There are a lot of countries where the tap water is risky to drink and most tourists take the easy but destructive route of buying water daily in throwaway plastic bottles. If you don’t want to carry a SteriPen (covered in issue #180), many water bottles have a built-in filtration or purification system. The three styles are a filter you suck through (like this Lifestraw one), a built-in filter you push down (from Grayl), or with a SteriPen-style UV light that’s built into the cap (from LARQ). I’ve used all three kinds and if you drink a gallon+ daily, the last option gives you the most liquid for the bottle size.

Cheapest Flight Destinations From Every U.S. State

Skyscanner crunched their booking numbers in an interesting way for this study, figuring out the cheapest domestic and international destination from every U.S. state in March ‘06. What makes this fun is how unpredictable and counter-intuitive the results are. Who would have thought that the cheapest place to fly from Wisconsin would be Madrid, that from Arkansas it would be Athens, from Georgia it would be Vancouver, or that from Los Angeles it would be San Salvador? If you want to take a vacation to Hawaii, it might be best to go to Antigua first: they found flights from Guatemala to Honolulu for $217 one way!

Reserve for the Next Eclipse

I was in Mazatlan a couple of years ago for the full solar eclipse that went through parts of North America. To see the next one, you’ll need to visit part of a narrow band of options in Europe. Make those reservations soon though: the Expedia group says searches are way up already in some destinations. “For 2026, Greenland (+55%), Iceland (+445%), and several cities in Northern Spain (+125%) are expected to have the best views. Much of the totality will be over the ocean, so northern Spain is going to have the most populated areas for viewing. Check apartment rentals here.

Where Electric Cars Are the Standard

Norway leads the world in a whole lot of civilized statistics, but they’ve really outdone themselves on the social engineering front with electric car adoption. “According to recent data from the Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council (OFV), electric cars accounted for 95.9 percent of all new passenger vehicle registrations in 2025.” The next biggest category was hybrids. See the full story here.

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.