Nomadic Spirit is a weekly newsletter for travelers who care as much about the why as the where.
In this issue
The travel industry would love to sell you a “golden gap year.” Great marketing, but not a great way to plan your travel once your calendar is your own. We go to St. John's, Newfoundland, a place no ranking will send you, where a woman handed her car keys to a family she had just met at a trailhead. Maggie Wolfe Miller takes us to a verandah outside Jericho in the mid-1980s, where a family who had lost nearly everything offered two strangers a glass of sweet mint tea. She has the photograph. And in Further Afield, the ranking of the best countries in the world for older travelers, what Japan is quietly doing about its own crowds, and the sympathetic case for the golden gap year in case we have been unfair to it.
The Dispatch
Where Travel and Life Intersect
Everyone Wants to Sell You a Golden Gap Year
At some point, your travel stops being shaped by somebody else's calendar. No two weeks to ration. No approvals needed. No flight out on a Friday and back on a Sunday night just to save vacation days. For some, this arrives with retirement. For others, it comes from leaving a job, working for yourself, or simply deciding you've earned the right to stop asking.
However you got there, the travel industry has a name for what happens next. You've probably run into it lately. The “golden gap year.”
Great marketing? Yes, really smart. Great for you? Probably not, but there are some insights buried in all this that are worth paying attention to and could shape how you travel for the better.
Why the phrase is everywhere
Earlier this month, a tour company released a ranking of the best countries for a “golden gap year,” with Japan at the top. Within days, it ran in Forbes, Euronews, and Parade, among others.
The company that ran the study sells guided tours to Japan. Their own write-up notes this a few lines after announcing the result, offered as corroboration.
The phrase has been circulating since about 2024, mostly out of cruise lines and tour operators, and two numbers explain why they are all saying it at once. In 1990, 5 percent of Americans held a passport. Today it is 48 percent. And roughly 4.1 million Americans are turning 65 each year from 2024 through 2027, more than 11,000 a day, the largest wave in the country's history, though the average American actually retires closer to 61. A market arrived, and naming it was the obvious next move.
What it does to time
The phrase borrows a word people already regard warmly. A gap year sounds like freedom with a little daring. It's a bold adventure all neatly packaged. The brilliant marketing move is what it does to time. A loose intention, someday we would like to see more of the world, becomes a unit with a beginning and an end. Units can be priced.
A gap in what?
A gap year works for an 18-year-old because higher education, or a full-time profession, is waiting on the other side. The year is defined by what it interrupts. But if your calendar is already your own, there is nothing on the far side to go back to, which leaves a question that can't be answered. A gap in what?
It would be harmless borrowed language if it didn't come with a clock. Believing you are inside a one-year window forces you into a particular kind of trip: fourteen countries in eleven months, every week booked before departure, nothing seen twice because the window is closing.
It also sends everyone at once. Now imagine millions of newly free travelers, holding the same rankings, working against the same invented deadline, arriving at the same eight countries. The crowd you stood in at Kyoto was partly scheduled by the article that told you to be there.
What's worth keeping
That ranking looked at walkability, safety, healthcare you would trust at two in the morning, whether senior discounts are real for visitors, and whether a country has built itself around older travelers or has only made room for them. Useful things to know, and by those measures Japan earned the top spot.
The arithmetic
The big difference? The arithmetic. The industry is selling a period with an end date. You are not working from one anymore.
That changes every decision. Rather than feeling an urgency to jump-start this next stretch with a year-long commitment to the road, think about it over a longer horizon. Embrace the flexibility that a looser schedule gives you, plan some longer stays (a big fan of the three-week immersion), and learn what kind of travel you really enjoy when you are not rushing back to anything.
What a ranking can't tell you is that the version of Japan you'll get depends entirely on where in it you stand.
Kyoto just had its biggest year on record, with nearly 63 million visitors, the first time above 60 million since the city began counting in 1958. In the same survey, the share of foreign visitors who said they would definitely return fell from 66 percent to 61. City officials pointed to the crowds. Meanwhile, Japanese visitors at the famous sites were down about 15 percent while foreign visitors rose 30. Those Japanese travelers didn't stop coming to Kyoto. They went north to Takao and to Yamashina, all of them still the same city.
Ten minutes up the road.
You don't figure that out in a rush, working off someone else's manufactured deadline.
By Paul M. Rand, founder and editor of Nomadic Spirit.
