AFAR

“Today, there are nearly 100 active micronations around the world, although the number fluctuates frequently. They engage in diplomacy, have feuds, military uniforms, and self-fashioned leaders with opulent titles, because—well, why not?”

“To most outsiders, Hawai‘i is defined by the lei-draped, aloha-dispensing, honeymooner-welcoming image of the place. There’s no room for another version to emerge.”

“The problem, I realized, is that they were my trips, with Sonya accompanying me—involuntarily. I wanted this trip to be different. I wanted it to be her trip.”

“Inside Give Kids the World Village, where the ice cream is unlimited, nightly tuck-ins from six-foot bunny rabbits are complimentary, and Santa Claus visits every Thursday.”

Still or sparkling or artesian or glacier? Martin Riese, America’s first water sommelier, believes that the more we think about what we drink, the more we’ll care about the planet.

“Lilian Bland was the first woman in the world to design, build, and fly her own plane — before Amelia Earhart had even become a teenager. So why don’t more people know her name?”

Country music became popular in Japan after World War II. Today, Tokyo has a vibrant underground country music scene.

“A former child prodigy travels to Spain to revisit the instrument of her youth—and to learn flamenco guitar from the tocaoras playing to the top of the male-dominated world.”

What do you do when you’re sent to Tokyo with no notice — and no dinner reservations? You learn how to be a person who waits.

A travel essay in which, during a last-minute solo excursion to Lake Atitlan, Jami Attenberg considers the advantages to taking more risks and opening up to the unfamiliar, and the differences between healthy solitude and isolation.