Brighton Beach Park has a popular stone-covered beach, swing set, picnic area with tables and barbecue grills, carry-in canoe area and public fruit trees — plus stunning views of Lake Superior. Bayfront Festival Park is located along the Downtown Waterfront in Duluth, and hosts events and concerts throughout the year. The park features a large, all-ages playground, with free use of recreational equipment. Hartley Park is for true nature lovers. 

With 10 distinct national parks, Uganda gives visitors the chance to explore myriad landscapes and natural habitats, each with its own impressive characteristics and wild inhabitants. Most people only have time to visit three or four parks in Uganda, so it's important to get a feel for which one may be right for you. Book a boat safari on the Nile in Murchison Falls National Park, or head out on a game drive in Kidepo Valley National Park to see elephants, giraffes, lions and more.

The atmosphere in Nanjing Impressions transports you to the past with its interior designed like an ancient tea house, hundreds of hanging lanterns, wooden benches and authentic dress for the servers and chefs. The experience is vibrant, with servers shouting blessings as they pass traditional Nanjing specialties. You'll find many dishes on the menu here, but make sure to try the city's signature dish of Nanjing Salted Duck.

Immediately upon our Copa Airlines arrival, we settled back in our prearranged taxi to enjoy the looming skyline of Panama City.  It was a warm mid-July night and already the towering skyscrapers were ablaze in all their nocturnal glory.  After all, this is ground zero for the global banking empire.  Even president Juan Carlos Varela’s attempts to hire a commission last year to create more fiscal transparency may find insurmountable difficulties.  Elite lawyers and familial ties run deep.  

Today, “Plaza de los Coches” buzzes with activity as merchants sell fruit piled onto wooden crates, tourists carry shopping bags by the latest designers along with indigenous mochilas, and performers dressed in bright-colored dresses dance along to bachata. This plaza is where the slave market used to take place.  It served as the meeting point of three worlds—European, Indigenous American, and African—as the international trade created a process of ethnic and racial exchange. 

Despite relentless coverage of the Mexican drug war by U.S. news media over the last several years, tourism to Mexico is rebounding strongly. Following three years of sharp decline that began in April 2009, when fears over H1N1 – the virus commonly known as “swine flu” -- effectively shut down most of the nation to foreign travel, visitors arriving in Mexico by air jumped to 22 million in 2011. That number is expected to increase again this year.

Throughout a long career of travel writing and literary journalism, the British writer Jonathan Raban has expertly blended the personal with the public in a tone that’s never vain or self-aggrandizing. From the relative exuberance of young adulthood in Coasting—about a solo sailboat trip around the coast of England—to the mature, battered-by-life expatriate in Passage to Juneau—another sea journey through the Inside Passage and up to Alaska—we gladly follow his spiritual journeys through whatever territory he chooses to take us. In Driving Home, a bountiful new collection of essays, Raban can also lay claim to being an astute observer of the American scene.