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What you need to know to book and plan your trip to Cuba.

Understanding the Sky

A subversive band of Portland chefs has a new grocery store: the ocean. You’re going to want to taste what they’re cooking up.

A former Manhattanite returns to New York and rediscovers the city’s old charm through his child’s eyes.

Uncorking Switzerland’s Secret

If there’s a better way to start your day in London than with an Arnold Bennett omelette at the Delaunay, I don’t know it. The Delauney is the latest in elegant, old-fashioned glamour from the group that created The Ivy, Caprice, and The Wolseley, and it’s a beautiful, relaxing place to break your fast. The coffee is fantastic, the tea fragrant, and the omelette a rich eggy treat that will see you through to lunch and beyond.

Northern Spain isn’t nearly as popular as the south among foreign visitors (if you discount the El Camino de Santiago), but for my money the north provides a more pleasurable experience. The mountainous terrain is spectacular, the food in every town we visited is splendid, the beer scene is surprisingly bubbly, and the quaint fishing villages, like quiet Comillas, provide respite from the hustle and bustle of big centers like Barca and Madrid. Comillas, scene here from the hills surrounding gorgeous Pontificial University, features an excellent beach, dozens of neat cafes in an ancient town center, and El Capricho, a building designed by famed Antoni Gaudí.

Madrid’s largest park, named after King Juan Carlos I, is a short metro ride from downtown, but from the moment you leave the station you feel as though you’ve been transported to a faraway land of fairy tales. Giant sculptures decorate the massive grounds, with dedications to Galileo, victims of the Holocaust, and world peace, respectively. If the weather is fair, there is a free train which offers rides every hour on the hour around the entire park—the only way you can see the whole place in a day!

Continue hundreds of miles south of the main island of Tahiti and you’ll come to the Tropic of Capricorn and the five-island Austral Islands chain. There are plenty of ways to connect to nature here. Take a cue from the locals and join them as they beach-hop and ride bikes through the villages and along the shore (with very little traffic on the islands, biking is a breeze). Then delve into the lush interior of Rurutu island during a horseback excursion. If you time your visit between July and November, you’ll also be able to spot majestic whales in the waters around Rurutu.

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.

Described by writer Tahir Shah as the “greatest show on Earth,” no visit to Marrakech would be complete without a visit to the famous night market on the Djemaa el Fna. Arrive before sunset and park yourself at one of the various cafés with terraces overlooking the square to watch performers set up; then venture into the fray in search of adventure. Silk-clad acrobats, wide-eyed storytellers, sly snake charmers, jangling belly dancers, and capricious monkey handlers all emerge from the darkness, ringing the edge of the food stalls with their own special brand of entertainment. When you tire of the heckling, prowl the market in search of good things to eat: bite-size morsels of grilled lamb rubbed in cumin, sardines fried in chermoula, peppery snails, and sheep’s heads for the brave. Then nudge up alongside a family of locals at the table and settle in for the feast. If you’re nervous about going it alone, you can sign up for a food tour with Canadian tour guide and all-round good egg Mandy Sinclair of Tasting Marrakech; she’ll help you find the best stalls while introducing you to the secrets and delights of traditional Moroccan street food.

There is perhaps no landmark of San Francisco, and perhaps even the entire state of California, more iconic than the Golden Gate Bridge. This much-photographed bridge spans the Golden Gate, the strait separating San Francisco (to the south) and Marin County (to the north). The 2.7-kilometer-long (1.7-mile-long) bridge was completed in 1937 in one of the most remarkable engineering feats of its time. Although the idea of traversing the Golden Gate by way of a bridge had been discussed for decades, the fear that fog and wind would make the project nearly impossible discouraged planners. In the end, the bridge was completed in four years at the cost of $35 million as well as the lives of 10 construction workers. A pedestrian path along the bridge offers stunning views of the bay and San Francisco as well as an up-close look at this Art Deco wonder.

On this episode of Unpacked: Travel to Listen, host Tim Chester discovers why Macon, Georgia—home to Little Richard, Otis Redding, and the Allman Brothers—is one of America’s most musically rich cities.

On this episode of Unpacked, we guide you through a year of astrology-inspired travel.

Travel to southern Argentina, the gateway to “the seventh continent,” for a trip that spans the wine and tango of Buenos Aires and a bona fide polar expedition—with a world-famous waterfalls finale.