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If it’s rhinoceros you want to photograph, you can’t miss Ongava Game Reserve just south of the border of Etosha National Park. This private breeding facility has black and white rhino and plays a critical part in conserving this species. When staying at Ongava, there are several options for accommodation including the three luxury suites at Little Ongava, the air-conditioned chalets of Ongava Lodge and the traditional safari tents at Ongava Tented Camp. Best of all, because Little Ongava is so small, guests share a private guide and 4WD vehicle. This allows you maximum flexibility for exploring both Etosha and Ongava’s reserve.

One of San Salvador’s most popular restaurants, Los Balcones is located inside the Quality Hotel Real near the airport. It’s an unlikely location, perhaps, but guests rave about the food and the service here. With respect to the former, the variety—especially at the breakfast buffet—is notable, especially for visitors who have tired of pupusas and heavier foods that are typical to the Salvadoran diet.

Danang has a strong association with the American War. It was here that US troops first landed, it had a major US airbase and it was a designated R&R spot for US troops. It is fitting then that the city is home to one of Vietnam’s more interesting and comprehensive war museums. The museum is split into four sections including an outdoor display of military equipment, a military museum, a reproduction of Ho Chi Minh’s house and a Ho Chi Minh Museum.

This enchanting corner of Costa Rica, blessed with a superb climate, provides visitors with a chance to experience an ideal rural setting. If you’d like some action with your relaxation, you’re well positioned to hit local sights like Poás Volcano, as well as try camping, horseback riding, and trout fishing. Fraijanes Lagoon, set amid grasslands, forests, and strawberry fields, is particularly idyllic. There’s another attraction you may not associate with a rural setting: Good restaurants abound. Get up early to enjoy the sunrise and a cup of delicious coffee alongside warm bread and natilla, the local sour cream.

You don’t know you need a paperweight shaped like a dumpling until you see it. Hidden behind sliding doors on an unassuming street corner in Shanghai‘s Jing’an District, Spin is the best place in the city to buy modern Chinese ceramics. The shop works with artists in Jingdezhen, China’s porcelain capital, to make original, limited-edition works of art at competitive prices, from a small porcelain and wood display table to delicate celadon-green teacups and dainty chopstick rests shaped like chili peppers. Spin ships worldwide at a reasonable cost, so you don’t have to worry about lugging a vase the size of a small child through Asia.

Expect no less than over-the-top extravagance at Laucala, a resort island in Fiji with its own rental submarine. Bring friends: The island has 25 villas spread out over 4.6 square miles, with a rain forest, beaches, cliffs, a lagoon, and one of the island’s highest hilltops literally in their backyards.

Opened in 1880 as Canada‘s first natural history museum, the Redpath Museum has a charmingly old-school Victorian quality to it. The collection of artifacts assembled by intrepid explorers ranges from taxidermy and Egyptian mummies to geological samples and—one of its most prized possessions—a handwritten letter from Charles Darwin. The museum is located at the heart of McGill University, long one of Canada‘s most important institutions of higher learning. Most of the buildings on campus, all in a handsome gray stone on a lovely bit of green in downtown Montréal at the base of Mount Royal, date from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Set on a village site that dates back a thousand years, this park aims to show visitors what life was like on Guam 500 years ago, when the Chamorro had the island to themselves. Walk through a small botanical park to the re-created village. What’s most interesting is the specialization: a cooking house, a men’s house (common in Micronesia), even a house for the sick. And, of course, the biggest house of all was the chief’s. The park offers an excellent introduction to the Guam that existed before the Spanish arrived.

Since opening as a preserves shop in 2011 (and adding breakfast and lunch service in 2012), Sqirl has become an East Hollywood staple. The tiny space—only 800 square feet—invites crowds of hip Angelenos looking for a bright space for all-day breakfast and brunch that’s carnivore-, vegetarian-, and vegan-friendly. There’s an airy outdoor patio where diners can take in the L.A. sun and sip on the fresh-squeezed juice of the day while ruminating over the eclectic menu. The buckwheat pancakes make for a great healthy unhealthy breakfast: They’re made with buckwheat and cactus flour, cocoa nibs, and toasted coconut, making them vegan, gluten-free, and not-so-sinfully delicious.

The Electric Pickle is a boutique entertainment and music venue located in downtown Miami‘s Design District/Wynwood area. This area is the most popular location for those wanting to escape the velvet rope of South Beach. The beats pump inside the diverse bar filled with crowds from every Miami background. The Pickle was named #8 Bar that Rocks by Rolling Stone. If you like to dance, this is the place. Celebrity DJ’s take the stage from time to time and there are always specials on drinks. Step away from your regular rum and coke to try one of The Pickle’s specialty drinks, they are full of flavor and fresh ingredients.

This royal palace was probably much-visited this year, due to an exhibition of Joana Vasconcelos, a very important Portuguese artist. The palace was built on a hill, after being destroyed at its the previous location (in front of the river) in the 1755 earthquake. But it wasn’t finished, because the royal family fled to Brazil during the French invasion. In 1968, it opened as a museum, with important collections of decorative arts of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as furniture, jewelry, textiles, painting, ceramics, photography, and sculpture. Many important state ceremonies take place here as well.

The bleak, windswept landscape of Connemara in the West of Ireland is characterized by bogs, lakes, mountains, and miles of stone walls. Connemara National Park is one of the best places to appreciate this unique landscape, with more than 7,000 acres of national park encompassing mountains, including some that are part of the Twelve Bens range, plus Western blanket bog and treeless plains that are home to red deer, sheep, and Connemara ponies. Explore for yourself, and find traces of history dating back thousands of years, including 4,000-year-old megalithic tombs and abandoned farms.

When you tell your friends that you’re headed here, everyone will chime in about the dish that you have to get. ‘Make sure you try the smoked salmon flatbread!’ ‘The burger, be sure to get the burger’.’ ‘The donuts! You have to get the donuts!’ It’s good to know that with breakfast, brunch or lunch, they don’t take reservations. Be prepared to possibly wait and hang out on the porch swings or hang out at the bocce courts and play a while (they’re about a 10-minute walk from Boon Fly). With dinner, they do take reservations and I’d encourage you to get those well-ahead. If you’ve had a big bike ride in nearby Napa Valley or are headed in to downtown Napa for a concert or event, Boon Fly Cafe is just 5 miles away and will leave you with your belly full and happy.

Gandhi Smriti, previously called Birla House, is now a museum dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi, the man many consider the “Father of Indian Independence.” Gandhi lived in the house during the last several months of his life and was assassinated here in January 1948. View the modest rooms where he spent his days, and stroll the same prayer grounds where he held a nightly congregation. A visit to Gandhi Smriti offers insight into the last 144 days of Gandhi’s life, during one of the greatest periods in Indian history.

English explorer and draftsman Frederick Catherwood and American adventurer John Lloyd Stephens were the first foreigners to rediscover Copán and numerous other Maya cities. Catherwood’s extraordinary lithographs, on view at the Catherwood House Museum, portray those monuments as they appeared when the pair first witnessed them; the institution’s Belle Époque setting transports visitors to Catherwood’s day and conjures the wonder he experienced as he wandered the Maya world of Mexico and Central America. A coffee enjoyed in the courtyard and a poke through the elegant gift shop are icing on the cake.