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The Rocks is undoubtedly one of Sydney‘s most beautiful areas. Follow George Street until the very end and it’s almost like you’ve stepped back in time—there are cobblestones under your feet, quaint stores to browse, and great pubs to visit. One of the best experiences you can have in Sydney is to visit the Rocks Markets, especially on Friday nights during spring and summer for the Rocks Markets by Moonlight. The warmer months in Sydney are the most exciting; pair them with all the beauty of the famous Harbour Bridge, Opera House and this historic hub and you’ve got the best version of this amazing city. There are stalls offering everything from handmade gifts and sweets to unique jewelry and fashion, but the atmosphere is set off by all of the other quirks that you would never have expected—puppeteers and magicians roaming the crowd, dozens of people young and old wearing headphones and dancing at a silent disco, musical performances and pet displays with some of the most enormous cats and rabbits you’ve ever imagined. All of this set among historic buildings and Sydney’s oldest sites makes for a truly unique experience indeed.

Sun Moon Lake is Taiwan‘s largest fresh water lake. When I lived in Nantou County, central Taiwan, I would often ride my scooter to Sun Moon Lake for a bit of fresh air and reflection. One day I drove to the lake and traveled up a hill to the Ci-en Pagoda. Parking my bike, I climbed to the top of the pagoda and gazed out at the misty lake, which seemed magical in that moment. Many legends surround Sun Moon Lake, including the one which says the lake was once inhabited by two dragons. These dragons used the sun and moon as toys, causing the world to fall into darkness. Eventually a young couple came and defeated the dragons, brining light back into the world. Sun Moon Lake is one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever visited.

Plan on spending the better part of a day at the National World War II Museum, even if you profess limited interest in history. This fine, sprawling museum—formerly the D-Day Museum—is affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, and was established here because of the role the locally made Higgins landing craft played on D-day. Don’t expect the usual repository of static artifacts, like machine guns and airplanes—although you will find those on display. It’s more about gathering stories, from film and oral histories, and from all sides of the conflict. The museum was the idea of Stephen Ambrose, noted author of books about WWII, who wanted to share with the public the interviews that didn’t make it into his books. It’s grown massively since its humble beginnings, and does a remarkable job of capturing the era through both a microscope and wide-angle lens.

Creamy travertine floors and castle brick walls of pearl-stone tiles fuse with Asian antiques and dark teak furniture in the Caribbean-meets-Indonesian design at Villa Balinese, on an elevated crescent fronting Providenciales south shore. From the original local art to the antique Moroccan vases and curved bamboo chairs, it makes a bold and seductive statement throughout -- and best of all, every piece of furniture in this villa rental is hand-picked and meticulously placed by its owners. With just three bedrooms, but 4,200-sq-ft of space and 30-foot vaulted ceilings, it’s impossible not to be transfixed by the Alice-in-Wonderland dimensions and sexy stark vibe encountered here. Entering the grand entrance foyer, the eye is drawn almost immediately to the impressive sunken living room, where a wall of floor-to-ceiling glass windows slides open onto a grand marble pool terrace with panoramic ocean views. The infinity pool running the length of the house was constructed with emerald-colored tiles, creating a vibrant contrast with the turquoise-hued sea it disappears into. A 50" plasma TV, which can be raised with a remote click from a recessed hiding place and swiveled to face the pool, is another one-of-a-kind design example. There is no beach access on-site, but the crystal-clear sea running parallel to the property can be reached via a ladder dock. Please note that children under 12 are not allowed, but this property works great for couples or older families.

Why we love it: A boutique property with a strong sense of place

The Highlights:
- Cleanly designed rooms hung with local art
- A prime location in one of Duluth’s coolest neighborhoods
- Friendly owners who are ready with restaurant suggestions

The Review:
Opened in the fall of 2018, Hotel Pikku has quickly become one of Duluth’s most sought-after stays. With a name that means Little in Finnish, the boutique property has just three suites, decorated in clean, Scandinavian style with vintage couches, brass side tables, and paintings by local artist Patricia Canelake. Bathrooms feature walk-in showers and cedar-and-citrus-scented bath products, and suites 1 and 3 come with kitchens, which the hotel owners suggest stocking with snacks from the Dovetail Cafe or the Corktown Deli, across the street.

While there’s no permanent on-site staff at Hotel Pikku, the owners are available by text or telephone from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. Rooms are bookable on Airbnb and guests check in themselves, making for a seamless stay. Out the front door, the burgeoning Lincoln Park Craft District is home to some of Duluth’s best restaurants and breweries. The hotel is surrounded by several studios and galleries, and is within easy walking distance of the Superior Hiking Trail, Lincoln Park, and entrances to the Duluth Traverse mountain biking trail system.

