Travel

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"

The rebuilt museum boasts an innovative green roof, home to poppies, yellow tidytips and other native plants.

California Academy of Sciences: Greening a Higher Ground

San Francisco's new science museum hosts its own rooftop ecosystem

We don't have a town center, Alvarez says, but we're "rich in characters and talents."

Julia Alvarez on Weybridge, VT

Other towns get more attention says novelist Julia Alvarez, but this is a place where things get done

Medieval wall gate.

Munich at 850

The livable, culture-crazy, beer-loving capital of Bavaria is coming to terms with its history

"I never thought anything would come of them," John Rich says of the some 1,000 personal photographs that he made as a reporter during the war.

One Man's Korean War

John Rich's color photographs, seen for the first time after more than half a century, offer a vivid glimpse of the "forgotten" conflict

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