Search results for

At street level, the Capuchin monastery might seem like many other historic churches in Palermo. But once you go below ground, you’ll encounter the most unusual and macabre display in the city. More than 8,000 mummified bodies are interred in its catacombs, some stacked on wooden shelves, others standing or hanging upright along the walls. The oldest resident is a friar named Silvestro da Gubbio, who dates from 1599; among the more recent arrivals is two-year-old Rosalia Lombardo, who died in 1920 and is so eerily well preserved that she’s been nicknamed Sleeping Beauty.

Adjacent to the restaurant is a cheery boutique filled with gourmet products from all over Tuscany. Thanks to the restaurant’s long-standing relationships with many of the region’s top purveyors, you’ll find high-quality olive oil (tastings can also be arranged), cheeses, cured meat, preserves, breads, and more. Not all of it will make it through customs, but you can savor any perishables on a picnic to the Tuscan countryside.

Soon after conquering Constantinople and defeating the Byzantines in 1453, Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II commissioned the beginnings of the Grand Bazaar to reinvigorate trade with the city. More than 550 years later, the bazaar is one of the oldest covered markets in the world, with a labyrinth of 61 streets connecting over 4,000 shops selling all manner of treasures and souvenirs, from jewelry to silk carpets. Make a beeline for Sivasli Istanbul Yazmacisi, whose quality textiles are popular with interior decorators. Looking for currency exchange shops? You’ll find the best rates in Istanbul here.

The Grand Hotel Tremezzo has been the summer home for Europe’s jet set since opening in 1910. Over the past five years, the Como-based De Santis family, which has owned the lakefront hotel since 1975, has ushered the grande dame into the modern era by building eight rooftop suites, expanding the spa, and adding a hammam. Marble bathrooms and champagne-stocked minibars make the rooms feel fit for aristocrats, but the hotel is far from buttoned up. Guests can splash around in one of three pools, including one that actually floats on the lake. Locals join guests at Saturday beach parties. From $420. This appeared in the October 2015 issue.

Casa e Bottega is the place to head when you need to offset your vacation eating with a fresh juice and green salad. Try the beet, ginger, and lemon juice and a salad with anchovies from Cetara and the season’s first tomatoes, or maybe a green juice made with spinach, apple, and citrus and a cold rice salad with skewers of grilled vegetables. Love to shop? You don’t have to leave your table! The glassware, ceramics, table linens, and beach bags—all in the same soothing sea glass–green palette as the café’s—are for sale.

You can smell the enticing aroma from this shop as you leave La Piazzetta to walk down Capri’s main drag. This historic gelateria and pastry shop makes its own crisp sugar cones to serve ice cream to the crowds throughout the day and late into the night. Come here after your evening passeggiata for a gelato. If you can’t make a decision, don’t fret: You can order up to three flavors in one cone. Wonderful pastries and ready-made meals are available here, too. (There is another location down at the Marina Grande.)

About 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Trapani, and just north of Marsala, acres of salt flats stretch in shallow lagoons, punctuated by crumbling windmills. This region has been producing bright white salt with intense flavor since Phoenician times, and a Museum of Salt lays out the process in a restored windmill, with everything from diagrams of the Archimedes screws used to pump water between flats to the wide, straight shovels used for skimming the salt into towering white mounds. Bags of the stuff can be bought at the gift shop, so you can take home a taste of Sicily.

Pizza is always a good idea. And pizza fresh from a wood-fired oven served at a table as close to the sea without actually being in the water is an even better idea. Downstairs at the Hotel Covo dei Saraceni, this casual brasserie serves inexpensive pizzas for lunch and dinner. The chewy Neapolitan-style crust is slathered with San Marzano–tomato sauce and fresh, creamy mozzarella, decorated with a basil leaf or two. The simplicity is delicious. You can also order your pies for takeout.

Begin your perfect beach day with a stop at this snackbar on Positano’s Spiaggia Grande for a sweet brioche and a cold cappuccino freddo. In the afternoon, come back for a scoop of gelato or a chocolate-dipped ice cream–bar snack. At the end of the day as the sun drops behind the mountain and the day-trippers leave, perch on one of the high stools at the cocktail bar and sip a cold gin and tonic or draft beer. The bar is attached to a formal restaurant that overlooks the beach.

