(CNN) — You'll find it almost everywhere you turn -- on T-shirts, bumper stickers, magnets and all types of tourist trinkets -- the three words: "Ithaca is gorges."After all, who doesn't love a good pun? Ithaca, New York, is gorgeous, peppered with steep gorges (get it?), plunging waterfalls, and a tapestry of tree-covered mountains that turn vibrant shades of yellow, orange and red when the leaves change in the fall. If you can time your visit just right, at the peak of "leaf peeping" season, it is a wonder to behold.A four-hour drive from New York City, Ithaca is located in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York -- named for the 11 finger-shaped lakes, spread over some 9,000 square miles. Over the years, the area has garnered a progressive and often eccentric reputation; Ithaca even had its own currency, one of the longest-running community currencies in the United States.

This building resembles a large outcrop emerging from the soil. It houses a trove of information about the prehistoric world that existed in the Côa River valley. During the early 1990s, a discovery was made along the banks of the Côa River. Researchers found several locations where flat rock faces above the river contained prehistoric rock art. Unfortunately at the time of this find, plans were underway to build a dam at the mouth of the river to flood the valley. This was designed to store water for release into the Douro River during dry summer months.After some controversy, the dam project was shut down. The rock art sites in the Côa Valley were designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1998. At the same time, a park and museum were also in the works.

(CNN) — With its vast mountain ranges, sandy beaches and towering forests, Cape Town is a place where the natural world dominates, imploring visitors to stop and soak it all in. The southernmost city of Africa has an unofficial motto: "Slow down it's Cape Town." But these words have taken on new meaning during the Covid-19 pandemic. Everything ground to a halt back in March, when the long winter lockdown to fight off the first wave of coronavirus in the country began. Now, with summer in full swing, locals have been cautiously letting the sunshine in as the country battles its second coronavirus wave.Last month, South Africa became the first African nation to record more than one million Covid-19 cases.

Deep in Oak Creek Canyon, a trail meanders among the crumbling remains of some stone buildings. Mostly forgotten and partially consumed by vegetation, these former buildings were the home to some unusual occupants and visitors.In the 1870s, before there was even a road through the canyon, Jesse Jefferson “Bear” Howard constructed the first cabin on the site. Howard was a hunter who moved to the area to settle a score with the local wildlife. His friend was mauled to death by a bear in the canyon and Howard vowed to kill every bear in the region in retaliation.A legendary figure in the early days of Flagstaff, Arizona's settlement, Howard was said to have stood 6-foot-4-inches tall and frequently hunted his quarry armed with just a knife. Mostly reclusive, he only went into town to sell his bear meat to butchers, restaurants, and encampments of railroad workers. Thankfully, Howard was unsuccessful in exterminating bears from the local ecosystem. He reportedly kept up this profession until he was 90 years old.

This unassuming, but attractive brick building happens to be the birthplace of several devices and technologies that changed the world. In 1869, the first monkey wrench was crafted inside this building.This was also the same location that Thomas A. Watson answered the first phone call made over a line. Edwin Land and Polaroid laboratories also called the building home. Two plaques located on the side of the building commemorate its history. It's appropriate that this building is now home to LabCentral, which calls itself, "a launchpad for high-potential life sciences and biotech start-ups." If you happen to be in the area, be sure to walk around the perimeter of the building to view the facade and plaques. 

By now most of us have become so eager to travel that we would even consider taking dodgy low cost carriers and indulge in all-day buffets without any hesitation or thought. Talking about lowering our standards just to get out of our pandemic routine. Personally, I’ve been trying to cope just by planning ahead and dream about all the adventures and luxury experiences we’ve been putting on hold ever since this madness started.Most of the experiences that are reoccurring in these dreams involve wildlife and luxury accommodations, but the latter shouldn’t be a surprise. Yes, I’m a fan of wildlife and nature in general (don’t get me wrong, I can still enjoy a good old concrete metropolis too) and I’m surely not the only one. When did it start? I don’t really know, but I’m convinced my early trips to the Galapagos Islands almost 30 years ago (before the large crowds arrived) and the Masai Mara must have something to do with it. Luck was on my side when I visited the mountain gorillas in early 2020 right before the pandemic paralysed the whole world, and it reminds me of the fact that we shouldn’t wait too long to take those amazing wildlife trips we’ve been planning for what seems like a lifetime. Hence why I made a list of wildlife experiences which you should definitely consider once we’re living back in pre-covid ages.

