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Just across the Ashley River from the Charleston Peninsula, Charles Towne Landing marks the site of the forerunner to Charleston, Charles Towne. Settlers from Barbados founded the town in 1670, though after ten years—and a series of attacks by French, Spanish, Native Americans and pirates—they wisely decided to move to the easier-to-defend Charleston peninsula and start over. A recreation of a 17th-century trip, the Adventure, and replica of a colonial home provide insights into life in the earliest years of colonial America.

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.

Hidden behind unassuming doors, this 17th-century palace provides respite from the frenetic bustle of the medina without sacrificing sense of place. The property hits all the right Moroccan style notes: there’s plenty of arabesque-patterned tiling and a lush courtyard complete with tinkling fountain and fragrant citrus trees. But the classic interiors also have contemporary flair—see the chrome lamps, cement-hued tadelakt baths, and leather furnishings in the eight guest rooms, or the panoramic rooftop and on-site restaurant, which not only serves local Fassi fare but also offers free cooking classes that begin with a trip to the market. For an alternate take on tradition, guests head to the hotel’s candlelit Carrara marble hammam, which uses indigenous ingredients like ghassoul clay from the Atlas Mountains, black-olive soap, and argan oil for its soothing pamper sessions.

Reaching the remote Kenai Fjords Glacier Lodge is part of the fun. The four-hour boat journey from Seward to the only lodge within the 700,000-acre Kenai Fjords National Park is a prime opportunity to spot porpoises, puffins, and whales. On arrival, guests disembark and make their way to the lodge, where they’re briefed on bear safety: No food allowed in the 16 cabins. Calving tidewater glaciers provide the wake-up call for days filled with sea kayaking, canoeing, and hiking. Come evening, relax in the main lodge with a cocktail or with a book from the lodge’s natural history library. From $725, all-inclusive. This appeared in the June/July 2015 issue.

Skip the night markets if you’re after authentic handwoven textiles (most of what’s there comes from Thailand and Vietnam) and instead make a beeline for Weaves of Cambodia. Located in a sleek contemporary store attached to the Angkor Hospital for Children, the proceeds from your purchases go directly to the hospital, which provides free medical care to Cambodian kids an the disabled weavers of Preah Vihear who make these beautiful handwoven textiles, garments, accessories, and woven products, like cushions. I love the large vibrant textiles which make wonderful wall hangings and sideboard runners, however, there are also small inexpensive embroidered purses and wallets, like those above, that make great gifts that give back.

It’s fair to say that a trip to the hammam is a quintessential Moroccan experience and is a salve for the soul as much as it is for the body. Fes’s bathhouses may not have the sheer wow factor of those in Marrakech, but they perhaps offer a more intimate and authentic experience at more wallet-friendly prices. Your safest bet is to take a taxi to Nausikaa in the Ville Nouvelle and hang with locals while being treated to a deluxe treatment which involves a luxurious steam, followed by an enthusiastic scrub-down (gommage) with an exfoliating mitt (kessa) and olive oil soap, before getting slathered in rose-scented clay which leaves the skin baby-soft and sparkling. It also offers excellent pedicures and waxing.

If your heart is set on going old-school, be aware that the medina’s hammams are not always as hot, nor as clean, as you might like. In the medina, the pink and womblike hammam at Dar Bensouda is perfect if you’d prefer a private to a public hammam. It’s properly hot, and the local women who do the gommage mix their treatment lotions with lavender and chamomile as well as with other healing herbs and spices. A treatment costs 350 dirhams. The Riad Laaroussa provides a luxurious, candlelit experience. It’s the place to go if you want to experience a hammam with your partner, followed by sublimely relaxing massage. Have a cocktail in the courtyard afterwards; the orange- and cinnamon-infused gin and tonic is legend.

Across the bay from Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island, Finch Bay is one of the few hotels in the Galapagos Islands located near a beach. While the hotel prides itself on its ecofriendly touches—such as its own water treatment plant, solar panels, a composting system, and the addition of 500 new mangrove plants surrounding the hotel—the atmosphere is more that of a contemporary resort than a rustic nature lodge. Outside, an oversized pool overlooks the ocean; inside, a Cordon Bleu–trained chef heads a modern restaurant. Dark volcanic stones line the walls in the suites, while standard rooms all come with hammock-slung wooden balconies. Like most hotels in the Galapagos, Finch Bay is all-inclusive, providing land and sea excursions to attractions like the highlands of Santa Cruz, to search for giant tortoises in the wild. Also included are daily excursions on the hotel’s private yacht to nearby islands like Bartolomé or North Seymour, national park highlights, which can be reached on day trips.