Finding a table with a view, friendly service, and menu prices that don’t make you gasp is a rare thing in Capri. Ristorante Villa Margherita offers all three. Sit under the pergola at lunchtime, and take in the blues and greens of Marina Piccola down below. After dark, the space twinkles with soft lights and candles. Island classics such as insalata caprese and spaghetti alla Nerano, made with zucchini and provolone, are featured on the menu. Finish on a cool refreshing note with paper-thin slices of pineapple carpaccio marinated in ginger.

Located just off Main Street, the Washington School House Hotel eschews Park City’s typical rustic style for a pared-down, flea-market–chic aesthetic. Before being reimagined as a design-oriented inn in 2011, the 1889 building served as a schoolhouse for miners’ children and a dancehall for the local outpost of Veterans of Foreign Wars. Today, the interior is anything but traditional, from the whitewashed living room with 16-foot ceilings to the antique mirror and the white, lacquered antler chandelier. Outside, a heated pool sits on the hillside surrounded by aspens and boulders. There’s also a fire pit, fashioned from a steel Olympic torch from the 2002 Winter Games.

Each of the guestrooms and suites is unique, though all feature reclaimed wood floors, crystal chandeliers, and tall windows. An artful collection of European antiques and vintage paintings adds a bohemian vibe, while white marble bathrooms offer heated floors, walk-in showers, clawfoot tubs, and period fixtures. Guests can also look forward to plush hooded robes and top-notch toiletries from Molton Brown.

Valley of Fire is the oldest state park in Nevada, and a great place to see 3,000-year-old Indian petroglyphs and explore the red sandstone formations created during the age of the dinosaurs. Bring your camera to photograph the landscape while hiking this rocky landscape formed over 150 million years ago. The red sandstone gives off an incredible light, which makes the grey rocks nearby appear turquoise. Great place to camp while watching incredible sunrises and sunsets! Photographers will go crazy for this place, especially in spring, when a variety of wild flowers bloom. Skip the Las Vegas strip and head straight to this magical place!

Bright and early, just before the sun comes up over Mount Bromo, Mount Semeru and Mount Batok, with ample rolling fog and an epic eruption for good measure. We climbed Mount Penanjakan in our Toyota 4x4 pre-dawn in the headlights of some 1,200 other vehicles. Once at the viewpoint my travel partner and I decided against the same shooting vantage as everyone else - all 3,000 tourists, gah - and climbed down the hill for a better look (and a few square feet to dig in our tripods). As soon as the sun started to shine and illuminate the volcanoes in the distance, all the nuisance and discomfort of the day, all the pain and suffering associated with actually making the trip to Bromo, it vanished. We spent the next hour shooting one of the most incredible sunrises I have ever witnessed. Getting here is a bit of a package-tour nightmare, but so very much worth it in the end.

Two architectural wonders helped put Dubai on the map: the Burj Al Arab hotel, which resembles the sail of a ship out on the gulf waters, and the Palm Jumeirah, a residential development on a manmade archipelago that fans out in the shape of a huge palm tree. But in 2010, the sleek Burj Khalifa stole their thunder. Now the world’s tallest structure, the tower soars 830 meters (2,722 feet) into the sky. Visitors can zoom by elevator up to the 124th floor to experience incredible views and explore interactive displays on Dubai’s history and the tale behind the building of this futuristic marvel. Another observation deck is even higher, on the 148th floor.

Sicily has a long tradition of puppet shows, and they’re not intended merely to amuse the kids. These are elaborate theatrical works that tell complex stories through beautifully crafted marionettes. Palermo’s International Museum of Marionettes Antonio Pasqualino (its full name) honors the art as it’s performed in Sicily and in other cultures around the world. The 3,500 puppets on display come from Sicily, Japan, Indonesia, Cambodia and parts of Africa. You can even watch marionettes in action in a theater on the top floor; check the schedule to see what’s playing during your visit.