A Chosen Place
Destinations worth traveling for, and understanding once you arrive
St. John's, Newfoundland
Newfoundland Still Feels Like Somewhere Else
Why this overlooked corner of Canada deserves a place on your fall travel list
The rankings mentioned in this week's Dispatch, the ones that highlight Japan as the best country in the world for older travelers, put Canada seventh. Interestingly, it was the only North American country in the top 10.
Most travelers to Canada find their way to the same handful of places. Banff and the Rockies, Vancouver, Quebec City, and Niagara Falls. All are amazing places and worth a visit. Newfoundland is a part of Canada few lists will send you to but should definitely be on your list, particularly in the fall.
If you are not familiar, Newfoundland is far enough east that St. John's is closer to Ireland than to Winnipeg. It was a separate country until 1949.
A Place That Still Feels Different
Newfoundland offers something that is becoming increasingly difficult to find: a place that feels different and still a little undiscovered.
A good place to start is St. John's, one of the oldest cities in North America. It wraps around a spectacular natural harbor. You can walk streets filled with colorful wooden houses, climb Signal Hill, and explore the Battery, where the homes seem to cling to the rocks. A short drive from downtown, you'll find Quidi Vidi, which still feels like the fishing village it was before the city grew around it.
If you are a hiker or walker, the East Coast Trail covers more than 200 miles of the Avalon Peninsula, past cliffs, coves and even more fishing villages. Whatever your speed, you can choose a section and be back in St. John's for a late lunch or dinner.
Food and music are worth as much attention as the landscape. If you are a seafood fan, cod, snow crab and mussels are restaurant highlights. Later, you can find pubs with live music that isn't staged for tourists.
And Then There Are the People
In 2017, a story about a visiting family and a woman named Alma Lake traveled well beyond Newfoundland. The family had come to hike the East Coast Trail but discovered there wasn't a rental car available in St. John's. They decided to use taxis instead.
Earlier that same day, they had asked their cab driver what made him proudest to be a Newfoundlander. Generosity and hospitality, he told them. If your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, someone will stop, help you out, and probably drive you home.
Near Signal Hill, they met Lake and her friend and began talking about the trails they hoped to explore. Lake asked if they had a car. When they explained the problem, she offered them hers.
Lake didn't know them. But she knew they had driver's licenses, and they needed a car more than she did.
So they took it.
They spent the rest of their visit exploring in a stranger's car. On their final evening, Lake and her husband invited the family to their home for dinner. The story was later picked up by the CBC and even retold on the floor of the Canadian Senate.
That generosity has deep roots. For centuries, isolated fishing communities survived because neighbors depended on one another. Much has changed, but some of those habits endured.
Going in the Fall
Fall may be the sweet spot. Summer crowds have thinned, leaves are turning, and the roads are quieter. By October, some boat tours and seasonal attractions begin closing, so check schedules if you go later in the fall. The East Coast Trail Association stops clearing paths and posting trail conditions from November through April. One stretch between Herring Cove and Ferryland is currently closed due to a land dispute, so check their advisories before you plan a route.
Give yourself at least five days. St. John's and the Avalon Peninsula are enough for one trip. If you have more time, head toward Brigus, Trinity, or Bonavista.
And leave a little room in the itinerary. In Newfoundland, a change in plans may turn out to be the best part of the trip.
We want to hear from you
Two ways to be in Nomadic Spirit
Maggie’s piece this week (below) is a reader submission. The Journey is open to readers who want to write about a trip that mattered. Personal, specific, in your own voice. Length is flexible. We edit lightly and leave your voice intact.
Fork First: One dish, one place, one reason to go. 200 to 300 words. The test: would you go back for this dish? Would you tell everyone heading to that city to find it? If yes, write it up.
If you are interested in sharing your story with our 19,000+ readers, please write us at [email protected], and we’ll send along submission guidelines.
We read everything that comes in.
The Journey — Voices of the Nomadic Spirit
Stories from travelers who have been changed by where they went.
Photo Credit: Maggie Wolfe Miller, old Jericho, mid-1980s
When a Cup of Tea Became a Welcome, Sweet Memory
One of my favorite travel experiences took place over 40 years ago, when I was newly graduated from college, and ready to explore the world.
I left my home city of Cape Town, South Africa, in the mid-1980s with a backpack, a round-trip ticket, and $200 in my pocket. I returned home two years later!
