20 Amazing Places To Visit In 2020 With KAU

With 2020 just around the corner, the lists of “20 in 2020’s” are becoming a trend and for those that love travelling here is a list of 20 amazing places to visit in 2020. If you are wondering how you could cover all these places, invest in a cryptocurrency that allows you to travel in the lap of luxury. The best crypto to invest in is the KAU, a Gold backed cryptocurrency that eliminates storage fees for physical gold bullion, in addition to offering holders a unique fee-sharing yield model that adds an extra layer of value to gold holders in the form of monthly payments. You can use this investment on the XcelTrip platform to book your travels and make memories that last a lifetime.

Now that we’ve made sure that the finances of the travels are sorted here are 20 amazing places to visit in 2020:

Armenia

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Armenia is on its way to being one of next year’s most talked-about destinations, and there’s more to the tiny Caucasus nation than what makes the nightly news (or Kim Kardashian’s semi-regular visits). Ryanair will begin flying to Armenia in 2020, marking the first time a low-cost airline has serviced the country and ringing in a new era for travel there. The routes will debut with Rome to Yerevan and Milan to Yerevan in January, followed by Memmingen to Gyumri and Berlin to Yerevan the following summer. One-way tickets start at $33, making Armenia a budget-friendly — and blissfully offbeat — add-on to your next trip to Europe.

Bahia, Brazil

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Brazil has had a momentous year when it comes to travel. The country has dropped its visa requirements for U.S. citizens. New flight routes have added better connections to Brazilian cities like São Paulo and Salvador from hubs throughout North and South America.

Salvador is the main gateway into the northeast state of Bahia — a region with a rich Afro-Brazilian heritage and a coastline that rivals Rio’s. The capital city has recently seen a slew of notable hotel openings. Hotel Fasano Salvador sits in the headquarters of a former newspaper and overlooks the Bay of All Saints, and the nearby Art Deco Fera Palace, prior to reopening last year, once hosted the likes of Carmen Miranda and Pablo Neruda. The downtown Pelourinho district, where the Fera is, was the site of the first slave market in the Americas in 1558; today it is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has just emerged from a restoration of its cobblestone streets and colonial façades. And some things never change: West African dishes, beating music, candomblé religion, and rich history make the state as magnetic as ever.

Botswana’s Salt Pans

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Littered with fossils and Stone Age artifacts, Botswana’s Makgadikgadi salt pans are the remains of an ancient super-lake — a salt-encrusted expanse covering more than 6,200 square miles of the Kalahari Desert. Fifth-generation safari operator and naturalist Ralph Bousfield put the harsh yet hypnotically beautiful pans on the safari map 25 years ago when he opened Jack’s Camp, named for his father, who first set up camp here in the 1960s. Marooned on a grassy island on the edge of the pans, it’s still the only safari operation for almost 100 miles. Over the years, royalty and rock stars have been humbled by the landscape and enchanted by the 1940s campaign-style furniture, Bousfield family heirlooms, and Persian-carpeted Rajasthani tents.

Canadian Arctic

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The Canadian Arctic is “the world’s last and most pristine wilderness, with places man has not walked upon for over 500 years,” says Tessum Weber, a member of the esteemed family of explorers that runs Weber Arctic. It’s the ultimate destination for travelers, with a certain starkness that only polar regions can provide — though it’s rapidly losing its battle with the ever-rising tides.

Canary Islands, Spain

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This archipelago of islands off Africa’s Atlantic coast has attracted sun-seeking European travelers for decades, thanks to its black, white, and buttery-golden beaches. But it’s the mountainous interiors of the seven main islands that are grabbing the global spotlight in 2020. International airports on Tenerife, Gran Canaria, and Lanzarote are the archipelago’s main access points, with a network of car ferries that makes it easy to hopscotch between ports.

Guyana

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Though it has plenty of reasons to stand out — as South America’s only English-speaking country, and with a strikingly diverse population of Indian, African, Chinese, European, and Amerindian descent — Guyana has long hovered under the radar. But this relative quietness isn’t going to last long. The 2015 discovery of oil offshore has led to surging interest in the country. What that means for Guyana is still playing out, but so far, its abundance of natural beauty has remained shielded from the masses.

Nashville

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Nashville may be nearly synonymous with country music, but it’s no one-note town. The long-awaited National Museum of African American Music will open this summer on Broadway, home of Honky Tonk Row, and will showcase the history and impact of black music from the slave era to the present. Inside the museum — the first of its kind — five interactive galleries are dedicated to 50 genres of African American tunes, including blues, jazz, hip-hop, and rap. Don a choir robe and virtually sing “Oh Happy Day” along with Grammy winner Bobby Jones and his 30-member Nashville Super Choir. A recording of your performance will be sent to the smart bracelet you receive at admission. You can also step into the role of a record producer and arrange vocals and rhythms to create a personalized soul track that can be sent to your bracelet as well. Be sure to check out the 1963 poster for civil rights activist Sam Cooke’s legendary soul performance with Otis Redding at New York’s Paramount Theater, and don’t miss seeing Ella Fitzgerald’s leopard-print coat and a kimono from Alicia Keys’s personal wardrobe.

