museum has just been inaugurated, a project by Herzog & De Meuron that connects the medieval cloister and the chapel that houses the famous Issenheim altarpiece, by Matthias Grünewald, a masterpiece of Gothic art, with the new rooms of the museum's collection of modern and contemporary art.
www.musee-unterlinden.com
11 Wild Germany
Walk through the forests of Hainich on a path 44 meters high among the treetops, visit a village of wildcats or watch the sunset from the cliffs of the Rügen island, which inspired the romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, are some of the proposals for tourism in Germany in 2016, a year in which its 16 national parks and biosphere reserves will be protagonists, with routes through the Harz geopark, the Wadden Sea National Park and the Bliesgau Reserve, among other places.
www.germany.travel
12 The Arctic Games
From March 6 to 11, Nuuk (Godthåb, in Danish), the capital of Greenland, will host the Arctic Winter Games, the biggest event of this type that has been held up to now. They will accommodate 15 sports disciplines, most related to snow, or indoor, such as badminton. In parallel, a music and dance festival has been organized.
www.awg2016.org
13 Jericoacoara
30 years ago backpackers discovered the beach of Jericoacoara (Brazil), in a hard-to-reach fishing village, six hours by road from Fortaleza. The new international airport that will open this year in the city of Cruz, an hour away by car, will make the trip more comfortable.
www.visitbrasil.com
14 Hokkaido Bullet Train
Starting in March, the new Hokkaido Shinkansen bullet train will link Tokyo and Hakodate, the gateway to the northern island of Hokkaido, home to some of the most rugged and remote landscapes from Japan.
www.japan-guide.com
15 South India
For those who have already visited northern India, the southern region of Tamil Nadu is a good option. The route starts from Chennai (old Madras), the state capital, and continues through Kanchipuram, the city of a thousand temples; Mahabalipuram and its seven pagodas, and Sri Meenakshi, a huge Hindu temple complex in the city of Madurai.
http://incredibleindia.org
16 The floating forest
Two novelties will join the landscape of Rotterdam (Holland) in 2016: the Museum Rotterdam, in the Timmerhuis designed by Rem Koolhaas, and the installation The bobbing forest ), by the Dutch artist Jorge Bakker, which will fill the port of the Dutch city with floating trees. And in Bolduque (Holland), the birthplace of El Bosco, the Noordbrabants Museum presents the exhibition Jheronimus Bosch from February 13 to May 8. Visions of a genius, a retrospective that commemorates the fifth centenary of the painter.
www.holland.com
17 Canadian Beaches
The Tsusiat River plummets from a 10-meter cliff onto the beach at one of the most suggestive camping spots on the West Cost Trail, a 75-kilometer-long hiking route the coast of Vancouver, in western Canada, from which ferries depart for the Southern Gulf Islands, an archipelago of small islands with pebble beaches and fishing villages. Companies like Air Transat or Air Canada have direct flights from Spain to various Canadian airports from 600 euros.
www.visitcanada.com
18 An Argentine route
After 30 years, the mythical highway of the Seven Lakes, which connects Villa La Angostura with San Martín de los Andes (Argentina), has been completely paved. The 107-kilometre route runs through spectacular landscapes of the Patagonian Andes, lenga, araucaria and myrtle forests.
www.argentina.travel
19 La Montañona
Following its Central American neighbours, El Salvador launches two new ecotourism routes: the coffee route, through the western part of the country, and the circuit of La Montañona and Bosque Vainilla, a project of hiking routes through the forests of Chalatenango.
www.elsalvador.travel
20 Washington
This year the Smithsonian Foundation's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) will open on the National Mall in Washington, a project by architects Philip Freelom and David Adjaye dedicated to the life, art, music and culture of the black population of the United States.
http://nmaahc.si.edu/
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