Post Travel: Petal Parties, Supermarket Safaris, and Getting from A to B

Petal Parties

Spring’s arrival sees flowers sprouting around the world, along with vibrant festivals to mark the occasion. Among the most famous are Japan’s cherry blossom festivals, where friends and families gather under canopies of pink petals to picnic, sing, and contemplate the ephemeral beauty of life. But towns and cities across the United States are also hosting blooming bashes, inviting visitors to celebrate the dawn of brighter and longer days.

Japan may be synonymous with its blushing blooms, but Macon, Georgia, is called the Cherry Blossom Capital of the World, especially during its annual International Cherry Blossom Festival (cherryblossom.com), running March 20-29 this year. More than 350,000 Yoshino cherry trees will transform the city into the ultimate pink party, complete with concerts, fireworks, golf tournaments, and more.

Flower power is on full display during the Nantucket Daffodil Festival (daffodilfestival.com), April 24-26, where the sunshine-hued blooms come with a side of vintage car parades, flower shows, dog parades, and community pride for the more than three million blooms that paint the island in gold.

Meanwhile, Skagit Valley, 60 miles north of Seattle in the northwest corner of Washington, is home to more tulips — tens of millions of them, in fact — than anywhere outside the Netherlands. The annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival (tulipfestival.org) runs the entire month of April and makes for a perfect spring outing or midweek road trip through row after row of yellow, purple, crimson, and orange blooms across five separate gardens. Tickets are required to visit them, but you’ll also find a calendar of free events, including parades, photo contests, street fairs, and art exhibits. Check out the website’s downloadable map for restaurants, hotels, and tulip-hunting tips.

Getting Around

While it’s nice to unplug on vacation, using smartphone apps to turn wasted time into well-planned moments has its rewards. Make taking public transportation a breeze with Citymapper, which lists real-time schedules for public transit and offers walking and cycling routes in cities around the world. When outdoor activity is a top priority, AllTrails hits the mark by sharing an area’s best biking, hiking, and running trails, along with info on difficulty, starting location, elevation gain, and photos.

Travel Trends

A recent report from Skyscanner, a global travel metasearch engine, identified seven trends shaping how we vacation in 2026. Among them is a fresh twist on culinary exploration called Supermarket Safaris, which sees food-curious travelers duck into grocery stores to discover the flavors that define a local culture. Bookbound travel is also turning heads (and pages), with 55 percent of the 22,000 people surveyed eager to follow in the footsteps of literary heroes through charming bookstores, local libraries, and reading retreats.

This article is featured in the March/April 2026 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.