Copenhagen

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Copenhagen doesn’t need to sell itself as a worthy travel destination, what with its long summer days, hygge-filled winters, and unparalleled food scene. Yet the city keeps finding ways to become more travel-friendly, most recently with the extension of the City Ring Line subway line. Areas like the leafy Frederiksberg neighborhood and industrial Nordhavn waterfront are now much more accessible by rail — major for those scared of tackling Copenhagen’s busy bike highways. (Skilled pedalers, however, can breeze down the new Lille Langbro, a pedestrian-and-cyclist swing bridge, which now links both sides of the inner harbor.) Last August the city unveiled Kongens Nytorv, a plaza that for years was hidden under scaffolding. Located in the heart of Copenhagen, the roundabout is a one-stop shop for historically significant buildings like the Royal Danish Theatre, as well as Christmas and flea markets.

Dominica

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Although Hurricane Maria made landfall in 2017, its impact is still felt throughout the Caribbean. The tiny, lush island of Dominica — located between Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Eastern Caribbean — sustained intense damage and remains one of the world’s most vulnerable places in the face of climate change. To help protect the island from future storms, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit appeared at the United Nations four days after Hurricane Maria and declared that Dominica would become the first climate-resilient country in the world. To achieve this goal by 2030, the island is banning single-use plastics and Styrofoam; harnessing the renewable energy of the country’s geothermal, hydro, and solar resources; developing sustainable fisheries; and realigning and improving roads to resist flooding and other damage.

El Chaltén, Argentina

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On the Patagonian travel circuit, Argentina’s off-grid El Chaltén is often overshadowed by its more sought-after Chilean neighbor, Torres del Paine. The pocket-size Argentine village was founded in 1985 and quickly became a popular base camp for intrepid alpinists on a mission to summit the fabled granite spires of Mount Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre in the UNESCO-listed Los Glaciares National Park. However, you don’t have to be a die-hard hiker to enjoy the area’s scenic trails. Beginner to moderate routes offer access to Patagonia’s unmarred beauty: primeval forests packed with southern beech trees, snowmelt lagoons, rushing rivers, and jagged zeniths topped with outsized glaciers and floating condors. The upside to El Chaltén’s lower profile is that climbers enjoy less-congested trails. Yet for decades the remote frontier town has remained largely a backpacker outpost due to its lack of top-tier accommodations with high-end amenities like a spa and in-house guides.

Metz, France

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It’s a mystery why France’s historic region of Lorraine is still largely overlooked, especially since there was an international tug-of-war over this northeastern province that started in the Middle Ages and lasted for centuries. The region is poised for global attention in 2020, when Metz, the province’s elegant capital, fetes the 800th anniversary of its St.-Étienne Cathedral, a masterpiece of gothic architecture. After a fire threatened to topple Notre-Dame de Paris this past spring, and as the Parisian icon undergoes restoration, consider a visit to the Metz monument, built from local golden limestone. With a 138-foot-tall nave, it’s one of Europe’s tallest gothic buildings. But what really sets it apart are its stained glass windows, which are the world’s largest by surface area, at 70,000 square feet. A highlight is the Old Testament depictions by artist Marc Chagall, whose stained glass will be the focus of an exhibition in October 2020 at the Centre Pompidou-Metz — which is celebrating its 10th anniversary that year.

Dubai

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What does a city that manufactured an archipelago of 300 islands on a whim create for a landmark event? As Dubai prepares to make history as the host of the first World Expo to be held in the Middle East, the answer is emerging from the sand: an entire new city. To welcome the 25 million visitors expected to attend the six-month-long event that kicks off in October, the City of Gold has spent billions building up a sprawling site that’s double the size of Hong Kong island. If ever there was a metropolis of the future, this is it: There will be 130 buildings connected by smart technology that can do everything from monitoring the charging of electric vehicles to making sure the buildings’ temperatures are just right for visitors. At the site’s core is Al Wasl Plaza, an engineering feat crowned with a steel dome that can be turned into a 360-degree projection surface.

Rwanda

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A country forever marked by its genocide 25 years ago, Rwanda has made exceptional strides in building itself into a place that celebrates and protects its natural resources. A closer look at the East African nation reveals its focus on the future, with the development of its fourth national park, Gishwati Mukura, set to open next year. As the forest develops, it will eventually connect Volcanoes National Park and Nyungwe National Park, creating a wildlife corridor that enables local species like chimpanzees and mountain gorillas to flourish.

