England
St Ives
Light so luminous it lured a century of painters to this harbour of turquoise shallows.
The light arrives off the Atlantic and bounces between whitewashed cottages and turquoise water with an intensity that made St Ives a magnet for artists from the 1880s onwards. It remains a working Cornish fishing town that happens to hold one of the finest concentrations of art in Britain.
Tate St Ives, perched above Porthmeor Beach, sets modern art against the seascape that inspired it, and Barbara Hepworth's sculpture garden — preserved as she left it at her death in 1975 — waits a short walk through the narrow lanes. The harbour still works its crabbers and mackerel boats, and the town opens to four distinct beaches: Porthmeor for surf, Porthminster for sheltered swimming, the Harbour Beach for families, Bamaluz for those who prefer quiet — there is nearly always one out of the wind. The branch railway running along the coast from St Erth is regularly voted the finest coastal train ride in England, and the artists' net-loft studios still line the streets where Hepworth and Ben Nicholson worked the light.
Solo
The artists came here alone to work — follow their lead with a morning in the Hepworth garden, an afternoon on Porthmeor with a book, and the Atlantic for company.
Couple
St Ives distils the Cornish coast into a single afternoon: gallery, beach, seafood, sunset. Walk the Island peninsula at dusk and the light does things no painting quite captures.
Family
Four beaches in walking distance means one is always sheltered — combine the Tate's family workshops with crabbing off the harbour wall and an ice cream up Fore Street.
- The light drew Hepworth, Nicholson and a colony whose studios still line the harbour.
- Porthmeor breaks clean for surfers beneath the Tate on its headland.
- Whitewashed lanes open suddenly to water that looks Mediterranean and tastes Atlantic.
- Galleries and seafood kitchens share the same converted net lofts.
Crab sandwiches on Porthminster Beach, sand between your toes and gulls overhead.
Mackerel fresh off the boat at a harbourside kitchen.
Pamukkale
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Thermal water spills down white travertine terraces like a frozen waterfall you can wade through.
Lake Van
Turkey
A vast soda sea where you float without trying, ringed by snow-capped volcanoes.
Las Baulas Marine Park
Costa Rica
A turtle without a hard shell hauls ashore in darkness, her lineage 100 million years old.
Stratford-upon-Avon
England
Half-timbered streets where Shakespeare was born and the swans own the river.
Windsor
England
Guards change at a working royal castle while the King's swans patrol the Thames.
Ely
England
A lantern tower floating above the fens like a ship's mast on flat farmland.
Lavenham
England
Crooked medieval timber frames leaning at angles that defy both gravity and planning law.