It’s not accidental that this small town feels like the Alps, and there is no more visible symbol of this than the Trapp Family Lodge. The Austrian inspired lodge and resort is operated by actual members of the Von Trapp family, whose story was told in the Sound of Music. The main lodge is right out of the Tyrol, with dark woods and balconies lined with bright red and white flower boxes. This theme is carried on by a number of other lodges (Northern Lights Lodge, Innsbruck Inn), and private residences around town.

While you will rarely encounter hikers in Lederhosen, there are outdoor activities of all kinds including miles of trails at the Trapp Lodge and Stowe Mountain Resort Touring Centers, Wiessner Woods and the Long Trail, all of which are free off season (and off-leash dog friendly). There is also a scenic greenway and paved bike path that winds lazily for five and a half miles from the village center, crisscrossing the road and river leading to Mount Mansfield past shops, restaurants and a pub or two. Make sure to stop at the Shed Brewery for a local brew on the patio overlooking the path…if you’re lucky they may have their Weizen beer on tap.

Alongside the pubs, Stowe is dotted with excellent chef-owned restaurants specializing in regional and seasonal fare, often using local ingredients. A few offer Austrian and German dishes, and the most authentic of these is an unassuming (and unadvertised) place called the Alpenhaus, where chatty owner André Noel will greet you, inquire as to whether you have a reservation, and regardless of your answer, lead you to an almost always empty dining room.

Despite the lack of crowds, the dinner menu is authentic and extensive, with everything made extremely well from the highest quality regional products. The dishes include a whole page of Schnitzels, potatoes in pancake, dumpling and soup forms, and quite a few vegetarian options, including one of my all time favorites, Kaesespaetzle, a decadent macaroni and cheese made with top notch New York Emmenthaler. Attached is the Vienna Tea Room serving lunch and decadent pastries that are seriously worthy of Stephensplatz.

The Trapp Lodge also offers an Austrian Tea Room with a variety of Wursts, baked goods and desserts, while their Dining Room provides a more formal setting with a few German inspired dishes including an excellent mushroom strudel in a fresh herb cream sauce with cranberries. In the center of the village, comprised of a couple blocks of storefronts and restaurants is a Swiss restaurant called the Swisspot offering all kinds of wonderful fondue and European dishes.

In all, Stowe offers beautiful alpine scenery, a plethora of outdoor activities no matter what time of year, and for those of us who are in love with Germania, an authentic experience like none other I have seen in the United States.

Known in backpacker circles as a great, cheap place to get your scuba diving certification, Utila offers little more to do, but plenty to enjoy. Like the other Bay Islands, Utila is reached by a short ferry ride from the mainland coastal city of La Ceiba. Unlike the rest of Honduras, English is more widely spoken than Spanish, and the native inhabitants are primarily Garifuna, descendants of Black Caribs, giving it a much different feel than the rest of the country. Tourism has become the primary source of income, and Honduras recently made Utila a tax-free zone to encourage its further development, as well as standardizing scuba diving rates (read this as get there now before it gets overdeveloped).

Arriving at the docks is a mellow affair, with few or no hawkers, so take your time walking the several blocks of accommodations and dive shops before choosing. The main road goes in both directions along the coast as well as going straight ahead to the uninhabited North side of the island, where the road literally just ends at an empty beach. Most people come for the diving, and there are several places that offer free dives, dive courses and accommodation. We stayed at Cross Creek, one of the larger hotels and dive centers, and signed up for the beginning PADI dive certification course.

Like most inexpensive dive centers, Cross Creek is a magnet for traveling young people from around the world, either learning to dive, or master divers plying their trade. We stayed in the clean and sparse hotel, which was a single row of small rooms with fans and small beds, fronted by an open terrace perfect for hanging hammocks and lounging. There is a restaurant and bar on site, which the dive masters are required to work at to earn their keep, but often was not open. The dive course involves classroom training a couple hours each evening, and diving from about 6 to 1 each morning, including quite of bit of prep time getting the gear ready and cleaning it when you return. The remainder of the time we were free to explore the island, although often exhausted from the rigors of diving.