A stay at this resort offers the best of many worlds: easy access to San Antonio and its airport, proximity to scenic Hill Country and its wineries, and plenty of on-site amenities to encourage you to hang around. Spread over 600 acres, the property includes an 18-hole golf course, a nine-acre water park (with a winding lazy river and 650-foot rapid river ride), hiking trails, and a 30-room spa, where treatments incorporate Texas-grown ingredients like lavender and sassafras. The facilities fan out from the LEED-certified main building, which houses 1,000 warm, comfortable guestrooms, many of which look out onto the main pool. There are also enough restaurants to warrant a multi-day stay, from an organic-focused spa bistro and a sports bar with local brews, to a Texas-inspired main restaurant and a fine-dining steakhouse set among the golf greens. Each spot uses ingredients sourced within a 150-mile radius of the hotel, and aims to highlight Texas wine and beer. While the kids are off enjoying the water park or video game arcade, adults can take a tequila tasting class or settle into a rocking chair with a good book—then everyone can meet around the indoor or outdoor fireplaces to trade stories.

Still run by the descendants of its founder, Malcolm Mackay, this 114-year-old family-owned working cattle ranch in Roscoe, Montana, has been hosting guests—Roy Rogers and Robert Redford among them—since the 1980s. Lazy E-L Ranch is often booked a year in advance due to a capacity of just 14 guests who stay in three period cabins furnished with Western art, family pictures, and Navajo rugs. Instead of a formulaic schedule of staged chuckwagons, cowboy sing-alongs, roping practice, and nose-to-tail trail rides, guests have the option of a more authentic experience, joining ranch staff as they manage stock on 12,000 acres roamed by moose, deer, and bald eagles. The main draw here is integrating into ranch life, feeding chickens and horses, cleaning barns, and helping prepare family meals (though chores are optional). There are no guest cattle drives, but experienced riders can occasionally join or observe Lazy E-L professional cowboys moving 2,000 head of cattle. For guests preferring play to work, there’s horseback riding and hiking across pristine alpine pasture and barren plateaus; non-horse people can mountain bike down the terrifying Beartooth Highway, play soccer, baseball, and croquet, fish a private six-mile section of the West Rose Bud River, or raft the Class IV Stillwater River.

This family-owned and -managed 1,000-acre guest ranch in Lewis and Clark County is paradise for riders of all ages looking to improve technique while learning about equine psychology and Western working life. The owners, Zack and Patty Wirth, and two of their six children, all direct descendants of 1860s Montana homesteaders, breed and train quarter horses and hold wide-ranging riding rights on a neighboring ranch of 85,000 acres. Guests, a maximum 20 at a time, ride according to their interest and level; time in the saddle (or bareback) might be spent in the ring, on scenic trail rides, endurance training, or learning to rope and work with the Wirths’ 30 Corientti and Longhorn cattle.

Four cozy rooms of the same size but with different bed configurations have fireplaces and mountain views. The atmosphere is communal and convivial, the hosts dining with guests and taking note of the weather and individual interests to plan activities. Many teen visitors fulfill dreams of unlimited horse time; for non-riding family members or partners there is guided shooting, hiking, and mountain biking. There’s also technical fly-fishing on the Little Prickly Pear Creek, a spawning ground for rainbow and brown trout. For rock hounds, fossil-rich shale cliffs sit just a mile away from the barn and guest rooms.

Peggy Dulany, a New York philanthropist and daughter of David Rockefeller, bought J Bar L to protect the 620-square-mile Centennial Valley, a former Native American hunting ground settled by a few cattle-ranching families in the late 19th century—and which still has no towns, let alone paved roads, gas stations, shops, or subdivisions. To conserve the rangeland way of life, she hired locals to run a holistic grass-fed cattle business on the principles of rotational grazing and natural stockmanship. To share the landscape with nature-loving travelers and to keep the valley looking as it was, Dulany restored several abandoned 19th- and early 20th-century homesteads. These self-contained vacation rental homes range from a Sears Roebuck family house, now solar-powered, to isolated cabins on a bend of the Red Rock River. All come with fully-equipped kitchens and are tastefully filled with Western-themed furnishings and antiques; some have outdoor hot tubs.

J Bar L no longer offers working weeks for would-be cowboys but will match guests with geologists as well as with hiking, bird-watching, and fly-fishing guides. Horse lovers can hire ranch mounts for guided daily rides on rangeland that is home to pronghorn, elk, and Black Angus cattle, or up the slopes of the 10,000-foot Gravelly Mountains where wolves, grizzly bears, and bald eagles roam.

