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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.

Get up, up, and away with Lake Tahoe Balloons. The company launches its colorful hot air balloons not from land but from the surface of the lake via the Tahoe Flyer, the world’s only certified balloon launch-and-recovery boat. Trips begin with a 5:30 a.m. boat ride to the mid-lake launch site. Once the balloon is in the air, passengers and pilot float up to 3,000 feet above the water’s surface for bird’s-eye views of the entire Tahoe basin. On the clearest days, views extend southward all the way to Yosemite National Park. After the flight, everybody celebrates with a champagne toast—then heads back to their hotel for a nap.

Hiking the French Valley is part of the W-trek through Patagonia’s Torres del Paine National Park. It’s about 16 mi round-trip from Refugio Paine Grande to the French Valley Mirador, to see the French Glacier and the Paine Massif as close as you can get. The trail is diverse and only reaches a steep height at the last 5.5 km on the way there. You begin at Lago Pehoe and take grassy paths through the forested valley, on an terrain that the locals call “Patagonia flat,” i.e. an undulating up and down of several feet. On the way you’ll see tiny magenta--and edible--berries that taste just like apples; you’ll cross small glacial streams where you can fill up your water bottle with fresh, wild water. You’ll trek right by the Cuernos, or the “Horns,” another well-known set of peaks in Torres del Paine. Over the French River you go as you get deeper into the valley, over wobbly rope bridges. The final 5.5 km to the French Valley Mirador has you balancing on thousands of loose boulders on your way up. The very top of the trek feels like being in the middle of a Patagonian fishbowl: Paine Massif to your left, French Glacier in front, the Aleta de Tiburon (the Shark’s Fin) and the Cuernos to the right, and turquoise Lago Pehoe behind you.

Located in the town of Ocho Rios, Mammee Bay Beach is a sight for sore eyes—wide and spacious with powdery white sand and electric blue water. Even though half of this beach is private for guests of the gigantic RIU Resort, the other half is accessible to the public. Drive over to Bamboo Blu Restaurant (30 Beach Road), where you can park your car and enjoy the beach with a meal or some cocktails.

Located in downtown Wood Dale, the Veterans Memorial park area is a place to pay respect to those who have served in the armed forces. Dedicated on November 11th, 2000, this memorial celebrates of all members of the community who made sacrifices for our freedom. There is a flame that continuously burns to demonstrate the eternal gratitude that community members have for their fallen brethren.

The de Young Museum, with its perforated copper facade and spiraling tower in the center of Golden Gate Park, is as dramatic outside as it is inside. Follow the widening crack in the sidewalk into the atrium. It’s an Andy Goldsworthy–created nod to the tectonic plates that carved out California, and emblematic of the museum, too: The previous building was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and rebuilt by Herzog & de Meuron, opening in 2005. Inside, Gerhard Richter’s wall-size mural, made from digitally manipulated photographs, greets visitors. The museum specializes in American art, international textile arts and costumes, and art of the ancient Americas, Oceania, and Africa. Visiting exhibitions often focus on modern works and draw massive crowds. Recent blockbusters include Georgia O’Keeffe, Richard Diebenkorn, and David Hockney. Make sure to visit the observation deck at the top of the tower. (It closes one hour before the museum.) It’s a unique view over the low-lying western end of the city.

Uluru, or Ayer’s Rock as many know it, is one of the most recognized landmarks anywhere in the world. This strange giant rock in the middle of the Australian Outback has long kindled imaginations, going back millennia. It may be an important tourist site today, but it also holds immense cultural value for the original inhabitants of the area, something I learned all about on the very unique Anangu Tour of Uluru.
In the Pitjantjatjara language, anangu means person or human being, and the tours are designed to teach newcomers about the native peoples. The tours are given in the Pitjantjatjara language, with interpreters translating for the guides. It’s not that the guide didn’t know English, he certainly did, it’s that they want visitors to hear the nuances of a language most of us have never before encountered.
The walk around the rock was an enlightening experience, learning all about traditional culture and the extreme importance Uluru holds in the Tjukurpa or Dream Time. Tjukurpa is Aboriginal law, culture, history, and their worldview all bundled into one. It is expansive, impossibly ancient and much of it is shrouded in mystery, transmitted only to certain people at particular times in their lives. To be a part of that was a humbling experience.

The MacRitchie Reservoir is one of four reservoirs in the heart of Singapore at the Central Catchment Nature Reserve, where the surrounding forests are protected as national parks to ensure the quality of the water. Though unfortunately not accessible to the public, the ruins of a once-massive Shinto shrine built by the Japanese during their World War II occupation of Singapore are hidden in the overgrown, off-trail jungle near the northwestern corner of the reservoir. There is more to Singapore than meets the eye.

