Hole shebang: Inside the most exclusive links on Canada's east coast
They mayn't be too keen on becoming our 51st State, but Canada is happy to be our 47 holes — in the form of three premiere golf courses within their sovereign Atlantic border.
A pair of 18-hole courses — and one mini third child of an 11-holer — at Cabot Cape Breton (CCB) resort, which opened in 2012 on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island, make for a perfect mid-to-late summer Atlantic clubbin' retreat.
If you're worried about freezing your balls off, your Titleists will be just fine: It's a balmy 70 to 80 degrees (that's Fahrenheit, no need to panic, centigraders) through September with plenty of cooling breezes perfect for hiking, biking and, through July, KitchenFest, when the town square hosts square dancing, whiskey tastings and 'céilidhs' — Celtic musical numbers with 150 performances, all to help you blow off the steam from your strokes of bad luck on the links.
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4 Great Scot! CCB sits on coastal Nova Scotia.
Armand Barragan
The province's Latin name is 'New Scotland,' and these World's Top 100 18-holers live up to their namesake. CCB's Cabot Links is right on the oceanfront while Cabot Cliffs is a little artsier, gently carved with surgical precision out of the cape's vert geography and 'Insta-famous' rolling fairways.
And that cute little itty-bitty 11-holer, for those blessed with a more putt-putt penchant, is natally named 'the Nest' atop the highest point of CCB. This is the bunny hill, if you will, perfect for kiddos looking to be the next Nelly Korda.
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For the parents who 'want to watch' their offsprings' swing-and-a-misses from afar, there's always the Glendora Whiskey Distillery, exercising at Coone Barn or taking to the har-tru clay tennis courts all within earshot of the Nest. Your 'Atta girl, honey, you'll get the next one!' chants will still land, however insincere.
4 Linked inn: Stay in CCB's lodge or villa rentals.
Off The Deck
4 Rates in peak season start from $452 a night.
Cabot Cape Breton
Sadly, the major occultic event 'round these parts — the Cabot Cape Breton Solstice Challenge — ended on June 20 when golfers attempted to master all three courses consecutively. The prize was a commemorative coin and complimentary entry into the Solstice After Dark putting contest, where all proceeds went a local charity.
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We recommend doing the challenge anyway, just BYOGJ (bring your own green jacket).
With all these 'birdies' and 'eagles' flying around, you might start hankering for some fowl for dinner. Bzzzt, wrong: This is Atlantic Canada, aka pescatarian country. You'll be feasting on Cape Breton seafood chowder or Nova Scotia lobster at CCB's award-winning Panorama restaurant.
4 Drinks at Panorama's bar make for a lovely 19th (or 48th) hole.
Jake Graham
And now it's ZZZ -o-clock. Crash thee at the resort's charming 72-room lodge with ocean views from every unit or opt for larger homes and villa rentals for groups and families willing to go splitsies.
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Besides those maddening sand traps, the getting here is the truly unholy part of CCB. Your best bet is a two-hour nonstop flight out of LGA or Newark to Halifax Stanfield International, rent a car and drive just over three hours due northeast.
Just keep in mind, even if that commute and/or your golf score leaves you with a frowny, boiling red face emoji on the inside, the lovely and e'er smiling Canadian staffers will be as dimpled as your golf balls the entire time to help ease the pain.
Mid-season rates (through June 26 and Sept. 15 to 28) start at $383; peak-season rates (June 27 to Sept. 14) start at $452.