Spanning 9,306km (5,780 miles) and six time zones, Canada is the second-largest country in the world. It’s home to rugged coastlines, vast prairies, dense boreal forests, towering mountain ranges, and upwards of two million lakes.But what makes Canada special is its people. It’s a place that embraces its diversity and that encourages people to be friendly, caring, and polite.Due to its large size, though, traveling across Canada can be a little challenging. Domestic flights are prohibitively expensive due to low competition and, outside of the eastern part, trains don’t go many places.That means if you really want to see Canada, you need to drive.To help you explore this amazing country, Chris Oldfield, our Canadian team member, helped create this suggested itinerary for a one-month road trip. It’s packed, since you’ve got a lot of ground to cover. However, it’s also not too rushed (though you can easily extend this out to six or eight weeks as well).

Get out a sheet of paper and write down all your set expenses: rent/mortgage, car payments, cable/streaming bill, cell phone, insurance, school payments, etc. Tally them up.Then write down all your discretionary spending. This is what you spend on food, movie nights, drinks, shopping, that daily coffee from Starbucks, cigarettes, sports tickets, your daily midday snack, and other similar things. If you don’t know what you spend money on, go track your expenses for a two-week period, see what you spend, and come back.Add that all up — what did you get? Probably a large sum of money.And I bet there will be many expenses you didn’t realize were there. Financial experts call these “phantom expenses” — we never know they are there because the expenses are so small. People bleed money without realizing it. A dollar here and a dollar there adds up. Even a daily bottle of water or candy bar can make a substantial difference over the course of a year.

Condercum, or Benwell as it's now called, was one of 13 permanent forts along Hadrian's Wall. The fort itself can no longer be visited, as it's covered on the north side by a Victorian reservoir and to the south by 1930s housing. However, this housing estate does hide a few surprises.The Benwell Roman Temple was once a small temple dedicated to the native god Antenociticus. Antenociticus is thought to have been a local Celtic god because there are no mentions of the diety at any other British or European Roman sites.The temple was originally located in the vicus, or the civilian settlement that stood outside the fort. At some point, the temple became a cemetery as three skeletons were excavated at the site.

Food is an inseparable accompaniment to any travel or holiday experience. In luxury villa accommodations, dining is taken to a whole new level of exclusivity and personal touch. While some diners make reservations, drive themselves to 5-star restaurants, and wait for a table, villa vacationers instead have the restaurant experience brought right to the very place where they are staying – along with other delightful perks.Your own private chefAn iconic service feature of a luxury villa stay is having your own private chef. These experienced talents provide full services for guests, from grocery shopping to the actual food serving. They combine local expertise with high-class culinary training, knowing where to find the freshest ingredients and crafting star-quality dishes with finesse.

When Jackson Hudecki walks through Woodland Cemetery on a cold December morning, the place is almost empty, save for a few people visiting a gravestone, a woman walking her dog, and a small group of birders armed with binoculars and scopes. The century-old cemetery sits atop a bluff overlooking Hamilton Harbour on the west tip of Lake Ontario. Stand on the southwestern edge of the cemetery in winter when the leaves are gone from the trees, and you’ll see a jutting peninsula called Carroll’s Point. It’s an ideal spot for birding.After a half-hour loop, Hudecki, Bird Study Group Director of the Hamilton Naturalist’s Club, has identified 14 species of birds, including a red-tailed hawk, a brown creeper, and a gaggle of Canada geese. The cemetery is an avian hotspot year-round, Hudecki says. Open water attracts waterfowl from November through March and April. Springtime brings migrating warblers, thrushes, and vireos. “It’s an area the winds are constantly pushing birds towards,” says Hudecki. Birds of prey take advantage of these gusts: “The winds hit off the lake, and just go upwards, and they’re riding it,” says Hudecki. “It’s amazing to watch.”

This year hasn’t been what anyone expected. As COVID has reminded us, you never know what tomorrow will bring. And, this year, it didn’t bring too many great things (especially for folks like myself working in the tourism industry).However, if there’s been one silver lining, it’s that being home this much has allowed me to supercharge my reading. While this year started off slow, since COVID, I’ve been averaging a book (sometimes two) a week. (I mean, after all, what else am I going to do?) Books that have sat in my bookcase for a long time were finally opened.So, as I look back on this year as it comes to an end, I can find at least one good thing about it!And, since it’s been an entire year since I a post about my current favorite reads. (As we head into the holiday season, a book is always a good gift idea!) Here are all the books I’ve read this year that I’ve loved:

What do Star Wars, the Last Airbender, and Super Mario have in common? According to Varta Melon, they all belong on tahdig.Melon is a Chicago-based baker and blogger. But what started as a food blog to introduce followers to Persian cuisine has transformed into an Instagram account that documents just how innovation and artistic tahdig—a traditional Iranian dish made of slightly burnt rice—can be.“At the end of the day, it's a fried carb, and fried carbs will always do well,” says Melon. “You take any sort of comfort food and you fry it, it's going to be good.”Born and raised in Virginia to Persian parents, Melon grew up in a household that revered Persian delicacies such as barbari, an lranian flatbread; gheymeh, an Iranian stew filled with cubed meat and veggies; and ghormeh sabzi, an herb and beef stew. Though tahdig was also omnipresent in her home, she was surprised at how quickly the dish gained popularity in Western culture.