Tangier, Morocco

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We’ve been talking up Morocco as a long weekend destination for a while now, especially with the 2019 launch of two flights on Royal Air Maroc’s Dreamliners, from Boston and Miami to Casablanca. That momentum isn’t slowing down: In June, American Airlines will start a new flight from Philadelphia to Casablanca’s shiny new airport, which recently doubled its capacity to 14 million a year. In the same month, Royal Air Maroc joins Oneworld Alliance, making it much easier for those same travelers to connect to other destinations around Morocco.

Mokpo, South Korea

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There’s much more to South Korea than the popular tourism destinations of Seoul, Busan, and Jeju Island. Located in the Jeolla region at the southern tip of the peninsula, Mokpo is a big port city that attracts the world’s most in-the-know food lovers, thanks to its fertile lands and easy access to the sea.

A visit to the colorful and electric Mokpo Specialty Seafood Market, an arcade-style covered market, is an absolute must. The best time to visit is in the early hours of the morning, when the market is full of shoppers crowding over the catches of the day.

Southwest Michigan

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Ocean-like coastlines and a laid-back vibe have always been southwest Michigan’s biggest draws. But recently the lakefront region has embraced a grown-up take on agritourism and reemphasized its focus on family farms — after all, Michigan is the country’s second most agriculturally diverse state, behind California. In South Haven, a two-hour drive from Chicago, The Fields has opened the Midwest’s first glamping experience, with 10 tents set on 30 acres of blueberry farm. Guests are escorted to their porches in a vintage Ford pickup, wash down fresh fruit pies with locally roasted coffee by the fire, and snuggle up in the stylish, 320-square-foot tents. In 2020 it’s adding five additional tents and an on-site food truck.

Okinawa, Japan

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When a catastrophic blaze gutted the 500-year-old UNESCO World Heritage Site Shuri Castle last year, Okinawa’s tourism sector fretted that one of the top reasons for visiting Japan’s southernmost prefecture had been wiped out. But as the castle’s restoration fund grows (thanks largely to a crowdfunding campaign), so do fresh reasons to visit these ancient islands in the Pacific Ocean. 

Across a mile of sugar-soft sand in Okinawa Kaigan Quasi-National Park, the iconic Hawaiian hotel Halekulani has opened its first overseas outpost, bringing with it 360 plush rooms and a taste of Michelin-starred glamour in the form of Shiroux restaurant, where chef Hiroyasu Kawate — of two-starred Florilége in Tokyo — consults. Come April, seek out the remote Yaeyama Islands, where Hoshino Resorts’ revamped Risonare Kohamajima is relaunching along a bougainvillea-laced beach. At this most far-flung part of Japan — it’s actually geographically much closer to Taiwan — there’s little to do but cycle through sugarcane fields and swim in the ridiculously blue Sekisei Lagoon, with one of the largest coral reefs in the northern hemisphere beneath your feet and manta rays by your side.

Sri Lanka’s Southern Coast

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It’s only been a decade since Sri Lanka emerged from a brutal 26-year civil war that devastated its residents and decimated its tourism industry. But since 2009, global travelers have flocked to the country, drawn to its alluring beaches and misty tea estates. Sri Lanka regularly found itself topping lists like this one — until this past April, when tragedy struck again, this time in the form of an Easter terrorist attack at Colombo hotels and churches that left about 250 dead. Overnight, the beaches and tea estates were empty of tourists once again. While thousands of citizens were impacted by the slowdown, resilience is part of Sri Lanka’s ethos. Despite a decline of more than 20 percent in tourist numbers since 2018, a clutch of new hotels along the country’s southern coast have been readying themselves for guests, and travellers are trickling back.

Slovenia

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The fact that Slovenia, a postcard-perfect Eden of Alpine meadows, red-roofed villages, and shimmering Adriatic coastline, remains a low-key hideaway might be one of the great miracles of modern European travel. Let’s face it: If the country didn’t have such show-offs for neighbours — Croatia with its Game of Thrones filming locations; northeastern Italy with, well, Venice — it would have been overrun eons ago.

Southeastern Australia

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The southeastern Australia coast is ideal for a road trip — unless you’re short on time. Now there is a faster, more luxurious, and infinitely more relaxing way to explore it. Journey Beyond Rail Expeditions, the company behind the premium Ghan (Adelaide to Darwin) and Indian Pacific (Sydney to Perth) train routes, is adding a new adventure: Great Southern. Launching in December 2019, the 28-carriage twin-locomotive train will carry up to 214 guests between Adelaide, South Australia, and Brisbane, Queensland, traversing Victoria and New South Wales en route.

Use KAU on XcelTrip to travel to these 20 amazing places to visit in 2020 and memories that last a lifetime.