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The Camel Racing Festival is free and open to the public, and celebrates a sport that has deep cultural roots in the region. Much like the city itself, the current festival has a modern twist (as you can see): robot-jockey-mounted camels gallop toward the finish line during Dubai‘s Camel Racing Festival.

The most famous remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall gets its name from its location on the east side of the Spree River, as well as from its collection of political and satirical murals. Originally painted just after the wall fell, the murals were repainted (or in some cases painted over) in 2009 as a way of cleaning up the increasingly decayed originals and in recognition of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. Today, a fence partly protects the gallery to prevent vandalism of the murals, but people throng here nonetheless, especially in summer. A museum at the site tells the fascinating story of the structure through interactive displays, original newsreel footage, and filmed interviews with Berliners who lived on both sides.

The Grand Hotel de Londres (also known as Buyuk Londra) has been open for more than 100 years, and while its interior is immaculately kept, there’s something about it that is charmingly stuck in the past. You can imagine Ernest Hemingway at the bar in 1922, reviewing notes for his story in the Toronto Daily Star. Wander through the lobby with its antique furniture, past the requisite portrait of Atatürk, to the tiny elevator that will take you up to the rooftop. The bar there is scenic without being a scene: no seasonal cocktails or artisanal ice cubes here, just a simple but serviceable menu and gorgeous views of the Golden Horn and the Old City. If you can, try to arrive before sunset to hear the call to prayer echo throughout the streets, then descend the grand staircase back into the noisy nightlife of Pera.

Designed by Fuster + Architects, an award winning firm located in San Juan, Puerto Rico, El Blok takes its visual cues from the surrounding light, land and sea. In addition to being a playful structure, it is highly functional and built to withstand storms and hurricanes (a big plus anywhere in the caribbean!). It is located at the beach, at the start of Esperanza’s sleepy malecon, with its low-key seaside huddle of restaurants, bars, and stores, most of them back open after hurricane Maria’s devastating sweep of the island.

I loved my room, one of the spacious corner suites. The way the space captured the light was uncanny, every time I got back to my room, a new play of light beams and shadows was waiting for me. The restaurant downstairs serves up amazing food, hands down the best I had on island. Executive Chef, Carlos Perez. brings to the table a delicious, fresh take on Puerto Rican cuisine, centered around their bayahonda mesquite fired grill and Rotisol rotisserie. Just don’t expect much of a breakfast at the hotel. I took a short walk each morning to some cafés nearby, to grab a coffee and omelet. El Blok’s rooftop bar was ‘the’ place to hang in the evenings with locals and travelers alike, while listening to amazing music. When we were there, the duo Más Que Dos was playing and it made for an all around perfect sunset.

El Blok currently has 22 rooms and is adding another 11, slated to open in summer 2019. We were warned about construction noise between 8am and 2pm, but I can honestly say it didn’t interfere at all with my stay. It’s of course when you’re supposed to be out and about anyways, exploring the island!

Rates start at $140 per night plus tax.

A heartfelt thank you to Discover Puerto Rico (@DiscoverPuertoRico) for 3 days in beautiful Vieques and a fun stop-over in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

A short drive outside the town of San Pedro de Atacama, Tierra Atacama has wonderful views of fields and Volvano Licancabur. The hotel is part of the Tierra hotel group owned by the Chilean-American Purcell family (who also own Tierra Patagonia, Tierra Chiloé, and Ski Portillo). The property originally served as a cattle corral, but Chilean landscape artist Teresa Moller has transformed the grounds, preserving the ancient algarrobo and chañar trees and restoring the adobe walls.

The bedrooms are decorated in natural colors, with local touches like ceramics marching along the sills of the extra-large windows. Animal-skin rugs and alpaca throws provide a touch of warmth for the cool desert nights. You can see the incredible silhouette of Volcano Licancabur from all the rooms, but the Poniente rooms are slightly larger and have better views. There is a friendly communal vibe at the hotel, and upon arrival guests meet with the head guide in the main lounge to choose from the range of group activities on offer each day.

When Mike Richardson exploded onto the fairly limited Fes dining scene in 2007, he took the medina by storm. Suddenly there was someplace where locals, tourists, and a handful of resident expats could convene. They came to view exhibitions by up-and-coming young artists, to hear Sunday sunset concerts featuring the likes of Houariyat—an all-female drumming band—and to tuck into the café’s legendary camel burger. All these attractions are still going strong, but Clock has expanded and begun offering excellent traditional-cooking classes, and holds movie nights in a screening room furnished with vintage cinema seats. It now also has a sibling in Marrakech and another soon to open in Chefchaouene, and a country cousin in the Scorpion House in Moulay Idriss, which you can book for private lunches. If all this doesn’t whet your appetite at least come at brunch for the best coffee and Berber eggs in town.

