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Long the heart of the Condesa district (even during the dark days following Mexico City’s devastating 1985 earthquake), today’s Parque México is the quintessential urban park. Well-manicured with ample seating and a recently refurbished open-air forum that plays host to groovy neighborhood events as well as perennial skateboarders, the park’s venerable trees provide shade to the area’s easy-on-the-eyes crowd of joggers, dog walkers, cute old folks, and amorous teens. Along the garden’s perimeter, some of the city’s smartest apartment houses (often in flawless art deco style) share space with cool cafés, kicky boutiques, and crowded restaurants. Few city pleasures surpass Parque México’s people-watching (and pooch-watching) over coffee or cocktails, as golden sunlight streams through branches onto lively, see-and-be-seen sidewalk venues.

A wildly colorful, cartoonish emoji mural sets the scene for fun, fabulous Lalo, the casual-chic outpost from chef Eduardo García (whose Máximo Bistrot is adjudged one of the finest spots in the city). Tables for two are the first to fill, so diners usually find themselves at a long shared table, choosing from a menu of small(ish) plates that pack real flavor and cleverly blend familiar comforts with more-unusual, yet equally tempting, combinations. Breakfast faves include a sinful French toast or less conventional choices like chilaquiles in salsa verde; fluffy omelettes contain amazing cheeses and surprising ingredients. And don’t be shy with pastries. Lunch swings to raved-about pastas and pizzas, or the salad whose ingredients all come fresh from nearby Xochimilco. Artisanal beers and homemade sodas are a sensation as well.

Its massive size, centrality to daily life in the capital, and easy accessibility (a Metro station opens up right onto the plaza) makes the Zócalo an ideal place for large-scale temporary exhibits. The government hosts occasional exhibits and makes entry free for residents and visitors alike. Past exhibits have included Gregory Colbert’s “Ashes and Snow,” a show of large-format photos of animals and people, and Willy Souza’s “Mexico en tus sentidos” (“Mexico in your senses”), lush, vivid photos of people and places around Mexico. To see if a show is planned during the time you’ll be visiting, check the website of the Secretary of Tourism.

Located in Tagaytay in Luzon, just an hour and a half by car from Manila, Taal Volcano has a complex and unique landscape and offers one of the most picturesque views in the Philippines. Taal Lake is a freshwater lake that partly fills the Taal Caldera, a large collapsed area formed during prehistoric eruptions. Within the lake is the nine-square-mile Volcano Island, which is the active part of the volcano and consists of at least 47 cones and craters, including the Binintiang Malaki cinder cone, which looks how you imagine a volcano should. In the center of Volcano Island is the crater lake, which hosts a small rocky island called Vulcan Point. So there is an island within a lake on an island (which is a volcano) within a lake on an island! (Vulcan Point is in the crater lake on Volcano Island, which is in Taal Lake, which is on the island of Luzon.) The volcano has not erupted since the seventies, though there are occasional signs of unrest. Visiting Taal’s crater lake is a great day-trip option: You hop on a boat across Taal Lake to Volcano Island, where you can hike or ride on horseback to the crater lake. Or you can simply take in the great vistas from Tagaytay, enjoying the cool weather and exploring the many places to eat.

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.

Presiding over Stanley Park, Canada’s largest aquarium houses more than 50,000 creatures, from penguins to sea otters to three-toed sloths. Don’t miss the star turns from the rescued Steller sea lions Izzy and Rogue, who swoop gracefully under the water and bask on sun-warmed rocks. Afterward, be sure to visit the theater, which goes beyond 3-D with mist, scents, wind, and even lightning. Adding substance to style, the aquarium is also the headquarters of Ocean Wise, a global conservation initiative dedicated to increasing the understanding, wonder, and appreciation of our seas.

Standing out in San Francisco‘s Marina District, this historic landmark is a leftover from the 1915 Pan-Pacific International Expo and was designed by Bernard R. Maybeck, a student of the École des Beaux-Arts. His vision was to give the impression of ancient Roman ruins. When the fair concluded, the Palace of Fine Arts proved too beautiful to raze. Maybeck had intended the Palace to fall into ruins (in keeping with his original vision), and it did for years. It was used as a storage depot after World War II and as a warehouse for the Parks Department. In the late 1950s, a local city official led an effort to face-lift the building. The Palace of Fine Arts was rebuilt and is now enjoyed by visitors who walk beneath the towering colonnade and the grand rotunda.