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Business Insider
17 hours ago
- Business Insider
I watched the ultra-rich descend on Venice for Jeff Bezos' wedding — and was shocked how little locals cared
As I stood in an airless bus shuttling me from my budget airline to the terminal at Venice's airport, the day before Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez's wedding, I looked out the window and saw Kim Kardashian's private jet. A bead of sweat dripped down my forehead, and I imagined her handlers whisking her to a private exit, where a speedboat would be waiting to take her into the city. I wanted to ask locals what they thought of a wedding that was either a display of extreme or aspirational wealth — depending on who you asked — in a city where overtourism, high living costs, and homes becoming holiday rentals had seen the population drop by 120,000 to about 50,000 since the 1950s. I found two competing visions of the city. One was pristine and curated: a backdrop for black-tie photo ops whose guests arrived by private jet. The other was chaotic, crumbling, overwhelming, and imperfect, but lived in. From the moment I arrived in Venice, the difference between what the ultra-rich, the average tourist, and the locals experienced was impossible to miss. I used the 50-minute wait in the sun for a crowded vaporetto — Venice's public water bus — into the city to people-watch. I looked from a distance behind a chain-linked fence as a steady stream of VIPs — most notably Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King — stepped from a private dock onto private water taxis. Paparazzi lenses clicked beside me. The boats, some carrying only luggage, were headed to five-star hotels accessible only by water, the canals acting like moats. Feeling flustered, both by what I'd just seen and by the 84-degree Fahrenheit heat, I asked the receptionist at my three-star, slightly dated but perfectly adequate hotel what she thought of the wedding. She wasn't bothered. Venice has bigger problems, she told me: pickpocketing, boats damaging historic foundations, and overtourism. Many Venetians I spoke to echoed that sentiment. The wedding felt distant—a media circus that barely touched their lives. "It doesn't affect us," Francesca Babolini, a Venetian photographer, told me while working on her laptop in a café near one of the main squares. Mario Peliti, an editor and gallerist, whom I found sipping a drink outside a restaurant near a five-star hotel, agreed. "He's not the first or the last rich man to come to Venice," he told me, adding that the city is "absolutely" used to hosting the wealthy in its palazzos, churches, and canals. Once a major trading center between Europe and Asia, it has, of course, long been a destination for the rich and powerful. At the Rialto market — the city's main market, which has been open for seven centuries — traders greeted regulars and haggled over the price of spices, fresh fish, vegetables, and fruit, including gigantic beefsteak tomatoes. The museums were open as usual, and tourists lined up outside, squinting at their maps in the sun. The vaporetto ran on time, although boarding was a battle, with people elbowing for space on already packed decks. At Piazza San Marco, however, there was a break from the routine. Many protests had taken place in advance of the Bezos-Sanchez wedding, largely coordinated by a pop-up group called "No Space for Bezos," and one was underway at Piazza San Marco. A person had climbed one of the three flagpoles in Venice's central square. In a similar spot on Monday, Greenpeace rolled out a huge banner with Bezos' face, reading: "If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax." The following day, protesters climbed a crane to put up a sign that said: "Tax the rich to give back to the planet." Activists had planned to block the city's canals and fill them with inflatable alligators to delay wedding guests headed for the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, a venue in the heart of the city. But the couple moved the final-day wedding celebration to near the Arsenale, an area further out from the center. When the protester finally descended the pole, police carried him away. The crowd erupted in support of the activist, while others shouted: "Shame!" It was a brief reminder that not everyone was indifferent to Bezos and Sanchez's choice of Venice as their destination wedding. Tommaso Cacciari, an activist and fourth-generation Venetian, was among those who helped organize protests against what they saw as a boastful spectacle in their hometown. "Jeff Bezos, in his amazing arrogance, thought that he would come, not to a city, but to a theme park," he said. "He wanted to use Venice as a background, we used him to speak about the real problems of Venice." For Cacciari, the wedding isn't just another celebrity event; it's a symbol of how, in his view, the city caters to the superrich rather than the people who work, grind, and, increasingly, struggle to live here. "Bezos found out that Venice is not yet only a theme park," he went on. "It's still lived in by citizens, by activists, by people who love their city and want to change the way it's being run." The respective representatives of Bezos and Sanchez and the mayor of Venice didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from BI. A protest march was planned for Saturday night, but so far, the activists and the wedding party had yet to meaningfully collide. Judging by how closed off the celebrations were, it seemed unlikely the protesters would get close. The luxury hotels were impenetrable. I tried to get into five of them and was turned away every time. From the early hours each morning, paparazzi camped a canal-length away from the Aman hotel, which was Bezos and Sanchez's wedding basecamp, to get their shots, which were often obscured by a gazebo placed outside the entrance to shield guests from public view. Swarms of police officers blocked access to the Chiesa della Madonna dell'Orto church, where Bezos and Sanchez were hosting a welcome party. By Friday, the closest the press and curious tourists could get to the celebrities, who would be attending a party at San Giorgio Maggiore, was a workers' entrance. From there, we saw little more than a fence and a row of security guards. But few locals were even looking. As Bezos and Sánchez's wedding played out behind barricades and blackout gazebos, the rest of Venice carried on. They opened their shops and shouted into phones between puffs of cigarettes. Meanwhile, tourists leaned against stone walls, licking melting gelato. On the same island where the Bezos-Sánchez wedding was taking place, another couple did a wedding photo shoot. There were no bodyguards, fences, or entourage — just a bride avoiding spending too long in the sun to keep her makeup from melting. Aside from the occasional short-lived protest, anti-Bezos posters scattered around the city, and the occasional security cordon, you might not have known anything was happening at all. Two Venices existed in parallel that weekend — one arriving by private jet, slipping onto speedboats; the other waiting in line for the vaporetto, fanning itself in the heat. Cacciari, the protester, said he loves this version of the city, with all its chaos and friction. "A city is a place where people meet, where people even fight," he said. "It's the melting of cultures — even the conflict between cultures."
