Audrey Prest / Staff Photographer

LA GOULETTE, Tunisia - North Africa, frankly, is not a destination that ever beckoned to me. But then friends invited me to join them on a Holland America cruise of the Mediterranean, and the itinerary included a stop in this port adjacent the city of Tunis.

 

Pacik Rin / Associated Press

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - This multiracial nation's tourism tag line is "Malaysia Truly Asia," and true to its slogan, it is home to a unique potpourri of Asian cultures - Malay, Chinese, Indian along with many indigenous groups on Borneo island.

 

Jim Farber / Great Escapes

There is something about a train that sets it apart from all other modes of transportation: that unique combination of laid-back relaxation and visual stimulation as the wheels clatter beneath your feet and the world glides by outside your window.  

Eric Noland / Travel Editor

BONAIRE, Netherlands Antilles - When the promoters of Caribbean tourism are scouting sites for their next travel poster, they sail right on past Bonaire. The little speck in the Netherlands Antilles, just off the coast of Venezuela, cannot deliver the Caribbean's iconic images: vast beaches of powdered-sugar sand, lavish resorts with infinity pools, lush rain forests, pulsating nightclubs.

 

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Stately? Not really.

Plump? Definitely.

Peter Fullam, that's me, came from the staircase on top of the Martello tower at Sandycove bearing camcorder and a map.

I reverently tip-toed around the stone gun platform on top of the tower to take in the view.

 

ABOARD THE SEA VOYAGER -- In a Costa Rican rain forest teeming with wildlife and overrun with vegetation, you'd think I'd be able to call upon my inner monkey to swing into action.