Nothing beats a hot cup of cocoa by a roaring fireplace while wearing comfy sweats wrapped in a blanket. Add a good book during a heavy snowfall, and it’s about as perfect a day as it gets! Invented by the Danish, “hygge” simply means cozy, and it’s how we should all winter. According to the official Visit Denmark website, “hygge means creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying the good things in life with good people…Perhaps hygge explains why Danes are some of the happiest people in the world.” Inspired by this way of life, we’ve put together 8 destinations to visit this winter to embrace a hygge vibe for a well-deserved break. 

One of the things to look forward to the most with a new year is all the new trips there are to plan. Twelve months are a blank canvas to fill with destinations, escapes, cultural immersion, and memories. Whether you prefer to go on grand adventures scaling mountains and reaching high peaks or cozy, slow travel leisurely walking down old, historic cobblestone streets, dipping in and out of bookstores and cafes while getting to know the local people, a new year is a new opportunity to fill as many moments as possible with curiosity and enriching experiences. We'd love to take off for hundreds of places in the world, but these eight are currently at the top of our minds.

Traveling alone is such a rewarding experience. It requires us to be content in our own company outside of the isolation of our homes. Discovering a new place is exhilarating when done with others but takes on an introspective element when done by ourselves. It pushes us outside our comfort zone - whether dining alone or joining a group tour without a buddy. It’s an opportunity to plan an entire trip around what is most important to us, around what we’re most interested in — no compromising or going for tacos when we want pasta. There’s no argument over when to wake up or how much to cram into the day. You get to explore at your own pace, no questions asked. Along the way, you’ll more than likely discover something new about yourself, whether it’s learning you are capable of something you hadn’t considered before or having a moment of self-awareness that leads you to a new level of growth. 

Travel was a significant part of my life before the pandemic. Working as a freelancer, I’ve had the privilege of taking my “office” with me, and I took full advantage of that luxury. The pandemic was one of several challenging years, and travel stopped for me months before the world shut down. While I’d like to say that I could fuel that part of me in other ways, it just didn’t seem the same. Coming back to travel in 2024 felt like coming home again.

What’s more magical than visiting a destination that feels like a real-life fairytale? Europe has many towns just like this, but Amboise, France, looks as if it has stepped out of Beauty and the Beast. Amboise is a small medieval town in the Loire Valley, about 140 miles outside Paris. It served as the final home of Leonardo da Vinci and features the famous Château Royal d’Amboise. The people are friendly, the food is outstanding, and if the walls could talk, we’d hear intimate conversations between da Vinci and King Francis I. 

There are cities filled with so much history that they might as well be walking time machines, like Boston. Other cities, like Washington D.C., certainly have history but memorialize it more than anything. In fact, the nation’s capitol has over 160 memorials. So, while Boston has the past oozing out of every brick and cobblestone, D.C. is more of a testament to days gone by. That’s not to say D.C. doesn’t have sites with historical impact. Most cities have stories to be told if you know where to look, and in the Capitol, that’s in old, iconic buildings. 

Visiting Paris for the first time is exhilarating. There’s so much to do that it’s easy to overestimate how much time you have to explore. The first thing to remember is to be realistic while planning. For example, the Louvre is enormous. If you think you’ll cover it in a day, think again because not even a week is enough time to see everything. Second, manage your expectations. Most people don’t realize the Mona Lisa is about the size of a large textbook rather than a giant canvas. Just like any other city, do some research before leaving. While spontaneity makes for grand adventures, having a reasonably sketched-out plan never hurts, especially if you have a laundry list of things you want to fit in and a budget to keep to.

Savannah is a bucket list item for many. People are drawn to the haunting yet enchanting beauty of the Spanish moss, the abundance of ghost stories, and the celebratory atmosphere of River Street. As one of the oldest cities in the United States, Savannah’s roots run deep, and it has seen every significant milestone in the country’s history since the Revolutionary War. Named one of the “friendliest cities in the US” by CondeNast Traveler, it’s no surprise people are drawn to this Southern beauty and continue to return year after year. 

There’s a scene in Eat Pray Love when Liz is in Italy visiting the Augusteum. She explains the origin of these ancient ruins and talks about how the city has built itself above it over time.

It’s one of the simplest things, sitting in what she considers the “quietest and loneliest” part of Rome. But that brief experience had an impact on the way she started to see things. It was a pivotal moment in finally letting go of the relationship she had with David. It didn’t make the experience - the heartbreak - any less painful but it allowed her to take the first step to move forward. This is the beauty, and the privilege, of travel. It takes us outside our routines and self-imposed bubbles where nothing changes and opens our eyes to looking at life differently. This world is so much bigger than the next promotion or moving in with a partner. If we allow ourselves to look outside the world we limit ourselves to, there’s so much more to be discovered about ourselves, the people in our lives, the challenges we’re working through, and the people around us.