A Trastevere institution since 1933, Ai Marmi (the official name is Panattoni, but no one calls it that) is exactly what you’d expect in an Italian neighborhood pizzeria—zero frills, lots of character, and authentic, thin-crust Roman pizza. This is the kind of place to hit for a quintessential Roman vibe, thanks to the requisite lineup of city favorites like fritti, fried cod, fried zucchini flowers, and supplì—mozzarella-filled fried rice balls. The shop gets its nickname from the long marble slabs that top the family-style tables (ai marmi means “marble” in Italian).

Surrounded by 40 pristine sand- and grass-topped acres, endless water views, and the sound of crashing waves, Bekal Fort—the largest fort in Kerala—feels like it rose up from the sea. In fact, it was built some three centuries ago as a defense post, lingering evidence of which includes the old ammunition storage areas and the cannon windows lining the outer walls. Today, visitors can wander around the complex, climbing up the observation tower, strolling around parts of the original walls, venturing out to the waterside walkways, and picnicking on the main lawns. (Along with the history and scenic beauty, the filming of some hit movies here has made the fort even more popular with domestic tourists.) After exploring the site, head down to the beach for some sea air and views of the fort from a different vantage point.

As if floor-to-ceiling Inner City views from an 18th-floor space weren’t enough, the 21,500-square-foot illuminated ceiling by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist will wow you at Das Loft restaurant. With strict historic preservation building codes long in place that dictated nothing be built higher than the city’s iconic Stephansdom cathedral tower, Vienna was rather late to the game of splashy starchitect buildings. In 2010, however, Jean Nouvel’s Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom opened across the Danube Canal, an area that had been plagued by banal postwar stucco buildings. Now, guests at the hotel’s Das Loft penthouse and panoramic restaurant can not only enjoy beautiful urban vistas, but a popping cocktail scene and modern takes on Austrian dishes.

The name Fleischmarkt goes back to the medieval butchers who worked along this Inner City street. The surrounding blocks are still home to long-standing merchants like Mühlbauer Hut, a century-old hatmaker. Strolling the area also takes you to Vienna’s oldest church, the tiny Romanesque Ruprechtskirche. Located in a Biedermeier-era house, the nearby Stadttempel synagogue survived Kristallnacht. The Orendi-Hof at Fleischmarkt 1 is a stunning art nouveau building, followed a few doors down by Max Kropf’s richly detailed 1899 neoclassical building and then by a Byzantine-style Greek Orthodox church, all in one short block. In recent decades, the Fleischmarkt bar area gained the nickname Bermudadreieck—the Bermuda Triangle—in reference to tipsy revelers getting lost in its twisting alleys.

Château de Montaigne is worth a detour, especially if you need a little break from the wine tastings, that Bordeaux is so known for. The 14th century castle is nestled deep in the countryside near Bergerac and Saint-Émilion and was once the residence of Michel de Montaigne, one of France’s most important, early philosophers. If you haven’t heard of him, he is the one you may (or may not) thank for making essays popular as a literary genre.

Donsol, in southeast Luzon, is the perfect place to snorkel with whale sharks, otherwise known as butanding. Each year from November to May, possibly the largest school of whale sharks in the world migrates here to feed on the dense concentration of plankton and krill in the area. Donsol’s whale shark interaction is strictly regulated to protect the creatures and their natural habitat. They are not captive and are not fed by the local fishermen, so whether they appear or not is pure chance. A small boat takes you out to the bay and spotters cue you to jump in and swim alongside the whale sharks as they begin to near the surface. It’s an incredible experience to be so close to these huge beasts, which are typically four to 12 meters long in Donsol (though residents claim, of course, to have seen larger). They look like spotted submarines, but luckily have a gentle disposition and are surprisingly graceful.

So you want to drive through a tree? Well, you’ve got options. (At least for now. Since no new drive-through trees will be created any time soon, for obvious environmental reasons, the existing ones are maybe the last of their kind.) There are actually three trees in the vicinity of Redwood National and State Parks whose trunks are wide enough to accommodate a car. The Chandelier Tree, at the Drive-Thru Tree Park, may be the most well-known and most frequently photographed; pay your $5 and get behind the wheel. The Tour Thru Tree, near Klamath, is the other tree with a human-constructed tunnel. The only organically occurring drive-through tree in the area is the Shrine Tree in Myers Flat, on Avenue of the Giants. The opening in this tree was primarily nature-created—though at this point it’s held together with some human help. Shrine also has a fallen tree with a drive-up ramp, a stump you can walk through, and a couple of playhouses carved from redwoods.

Travel back 1,500 years to see how Vikings carried out their everyday lives. The Iron Age Farm is a re-creation of a 350-550 C.E. farmstead—with longhouses and burial mounds—based on excavations conducted by the Museum of Archaeology in the 1960s. Storytellers in traditional attire teach kids how to spin wool and make fires with rudimentary tools, in addition to sharing Viking history.