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Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn) is a Buddhist temple in Bangkok‘s Yai district. It is situated on the west bank of the Chao Phraya River. The temple is one of the best known Thai landmarks. The mosaics which cover the temple create a pearly sheen during sunrise and sunset. Ferries can be caught at the Tha Tien Pier across the river from Wat Arun every couple of minutes. Tha Tien Pier is located near the Grand Palace and Wat Po.

This property is closed through 2019 for repairs made necessary by hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Caneel Bay, one of the island’s more secluded and protected bays, is home to Caneel Bay Resort, a historic luxury hotel founded by Laurance Rockefeller. After opening the resort in 1956, Rockefeller donated the land on which it lies to become the Virgin Islands National Park, which covers about 60 percent of the island. Day-trippers can easily reach Caneel Bay by taxi from Cruz Bay. The resort has no fewer than seven beaches, including Honeymoon Beach, a short hike away. Come here to relax on the main beach, book water sports at the diving and snorkeling center and have lunch at the hotel restaurant.

The Inca Trail is perhaps the most famous trek in Peru. This is the road to Machu Picchu, an ancient route that leads from the Sacred Valley into the heart of the Andes. You must obtain a permit and hire an official guide in order to hike the Inca Trail proper. There are plenty of tour operators in Cusco that offer trips up to Machu Picchu, so you should definitely look at reviews before you choose. For better or for worse, the tours are all-inclusive. The local tour operators employ porters to carry your packs and set up a camp. A team of local chefs will prepare three meals a day, and many hikers come back raving about the delicious meals. Keep in mind that the trek can be tough, especially in the first few days. The trail is often narrow, and it flirts with formidable heights. The mountains in this part of the Andes can rise well over 13,000 feet, and many hikers find themselves suffering from altitude sickness. Make sure to take a few days (in Cusco or the Sacred Valley) to acclimatize before you begin the journey. Finally: make sure to plan ahead! The Peruvian government limits trail access to 500 people per day, including porters. This regulation protects the local ecosystem and the delicate ruins, and it ensures that the trail won’t be too crowded. However, it also means that permits for the peak summer season sell out months in advance. If you aren’t able to get a permit for the classic Inca Trail, never fear: there are various other trails that lead to Machu Picchu.

One of the most stunning natural sites in Tasmania, the Freycinet Peninsula is most famous for a short but steep hike to the perfect white-and-turquoise horseshoe beach known as Wineglass Bay. It’s hard to believe the name comes from a gruesome whaling history that once dyed the bay the shade of red wine. Travelers on an expedition with Freycinet Adventures can kayak the electric-blue waters of Coles Bay and stay in a private camp on secluded Hazards Beach, where they’ll wake up to views of the rocky shoreline, sheathed in orange lichen, and the zigzagging Hazard Mountains, circled by sea eagles. No trip to the Freycinet Peninsula is complete without freshly shucked oysters from the Freycinet Marine Farm.

Though a relatively new option for tourists, the Crystal Caves of Grand Cayman’s Old Man Bay have been hosting other sorts of visitors since time immemorial: Everyone from bats (who still hang out near the entrance) to farmers (in search of the attendant guano) to pirates (where better to dodge both hurricanes and the law?). Shrouded within a healthy radius of rain forest, these stalactite-and-stalagmite-studded caverns are well worth your visit, too; whether or not you locate the treasure that some of the previous occupants are rumored to have left behind, you’ll find a wealth of natural beauty—especially the reflection of all those formations in the gin-clear rainwater lake.

Wide paths and a laid-back cycling culture make bikes a great way to explore Vancouver. Rent one from Cycle City Tours, which offers self-guided maps as well as outings run by expert storytellers. One tour takes a 5- to 7.5-mile spin through Stanley Park, cruising along Vancouver’s seawall and venturing onto its trails. All throughout, guides explain the biodiversity of the temperate rain forest and the history of the coastal First Nations people. For something livelier, hop on the rolling Craft Beer Tour, which visits three breweries and the excellent Belgard Kitchen. If you’re keen to keep going, you can extend your riding time until the end of the day for another $10.

Bird watchers won’t want to miss Cinquera Rainforest Park, home to El Salvador’s national bird, the turquoise-browed motmot, as well as a number of other avian species. In addition, this park—which was created to preserve what little vegetation was left in the region after civil war and deforstation—has trails to hike, waterfalls to spot, and history to learn: the small town of Cinquera is known for having been a stronghold of guerrilla resistance during the civil war. These days, you can get a tour of the park from a former guerrilla (many of whom are now park rangers or guides).

To get here, it’s about an hour from the capital city of San Salvador and best reached by car.

Manhattan can, famously, feel like endless rows of apartment blocks and office towers for most of its length. At least above 14th Street, a regular grid of streets and avenues, bisected only by Broadway, has transformed the city into a dream for real estate developers. The green spaces interrupting the pattern—Union Square, Gramercy Park, Madison Square Park—are few and far between, with one enormous exception: Central Park. Running from 59th Street to 110th Street, and between Central Park West (Eighth Avenue) and Fifth Avenue, it is one of the world’s largest urban parks, measuring some 843 acres. It is the masterpiece of the 19th-century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted working in collaboration with Calvert Vaux. Inside its borders are stately allées and naturalistic scenes, ice-skating rinks (in the winter), an enormous reservoir, and a faux castle. The park is hugely popular, and so to call it an escape from the bustle of the city is often not accurate, especially on mild summer days and the first warm ones in the spring when thousands of residents head to its playing fields, bike and run along the road that loops the park, and enjoy picnics on the Sheep Meadow or one of its other lawns.

