With good reason, visitors to Croatia flock to and concentrate on its gorgeous Adriatic coast and such unmistakable cities as Split and Dubrovnik. But there’s more to this country than its enviable coastline, verdant islands, and pristine beaches. A simple detour east brought me to Zagreb, one of the most underrated capitals in Europe and one of its most surprising, filled with great (and uncrowded) restaurants, fun markets, tons of museums, and striking architecture. Read about the top five buildings in Zagreb >
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Caribbean Dreamin’
My first trip to the Caribbean was to St. Martin, which also included a high-speed catamaran to St. Barts and a slow ferry with airplane passenger seats to Anguilla. My second was aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship that called at half a dozen islands. Since then, I’ve returned to the Caribbean multiple times, always to different islands, each with its own personality and vibe, all with outstanding beaches, friendly locals, terrific food, and interesting sights. It remains my go-to vacation spot when I want a vacation away from my frenetic trips elsewhere. Read about the top five Caribbean islands >
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Oklahoma’s Churches Are More Than OK
Adolf Hitler in stained glass. Dogs attending services. An Art Deco beauty co-designed by a female architect way back in 1929. A collateral victim of one of the worst terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. An abbey church on a now defunct college campus. Visiting churches in Oklahoma proved to be a highly unusual experience. More than just beautiful structures, these houses of worship are packed with some truly fascinating stories. Read about the top five churches in Oklahoma >
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Scotland’s Museums Are True Treasures, Inside and Out
Viking chess pieces. A 62-page book on how to be safe from air raids. One of the world’s top five clocks and one of the top five Crucifixions (thank you, Salvador Dalí). A parade of important historical figures from the fifth century on. I found all of them, and so much more, in the museums in Scotland, perfect refuges when mercurial weather drives you inside (after you’ve taken a good look at their gorgeous outsides). Read about the top five museums in Scotland >
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Centuries of Copenhagen’s Best Buildings
Copenhagen, Denmark, has a certain coziness about it. That intangible feeling is called hygge, and I could sense it in the general vibe of the city as well as in many of the places I visited. Even in the grandest buildings, some of which are hundreds of years old, somehow there is still, by and large, a sense of a human scale. Read about the top five buildings in Copenhagen >
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Norway’s Captivating Churches
Arguably the most iconic example of Norwegian architecture (and the one that always amazes me) is the stave church, a medieval wooden Christian church building constructed between 1150 and 1350 that used to be prevalent throughout Norway, with numbers estimated to be around 2,000. Sadly, fewer than 30 have survived. Since then, new and different—and quite beautiful—styles have taken their rightful place in the country’s ecclesiastical architectural inventory. Read about the top five churches in Norway >
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Fired Up
On a cold evening in late October in Granville, Ohio, I entered my accommodation, the Granville Inn, where the flames in the lobby fireplace greeted me and started to thaw me out, exorcising the chill from my body. With the northern half of the globe now ensconced in the winter season, I’m warmed by that memory. Amid all the snow and ice and freezing temperatures, one of the most welcome sights is a fire—well, a contained fire, such as in a fireplace, particularly a wood-burning fireplace, where you can become mesmerized by the dancing flames and the snap, crackle, and pop of the logs as they burn. Even without Christmas stockings that were hung there with care, fireplaces always provide a warm welcome. Read about the top five fireplaces >
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Great Churches in the Great Lakes State
By some estimates, there are approximately 12,000 churches in Michigan. Declining attendance in these churches, no matter what the faith, means that many have closed permanently, and many more are headed in that direction, with the very real possibility of being razed. That would be a shame, because these are some very fine buildings that enhance the beauty of cities and towns all around the Great Lakes State. Read about the top five churches in Michigan >
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The Visual Delights of Malta’s Churches
Estimates of Malta’s Catholic population range from 80% to 98%. Even at that lower figure, this is a country with a lot of Catholics. And it has spectacular churches to support their practice. No matter what city I went to, there was always a gorgeous church, or many of them, depending on the size of the city. Valletta, the capital, alone has 28 churches, in a city that you can easily walk from end to end in under an hour. But even smaller cities seem to have more than enough to tend to the religious needs of a total national population of just over half a million. Read about the top five churches in Malta >
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Dublin’s Buildings of Distinction
I began my three-week trip to Ireland, naturally enough, in Dublin, before renting a car and heading out to see the rest of the Emerald Isle. Here in the Irish capital, I caught an Oscar Wilde play, indulged in pints of Guinness, touched a real skeleton for luck, and came across three of the country’s best churches, one of the world’s best baptismal fonts, and one of the world’s most atmospheric restaurants. All of the latter were housed in some of the city’s finest structures that go back centuries and centuries and are just as beautiful today as they were then. Read about the top five buildings in Dublin >
Stephen Travels 