Search results for

Convenient to Montevideo’s cruise ship terminal, the Mercado del Puerto was first inaugurated in 1868 and long served as the city’s principal meat and produce market. The clock here is almost as famous as the building itself. Constructed, like the entire market, in England and then shipped to Uruguay, it dominates the central hall of the cast-iron building. The Mercado del Puerto no longer operates as a market and today houses a number of popular restaurants serving typical Uruguayan dishes.

Old San Juan offers historically and culturally significant experiences including a walk through 500-year-old forts, visits to UNESCO sites, historic churches, museums, the second oldest cathedral in the Americas and Ponce de Leon’s mansion. Cobblestone streets and pastel buildings are perfect for exploration during the day and variety of restaurants and shops make for a complementary evening.

The Palace is located on the Lapad Peninsula, two and a half miles from Old Town. The 308 rooms all have balconies with sea views.

Tayrona National Natural Park has become such a popular destination during typical vacation periods that authorities have had to limit admission. But an off-season visit offers singular luxuries like miles of all-but-solitary beaches, jungle trails, and a unique way to observe a variety of monkeys and tropical birds in every brilliant hue. Tayrona can be experienced as a day trip from Santa Marta or as a several-night stay at one of the park’s accommodations. From the main entrance at Cañaveral (El Zaíno), visitors can take a leisurely hike to the ocean while a donkey handles the luggage; horses are also available for those who prefer not to walk. This same park entrance also leads directly to high-roofed, native-wood cabins known as ecohabs, a slightly fancier option for staying in the park.

Located in Jardines del Pedregal, an elegant suburb on the outskirts of the city, Tetetlán is worth the trip. Originally the horse stables of a home designed by Mexico’s most influential architect, Luis Barragán, the space was recently restored by an art collector who lives next door. It is many things: a café serving shade-grown local coffee, a showcase for local designers, a restaurant serving creative Mesoamerican dishes, a yoga studio, a hotel for visiting artists who are asked to donate a book to Tetetlán’s extensive collection, and a listening library. But it’s the space’s design that’s truly breathtaking: glass floors look down on the area’s local purple-black volcanic rock, and the sun pouring in from skylights is warmed by rafters painted in Barragán’s signature pink.

On the northern edge of Tucson, you can drive through a condensed version of western North America’s ecosystem in about half an hour. On the way up the Mount Lemmon Highway (also known as “Catalina Highway” or “Sky Island Scenic Byway”), you traverse almost all of the different life zones you would encounter if you were to actually drive from Mexico to Canada: starting with the saguaro-studded Sonoran desert, up through grassland, junipers and oaks, pines, and finally a mixed-conifer forest with stands of aspen. You begin at about 2500 ft. and end up at almost 9100 ft. above sea level (about 760 to 2770 meters). In the summer, especially, southern Arizonans love this road: “thirty miles, thirty degrees cooler,” as the saying goes. When it’s 105 degrees down in the city, it’s a perfect 75 up on the mountain. In the winter, you can go skiing in the southernmost ski resort in the U.S.

Having been raised on National Geographic magazines, I have always been fascinated by western landscape of America. The jagged peaks of Tetons have been on my to-see list ever since I have known the works of Ansel Adams. Last labor day weekend, my husband and I could finally make a trip to Grand Teton National Park in northwestern Wyoming. We started our trip by flying into Salt Lake City, Utah and then drove about 5 hours north to Jackson Hole in Wyoming. The roads are beautiful, the landscape mind blowing. We were in the Jackson Hole area for about 4 days and one of the days we left our car behind and instead rented a bike to go back and forth between the Teton National Park and Yellowstone Nat Park. It was worth every single aching muscle :)

My wife, Robin, and I have been camping, fishing, and hiking in the Lakes Basin area, near Sierra City, since we met. These days, our usual home base is a tiny log cabin at the edge of Packer Lake, pictured here. From trailheads around Packer you can hike to many other lakes--Saxonia, Deer, Lower and Upper Tamarack, Young America, Upper and Lower Sardine. Most of the hikes are relatively easy, and on some trails you’ll rarely encounter other hikers. In early October 2007, a brief, unseasonable storm passed through and carpeted the area with an inch or two of snow, which made for an especially invigorating walk along the Pacific Crest Trail to the lookout at the top of the Sierra Buttes.

Federal Donuts, which sells wacky-flavored handmade doughnuts, coffee, and Korean-style twice-fried chicken, is just one example of how chefs in the City of Brotherly Love are pursuing their culinary obsessions. The original Center City shop has been joined by branches around town (including one at the baseball stadium) as well as a satellite shop in Miami: The owners’ whimsical impulse to pick up a doughnut machine on Craigslist in 2011 now seems less crazy and more like the first steps of delicious empire-building.

Verde is actually two stores in one. It carries one-of-a-kind accessories, jewelry, and gifts, which makes it stand out as one of several unique shops in the Midtown Village district of Center City. Serendipitously, the boutique shares space with Marcie Blaine Artisanal Chocolates. In fact, you can watch the chocolate confections being made in the back room by peeking through the large window. A shopa-choco-holic’s dream! While in Midtown Village, venture across the street to another notable shopping stop, Open House, which sells Philly-themed items as well as a curated selection of housewares and accessories.

There are a handful of appealing options in the West Loop, but the most exciting is the Hoxton Chicago, whose laid-back lobby is filled daily with locals and guests working, meeting, dining, drinking, or hanging out with a coffee. Part of the socially focused Hoxton hotel group that launched in London’s East End in 2006, this 182-room hotel has become the West Loop’s top rendezvous spot for meetings (unless you’re a member of nearby Soho House), but upstairs is just as enticing. We love “Flexy Time,” which allows guests to check in and out whatever time of day they like, so long as they book directly through the hotel website.

Hello, rooftop pool! Leave it to Chicagoans to remain optimistic that summer will be amazing, even if winter lasts well into May. The rooftop pool (open to restaurant as well as hotel guests), occupies a prime spot on one corner of Six Points, that crazy intersection where three major shopping streets cross paths. That means the regulars are a mixed bag, but all come in for a good time, whether that means for brunch in the newly redesigned Café Robey street-level restaurant, to drink until dawn at the poolside Cabana Club bar, or to sneak up to its new sister, the Up Room, at the top of the deco tower.

Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple is a popular landmark in Little India, where much of Singapore’s sizable Tamil Hindu community works and worships. Originally a simple building on a plot of land, the temple became something entirely different in the mid-1960s with the addition of an elaborate five-layer gopura, or gatehouse tower. Each stepped level of the tower’s roof is crowded with vividly painted statues of royalty, dancers, and deities, as well as candy-colored architectural elements, all of which creates a remarkable celebratory effect. The temple has been granted protected status as a national monument by the government.

Restaurateur Brooks Reitz built his name with this chicken-and-oyster joint that feels old-school despite its carefully crafted ambiance. On a first visit, it’s sinful not to order the perfectly salted, crispy/juicy fried chicken amalgam shellacked with a glaze of Old Bay and cayenne suspended in melted lard. That necessitates a second visit to gorge on the poached char-grilled lobster and sausage, or the Leon’s Fish Fry, a platter of shrimp, oysters and catfish. Leon’s was the first to open way-Upper King, now the restaurant hotbed, and it’s held onto its cool status thanks to its thoughtful buildout in a restored auto body shop, retaining the exposed rafters and a rollup garage door that opens to a patio out front.