For one of the best restaurant views you’ll ever enjoy, head to L’Orangerie at the five-star hotel Bastide de Gordes. Here, you can dine on the garden terrace or open-air veranda with breathtaking vistas over the Luberon Valley. The menu features traditional Provençale dishes, providing flavors—and prices—to match the elegant setting. Start with a salad of chilled watermelon, feta, mixed greens, and fresh mint, followed by roasted cod with squid ink spaghetti. The Grand Marnier soufflé with bourbon-vanilla ice cream will set you back around $20, but there are few places you can savor dessert in such extraordinary surrounds.

Between 1812 and 1815, the British ordered the construction of 300-foot-long Jasper Rock Tunnel (more commonly known as Black Point Tunnel) to provide better access from the cane field to the sugar factory to the ships for export. Slaves were responsible for the actual building, manually cutting through the mountain with shovels, picks, and sledgehammers. Now part of the Black Point Historic and Recreation Park, the tunnel also served as the site for several scenes in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

If you were to picture the perfect Caribbean beach, it would probably look something like Salt Whistle Bay on Mayreau. Here, clear, turquoise waters lap at 2.5 miles of sparkling white sand, while palm trees, seagrape plants, and flowering bushes provide shady spots for lounging. At one end, you can walk the few yards of land that separate the Caribbean and Atlantic sides of the island. The only catch is that you’ll need a boat to reach the beach, so rent your own or book a day sail to Mayreau.

This independent bookstore feels like a cozy home, with rooms full of books and comfortable chairs in which to sit and browse. Fans of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code may recognize the shop as the one where Robert Langdon searched for Dante’s Divine Comedy. There is an extensive selection of English-language titles about Florence, Tuscany, and Italy that range from tiny novelty volumes to large coffee-table tomes. Head to the back and you will find a few shelves of secondhand paperbacks that provide material to read that doesn’t require Wi-Fi.

The CoCo Key Water Park Resort in Mt. Laurel provides aquatic entertainment for all ages. Open year-round, this resort is an all-indoor affair, with the exception of an open-air hot tub, and the water slides that protrude from the building’s exterior like an elaborate, serpentine garden sculpture. (Don’t worry, you enter and exit the slides with a roof over your head.) If you’re less amphibious in nature, CoCo Key also has an arcade and restaurant—so you can enjoy yourself while staying dry.

Pike Place Market isn’t just fish-throwing and flower bouquets: it’s also home to Left Bank Books, a collectively owned and operated anarchist bookstore that sells primarily political and philosophical nonfiction, but also literary fiction, poetry, periodicals, zines, clever T-shirts and posters, and more. They’re also active supporters of the Books to Prisoners program which provides free books to prisoners throughout the United States. You won’t find bestselling paperbacks here, but they do have general-interest books and a decent selection of used titles.

Friendship Park is really as lovely a place as the name implies. Residing in the center of Wheeling, it’s a great place to just sit and relax for a bit. The sound of the water is soothing, there are sitting benches along the sides, and the pavilion provides some shade should you need a reprieve from the sun. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that there is music piped via hidden speakers that adds an extra dash of tranquility to your visit.

When you’ve had enough of the hectic hustle of tourists and traffic in Times Square, seek refuge at Haven, a rooftop lounge located on the top of the Sanctuary Hotel on 47th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. The owners of this chic establishment spent a considerable amount of time in Saint-Tropez and have made an effort to make their guests feel like they have been transported there. Chill at the bar, relax under oversize umbrellas at one of their cedar tables, or go all out in an open air cabana, swathed in sheer white drapes while re-fueling with foods from their French inspired menu. You can even get your anti-oxidants while you drink by ordering a Night Sky- one of their signature cocktails made with acai blueberry vodka and fresh lemonade, garnished with a skewer of blueberries. The manager Katerina was wonderful, making sure we had everything we needed and even shaking cocktails herself to help out the busy bartenders. If you’re looking for some excitement after your rooftop recharge, Haven hosts a rotation of DJs, features events such as burlesque shows, and has a VIP area overlooking the main roof that is available to rent out. With plans to install heating and encase the rooftop, Haven will soon be able to provide the refuge you need before a show, after work, or after hours all year long.