With its domed greenhouses of epic proportions dotted across some 100 hectares (250 acres), the sustainable Gardens by the Bay are educational and fun. The Cloud Forest is a misty, 42-meter-high (138-foot-high) “mountain” that re-creates tropical highlands; visitors use ramps to explore around and through them. A biosphere of Mediterranean and desert plants, including huge baobab trees, makes up the Flower Dome. Outdoors, guests walk on suspended walkways between steel-frame “Supertrees” that are covered in solar-powered lights.

Opened in 1946 as a restaurant (where the famous regulars included Churchill and Hemingway), La Maison Arabe later expanded to a small hotel, then grew again under its current French-Italian owner. Today, it features 26 garden- or patio-view rooms and suites, individually designed in either a traditional or slightly more modern Moroccan style. All have air-conditioning and heating (a must for the varied desert temperatures) as well as Wi-Fi, satellite TVs, and marble-and-granite bathrooms stocked with aromatic toiletries. Also available to guests is an idyllic swimming pool, around which the hotel serves a home-cooked breakfast each morning, and the clubby, 1930s-inspired Piano Bar, where guests can enjoy live jazz and pre-dinner drinks by the fireplace. When it’s time to unwind, head to the cozy spa for an array of face, body, and hamman treatments, all performed with products made exclusively for the hotel.

Much like in the past, La Maison Arabe revolves around food. Guests can choose between Le Restaurant, where a gorgeous fountain and hand-painted ceiling set the stage for authentic Moroccan fare, and the intimate, lantern-lit Les Trois Saveurs, which serves a sophisticated menu of French, Moroccan, and Asian dishes. Additionally, the hotel offers some of the city’s best cooking classes, which are open to outside guests. Led by a dada (a traditional Moroccan cook), the lessons take place either at the main hotel or the Country Club—a satellite property located 15 minutes away by complimentary shuttle, where students can also find a larger pool, lush gardens, a restaurant, and a bit of calm away from the bustle of the medina.

“Buongiorno, Signor Farley,” said Umberto, the head waiter at Hotel Missoni’s Cucina restaurant. By the beginning of the third day of my stay, the staff knew my name. And what I drank with breakfast. An espresso doppio was delivered to my table a minute later. “Prego,” the server said.

You’d think I was in Italy. In fact, I was 2,500 miles southeast of the country’s heel, in the capital of diminutive, oil-rich Kuwait. Opened in spring 2011, Hotel Missoni, owned by the eponymous fashion and home furnishings house, is one of many designer-conceived hotels that have popped up around the globe.

I have to confess: I have a complicated relationship with fashion. Maybe it’s related to my childhood. (Isn’t everything?) In the seventh grade, I wore a T-shirt to school that read, “My Son Is in the Navy.” My trend-conscious peers, who clearly had no sense of irony, laughed at me until the final bell rang. When I wore bowling shoes to high school, I was similarly mocked. How would I do in a hotel designed by a couturier?

I was picked up at the airport in Kuwait City in a Maserati (a complimentary perk for all Missoni guests). Not a bad start.

The property (like its sister hotel in Edinburgh, which opened in June 2009) is the brainchild of the Missoni family matriarch, Rosita. The hotel’s 169 rooms were designed to feel like her home. Compact Hans Wegner wishbone chairs and tuliplike Eero Saarinen–designed tables rest on hardwood floors, and everything—espresso cups, towels, even the swimming pool—displays the colorful striped patterns Missoni is known for. Generous helpings of turquoise, gold, and beige are splashed throughout the hotel to evoke the bayfront landscape outside, and every room looks out on the ever-expanding Kuwait City skyline. Like many things Italian, the hotel is simple and comfortable.

The Missoni team, which is fine-tuning its approach before opening hotels in larger markets, learns fast. There are no design hotel clichés here: no faucets with the function designed out of them, no overly formal staff. “Are those Camper shoes?” a waiter asked me one day at breakfast. I nodded. “Like bowling shoes,” he said. “Very cool.” Here, it seemed, fashion and I got along great.

965/2577-0000, from $414. This appeared in the September, 2012 issue.

