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The Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden is a gorgeous park that’s just a short walk from Shinjuku Station. There are several gardens within the space, including a formal French one, an English landscape garden, and a traditional Japanese design. While the admission fee is nominal (about $2), it helps assure that it is surprisingly quiet, with fewer visitors than parks open to the public for free. If the weather is good, consider picking up a bento from nearby Takashimaya’s depachika. Convenience stores sell plastic “blue sheets” for impromptu picnics. The only downside to this park is that it is alcohol-free; if you want to drink sake at your picnic, head down the road to Yoyogi Park.

The Key West Shipwreck Museum transports visitors back to 1856, when the young city’s port had more than 100 ships passing through daily. Because of the coral reefs, shipwrecks were common at the time and salvage became a thriving business. At the museum, visitors will meet an actor portraying Asa Tift, an actual Key West citizen whose family made a good living salvaging, or saving, crew, passengers, and cargo from ships that were wrecked on the reefs. He’ll tell the stories of the many wrecks and recoveries of Tift’s time. The museum’s immersive experience includes films and historic artifacts, including the wreckage of the Isaac Allerton, which sank off the coast in 1895.

Japadog is one of those odd and wacky combinations of a hot dog with Japanese toppings, but it works! I had the Terimayo, a teriyaki-drenched dog topped with seaweed. Not substantial for the $5 price tag, but a good snack. The location on Robson is dine-in, and there are carts across the city.

Whether you’re up for the adventure of a mobile tented camp, or would prefer a private house staffed with personal chefs, Singita Grumeti is the place for the ultimate safari experience and unbeatable Great Migration views. The 350,000-acre protected nature reserve is home to five distinct properties (plus an exclusive private villa option), ensuring there is an option for any traveler—though luxury, service, and attention to detail are constants across the board.

The five main Grumeti properties offer a singular setting and experience, along with the option to visit any of the others for meals, or to make use of their facilities. Choices include traditional tented-style camps like Sabora Tented Camp, with its plush, 1920s-explorer-inspired decor, and Explore Mobile Tented Camp, an eco-friendly setup that can be moved as the migration progresses. Faru Faru Lodge features contemporary interiors and boasts two striking pools, while Serengeti House is a four-suite private house favored by honeymooning celebs. The grande dame of the reserve, Sasakwa Lodge, boasts luxury cottages, a spa, a wine cellar, dining room, a bar and lounge, a billiards room, a conservatory, and even an equestrian center.

With all this to choose from—not to mention the endless panoramas, gourmet cuisine, and unforgettable wildlife viewing—Singita Grumeti has become known as the pinnacle of safari getaways. And with good reason: the experience here is so impeccable, it just might spoil you on safaris for life.

No hotel in Jamaica blends better with its surroundings than the aptly named Rockhouse, a string of villas clinging to the top of a sea cliff at the western tip of the island. Local stone, timber, and thatch are the building materials, and a harmony of design and setting is the result. The feel is rustic, but not rough (the showers might be outdoors, but the rooms are air-conditioned), and the feeling carries over to the pool, which sits on a rock platform halfway down the cliff face, from where sunbathers can don snorkel and mask and clamber down into a usually calm Caribbean. Even the restaurant hangs over the water, adding emphasis to the promise of dishes being fresh from the sea.

As does practically every hotel in Jamaica, Rockhouse has its celebrity stories, going back to the early ‘70s when Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones added their names to the guest register. But it wasn’t until 1994, when a group of Australian owners took over, that Rockhouse began to evolve its reputation as one of the most Jamaican of Jamaican hotels. It happened in part because Rockhouse has none of the formality that some of the island’s best-known hotels, with their British colonial roots, still possess. And in part because of its active role in funding local education projects, it’s a valued, and popular, part of the community. That, and the restaurant’s homemade jerk sausage is legendary.

Local is the ethos at The Craft House. Commissioned by the government in 1982, the store offers a dizzying array of hand-crafted products, though the dolls, straw work, pottery, and leather goods are the best bets. No matter what you choose, you can rest assured that you’ve purchased an authentic souvenir—everything here is made on the island by artists who trained in the store’s educational program.

When Berlin was divided, Checkpoint Charlie was the most famous of the border crossings between the eastern and western halves of the city. It was here that Allied soldiers registered before crossing over into the Soviet-controlled sectors. Thanks to its appearances in Cold War thrillers from Bond movies to John Le Carré novels, it has become a symbol of that era in the city’s, and world’s, history. A small museum nearby includes a replica of the guardhouse that once stood here.

Arthur Guinness, the forefather of the world-renowned family, founded the brewery on this inner city spot in 1759. It’s the city’s most visited tourist attraction, telling both the history and processes that have gone into making Ireland‘s most famous export. At the end of the tour, visitors are treated to a pint of the famed black stuff at the top-floor Gravity Bar with its panoramic views of the city’s skyline.

