Each ‌autumn, ‌between six and seven million people gather in a 103-acre meadow in southwest Munich. They wear traditional dress like their grandparents and drink beer from heavy glasses that hold exactly one quart. Locals call the meadow the Wiesn, but the rest of the world knows it as Oktoberfest.…

In Esperanza, the fishing village on Vieques’s south shore, you’ll see small groups gathered at roadside spots, dressed in long sleeves and pants even when it’s warm. Because the bay’s rules ban sunscreen, insect repellent, and lotion in the water, covering up is the only option. Nearby, a horse stands…

On a cold September morning, the loudest sound on Banff Avenue could be a tour guide, or a bull elk near the Bow River lifting its head and letting out a low groan that ends in a squeal. During this season, elks mate, and the Town of Banff has already…

The first ray of sunlight reaches the Temple of Hera before it touches any other building on the Paestum plain. In front, six columns stand, and fourteen line each side, all the color of honey. For about ten minutes the travertine, a kind of local porous limestone, seems to glow…

The horse rises straight up among the people, its black coat gleaming, and its front hooves sweep through the air above the hundred raised hands. In the Plaça des Born, the main square of the old part of Ciutadella. Historically, people reached out to touch the horse’s chest, as it…

For now, to get to Koh Lanta, you must take a boat. At the Ban Hua Hin pier on the mainland of Krabi, cars, minivans, delivery trucks and, from time to time, a scooter with an entire family on it board a ferry with a flat deck and cross a…

At Sligachan, under the Old Bridge, a woman in a rain jacket kneels on the rocks and dips her face into the river. Local legend says that if you keep your face in the water for seven seconds and then let it dry in the wind, you’ll gain timeless beauty,…

At the western end of Ireland’s Beara Peninsula, a sturdy cable car extends out over Dursey Sound on a cable about 1,230 feet long and takes six passengers across one of the most powerful tidal races on the Irish coast. The journey lasts seven and a half minutes. Cork County…

On the third Sunday of September, the meadow at Ukanc fills with the sound of cowbells arriving before the cows do. Then the herders come down from the high pastures, shoulders loaded with the basenga, the whole kit of tools and utensils that made cheese possible above the tree line…

Austria’s second-largest city has a Renaissance fortress, a blue museum that resembles a friendly alien, and a Saturday market where people pour pumpkin seed oil on vanilla ice cream. Moreover, it is less crowded than it should be. Then there is the matter of the clock tower. The long hand…

Although the bus leaving the airport does not stop at Fairy Bridge, the small stone bridge spanning the stream on the main road to Douglas, the passengers still speak up. “Hello, fairies,” says one person, and a few more join in, partly in jest and perhaps some completely sincerely. The…

At the Long Bar inside Raffles Hotel, the colonial-era grand hotel on Beach Road that has hosted travelers since 1887, the floor crunches. Guests are invited to brush their peanut shells off the tables and onto the floor, and staff sweep them up by the thousands. In a country known…