My Favorite New Destinations of 2025

How do I sum up my travels in 2025? Fun, intense, and carefully planned, with an eye toward increasingly intense adventures in the future.

This year, I’ve been feeling more of an urge to visit new places, and especially new countries. But I’ve also been drawn toward more intense and adventurous trips. Madagascar was exactly what I needed — a rough and wild trip full of surprises. I want more of that!

In 2025, I visited seven new countries — Mauritius, Madagascar, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, St. Lucia, and Dominica. That takes me to 96. My goal of 100 is in striking distance!

(And don’t forget to check out my best travel moments of 2025 and my worst travel moments of 2025! These two are must-reads!)

So what made the list of my favorite new destinations of 2025?

In 2012, I chose places like Iceland, Montenegro, and South Africa.

In 2013, I chose places like Japan, Berlin, and the Scottish Highlands.

In 2014, I chose places like Sri Lanka, New Orleans, and Skellig Michael, Ireland.

In 2015, I chose places like Nicaragua, Albania, and Chicago.

In 2016, I chose places like Puerto Rico, Alsace, and Western Australia.

In 2017, I chose places like Ukraine, the Florida Keys, and St. Petersburg, Russia.

In 2018, I chose places like Antarctica, Hokkaido, and St. Croix.

In 2019, I chose places like Newfoundland, Georgia, and Lake Orta, Italy.

In 2020, I chose places like Mexico City; Viñales, Cuba; and Vis, Croatia.

In 2021, I chose places like the Aeolian Islands, the Berkshires, and Valle d’Aosta, Italy.

In 2022, I chose places like Naples, Martha’s Vineyard, and Guanajuato, Mexico.

In 2023, I chose places like Ischia, Patagonia, and Perast, Montenegro.

In 2024, I chose places like Bhutan, the Basque Country, and the San Blas Islands, Panama.

As usual, I am only including destinations that I visited for the first time in 2025 — so that excludes destinations that I’ve visited before, including Kraków, New Orleans, and everywhere I visited in Mexico this year.

One exception: the Second Time Around award.

Table of Contents

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• Madagascar
• Crete
• The Grenadines
• Curaçao
• Réunion Island
• High Tatras, Slovakia
• St. Lucia
• Langhe, Italy
• The Second Time Around Award: Warsaw
• My Travel Wishes for 2026

Madagascar

Going into 2025, I knew Madagascar would be the most intense, unusual, and visually stunning destination of the year. And it delivered in just about every direction possible.

More beautiful than expected. More hardcore than expected. More frustrating than expected. More surprising than expected.

Madagascar is not for most travelers. It’s rough and complicated and the travel infrastructure is limited. The roads? Wild. The plumbing? Very often nonexistent.

But if you’ve been craving a REAL adventure, and you’ve felt like you’ve been playing it safe too often in your travels lately — Madagascar is the place for you.

Imagine hiking across the roof of a rock forest, clipping yourself in and out. Imagine getting up close to lemurs and swimming with giant turtles. Imagine visiting tiny villages, chatting with locals and kids holding your hands wherever you go. Imagine watching a sunset over baobab trees. Imagine visiting a country nearly immune to overtourism.

Because Madagascar is a rough place to travel, I always knew I would not do it not solo, but as a group trip. I joined the Rock My Adventure Madagascar trip and WHAT A GREAT DECISION THAT WAS! An incredibly fun trip with so much adventure, nice places to stay, and everything organized so I wouldn’t have to deal with all the malarky.

(Well. There was a bit of malarky. We got caught up in unrest in the capital, got teargassed, were stuck waiting for days as the airport was mostly shut down. Shortly after we all left, the protests culminated in a military coup. Yes. Seriously. And the trip was still MASSIVELY worth it.)

Visiting Madagascar felt like I was a young backpacker again. It was so nice to experience this new country, but also connect with my past self at the same time.

The next Rock My Adventure Madagascar trip is in October 2026. You can get $100 off any Rock My Adventure trip with the code KATE100.

How to get to Madagascar: Your only option is to fly in; there are no international ferries. Air France has regular connections to Antananarivo from Paris. You can also fly into Antananarivo from Réunion on Air Austral (which I did) or Mauritius on Air Mauritius, and there are a few other connections within Africa. Ethiopian Airlines seemed to be the only airline operating reliably when everything was getting shut down during the protests.

There is an airline called Neos that has lots of random connections from Nosy Be to European cities like Milan, Verona, and apparently next year, PRAGUE. (Man, could I have used that this year!!)

Best Thing to Do in Madagascar: The biggest adventure of the trip was the three-day boat trip down the Tsiribihina River, just a rough and wild adventure that was so off the beaten path and got us up close to rural life in Madagascar. But I’ll quickly note that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, so my second recommendation is hiking the Grand Tsingy, which is dramatic and beautiful and really leaves you feeling accomplished.

Where to Stay in Madagascar: We stayed at great hotels throughout the trip, and I especially recommend Maison Ylang Dive Center in Nosy Be (perfect end-of-trip splurge with SUPER nice rooms, great staff and food, sweet dogs who live at the hotel, AC), Soleil des Tsingy (incredible infinity pool which is JUST PERFECT after a hike in this super-hot region), and

Adventurous Kateمصدر