Something about the first full week of July makes people want to go further than usual. Maybe it is the long holiday weekend still humming in the background, maybe it is the sight of everyone else’s beach photos, but the mood this week is less about checking a box and more about disappearing a little. The places on my mind are the ones that still feel like they belong to whoever finds them first, and the reading on my nightstand is all about what happens when you go somewhere alone and let it change you.
The Azores have been building toward this moment for a few years, and 2026 is when the routing finally caught up to the scenery. WestJet and Air Canada both launched nonstop service from Toronto to Ponta Delgada this June, following Ryanair’s exit from the islands in the spring, and the new carriers have reshaped the whole pricing picture for North American travelers who used to have to route through Lisbon. Sao Miguel, the largest island, is where most people land first, and it earns the detour with crater lakes like Sete Cidades and Lagoa do Fogo, thermal pools you can actually swim in, and whale watching that does not require a single hour of driving to reach.
July puts you right in the sweet spot between the wildflower bloom and peak crowds, with long days for hiking the caldera rims and warm enough water for a proper soak in the Furnas hot springs afterward. Ponta Delgada itself is compact enough to explore on foot, and renting a car for a day trip around the island is the single best money you will spend on the whole itinerary. Lonely Planet just named whale watching in the Azores one of its top experiences for 2026, which tells you where the attention is heading before the crowds fully catch on.
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Vagar Airport quietly logged a record 461,064 passengers in 2025, and the number is still climbing as more airlines add routes into this eighteen-island cluster between Iceland and Norway. Atlantic Airways still runs the workhorse route from Copenhagen at least twice daily year round, and Wideroe’s service from Bergen adds a second Scandinavian entry point for anyone building a longer Nordic itinerary. What you get once you land is a landscape that looks unfinished in the best way: grass-roofed villages tucked into fjords, sheep outnumbering people roughly two to one, and hiking trails that end at cliffs dropping straight into the North Atlantic.
July is as good as the weather gets here, with long daylight and a decent shot at clear skies for the hike out to Trolanes or the boat trip to see the sea stacks off Vagar. Torshavn, the capital, is small enough to cover in an afternoon, which makes it easy to treat as a base rather than a destination in itself. Bring layers no matter what the forecast says, and do not expect much in the way of trees.
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Search interest in Washington, D.C. jumped 173 percent year over year heading into this summer, and the reason is not a mystery: the country’s 250th anniversary is drawing a steady run of events through the capital all season, and people want to be there for it rather than watching from home. The National Mall is doing what it does best right now, with the monuments lit for evening crowds and the Smithsonian museums running extended programming tied to the anniversary. It is the rare American city where the history is not staged for tourists, it is just sitting there in the middle of everything.
Go early in the day to beat both the heat and the crowds at the major memorials, then save the golden hour for a walk along the Reflecting Pool, when the light does something to the Washington Monument that no photo quite captures. The Metro makes a car unnecessary for almost everything on the Mall, and neighborhoods like Adams Morgan and Shaw are worth an evening if you want the city outside the postcard version of itself.
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Every year someone writes that Albania is about to be discovered, and every year it stays just under the radar, which is exactly why it is worth going now. The stretch of coastline running from Vlore down to Sarande has the same turquoise water and dramatic cliffs you would pay Amalfi Coast prices for, at a fraction of the cost and without the August gridlock. Sarande itself has grown up fast, with a proper waterfront promenade and enough good seafood restaurants that you will not be settling for anything.
The nearby ruins at Butrint, a short drive south, are a genuine UNESCO World Heritage site that most visitors have never heard of, layered with Greek, Roman, and Venetian history and almost never crowded. Ksamil, a little further down the coast, has a string of small islands you can swim out to, and the water there rivals anything in the Ionian. Flights connect through Tirana, and a rental car makes the coastal drive itself part of the trip.
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Milos has been gaining a following for a while now, but it still manages to feel calm even in the middle of summer, which is more than can be said for Santorini or Mykonos at this point. The draw is Sarakiniko Beach, a stretch of white volcanic rock so smooth and lunar looking that it barely registers as a Greek island photo at first glance. With more than seventy beaches spread across the island, from the hidden cove at Kleftiko that is only reachable by boat to the fishing village of Klima with its colorful boathouses built right into the rock, there is enough here to fill a week without repeating a single view.
Ferries run from Piraeus and connect Milos to the rest of the Cyclades, so it pairs easily with a longer island-hopping itinerary if you want one. Adamas, the main port town, has enough tavernas and small hotels to make a comfortable base, and renting an ATV or small car is the easiest way to reach the more remote beaches on the island’s western side.
