Canada
The Thousand Islands
Castles, cottages and channels scatter through a granite archipelago where the St Lawrence widens.
The river divides around pink granite crowned with pines and porches. A castle rises from one island as if the Gilded Age had never ended.
The Thousand Islands turn the St Lawrence into an archipelago of summer worlds, from Boldt Castle's spectacle to islets barely wider than their boathouses. Cruises and kayaks thread the channels along the river's two national shores. The region even gave its name to a dressing, first served at fishing-guide shore dinners on these waters.
Couple
A castle cruise and a quiet channel kayak make two different rivers in one day.
Family
Boat tours put children among the islands and boathouses without any effort spent.
- Granite islands by the thousand carry castles, cottages and boathouses down the river.
- Cruises and kayaks read the archipelago at completely different scales.
- The famous dressing began at fishing-guide shore dinners on these waters.
Thousand Island dressing began here: created by a fishing guide's wife for shore dinners, named by an actress, carried to the Waldorf.
At Ivy Lea on the St Lawrence bank, The Ivy cooks from local farmers' produce, cheeses and meat.
North Berwick
Scotland
A volcanic rock towers from the Firth, white-coated with a hundred thousand screaming gannets.
Húsavík
Iceland
Wooden sailing ships chasing the exhales of blue whales in a sapphire northern bay.
Amanohashidate
Japan
A pine-covered sandbar that becomes a bridge to heaven when you look at it upside down.
Holkham Bay
England
A mile-wide crescent of sand where the sea withdraws beyond sight.
Cathedral Grove
Canada
Douglas firs eight centuries old stand within steps of the island highway.
Val-Jalbert Ghost Town
Canada
A seventy-metre waterfall thunders over a mill village stopped in 1927 and carefully woken again.
Lake Louise
Canada
A turquoise lake ends at a glacier wall, with century-old teahouses hidden up its trails.
Clayoquot Sound
Canada
Whales work island channels below forest that has never been cut.