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Travel

The band plays on in a small-town Czech bar few tourists would think to frequent.

Trebon: Yellow Lampposts and Czech Fly Paper

South of Prague but a world away, Trebon offers a glimpse of traditional Eastern Europe

Fátima is one of Europe’s top pilgrimage destinations. There are plenty of picnic benches, endless parking and desolate toilets for the masses.

Portugal: One Foot in the Past and One in the Future

While many things are changing in modern Portugal, the nation still holds steadfast to many traditions

Fisherman casts off from the cliffs of Cape Sagres.

Cape Sagres

This windswept coast was once home to a navigators’ school that readied explorers for adventures in the New World

The European Parliament, a towering complex of glass skyscrapers, has 785 members representing 28 countries and more than 450 million citizens.

Brussels: One of Europe’s Great Travel Secrets

The political center of Europe, this Belgian city is also home to art museums and delicious mussels with frites, of course

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

Murrells Inlet, S.C.

The seafood capital of South Carolina

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Cornelius, N.C.

Established in 1905

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Vermilion, Ohio

A ‘one movie theatre’ town on the shore of Lake Erie

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Sutter Creek, California

A small northern California foothills town

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New Rochelle, N.Y.

Voted best city to raise a family in

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Athens, Tenn.

Education, the arts, patriotism, family and respect for all

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Ashland, Mass.

Halfway between Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts

Partaking in an old but ambiguous rite, blue "devils" (in Paramin, with mouths colored by dyed bubble gum) offer spectators a deal: pay, or get rubbed with body paint.

Up Close at Trinidad’s Carnival

What’s behind the raucous pre-Lenten rite? An intrepid scholar hits the streets of Trinidad to find out

Despite the summer influx of tourists, says the author, the town "remains at heart a working harbor."

The Vineyard in Winter

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks delights in the allure of Martha’s Vineyard’s off-season

Your Kind of Town

Your Kind of Town

What makes your city, suburb or small town special? Share a favorite memory or anecdote about your hometown

Seen from the aircraft that Steinmetz calls his "flying lawn chair," a salt-making site at the village of Teguidda-n-Tessoumt in arid northern Niger appears to be a vast work of abstract art. The clay-lined pools hold briny water that slowly evaporates, yielding salt solids that workers truck to southern Niger and Nigeria, where the minerals are given to livestock. The bluish pools bear a salty crust that reflects the sky.

Africa on the Fly

Dangling from a paraglider with a propeller on his back, photographer George Steinmetz gets a new perspective on Africa

Equatorial Africa's rain forests have sustained Pygmies for millennia. Now other peoples are competing for the forests' resources, displacing the Pygmies.

The Pygmies’ Plight

A correspondent who chronicled their lives in central African rain forests returns a decade later and is shocked by what he finds

"Horses define Lexington in many ways," says Edwards (with Thoroughbred Park's statues).

Lexington Is Kim Edwards’ Old Kentucky Home

Far from her Northern roots, the best-selling novelist discovers a new sense of home amid rolling hills and Thoroughbred farms

John White likely did this study of a male Atlantic loggerhead on a stop in the West Indies en route to "Virginia" in 1585. "Their heads, feet, and tails look very ugly, like those of a venomous serpent," wrote Thomas Harriot, the expedition's scientist, of New World tortoises. "Nevertheless they are very good to eat, as are their eggs."

Sketching the Earliest Views of the New World

The watercolors that John White produced in 1585 gave England its first startling glimpse of America

The basillica and its storied mosaics constitute a matchless and threatened treasure. Architectural historian Dan Cruickshank calls it a "sacred mountain of a building, vast and elemental."

A Monumental Struggle to Preserve Hagia Sophia

In Istanbul, secularists and fundamentalists clash over restoring the nearly 1,500 year-old structure

Author of "Munich at 850," Charles Michener

Charles Michener on “Munich at 850”

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