The mountainous Coron Island, just northeast of Palawan, is part of the officially designated ancestral domain of the indigenous Tagbanua people (possibly descendants of the original inhabitants of the Philippines). They steward the land and sea, and control access to the island, much of which is off-limits to visitors. There is still plenty to attract travelers to the area, though: a small, sleepy town and clear lakes; limestone rock formations; and white-sand beaches. Those lucky enough to be welcomed into a Tagbanua community can learn about their culture and how they spearfish, as well as the special techniques for harvesting octopuses, seaweed, and sea cucumbers. For snorkelers, Siete Pecados offers rich coral reefs and the chance to spot dugongs, giant hawksbill turtles, and baby sharks. Divers can also hope to get a glimpse of puffer fish, eels, and giant clams. As well as the diverse marine life, there are numerous Japanese shipwrecks from World War II on view underwater. Add in the visibility of up to 80 feet, and this area is a superb playground for diving enthusiasts.

Named after Louis Mountbatten, Britain’s supreme allied commander in Southeast Asia, Mountbatten Road was originally known as Grove Road. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries it became a popular place for the wealthy to build country homes just a few yards from the sea and its refreshing breezes. Today, due to land reclamation, the sea is more than half a mile away. A number of them, nicknamed “millionaires’ bungalows,” were single-story houses with conical roofs that were built on brick posts for protection against heavy rains, snakes, and wildlife—a design modeled after similar dwellings in tropical India which provides the cooling effects of under-floor ventilation.

Wide, sandy Cane Bay Beach, on St. Croix, has a lot going in its favor: The medium-size surf, full-service dive shop, barbecue grills, and fun sites to snorkel make the beach popular with families, kids, and even dogs. Choose simply to rent some beach chairs and bask in the warm Caribbean sun, or opt for a game of beach volleyball or a swim in the clear waters.

Did you know that there are actually two equators? The terrestrial equator, like the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn as well as the poles, is based on the relationship between the Earth’s axis of rotation and the planet’s orbit around the sun. But there’s also something known as the celestial equator, which is an imaginary circle created by projecting the terrestrial equator into the night sky. The sun consistently hangs in the equatorial sky for 12 hours each day at the Earth’s widest part, but it passes directly over the actual line only twice each year, during the March and September equinoxes. Although many think that the equator is uniformly hot, in many areas it does experience wet and dry seasons. Biodiversity is extremely rich at the equator, particularly because half of the planet’s rain forests are concentrated in countries along the line: Brazil, Congo and Indonesia.

Vancouver’s serene waters serve as the perfect playground for kayakers and stand-up paddleboarders. Newbies can book two-hour “tasters” at Ecomarine’s Granville Island or Jericho Beach locations, while more adventurous paddlers—of any level—can jump right into tours, like the summer sunset excursion along the scenic shores of False Creek (a protected inlet) and English Bay (part of the Strait of Georgia). While most tours last a half or whole day, Ecomarine also offers more hard-core expeditions, like the weeklong trip to Haida Gwaii. This craggy, rain-forested archipelago is often referred to as Canada’s Galápagos for its vast number of endemic species. It also has a wealth of First Nations heritage sites just waiting to be explored.

In the 14th district of Paris are the Catacombs, also known as the underground ossuary (or l’Ossuaire Municipal) where 6 million skeletons are stacked in an orderly fashion and date back several centuries ago. This was done because Paris cemeteries were running out of space while the city itself was expanding, thus it was agreed to move each cemetery’s collection of skeletons underground.


It is an eerie place to visit and I wouldn’t recommend it is for the faint of heart. Still, not a sight to miss. People like Charles 10, François the 1st (Emperor of Austria), Napoleon III and his son all took a stroll through the long and ominous halls of the Catacombs to pay a visit. It really is a sight like no other, and is great to visit if you’ve already seen all the main tourist sites, or even a rainy afternoon to escape dreary weather.


It was interesting to discover the cause of death by looking at some of these skulls. In this particular picture I captured a skull which did not die of a natural cause. It had a perfect circle in the left cheek, indicating a gunshot wound. It was a scary discovery, but I felt compelled to photograph it.

Tickets are either 8 Euros full price, 4 Euros for youth tickets (age 14-26), and free 13 and under.



Learn more about the history of the Paris Catacombs in this article.

More commonly known as Turtle Beach, this Oahu North Shore cove often attracts honu, aka Chelonia mydas, the largest of the hard-shelled sea turtles. These big, friendly giants can reach 400 pounds as adults and are herbivorous, feeding primarily on algae and seagrasses, abundant year-round in the warm, shallow waters. Summer’s gentle surf—swells averaging just two feet—increase your odds of quality turtle time. Cross the road carefully and keep at least six feet away from the endangered turtles as they sunbathe onshore (mind any “no-go” zones maintained by volunteers). Avoid swimming here: The currents and beach rocks make it challenging.