I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO

  HAVE A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP with the City by the Bay. It is the very first place where I felt like a real grown-up. As a 21-year-old, many moons ago, I was juggling college, two part-time jobs and a serious romantic relationship I wanted to end, but didn’t know how. I needed to blow off […]

BEACH BLISS

At first glance, you may have to blink a few times to convince yourself that what you’re seeing is real. The crystal-clear turquoise waters and bright white sand beaches of Providenciales (nicknamed Provo by the locals)—the most developed and populated island in the Turks and Caicos—offers one of the most idyllic beach vacations.

A GUATEMALAN TREASURE

Antigua, Guatemala, is that rarest of places—a destination of historical importance absent the homogenizing effects of globalization and mass-market tourism.

IN THE LAND OF FRANKINCENSE

We’re standing on a bluff among the ruins of the former port of Samharam, a center of the frankincense trade in antiquity.

CANYON COUNTRY

It’s dawn. We’re driving slowly through Arches National Park just outside Moab, Utah. Hardly another car is in sight. Billowy lavender clouds drift overhead and turn incandescent as the sun rises.

THE HIGH LIFE

Just after dawn, we arrived at Machu Picchu on the first shuttle bus from the small Peruvian town of Aguas Calientes, some 20 minutes down the mountain.

THE NEW CHATTANOOGA

Years ago, I attended prep school near the tiny college town of Sewanee, Tennessee, home to the University of the South. From the window of my dorm, which was perched on the edge of the Cumberland Plateau, I enjoyed a breathtaking view of a spreading valley and the precipitous drop-offs that surrounded it.

END OF THE EARTH

Glittering white, shining blue, raven black, in the light of the sun the land looks like a fairy tale. … —Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer

NANTUCKET AHOY!

You’re strolling along the waterfront of an important early American port town admiring how the sunlight, diffused by an early morning fog, wraps the gray shingled buildings in a soft glow.

OF CASTLES AND CAVES

“The landscape is epic and open, with soft rolling hills, lush and green … one of the most beautiful and ravishing places I’ve ever been. It’s home to caves with the earliest petroglyphs known to man and castle strongholds that defended France from England for centuries.” —Anjelica Huston