A 2023 Best Places To Travel Ranking Includes A Quebec Region & It’s The Only Canadian Entry

Tourists coming to Quebec should look beyond Montreal and Quebec City this year — at least according to the New York Times. The esteemed publication has put out its list of “52 Places to Go in 2023” and Quebec’s Eastern Townships region — which an NYT contributor describes as “Canada’s New England” — just makes the cut at number 49. It’s the only Canadian entry in the best places to travel ranking.

The Eastern Townships, travel expert AnneLise Sorensen writes, represent “slow travel at its best.” She highlights the rural region’s celebrated agricultural offerings: wine, cheese, flowers and farmers’ market produce.

While Quebecers might be familiar with the townships’ allure, their region, Estrie, is perhaps best known by Americans as the seemingly endless swath of highway-trimmed farmland drivers must push through on their way to Quebec’s capital or metropolis. Sorensen admits as much, writing that the “bucolic, lake-laced terrain between” the two cities “is often relegated to fleeting glimpses from the windows of a rental car.”

There are some notable exceptions. Estrie is famously a favourite destination of the Clintons. They visited the town of North Hatley in 2017 and Sutton in 2021.

At the top of the New York Times ranking is London, England, followed by, in order, Morioka, Japan; Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park in the U.S.; Kilmartin Glen, Scotland; Auckland, New Zealand; Palm Springs, California; Kangaroo Island, Australia; Albania’s Vjosa River; Accra, Ghana; and Tromso, Norway.

The remaining North and Central American entries are Greenville, South Carolina; Tucson, Arizona; the Alaska Railroad; Guadalajara, Mexico; Boquete, Panama; Charleston, South Carolina; Cayos Cochinos, Honduras; Louisville, Kentucky; Macon, Georgia; Grand Junction, Colorado; the prairies of Montana; New Haven, Connecticut; and the Black Hills of South Dakota.