Retractable Cable Locks/2025 Emerging Destinations/No UK Coal
Nomadico Newsletter #127
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.
Retractable Cable Locks
I’ve been through a few brands of retractable cable locks that are seemingly no longer offered, so to prepare for multiple train trips in Europe, I picked up two of the best-rated ones on Amazon via the travel brand Lewis & Clark. These thin cables with a combination lock can snake around your luggage and secure it to a rack or seat and can even go through some of the larger zipper pulls. The cable retracts into a small case though and doesn’t take up much room when packing.
Panama City Bike Tour
I’m a big fan of walking tours to get oriented in a new city and get some history, but I like to take a bike tour instead sometimes because you can cover a lot more ground. I’ve done them in a lot of big cities with good bike paths and enjoyed my one in Panama City last week with Go Panama Bike Tours. One result of the Panama Canal expansion lane that opened in 2016 is that the city used a lot of that excavated rock to build a long biking and jogging path that extends along the water from the old city (Casco Viejo) to the end of the skyscraper zone miles away. Then there’s also a bike path on the bypass road that goes out into the Pacific. There’s a Reel here if you want to see video.
Emerging Destinations in 2025
Skyscanner and Booking.com both put out reports this week on which destinations are seeing a big rise in interest for 2025. Apparently very few travelers use both services because there was only 1 intersection among 20 results: Tromso, Norway. Both had one head-scratching U.S. result (Baltimore and Houston) and plenty of places I’ve never even heard of that look nice, like João Pessoa in Brazil (from the Booking report) and Tartu, Estonia (from the Skyscanner report).
Good Riddance to Coal
There’s a line in Mad Men about how the London Fog raincoats were a misnomer: it wasn’t fog, but coal smoke pollution that blanketed the city. You won’t be smelling coal in the UK anymore because the last coal-fired electric plant there closed at the end of last month. The UK isn’t the first European nation to get rid of the toxic polluter completely—Portugal is coal-free and Denmark replaced it with 100% renewable energy—but the UK’s transformation is significant because the country is part of the G7, the group of the world’s largest economies.
10/24/24