The man sitting next to me on the flight to Madrid from Tenerife was reading an e-book. I asked him how he liked it and he said fine, that it had been a recent gift. He smiled at the book in my hands. E-books are suddenly everywhere; real books just weigh you down. Everyone says so.

When movie locations were being scouted for The Help, Greenwood, Miss., was the obvious choice.
“Greenwood still looks like it did in 1963,” says guide Paige Hunt, “whereas Jackson – where the book takes place –has changed. That’s Skeeter’s place [the writer played by actor Emma Stone],” Hunt announces, pointing out a white-columned house familiar to the fans of the smash-hit film.

Seven years ago, when I first visited Buenos Aires, a single word – “smitten”– written on a wall expressed everything I felt about this absurdly beautiful city, where faces seemed Southern European, tango music was in the air, and steak was on the menu. I vowed to return.

Growing up in the Toronto burbs, I always wanted to live “downtown,” and now I do—in historic St Lawrence/Old Downtown. The Victorians invented the holiday style that we love and celebrate today, and St. Lawrence is the hippest of Victorian ‘hoods, ideal for a winter walkabout.

South African writer Damon Galgut, a Man Booker Prize shortlist favourite (The Good Doctor, In a Strange Room), delves into the private life of novelist and critic Edward Morgan Forster (Room with a View; Howards End) in this intimate tale about Forster’s travels in India, Egypt, and England.

A sailor and a nurse are locked in a clinch in broad daylight on US41 by the sparkling waters of Sarasota Bay. Drivers are slowing down for a closer look at the V-J Day lovers, who stand eight metres tall and are cast in aluminum. "Back by popular demand," this larger-than-life American hit from Sarasota's 2005 Season of Sculpture speaks volumes about the town they call Circus City.

When we tell friends we’re travelling to Borneo—the large Southeast Asian island divided among the countries of Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia—inevitably there are questions. Is it dangerous? Are there headhunters? No and
no. We’re going to visit Canadian friends who run a sustainable tourism business, and we want to see the legendary red-haired apes, the orangutans.

Some come for the bears, some for the belugas, others for the beaded moccasins. In summer, most come late, travelling by train from Winnipeg (1,700 kilometres away), over tundra that softens in the heat — “I’m melting!” screams that wicked witch of the tundra — so that the train must proceed ever more slowly. Slow is good: other choices include being pitched off the tracks.

It’s a bright afternoon, and I’m nursing a warm cappuccino at a café in Old Leipzig’s pedestrian-friendly heart. In this quiet setting, it’s hard to believe that just across the plaza, in St. Nicholas Church, a movement began 25 years ago that would bring German communism to its knees.

“It’s so modern!” exclaimed a friend after her first trip to Bangkok. Initial impressions of Thailand’s capital, with its sprawling population of seven million, shopping malls and famous traffic congestion can come as a shock to those expecting the unknowable East.