Key West is closer to Havana than to Miami, four miles long by two wide, and has spent most of its history being a slightly lawless island that happens to belong to the United States. It briefly declared independence in 1982 as the Conch Republic, surrendered after one minute, and applied for foreign aid. That

San Antonio is the second largest city in Texas and it feels nothing like the first. It’s older, slower, more Mexican, and built around a river rather than a freeway. It’s also the most walkable major city in the state, which in Texas is close to a miracle. Three days covers it properly. Here’s how.

Most people’s idea of Texas is flat, brown and enormous. The Hill Country is none of those things. It’s a limestone plateau west of Austin and north of San Antonio, all rolling hills, spring-fed rivers, oak groves and small towns founded by German settlers in the 1840s. There are vineyards. There are peach orchards. You

Big Sur is 90 miles of Highway 1 between Carmel and San Simeon, cut into a mountainside that falls straight into the Pacific. It has no towns to speak of, one traffic light in the entire stretch, and almost no phone signal. Most people drive it in three hours as part of getting somewhere else,

Washington DC has some of the best museums in the world and they’re free, which is a genuinely remarkable thing. It’s also why most visitors spend three days indoors, come out blinking, and go home having seen a city entirely through its exhibition halls. There’s a real place here with neighbourhoods, parks, markets and a