Search interest in Bozeman climbed 141 percent this summer, which tracks with what anyone who has been there in the last few years already knows: this is Montana’s version of a boomtown, minus most of the boomtown feeling on the ground. The Gallatin Valley sits at the doorstep of Yellowstone, with the Bridger Range rising directly behind downtown and the Gallatin River running fly-fishing water that draws people from across the country. Unlike the more established gateway towns, Bozeman still has an actual working downtown, not just a strip built for tourists.
July is prime hiking season on the “M” Trail above town and out toward Hyalite Canyon, where a five-mile hike rewards you with a string of waterfalls most visitors to the region never see. The drive south into Yellowstone is under two hours, close enough for a day trip but far enough that Bozeman does not feel like a mere staging ground. Book lodging early, because word about this place has gotten out even if the crowds have not fully arrived yet.
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Lauren Hough published this one in mid-June, and it has already landed on most-anticipated lists at the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and Kirkus. The premise is a direct answer to Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, updated for the country as it actually exists now: Hough refurbished a 2001 Dodge van, loaded up her husky mix, Woody, and drove out of Austin to talk to whoever would talk back, in gas stations and bars and auto shops from one coast to the other.
What makes it worth reading right now is the same thing that made her essay collection, Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing, a bestseller: she writes about people who get written off with more nuance and less pity than almost anyone working today. It is funny in the way that catches you off guard, and it does not pretend the country is simpler than it is.
This one publishes on July 14, and it is already a preorder bestseller on the strength of a story that first spread on TikTok. Laura Murphy’s fiance died in her arms a month before their wedding. Rather than cancel the honeymoon they had planned together, a trip through Ireland, London, and the French Riviera ending in Castellina in Chianti, she went alone, and millions of people followed along as she did it.
It is not a misery memoir. It is closer to a document of what it actually looks like to keep choosing to be alive after something breaks you open, told through a trip that was supposed to be about a marriage and became about something else entirely. Publishers Weekly called it visceral without ever tipping into indulgence, which is a hard needle to thread and one worth reading to see done well.
This annual guide has become something of a bellwether for where attention is about to shift, and the 2026 edition backs up a lot of what is already showing up in this week’s roundup. Whale watching in the Azores makes the top experiences list, alongside Grenada’s Spicemas festival, rafting the Colorado River, and food tours through Old Dubai, and the destination picks lean hard toward places that reward a bit of extra effort to reach.
It is less a guidebook in the traditional sense than a curated argument for where to point your next trip, built by a panel of writers and editors who spend their working lives chasing exactly this question. Worth flipping through even if you already have a destination locked in, if only to see what you are missing by not going somewhere else.
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With the country’s 250th anniversary landing squarely in the middle of this summer, 71 percent of Americans say they plan to drive to their next vacation rather than fly, according to recent industry surveys, and it shows in how people are talking about travel right now. International airfare to Europe is running roughly 20 percent higher than last year, which is nudging people toward exactly the kind of domestic road trip this anniversary summer was built for anyway.
The appeal is not just financial. There is something about a milestone this big that makes driving through your own country feel like the more meaningful choice, whether that means a loop through New England’s small towns or a long haul out to the national parks. Expect anniversary events layered into itineraries everywhere from Boston to Philadelphia through the rest of the summer.
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Search interest in solo travel has hit an all-time high this year, and searches specifically for women’s solo travel reached their highest point in fifteen years, according to data Google published in its own travel trends report. It lines up with everything else happening in the culture right now, from the runaway popularity of memoirs like The Solo Honeymoon to the steady rise of tour operators building entire itineraries around solo travelers rather than treating them as an afterthought to couples and groups.
What is different this cycle is how unremarkable the idea has become. Solo travel used to be framed as either a phase or a statement. Now it just reads as one more legitimate way to take a trip, no explanation required, which is probably the healthiest place this trend could have landed.
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Quark Expeditions sends its Ultramarine on a twelve-day loop around the entire island of Iceland starting July 27, and the itinerary reads like a checklist of everything that makes the country worth the trip: helicopter flightseeing over remote highland terrain, a crossing of the Arctic Circle by sea, a stop at Latrabjarg, Europe’s tallest bird cliff, and a close pass by the Vatnajokull glacier. The ship carries two helicopters on board, which is what makes reaching some of these spots possible without the multi-day overland logistics they would otherwise require.
This is adventure travel at its most literal, priced accordingly at just over twelve thousand dollars a person, but it points at something bigger happening in the category: operators are increasingly building trips around movement and access rather than comfort alone, betting that travelers with the means will pay for the ability to reach places a standard itinerary simply cannot.
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Header photo: Raul Kozenevski / Pexels, free to use under the Pexels License.
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