225 meters below the surface of the earth, visitors make their way through dim passageways that miners in the late 1800s had navigated in search of gold. The tour guide ‘jokingly’ points out that if for some reason we get stuck down there, the only way out is a via a steep emergency exit tunnel. In the photo for this post, there is a miner located beyond the struts (which are used to support the ceiling), who’s job it is to demonstrate what it was like in the past when miners excavated the gold bearing ore with nothing but a candle for light! During the tour, you’ll learn about the gold rush that caused the formation of Johannesburg and you’ll also be shown some interesting historical items, like dynamite which was manufactured by Alfred Nobel

This zoo in incredible for a few reasons: obviously, primarily for the animals there. Being in Belize, there are jaguars, ocelots, scarlet macaws... everything you wish you could stumble upon when hiking in the rainforest (if only hiking boots were less noisy!). Most noteworthy perhaps are the scarlet macaws, which are endangered. If you like to research places before visiting, you MUST read, The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw by Bruce Barcott: it tells about the Scarlet Macaw, Belize itself, and Sharon Matola- the woman who started the zoo and fought to save the macaws a while ago. If you’re lucky, you might even be able to hold a boa constrictor (I did!) or meet Matola, who my friends ran into while touring the zoo.

The province of Bohol seems to encourage the bizarre. It contains one of the world’s strangest landscapes, a collection of some 1,700 hills in a 20-square-mile area called the Chocolate Hills. It is also home to a peculiar creature called the Philippine tarsier (locally referred to as the mawmag or mamag), one of the smallest known primates, no larger than an adult man’s hand, with giant round eyes and a tail that is longer than its body. These adorable beasts are spread across various islands in the southeast of the Philippines, surviving in rain forests with thick vegetation. They are nocturnal, can leap as far as 10 feet from tree to tree, and (like owls) are able to turn their heads 180 degrees. Unfortunately, habitat destruction via logging and mining threatens the Philippine tarsier with extinction. The best place in Bohol to see them and support their conservation at the same time is at the Philippine Tarsier and Wildlife Sanctuary in Corella. Run by the Philippine Tarsier Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to tarsier conservation and education, this small but successful sanctuary provides the best possible environment to allow these tiny creatures to survive and thrive.

One of Japan‘s most talented chefs, Yoshihiro Narisawa presents Japanese ingredients in a style he calls “innovative Satoyama cuisine,” which highlights the country’s natural bounty. Narisawa works directly with purveyors to get the freshest seafood and produce. Bread is cooked on the table, there is soup made from soil (yes, literally dirt, along with burdock roots), and a forest-inspired dish that has a live audio feed from a forest in Japan. The exquisite meal is not gimmicky and involves a dizzying array of ingredients, and the wine-pairing option includes some very interesting, untraditional sakes, a great education in the spirit. Knowledgeable staff explain the provenance of each dish—it’s like an edible tour through Japan.

With more than 100,000 items in its collection, the Deutsches Museum is one of the most important science and technology museums in the world. Even though only around a quarter of the collection is on display at any one time, the breadth is nonetheless mind-boggling, ranging from the Stone Age to the present and touching on everything from cellular biology to atomic physics. Indeed, the holdings are so massive—and still growing—that they’re divided between several venues, including a hangar at Schleißheim airfield and the Deutsches Museum in Bonn. Specific highlights in Munich include the first motorized aircraft built by the Wright brothers, the first motorcar made by Karl Benz, and a U1 submarine. Also worth checking out are interactive displays that detail glass-blowing and paper-making, and the live demonstrations and experiments that take place each day. A dedicated children’s area with hundreds of activities caters to younger visitors, but, kids or not, plan to spend at least half a day here—and be pleasant overwhelmed.

Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem ensures that the magnitude of the Holocaust’s injustices are never forgotten. Visiting the museum is an educational, as well as emotional, experience and should not be rushed. The museum is dedicated to researching the phenomenon of the Holocaust and genocide in general, with the hope of avoiding it in the future. Exhibitions present the history that led up to the Holocaust, as well as the related events during and after World War II, featuring personal stories, historical artifacts, films, and photographs. It also highlights the bravery of underground movements, uprisings, and the non-Jews (the Righteous Among the Nations) who saved Jewish neighbors, children, and families from certain death. Outdoor gardens contain several monuments, including a haunting children’s memorial and commemorative sculptures. Guided audio tours are recommended.

Sitting near Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park, the Griffith Observatory has a vantage point that allows visitors great views of the HOLLYWOOD sign during the day, and even more fantastic views of the stars at night. The space has plenty of telescopes for stargazing, but it’s also a great informal setting for learning about the universe, thanks to a large exhibit space and a 290-seat planetarium that puts on rotating shows about topics ranging from the northern lights to water—and possibly alien life—on other planets. There is no entrance fee for the institution and just a small admission price for the planetarium itself.