Utila was hot, really hot, probably the hottest place I had ever been to that point. By the end of the first day, I was walking everywhere shirtless and had given up trying to protect against the sand fly bites that now covered my body. The heat is really what creates the slowness of island life though, and you can’t really have one without the other. A siesta is normally taken in the midday, as it’s really too hot to do anything and much of the activity is in the relatively cooler mornings and evenings.

Fresh seafood and simple ingredients are the staples of the food on Utila. Most of the restaurants are single person affairs, ranging from a person’s home to a slightly larger restaurant with several tables. At some of the smaller places, there may only be one item, whatever was fresh and available that day. One of my favorite places like this was Xijing restaurant, with four shaded outside tables, and such tasty dishes as rice and beans, barracuda with fries, or if you time it just right, you can get some sweet rice, made with coconut milk, cinnamon, and sugar in a ten gallon vat over an open flame, and gone within half an hour. Other staples of the island include fried chicken, grouper, tuna and conch. Almost everything is accompanied by salad or fries (papas fritas). Dinner will cost you less than 5 USD with beer. Baked goods are a favorite at breakfast on the island, and if you’re up for a challenge, you have to find Taracina, a woman with a shack in the middle of nowhere offering the best Pan de Coco around, definitely worth seeking out.

Outside of eating, diving and relaxing in your hammock, there is deliciously little to do. You can take the single track dirt road to the Northern side of the island, which is a couple hours walk through quiet palm trees and woods, to an empty beach on the other side. There is a primitive Iguana research station that you can visit, or volunteer at and stay a while, and help protect the spiny tailed Utila Iguana. There are some small cays to the Southwest that can be visited in your spare time. You can hang out with fellow travelers and discover many things about the world. Other than that, enjoy the sunsets, and the lack of excitement. It’s what makes any island special, reminding us of what is really important in life. Be careful though, because you may not want to come back.

Oludeniz means “dead sea” in Turkish. The actual town is named Belcekiz, but if you walk a couple hundred meters down the beach, you reach a peninsula of sand which creates a sheltered lagoon. The still, deep blue water behind this spit of land is the “dead” calm sea.

Campgrounds on the lagoon provide quiet places to relax, with or without the family. Bring your tent or rent a fully equipped caravan or camper trailer. Back in the town of Belcekiz, you can choose from a range of hotels. A clean midrange bungalow in a garden setting with AC, TV, and private bathroom costs around $35 USD a night for two.

Besides the beautiful beach and bay, the reason we came here was to trek along the Lycian Way. It’s a meandering trail that follows the contour of Mediterranean coast of southern Turkey. While the 300 km trail itself was opened 1999 it is comprised of paths that are thousands of years old. Take a month and hike the whole trail to Antalya, or pick smaller sections to explore over a few days.

One of the many highlights along the way is Butterfly Valley. This section of the Likya Yolu (in Turkish) is over 300 meters above the water. Start at Faralya and hike the down steep trail about 45 minutes to reach Butterfly Valley on the coast. Vertical cliffs on both sides of the narrow beach define the valley. Hippy expatriates raise over 40 organic foods and try to escape the real world in this mostly self-sufficient Walden. Hold those ropes tightly when climbing back up to the main trail. This side trip is not for the faint of heart.

On the small plateau at Faralya you will be greeted by the sight of George House, a family run inn with bungalows for travelers to stay and communal meals to bring back that hiking energy. Hasan is the host and son of the owner. He is a kind man and his family create a comfortable environment to relax. This is a popular lodge so make reservations if you can.

Finding a place to stay isn’t always about reservations. In many villages, families welcome trekkers into their private homes. They’ll flag you down along the trail, lead you home, clean up their bedroom, and sleep in the kitchen for the night. Dinner and breakfast are included, which are often delicious, but pale in comparison to the experience. You leave knowing you helped a local family, most of whom are simple farmers living off the land. Roads and electricity have just arrived at some of these villages.

Along the trail are historic towns and ruins like Letoon and Xanthos. Xanthos is a mini version of Ephesus, with an amphitheater where gladiators fought in Roman times. See beautiful tile mosaics and Lycian tombs without jockeying with tourists for a position to take a picture. The Chimaera or eternal flames of Mount Olympos are another popular destination with tree houses overlooking the Mediterranean.