My journey began with two months volunteering on a kibbutz in Israel, followed by a move to Jerusalem to work as a nanny and cashier in a high-rise hotel. It was a simple life, but one filled with adventures and lessons which no classroom could teach.
On my day off, my Greek boyfriend and I caught the bus to Jericho to do some exploring. He was a tour guide so I had a remarkable resource whenever we embarked on one of our escapades. We disembarked near an area believed to be the ruins of the ancient city mentioned in biblical writings. The landscape was fascinating, but what happened next is what has stayed with me all these years.
Not far from the ruins, we came across an elderly Palestinian couple and their extended family living in what remained of a ramshackle farmhouse. They'd made the house as livable as they could, but the setting was simple and rugged.
We struck up a conversation with the couple who had retreated from the heat of the sun to the shade of their verandah. As we listened, they told us about the losses they'd experienced when they were forced from their ancestral home. Their farmland, their home, their livestock, and the life they had built there.
Then they did something I have never forgotten. They invited us to sit with them.
There was no elaborate meal offered. Nothing luxurious or elegant. Instead, they offered us what they had: a cup of hot, sweet tea infused with fresh spearmint leaves.
I'd come to love this tea during my time in Israel, but somehow, sitting there in the shade with this elderly couple and their grandchildren, it tasted different.
Perhaps it was the whispers of history sounding heavy in the hot afternoon sun. Or perhaps it was the simple generosity of two people who, despite having lost so much, were willing to share what little they had with two strangers.
We talked. We listened. They told us their story, and for a while, we were simply people from different nationalities sitting together, sharing a drink and a moment.
That experience taught me something about travel that has remained with me ever since. Authentic hospitality isn't always about the value of what someone is offering you. Sometimes, it's about the invitation to sit down, to listen, to be curious, and to see one another.
I've enjoyed extraordinary meals in many countries. But I don't remember most of those meals.
I do, however, remember that cup of sweet, mint-infused tea. I remember the shade of that verandah in old Jericho.
I remember the elderly couple who had lost so much and still found something to give.
Maggie Wolfe Miller is Zimbabwean by birth, South African and American by descent, 100% African at heart. She currently lives in Wisconsin and shares her love of globetrotting by promoting transformational travel.
Further Afield
Reading worth your time.
What to Know About a Golden Gap Year, and How to Take One
AARP
The sympathetic version of the idea we argue with this week, published in August 2024 and worth reading on its own terms. It follows people who have taken one, including a stretch in the Algarve, and gathers practical advice from travel advisors on money, timing, and pacing. It also cites the same figure we do, roughly 4.1 million Americans a year reaching 65.
Ranked: These Are the World's Best Countries for Retirees to Travel To
Euronews
The ranking we argue with in this week's Dispatch, published August 14. Firebird Tours scored 100 countries across seven measures and put Japan first by a wide margin, with Europe taking eight of the top ten places. The criteria are worth reading even if you ignore the leaderboard.
Japan Triples Departure Tax in Push to Combat Overtourism
The Japan Times
The country named the best in the world in the recent ranking is working to spread out its visitors. The departure levy tripled to 3,000 yen on July 1, and Kyoto's accommodation tax now reaches 10,000 yen per person per night at the top tier. The revenue is earmarked for overtourism countermeasures, and the government cut passport fees to soften the hit on its own residents.
A Review of Adventure Canada's Newfoundland Cruise
Afar
A first-person account of circumnavigating the island, published in May 2026. The writer spends her best paragraphs on the places she had never heard of, including Red Bay and the Mi'kmaq community of Miawpukek, and on a kitchen party where the community laid out fish and brewis with scruncheons and stayed to explain how life works that far out.
“Do You Have a Car?”: Story of Newfoundland Kindness Finds National Audience
CBC News
The story behind this issue's A Chosen Place, reported in January 2018 with both women interviewed. Alma Lake explains why she handed her keys to a family she had known for about two minutes, and describes her own holiday that summer, when strangers in Southport knocked on her cabin door with bread, then fish, then blueberries.
“I believe in Kindness. Well, you may retort, who doesn't? But I believe in it rather as religious people believe in God. If humanity learnt to gauge its every action by the simple criterion of kindness, always to ask if it is, on balance, the kindest thing to do, the world would be much happier.”
Jan Morris, from her introduction to The Kindness of Strangers (Lonely Planet, 2003)
