Peter Neville-Hadley

The sleek and slightly sci-fi Tobu Spacia X train, with its streamlined nose and large, hexagonal windows, ambles through the Tokyo suburbs and a tangle of other railway lines before eventually picking up a little speed. Heading into Japan’s neat countryside, it slips between tree-covered hills with grids of small, orderly paddies lapping their bases.

This is no bullet train, but its comfortable carriages, in parts more like a living room on wheels than a conventional train, still reach the shrine-covered mountain town of Nikko, 150km to the north, in under two hours.

Turn from bustling Marktgraben into pedestrianised Herzog-Friedrich-Straße, lined with medieval mansions in pastel colours and hung with elaborate signs advertising ancient businesses, and your eye will be caught by a patch of brilliance in the distance, which brightens further as you approach the heart of Innsbruck’s Altstadt, or Old Town.

There's a great deal more to Innsbruck than just skiing, and available year-round.

It is difficult not to fall in love with the young Sibylle von Jülich-Kleve-Berg, as painted by Europe’s premier portraitist at the time of her wedding, in 1526. A young, grey-eyed, pale-skinned beauty with tumbling red tresses, she directs her level gaze off to one side, as if there were something far more ...

In 1845, theologian John William Burgon wrote one of the most quoted lines in English poetry: “Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime, a rose-red city half as old as time.”

Petra, his only poem, was written in homage to the well-hidden labyrinth of rock-cut tombs, temples and monuments that was the capital of the 3rd century BC-1st century AD Nabataean kingdom, and whose remains lie in modern-day Jordan.

But only 500km south, across the border with Saudi Arabia, there's a match for Petra. Here, relatively undiscovered Hegra, stands at a point where trade routes met.

In Austria, the arrival of the New Year is always celebrated to the sounds of Strauss, and in particular the great swirling tune that has become the country’s unofficial national anthem – Johann Strauss II’s An der schönen blauen Donau, or The Blue Danube waltz.

And in 2025 the band will play on as the country spends all year celebrating the 200th anniversary of Johann II’s birth. In addition to the many glamorous balls held every year until late February, and where dancing to Strauss is guaranteed, there will be 65 Strauss-related performances and three exhibitions at 71 locations.

The visit to Longzhou begins unpromisingly.
Why, the policeman at a checkpoint on the edge of the city wants to know, am I going to a little-known town two hours’ drive southwest of the Guangxi provincial capital of Nanning.
“Lüyou,” I say. Tourism.
“Mei you shenme hao wan,” he objects. There’s nothing interesting there.

‘I’m the worst daughter ever,” says Delia Hou over the music of a tango orchestra. The lissome 35-year-old Taiwanese-American quotes her parents: “You graduated once and you’re still not married. You graduated twice and you’re still not married.”

Ms. Hou has degrees in astrophysics and law, but here in a milonga, or tango-dancing club, they are forgotten. She and other Asian milongueras speak of the dance in almost metaphysical terms.

“Tango is about what you really genuinely want but you don’t even dare to admit,” says Ms. Hou. “Here you are, you don’t have a serious respectable job, you’re spending your evenings pressing your body against strange men. It’s not really typically Asian behavior.”

About Destinations of a Lifetime
NatGeo takes you on a photographic tour of the world’s most spectacular destinations, inspiring tangible ideas for your next trip. Travel to hundreds of the most breathtaking locales—both natural and man-made—illustrated with vivid images taken by the organization’s world-class photographers. These images, coupled with evocative text, feature a plethora of visual wonders: ancient monoliths, scenic islands, stunning artwork, electric cityscapes, white-sand seas...

Visitors to Antarctica have to follow increasingly strict rules to safeguard the wildlife, but travellers can still explore the frozen continent in style

Post Magazine takes a trip on the Seabourn Pursuit, a luxury cruiser equipped with Zodiac inflatables and two submersibles

"The whole purpose of CERN has always been, 'What are the building blocks of the universe? What are the Lego bricks that you can no longer break any more?'" says Goldfarb.

So by the end of my visit am I going to understand the origins and the meaning of the universe?

"Oh yes," says particle physicist Steven Goldfarb, cheerfully. "We can get that done in the first five minutes."

The seaside community of Aranya, about 2.5 hours from Beijing by high-speed rail, is luring in young Chinese visitors with its minimalistic design and otherworldly serenity. The “lie flat” youth in China, who’ve rejected the rat race like those “quiet quitting” in the U.S., come for space, slowness, and spirituality reflected in structures that sometimes merge with sand and sea.

As ever more European cities complain that tourist numbers have grown to the point of making ordinary life impossible, it’s long past time to abandon checklist tourism, “must sees”, and the look-at-me locations infinitely repeated on Instagram.

Even the most popular cities have corners of interest that see few visitors, and museums and other places of historical relevance in which you may find yourself perusing the displays alone, which, these days, is true luxury. Here are five crowd-free museu...

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Weimar became Germany’s cultural heart and, today, Goethe’s rambling house-museum, maintained much as it was at his death in 1832, and where he received many of Europe’s artists and intellectuals, vies with the Bauhaus Museum to be the city’s biggest attraction.