Hello and welcome to the Informed Traveler Podcast Newsletter, our monthly newsletter designed to compliment our weekly travel podcast, offer additional travel tidbits and tips. As always, your feedback is welcome.

Quotes from last month's podcast:

If you haven’t heard this month’s podcast episodes yet you can find the full interviews HERE. Some notable quotes include:

“There's a lot of beautiful trails that surround the island, so that that's always people love exploring the the hills and the trails around the islands and going to just remote beaches around the island.”

“if you come into the historic downtown, which is just five minutes away, kind of from that corporate center area, you're gonna see 16 square blocks of really what looks like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life, or Hallmark movies come to in real life.”

“if you're hoping to escape between December and March, now is the ideal time to start making those plans.“

^{3 Things I Learnt this Month}

The next time you hear the pre-flight safety briefing when flying somewhere think of PanAm Flight 526A. Last month an aviation search team found the wreckage sitting on the ocean floor seventy-four years after it crashed into the water off Puerto Rico. The discovery, which involved an autonomous underwater drone, ended decades of mystery about precisely where the Douglas DC-4 aircraft came to rest after crashing into the ocean shortly after it took off from Puerto Rico on April 11, 1952, with 64 passengers and five crew members aboard.

Although all passengers survived the initial impact, only 17 people would be rescued, and the rest would be lost with the quickly sinking plane – a result that investigators would blame in part on a lack of safety briefings and that would spur changes in the aviation industry. After this accident, pre-flight safety briefings about the location and usage of emergency exits and personal flotation devices before flights over open water became commonplace

___________________________________________

Online passport renewal is now open to all eligible Canadian adults. The biggest benefit is convenience. Canadians can now renew eligible passports from home, track their application online, and avoid the long lineups and wait times. It's a major step toward making travel preparation quicker and less stressful. To qualify, applicants must have an address in Canada, be older than 16 when they got their last passport, and must have received it within the last 15 years, among other criteria.
Applicants will still need to get a passport photo taken by a commercial photographer and submit a digital copy when applying online.
Online passport renewals have been an option for some passport holders for few years but the most recent version of the service had a daily cap of 2,000 applications.
People who apply online should expect to receive their new passports within 20 days and to be able to track its progress in real time.

___________________________________________

Atlantic hurricane season is in full effect and with that in mind some of the safest Caribbean islands to visit between now and the end of November include Aruba, which hasn’t been directly hit by a hurricane since the database's inception in 1851. As well as the other ABC islands, Bonaire and Curacao that are located outside of the hurricane belt. Barbados also benefits from a unique position in the region as most Atlantic storms typically curve northward before reaching the island so it rarely sees direct strikes.

Looking at the Month Ahead .

Grande Braderie de Lille — Lille, France September 5 - 6: Europe's biggest flea market welcomes millions of visitors searching for antiques, collectibles, food, and entertainment.

AmericanaFest — Nashville, Tennessee September 15-19: A celebration of Americana, folk, country, blues, and roots music featuring hundreds of artists in venues across Nashville.

Oktoberfest — Munich, Germany September 19 – October 4, 2026: The world's largest beer festival attracts millions of visitors for Bavarian food, traditional music, parades, and lively beer tents. Even if you're not a beer enthusiast, the atmosphere is unforgettable.

Travel Tip of the Month

Learning just a few phrases in the local language can make your travels smoother, more enjoyable, and more rewarding. Even if you only know a handful of words, locals often appreciate the effort.