Vienna's Coffee Houses: An Institution That Refused to Modernise

The Metropole has been the finest address in Hanoi since 1901. Graham Greene wrote part of The Quiet American here. Charlie Chaplin honeymooned here. Jane Fonda sheltered in its wartime bunker. The weight of history is extraordinary, and the hotel carries it beautifully.

The Nacional has housed Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, and Meyer Lansky. It hosted a summit of American crime bosses in 1946. It is a genuinely fascinating building with a genuinely complicated history — and a hotel that has not fully kept pace with the mythology but remains the most interesting place to stay in Havana.

The Pera Palace opened in 1892 to serve passengers arriving on the Orient Express. Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express here. Atatürk had a private room. It remains one of the great railway hotels of the world — meticulously restored and genuinely extraordinary.

Leaving Seminyak behind for the real Bali — the emerald rice terraces of Jatiluwih, the mother temple at Besakih, and a day spent with a Balinese healer in Ubud.

Getting lost in Marrakech's medina is inevitable; getting properly lost is avoidable. We walk the major souks, the tanneries, the Bahia Palace, and the Djemaa el-Fna in a single day.

Istanbul straddles Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, ancient and hypermodern. We spend a week exploring both sides of the Bosphorus and the layered history that makes this city endlessly fascinating.