An update on my five new countries visited in 2017: only 2 of them did not have a McDonald’s ! (Maldives and Haiti) I was surprised to discover that Cuba has one on the Guantanamo Base which is open only to their staff. To round out the five, Kuwait has 75 of them and Malta has 10….four countries that I have visited in the past have closed theirs: Bermuda, Jamaica, Montenegro and Macedonia.  And it looks like at least 4 out of the 5 I hope to visit in 2018 also have none….Iceland, Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC.

While McDonald’s has never been my first choice for dining in a new country, I have to say on a couple of occasions they saved me.  Once in Japan on a limited budget they were one of the few places I could afford and another time almost 20 years ago in Australia when I wasn’t yet weaned on drip coffee and needed a large cup.

Why McDonald’s and not Starbucks? While both are ubiquitous Starbucks is on track to be bigger but not yet!