The Hill
2 days ago
- The Hill
Wildfire prompts evacuations near Athens as summer's first heat wave hits Greece
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A large wildfire broke out south of Athens on Thursday, triggering authorities to issue evacuation orders and shut down parts of the coastal road linking the Greek capital to Sounion, location of the ancient Temple of Poseidon, a major tourist attraction. The fire came as temperatures approached 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in Greece's first heatwave of the summer. 'Right now, strong land and air forces are fighting a huge battle against the flames, mainly among homes,' fire department spokesman Col. Vassilis Vathrakogiannis said during a press briefing Thursday afternoon. Twelve water-dropping planes and 12 helicopters were providing air support to 130 firefighters, backed up by volunteer firefighters in the Palaia Fokaia seaside area south of Athens, Vathrakogiannis said. A coast guard firefighting vessel doused the flames from the sea. The fire, which reportedly broke out within a populated area, was fanned by strong winds that frequently changed direction, sending plumes of smoke fanning out across the sky. Television footage showed at least one home burning. Local mayor Dimitris Loukas said on Greece's state-run ERT television that several houses were believed to have been damaged by the blaze, but added that exact information on property destruction was not immediately available. The coast guard said two patrol boats and nine private vessels were on standby in the Palaia Fokaia area in case an evacuation by sea became necessary. Ambulances were also on standby but had not been required by Thursday afternoon, authorities said. 'We're telling people to leave their homes,' local town councilor Apostolos Papadakis said on Greece's state-run ERT television. Parts of the coastal road connecting Athens to Sounion were closed in both directions, with people urged to take alternate routes to leave the area. Fire department spokesman Vassilis Vathrakogiannis said 40 people had been evacuated by police, while evacuation orders were issued for a total of five areas. The cause of the fire was not immediately known, but the fire department spokesman said that an arson investigation unit had been sent to the area. The entire wider Athens area, as well as several Aegean islands, were on Level 4 of a 5-level scale for the danger of wildfires due to the weather conditions, with the heatwave expected to last until the weekend. Earlier in the week, hundreds of firefighters took four days to bring a major wildfire under control on the eastern Aegean island of Chios. More than a dozen evacuation orders had been issued for Chios, where the flames devoured forest and farmland. The fire department said one woman had been arrested on suspicion of having contributed to that fire's start — reportedly by discarding a cigarette. Wildfires are frequent in Greece during its hot, dry summers. In 2018, a massive fire swept through the seaside town of Mati, east of Athens, trapping people in their homes and on roads as they tried to flee. More than 100 died, including some who drowned trying to swim away from the flames.