A marine sanctuary in northwest Maui, Honolua Bay delights snorkelers and surfers alike. The right side of the bay boasts dense, showstopping coral that attracts vibrant fish, while the shallower left-hand side features lava caves, archways, and sea turtles in the summer months. Come winter, some of Hawaii’s most beautiful barrel waves start peeling around the point, drawing only the most experienced daredevils. Note that fishing here is forbidden and parking can be tricky—visitors often have to park along the cliffs and hike down through a magical, Robinson Crusoe–type forest to the rocky shoreline. When approaching the bay, watch for mile marker 32. Just past it, you’ll find stairs down to Mokuleia Beach.

If you’re short on time in Atlanta, now there’s a way for you to see most of the sights in a matter of minutes. SkyView, the city’s newest attraction, is a Ferris wheel that soars 20 stories above the ground. You can park at any of the lots surrounding Centennial Olympic Park before boarding a gondola. From above, you’ll be able to see the buildings of downtown, the CNN Center, the Georgia Aquarium, and the World of Coca-Cola. SkyView is open every day until 11 p.m. and beyond. The 15-minute ride is $13.50 for adults, $12.15 for seniors and military, $8.50 for children ages 3 to 12, and free for kids under 2. If you’re feeling like a big shot, go for the VIP flight, which allows you to skip the line to board a plush gondola, complete with leather seats and a glass floor. It will set you back $50 per person, but each capsule can hold five people, making this the ideal place for a special occasion.

The Natural History Museum houses some 35 million specimens and artifacts spanning 4.5 billion years in history. But it isn’t just what’s inside this structure that’s historic: The main building itself dates all the way back to 1913, when a Sunday school teacher—upset by the seemingly unstoppable influx of saloons, gambling locales, and other centers of vice—convinced the city to develop what’s now called Exposition Park. Fast-forward to the present, and the Natural History Museum is more than just a place to see weird animal bones and models of long-extinct Homo sapiens. The museum hosts plenty of public events throughout the year, including mini nature festivals, evening cocktail parties, and opportunities for community science. The neighboring California Science Center is a draw for the kiddos, and Exposition Park as a whole is occasionally leased out for large-scale music fests.

This is where everyone stops to smell the roses in the Rose City. Celebrating its centennial in 2017, the International Rose Test Garden is the nation’s oldest continually operating rose test garden (where varieties are evaluated for characteristics such as disease resistance, bloom size, and fragrance). Originally conceived as a way to preserve different varieties of European roses from the destruction of World War I, the garden today contains 10,000 plants across 4.5 acres in Washington Park. Best of all, it’s completely free, whether you want to compare green thumbs with professionals or take in the views of Mount Hood while breathing in the perfumed air.

Hungry hikers (known as hill walkers in Scotland) will find refuge at Monachyle Mhor, a 2,000-acre farm located deep in the middle of Trossachs National Park, just past the grave site of folk hero Rob Roy. The main draw of the 14-room pink farmhouse is the food: Chef-owner Tom Lewis, a rising star on the U.K. culinary scene, prepares meals sourced from the farm. The hotel also offers classes on baking bread and churning butter, and coordinates hunting trips and mushroom-foraging excursions. After a day exploring the land, retire to one of the comfortable rooms, equipped with fireplaces, steam rooms, and views of a loch.

This sleek, silver structure looks as if an alien spaceship had landed in the middle Seoul. It all makes sense, however, when you realize it’s the work of the late architect Zaha Hadid. Completed in 2014, the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (known to locals as DDP) set several new design standards—there are no straight lines or angles to be found in the entire cultural complex. Today, the building and surrounding park provide a space for the exchange of ideas through exhibitions, conferences, and pop-up shops. It’s also the site of Seoul Fashion Week. For a magical experience, visit at night when the entire building is illuminated in a patchwork display and the field behind Exhibition Hall is aglow with more than 25,000 LED white roses.

It takes patience and good fortune to create a unique image in a place considered Canada’s second-most-photographed landscape. The Through the Lens Cruise on Maligne Lake gives amateur and professional shutterbugs such an opportunity. While in the boat, the onboard instructor talks technique and composition with aspiring photographers and challenges seasoned veterans to try new perspectives. Once the group arrives at Spirit Island, everyone spends an hour framing the perfect shot. The cruise experience hasn’t changed much since Jasper National Park pioneers Curly Philips and Fred Brewster set up shop at Maligne Lake in the 1920s.