There are helipads but no cell phones or young children at Triple Creek Ranch, a 600-acre luxury Western playground on a slope of 10,157-foot Trapper Peak, Montana’s highest mountain, near the Idaho border. Owned by Craig and Barbara Barrett (he, the former CEO of Intel; she, a former astronaut and U.S. ambassador to Finland), this elegant, high-end dude ranch offers sapphire pan mining, scenic trail rides, fishing from stocked trout ponds, and guided hiking, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing (including starlit expeditions), as well as themed weekend stays focusing on art, food, and wine. The owners’ no-hunting policy has resulted in large herds of elk and other game gravitating to the property, and guests frequently spot animals from huge log cabins decorated with leather furniture and original Western-themed art and equipped with wood-burning fireplaces, private decks, bar, Blu-ray players, and working Wi-Fi connections. (Though the ranch deliberately has no cell phone signal.) From May through October, for additional fees, the ranch pairs up guests with professional rodeo trainers and Orvis-endorsed fly-fishing operators. In winter, the lodge facilitates transportation, tickets, and equipment rental vouchers for the nearby Lost Trail Powder Mountain downhill ski center (300 inches of snow annually) and Chief Joseph Cross Country Ski Area.

It was raining when we arrived in Donostia-San Sebastian, but the skies cleared on our second day, and we rode the funicular railway up Mount Igueldo to take in the view back on the city, La Concha Bay, and the empty beach. The “low” travel season had just begun, and the strange little children’s amusement park on the mountaintop had shuttered up for the fall and winter, adding just the right disorienting touch of weird desolation to the Basque country panorama.

Located about an hour northeast from Reykjavík and part of the famed Golden Circle tour (along with Gullfoss), the Geysir hot springs area consists of around a dozen hot water blowholes, including the eponymous Geysir. The Strokkur blowhole is the most popular, principally because it regularly (every few minutes, usually) spouts its boiling water up to 100 feet into the air. It’s still worth looking around at the other pools, even if they haven’t erupted for years or even decades, since they usually offer interesting colors and bubbling geothermal activity. The site also has a hotel, souvenir shop, café, and a related exhibition.

Perched picturesquely on a rocky hilltop overlooking the city, Heidelberg Castle is enigmatic, romantic, and one of the few castles in Germany that hasn’t been fully restored. Dating back to the 1300s, it served as the seat of the Palantine electors for several centuries. While it expanded substantially during the 16th and 17th centuries, it was plundered and destroyed on many occasions and now consists of mainly Renaissance and Baroque ruins. It’s free to roam the gardens and exterior, but guests must pay an admission fee to visit the interior. Take a guided tour for a historic overview and access to highlights such as the English Wing (built in 1612 by Elector Friedrich V), the graceful Renaissance courtyard, and impressive rooms like the Knight’s Hall and the Imperial Hall. The Grosses Fask (Great Cask) in the cellar is also worth seeing—the world’s largest functioning wine barrel, it’s made from 130 oak trees and can hold some 58,117 gallons of wine.

It is not quite accurate to say that this 13-room beachfront property on sparsely populated South Andros Island is off the beaten path. Sure, there are no roads to bring you here, and the only neighbors are the denizens of the 125-acre nature preserve that surrounds it, but a seaplane flight from Nassau will have you wading ashore in just 15 minutes. Once settled into their thatch-roofed private villas, guests gravitate toward the Great Room for fruity drinks, fresh-caught meals, and tall tales. While there is every kind of watery diversion, from bonefishing to scuba diving—and nature tours, too—it’s the kind of place where kicking your feet up is the most strenuous thing you’ll do all day, and where privacy is so valued that beach butlers won’t intrude unless, in one of the older nautical traditions, you raise a flag to indicate that you require food and drink.

Every city worth its salt has at least one great pizza joint. So why go out of your way to visit this one? Three reasons: (1) the pizza, (2) the neighborhood, and (3) the pizza. The eatery started as a delivery pop-up, with thin-crust pies made in a shared kitchen, and its hours and phone number shared among Bywater residents like state secrets. The name proved as accurate as it was uncreative; demand was vast, and the place finally landed its own spot. Pizza Delicious doesn’t attempt to be cute or overly wry with toppings, but it sets itself apart with fresh ingredients and an eye to perfection. Pro tip: Get a pie to go and head over the arching footbridge at the end of the block and enjoy dinner at Crescent Park with its waterfront view.