When it comes to the SR-71 and the stories surrounding the Lockheed's Skunk Works program that created it, the mystique is undeniable. Only 32 SR-71 aircraft were constructed, and 29 of those were SR-71A models. Two trainers, designated SR-71B, were also created. The last SR-71, the SR-71C, was nicknamed "The Bastard." The name was partly due to the Frankenstein-like creation of the aircraft. After one SR-71B trainer crashed in January 1968, it was determined that another trainer plane should be constructed. The project began with a wrecked YF-12A that was utilized for the rear part of the fuselage, and the front came from a static, but functional, SR-71A mockup. It was apparently a "bastard" to fly as well, considering it was said to have a "yaw at supersonic speeds" due to the joined fuselage not being quite straight. 

The Cemetery Dieweg was constructed after a cholera epidemic ravaged Belgium in 1866. As the population grew and other cemeteries closed, Dieweg became overcrowded and the cemetery was abandoned in 1958.A few decades later during the 1980s, the cemetery fell into a state of decay. Its maintenance was then limited to the pathways, which left the upkeep of the graves to the families. Ever since, nature has reclaimed many of the tombs, as they are covered in ivy and weeds. This creates a unique atmosphere and makes the cemetery one of the more unusual places in Brussels.Although the cemetery isn't functional anymore, a few exceptions have been made. For example, the famous cartoonist Hergé, from The Adventures of Tintin, was buried here. Every so often, a burial takes place in the cemetery. 

Travel is a privilege — even budget travel.The ability to hold a passport and purchase a plane ticket to another country is a luxury not afforded to most people around the world — including many in my own country.That’s the reason I created FLYTE over five years ago. Travel has changed my life completely, and I wanted students who didn’t grow up with the same privileges as me to have that same opportunity. So many inequities exist in our world today. The least we can do is try to give back to help balance the scale.The goal of FLYTE is to empower youth from underserved communities through transformative travel experiences. Since 2015, we’ve worked with six schools and nearly a hundred students, who have collectively traveled roughly 300,000 miles around the world. They come from communities where international travel is not readily accessible, so these trips give them the opportunity to get on a plane for the first time, helping them understand the vastness of the world — and their power to change it for the better.

Here, in the pint-sized South American nation of Ecuador, 2021 will see the continued opening to some of the most amazing — yet safe — nature vacations. Situated well away from the congested cities and crowds that you might prefer to avoid are several luxurious haciendas – jewels in South America’s crown with breathtaking landscapes and a vibrant culture to match.The Ecuadorian Andes are peppered with such haciendas that showcase jaw-dropping views and celebrate the country’s rich heritage at the same time. Here, we have rounded up some of our favorite hacienda hotels in Ecuador.1. Hacienda San Agustin de CalloLocated on its very own hacienda (country estate) and built on the actual site of an Inca temple, San Augustin de Callo is steeped in history. Where else can a traveler dine within still-standing Inca walls, complete with the niches that held statues of their ancestral gods? Indeed, it is the furthest point north from Cusco (Peru) that features “Imperial Style” Inca construction.

Like most things this year, the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ Reclamation exhibition did not go as initially planned. Curator and director of public programs Melani N. Douglass wanted to treat kitchen labor—the often-invisible daily work that disproportionately falls on women and feminine people—as high art. She envisioned an exhibition centered around kitchen-like spaces physically installed at the D.C. museum. When the pandemic struck, however, the museum moved the show online.The result is a digital exhibition that may be even more potent than the original. Reclamation went live on January 18th, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and will be available for the next year. Its homepage features a vibrant photo grid of hands preparing meals on kitchen tables strewn with pink grapefruit, purple onions, and filetted lamb. Each photo represents the work of one of nine female artists, most of them women of color working in multiple disciplines, including Douglass herself. Douglass gave each artist a series of prompts centered around the kitchen: to record herself at the table; to do a time lapse of meal preparation and eating; to take pictures of ingredients; and to record herself doing something at the kitchen table that had nothing to do with food.

This white, gabled KFC could be mistaken for a particularly good-looking roadside fast-food restaurant, were it not for the fact that it's on the National Register of Historic Places. This building was the first place to sell what would become known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a yellow neon sign with the restaurant's original name, the Sanders Cafe, still retains pride of place.To be fair, the first place where Colonel Harland Sanders served food to customers was across the street, at a service station he bought in 1930. From a small seating area consisting of his own dining table in the back of the station, Sanders launched an empire of franchised chicken restaurants, starting with his first restaurant, the Sanders Cafe.

Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we’re sharing things we’re eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday. And you can always reach us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. document.getElementById('cloak2c7866fa8d742ad189a2e96f554cdcf0').innerHTML = ''; var prefix = 'ma' + 'il' + 'to'; var path = 'hr' + 'ef' + '='; var addy2c7866fa8d742ad189a2e96f554cdcf0 = 'tlist' + '@'; addy2c7866fa8d742ad189a2e96f554cdcf0 = addy2c7866fa8d742ad189a2e96f554cdcf0 + 'nytimes' + '.' + 'com'; var addy_text2c7866fa8d742ad189a2e96f554cdcf0 = 'tlist' + '@' + 'nytimes' + '.' + 'com';document.getElementById('cloak2c7866fa8d742ad189a2e96f554cdcf0').innerHTML += ''+addy_text2c7866fa8d742ad189a2e96f554cdcf0+''; .Book ThisWhen Roberta Maceda, theowner and designerof the home and women’s wear label Octavia, purchased a dilapidated building with her mother in the leafy Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City in 2018, she enlisted the architect Pablo Pérez Palacios to transform it into her dream bed-and-breakfast. The result is the seven-room Octavia Casa: a contemporary three-story refuge whose facade is lined with golden teak panels and steel planters overflowing with native flowering plants like monstera deliciosaand jasmine. In the ground-floor lobby — a minimalist space with stone flooring and textured walls coated with chukum, a traditional Mayan stucco — is a breezy seating area with bamboo stools centered around a concrete table by the interior architecture firm Habitación 116. In the adjacent courtyard, guests can linger over breakfasts of ciabatta bread with honey and homemade hibiscus-and-ginger jam beneath the shade of a guava tree. Within each room, some of which contain reading nooks and oversize rattan chairs, are Octavia bed linens and bathrobes and, for a subtle, decorative accent, cream-coloredvases by the ceramics studio Encrudofilled with dried magnolia leaves. But perhaps the most spectacular space of all is the rooftop terrace, where guests can enjoy a glass of natural wine as they watch the sun set over the city’s vibrantly painted homes. Rooms start at $145, octaviacasa.mx.

Skiers might not know James Niehues’s name, but they have probably studied his maps. Over a decades-long career, the 75-year-old has hand-painted trail maps for over 200 ski resorts across the U.S. as well as a few in farther-flung places including British Columbia, Serbia, and New Zealand.The so-called “Rembrandt of Snow” stumbled into his mapmaking career in 1987, shortly after moving with his wife and kids to Denver from Grand Junction, Colorado. Desperate for graphic design work, he connected with local artist Bill Brown, who in turn handed him a job making the trail map for the Winter Park resort. Thirty-four years later, Niehues has created enough pieces to sell a coffee table book (The Man Behind the Maps, published in 2019) and he’s still not done: This ski season, he created a new map for Mad River Glen in Vermont, and is already at work on a new collection of sketches of iconic American landscapes.

Hell is a town called Tulum. Watched over by Mayan ruins and buttressed by the ocean, this is a place of pothole-filled streets, overpriced taxis, terrible traffic jams, and out-of-touch yuppies, celebrities, influencers, wannabe gurus, COVID deniers, and well-to-do folks looking to “find themselves” in overpriced retreats, hotels, and bars.It is a town where one can overhear tech deals, talk of the “the China flu,” Instagram algorithms, and an upcoming drum circle within the span of a few minutes.I came here with very low expectations. I’d heard the stories from my friends, seen all those “influencers” on Instagram gushing profusely, read the articles, and spoke with other travelers.

While most travelers who visit England only visit London, there are actually a lot of other gems in the country worth exploring.One such place is Bristol.“Bristol? There’s not much there.”That was the standard reply from locals whenever I mentioned I was heading to Bristol.Needless to say, I had low expectations. But I visited anyway. After all, there’s no such thing as “must-see” — and that means there’s no such thing as “must skip” either.On arrival, I found a hip college town with amazing eateries, great ethnic food, wonderful things to see, and plenty of green space.Bristol is like the English version of Seattle. Most travelers seem to use it as a base for trips to Bath, and never fully explore this city, giving it only a brief glance before heading back to London.

For more than two centuries, the White House has stood as a symbol of democracy and resilience in the face of change—a symbolism that carries particular poignance following the turmoil of the 2020 election and its aftermath. The stories embedded in its decor, artwork, hallways, and chambers capture colorful moments and occasional upheavals in American history. Known as the “Executive Mansion” or “President’s House” during its first century, the building has been burned, rebuilt, shored up (after a tinkling chandelier warned of some structural instability), renovated, and expanded into the complex we know today.