USA Today
3 days ago
- USA Today
Onlookers watch as large bison dies in scalding Yellowstone hot spring
Onlookers at one of Yellowstone National Park's most popular sites watched a large bison take its final steps into a scalding hot spring and die in a horrifying reminder of what can happen away from the safety of marked paths. The bison wandered into the Grand Prismatic Spring, located in the part of the park within Wyoming's borders, the morning of June 21, officials said. Photos and video posted by onlookers to social media show the bison appear to thrash around before slipping into the spring's waters, behind a curtain of steam. Katie Hirtzel, an Amazon driver from the Salt Lake City, Utah, area, saw the bison's remains resting in the spring hours later. "It's quiet, it's eerie, I couldn't really tell what it was at first," Hirtzel told USA TODAY. "I honestly found the whole experience so beautiful and inspiring to be able to see that raw power right in front of my face." Hirtzel, her husband and their 13-year-old son were visiting the park and spent four days camping in the area. She said when they went back to the Grand Prismatic Spring the next morning, the bison's remains were still there and didn't look at all changed. She hopes park rangers will leave the bison in its final resting place, as part of the "circle of life." Over time, the scalding hot water of the springs will take its toll on the bison's remains, said Mike Poland, the scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory with the U.S. Geological Survey. Poland said it's likely that the National Park Service rangers will leave the bison to decay naturally, but will keep an eye out just in case scavenging animals get too close to the busy tourist attraction and pose a risk to visitors. What you didn't know about Yellowstone: Old Faithful is 'just a tiny fraction' of Yellowstone National Park It's not unheard of for animals to fall victim to Yellowstone's dangerous natural landscape, Poland said, but it is rare for so many to witness it at a popular sightseeing spot. It's also an important reminder to visitors, he said: Stay safely on the boardwalks and marked trails to avoid serious injury or death. How hot does the Grand Prismatic Spring get? The Grand Prismatic Spring is Yellowstone's largest hot spring and one of the largest in the world, at between 200 and 300 feet in diameter and more than 121 feet deep. Its waters are really, really hot. Poland said the spring is shallow around its edges, where its water appears bright red in color due to bacteria and water is relatively cooler. Toward the center, the water gets deeper and hotter and colors change from red to a deep blue, he said. At the surface, temperatures have been recorded at about 192 degrees Fahrenheit, which is just under the boiling temperature of 200 degrees at that altitude, Poland said. Deeper down, water likely reaches boiling temperatures, he said. The temperatures in the spring are not survivable for long, he said. People who have strayed from designated paths around Yellowstone's thermal features have suffered second- and third-degree burns, or even died. Though it's morbid to think about, the bison's remains are essentially being "poached," Poland said. Over time, the boiling water will break down the flesh and tissue of the bison and only its skeleton will remain, he said. It's a common misconception that Yellowstone's springs will eat away at flesh because they are acidic; in fact, Poland said the majority of the springs in the park are neutral, not acidic. See photos of the bison at Grand Prismatic Spring Do animals at Yellowstone have special instincts to avoid hot springs? Hirtzel said she was shocked to see the animal dead in the hot spring, and she and her family and just been discussing how the animals that live in Yellowstone must know to avoid the springs. Wildlife at the park don't have any special instincts to stay away from the hot springs, Poland said. Like humans, they can sense increased temperatures as they walk near the springs and can probably tell there is danger. Still, there is plenty of evidence that animals dying in hot springs is not terribly uncommon, Poland said. In fact, there is a spot a few miles away from the Grand Prismatic Spring in the Lower Geyser basin known unofficially as "Skeleton Pool" because of how many animal skeletons have been spotted there. Animals can even be drawn toward the park's hot springs during freezing winters as a source of warmth, sometimes ending in a deadly misstep. "We know animals aren't immune to making mistakes," Poland said. "This probably happens more often than we would know because a lot of times this won't be observed... that this happened at Grand Prismatic right during the summer when people are watching is a unique event." The bison that died appeared to get itself into a tough spot while walking around the hot spring's crust and started to get burned by the water, then thrashed around and got itself into deeper, deadlier water and couldn't recover, Poland said. That's why it's so important for people not to leave the boardwalks around the hot springs, he said. Even if it looks like you are stepping on solid ground, the ground can be thin enough to give way to scalding waters when you step on them. "This is why the boardwalks and trails are where they are," Poland said. "It prevents damage to the thermal areas and it also prevents people from getting into bad situations."
