Quiet Wonder
Beautiful rather than thrilling.
- The world's most beautiful libraries — Reading rooms worth flying for — Dublin, Prague, Porto — with a bookshop crawl in each city. (11 days, Ireland to Portugal)
- Gardens and glasshouses — Kew, Keukenhof and the Eden Project, timed for the fortnight everything is actually in bloom. (8 days, England & Holland)
- Storybook towns — The villages that look drawn rather than built, and the bakeries that make the walking worth it. (9 days, Bavaria & Alsace)
- Bookshops of New England — A mill full of secondhand books, a village store with a woodstove, and the Athenaeum to finish. (6 days, Massachusetts & Vermont)
- Gardens of the mid-Atlantic — Longwood's fountains, Chanticleer's follies and Winterthur's woods, all within half an hour of each other. (5 days, Brandywine Valley)
- Desert gardens and cacti — Walk among towering saguaros and see thousands of desert plants lit up in Phoenix and Tucson. (6 days, Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona)
- Castles of the Loire Valley — Step into real-life fairy tales at sprawling estates with maze-like gardens. Visit the spectacular Château de Chambord. (6 days, Loire Valley, France)