Good evening

Surfin’ USA? Not any time soon, according to many of us on this side of the pond. The United States is on track to lose $12.5bn (£9.4bn) in international travel spending this year, according to a study published in May by the World Travel and Tourism Council. Its president and CEO concluded: “While other nations are rolling out the welcome mat, the US government is putting up the ‘closed’ sign.”

The land of the free is looking a lot more fettered these days with the result that UK arrivals are down nearly 15% in a year, and visitors from Germany (which had three of its citizens detained at the US border earlier this year, and is also threatened with punitive tariffs) have plunged more than 28%.

So, with many of us giving Uncle Sam the cold shoulder, we’ve come up with a list of 10 European alternatives to the classic American dream destinations.

“Sprawled on a towel, observing silhouetted surfers chasing the ocean-plunging sun, I don’t need to squint to imagine I’m in the Golden State. But my sandy toes and salty hair are products of the Atlantic, not the Pacific. And this Santa Cruz belongs to Portugal’s Costa de Prata, not California,” writes Daniel James Clarke.

Mary Novakovich swaps the Grand Canyon for Montenegro’s Tara River Canyon, Europe’s deepest gorge, which offers heart-thumping white-water rafting and world-class hiking. In the rugged, forested Făgăraș mountains in Romania, the Foundation Conservation Carpathia is working to create the continent’s largest forest national park, which has been dubbed a “Yellowstone for Europe”. And for the Mojave Desert, there’s the Tabernas desert in south-east Spain, where Sergio Leone shot his spaghetti westerns.

Leone was enthralled by American style and myth but always from a distance. “I can’t see the US any other way than with a European’s eyes,” he said. “It’s a country that fascinates me and terrifies me at the same time.”

That would seem to go for many of us in this current political climate.