Victoria Eugenia is a double-edged sword. A beautiful, red-velvet-swathed theater occupies the aboveground section of this building. Offerings feature biggish names in music, Broadway adaptations, and classical performances. Meanwhile, after midnight, it’s the basement that houses the action. The underground level is a dance club that’s at its peak from 2am on. Expect house music and house remixes of Top 40, as well as a lively, twenty- and thirty-something crowd.

At the poolside restaurant Dar Moha, hungry travelers can dine on couscous with foie gras, lamb shank tagine with ras el hanout jus, and chakhchoukha, a caramelized apple tart spiced with saffron. Enjoy your meal at one of the candlelit tables while a musician plays the oud, a stringed instrument similar to a lute.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a better view of Hamilton Harbour than the one at Newstead Belmont Hills, where the 60 one-, two-, and three-bedroom suites satisfy the Airbnb set with in-room kitchens, Jacuzzi tubs, and sleeper sofas. Though there’s no on-site beach, the resort’s shuttle can transport you to the nearest shoreline (about 10 minutes away), and a private water taxi is on hand to ferry guests to the restaurants and shops of Hamilton. Care to stay put? One visitor per room is gifted a complimentary round of golf on the property’s championship 18-hole course with your stay, the harbor-front infinity pool and club becomes one of Bermuda’s top happy-hour scenes come sunset, and Beau Rivage, the island’s only French restaurant, is renowned for its Gallic specialties such as Provençal shrimp risotto and foie gras–stuffed beef Wellington.

Rising before one of the world’s most famous sailing sites—the host of the Louis Vuitton Regattas, the Volvo Round the World Race, and the Auckland International Boat Show—the Sofitel Auckland Viaduct Harbour blends French and South Pacific influences while respecting the maritime heritage of the area. Glass walls maximize views of the marina and its many yachts as well as the reflective pools that create optical illusions in the hotel lobby. The color palette sets cherry and dark woods, jade greens, and slate grays against cream and white backdrops, while artwork—from ceremonial pieces to a Maori tribal sculpture in the atrium—pays homage to indigenous New Zealanders. Some of the treatments at the SO Spa, like the greenstone massage, also reflect local culture, while others use French products in a nod to the hotel brand’s heritage.

References to Auckland’s volcanic origins also abound, most notably in the back-lit marble walls of the Lava Dining restaurant, an all-day spot for French- and New Zealand-accented dishes; the casual 21 Viaduct Café and panoramic Sabrage Bar are other dining options. And then there are the rooms: from the Superiors and Junior Suites to the exclusive Opera Suite, all have contemporary décor, signature MyBed mattresses, marble baths with Lanvin products and separate showers and tubs, and walls of windows opening out onto a Juliet balcony with views of either the hotel’s atrium, or the city, harbor, and beyond.

Nestled within Positano’s hillside tangle of pastel residences and stepped alleys, Le Sirenuse is a legendary boutique hotel that feels more like a private home. Run by the Sersale family since its opening in 1951, the crimson-hued house is filled with antiques, potted plants, and oil paintings that lend it a friendly atmosphere devoid of any snootiness. White-walled guest rooms are accented with Vietri floor tiles and heirloom walnut furniture, while marble bathrooms have whirlpool tubs and Eau d’Italie toiletries, the hotel’s bespoke line. Dining is excellent: The Michelin-starred La Sponda restaurant is as tasty as it is charming, illuminated in the evening entirely by candlelight. There’s also a champagne and oyster bar that commands dazzling views from a panoramic terrace; the vistas are no less stunning from the pool deck, where potted lemon trees scent the air. The hotel also has a top-notch spa, plus fun perks such as free daily excursions on its vintage wooden boat.

A 600-suite hotel within a hotel, The Cove is the most luxurious of the room towers at the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort. Kids aren’t banned, but the vibe is definitely grown-up—witness the adults-only Cove Pool, with its DJ-driven party scene, outdoor gaming tables, and mating-ritual pool wear. But there’s a sense of sophistication in the two-story lobby, which soars above ponds of water lilies, as well as the suites, which have balconies with ocean views, sunken living rooms, and marble-floored bathrooms. All the activities of Atlantis, including those that make adults feel young again—such as the Abyss and Leap of Faith waterslides, or the dolphin encounters—are only steps or a free shuttle ride away. Also available is immersive programming that connects guests to the rich history, art, people, food, and festivities of the islands, from exhibits showcasing regional artists and a weekly Junkanoo Fest & Feast (honoring a more than 500-year-old tradition) to five new outposts of beloved local Bahamian restaurants.