The most stunning part of the Lycian Way are not specific places or ruins but the way you start to get used to life here. It isn’t uncommon to spend a few hours with a stranger walking along the trail as they commute home on foot; you are the one visiting after all. The list of stunning views is endless but it’s the smaller moments that you remember. A meal shared with a family on the side of the road where conversation is a mix of pantomime and a few shared words. Walking through the olive groves seeing the ripe fruits hanging down on the branches will return to your mind with every olive eaten. Or maybe it’s the herds of goats whose ancestors have walked these trails since ancient times.

If you are thinking about hiking the Lycian Way there are a few things you should consider. First, the trail is not an easy walk, there is a lot of up and down. You should be ready for the possibility of camping out, while there are usually places to stay in every village it isn’t as if there is a Comfort Inn. Turkey is a primarily Muslim country so women should dress modestly covering their legs and upper arms. Turkish summers are very hot, and the Lycian Way is best traveled in the spring and fall.

“Transport?” queried a smiling young man on a sidewalk in Ubud, an artsy town in the south-eastern hills. It’s a frequent offer on the streets of nearly every town in Bali. Everyone with a car will offer you a ride for a small price. You may say “no thank you” seven times on Monkey Forest Road in Ubud. But what’s heart-warming is that you will always receive an enthusiastic “Welcome!” in response.

As one of Indonesia’s luxury destinations, Bali is a truly service-oriented society and economy. Away from the resorts on the coast, there is less commercial zeal and more genuine friendliness. Culturally, Bali differs from other Indonesian islands, and indeed is an exception in this predominantly Muslim country with its Hindu-Buddhist history. It is this history that shapes the Balinese approach to life and the Balinese landscape.

Exploring the surroundings of Ubud on bike is perhaps the best way to take in the beautiful landscape, with all its rice terraces, temples, villages and cackling roosters. I signed up for a daytrip with Arung from Bali Moon Group. We began with a morning stop at an eclectic orchard growing everything from mangosteen, papaya and peanuts to cacao, coffee beans and tea leaves. Arung also introduced us to salak, a fruit with a brown, snake-scaled skin that looks like a nut inside and tastes like mixture of apple and pear.

After an invigorating ginger tea we were driven up to the edge of Mount Batur. The mountain bikes were unloaded and we were ready to start off downhill back towards Ubud. Arung had assured us back in the office that it was “all downhill”, but some of us were taken aback by how steep downhill can be. And the road was just a rocky path. One of the English girls on the excursion already wanted to make use of the trailing van service that carried our backpacks, but was persuaded to stick with it since it would get easier.

Our reward, when it began to level out, was a school full of excited children running towards the road to greet us. Six and seven year old boys were exploding with excitement, seemingly overwhelmed by such an unexpected visit from strangers. “Hallo! Hallo!” they squealed, vying to make eye contact with any one of the cyclists and jumping for high-fives. Wide-eyed awe and giggles rippled through the crowd as our group responded to their eagerness. It felt like the Tour de France. A few boys ran with the bikes until they were out-paced or came to the end of the village.

We cycled along rice paddies, many of them flocked by ducks feeding on leftover grains. In the rolling countryside I could hear the lovely sound of bamboo music and wind chimes everywhere. We passed through several more villages, all laid out on a sloping north-south axis and flanked by walled enclosures that are the typical Balinese. Each had an elaborately carved gateway and immediately behind it a wall, the aling-aling, to keep floating evil spirits from sweeping in through the open gateway.

In one village an old man on a moped scooted up beside me to ride tandem and indulge in conversation. His smile was wide, his questions direct. “Where you from? Where you stay? Where you go?” He exudes a pride in managing dialogue with a foreigner and brushes off the cajoling of youngsters. As we neared the open countryside he veered off back into his village and signalled his final sentence with a wave,”The Balinese people welcome you. Good time.”

Everyone, just everyone, genuinely wants to have contact and wish you well. When we came to the end of our cycle we were invited into a family home. The residential compound had sleeping pavilions for extended family members, a fountain in the middle, a temple and a low table for us to share dinner. A typical Indonesian meal is a selection of hot and cold plates, with spicy meats, peanut sauces and sautéed vegetables. Everyone was exhausted from the combination of heat and pedalling, and completely ready to feast on the buffet.

When our host came to collect our finished plates, she asked simply “Happiness?”