Hagia Sophia is old. Very old. The building that currently stands on the first of Istanbul's famous seven hills dates back almost 1,500 years and has had a remarkable and colorful history. It's also a beautiful place to visit.
Central America is where American school buses go to retire. In the balmy tropical climes of places like Guatemala and Honduras, they're given a new, colorful lease on life.
Tips and gear recommendations if you're going to climb Kilimanjaro for the first time. Includes suggestions for choosing a guide, mountain etiquette, and what to expect.
The rugged, mountainous terrain of northern Laos is beautiful. While well off the beaten track and not really on the road to anywhere else, Luang Namtha and Oudomxai provinces are well worth seeing.
That the Lemaire Channel is nicknamed "Kodak Gap" is a pretty good indication that it's reliably scenic. When the conditions are right, it's spectacular.
U Bein Bridge has become one of Myanmar's iconic landmarks. Spanning 3/4 of a mile, the foot bridge is reputed to be the longest teak bridge in the world.
It's the jail at the end of the world. It would have been very cold, very drafty, and, even compared to the low bar set by late-19th-century prisons, altogether rather unpleasant. But if you could sneak to a window, what a view!
It might not be for the vertigo-challenged, but getting to the top of the Acropolis at Ek Balam is definitely worth the effort. It is, quite literally, a view fit for a king.
Heavy snow shuts down Washington DC, but it also transforms the National Mall, its monuments, and other Washington landmarks like the White House into a winter wonderland.
Covered from head to toe with thick white dust, crouching low on their launches, the young men and boys use angle grinders to carve statues of the Buddha out of solid blocks of white marble.
In Istanbul, new is relative. The New Mosque might be newer than the Blue Mosque or Hagia Sophia, but having been completed in 1665 it is historic in its own right. And it's also stunningly beautiful.
You don't have to be a fan of Downton Abbey to appreciate the beauty of Highclere Castle sitting on a stately hill in the English countryside of Hampshire about two hours west of London.
Constructed entirely of teak, the Bagaya Monastery (Bagaya Kyaung) in the old royal capital of Amarapura has fared much better from the region's earthquakes than its stone neighbors.
I took this photo last spring during the very brief blooming of the tulip magnolias (or saucer magnolias) in Washington DC. They're one of the spring's first dramatic blooming varieties in the DC area, usually beating the more famous cherry blossoms by a couple of weeks.
One of the most famous attractions at Kronborg Castle, Holger the Dane sits sleeping in the tunnels below the castle. Legend has it he will awaken when his country needs him.
Known as Hamlet's Castle because Shakespeare's play was set there, Kronborg Castle is a 16th-century castle on a strategic peninsula on the Sound, just north of Copenhagen.
Formerly known as the Spitsbergen Airship Museum, Longyearbyen's North Pole Expedition focuses on several attempts around the beginning of the 20th century to reach the North Pole by air.
The website of the luxury hotel chain Four Seasons is using one of my photos from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in a post on things to do in Washington DC with kids.
The Rough Guides travel guidebook company is using one of my photos from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in a feature article on their website on 20 places to get utterly lost.
Vogue.com used on my photos of the impressive Brussels Stock Exchange building, which has ornamentation by August Rodin, in a feature on traveling in Rodin's footsteps to mark the centenary of Rodin's death.
Originally designed to house the national theater, the Palacio de Bellas Artes has become a cultural hub in arguably the most beautiful building in Mexico City.
