BBC

It was 01:00, raining and just 2C, but Café Luzia was buzzing. The bar in Berlin's trendy Kreuzberg neighbourhood was alive with pre-club revellers wrapped up in big coats talking loudly in front of the graffitied mirrors and surreptitiously lighting cigarettes on open candles.

The city of Belo Horizonte is little known outside Brazil. Despite being a state capital and Brazil's sixth-largest city, Beagá, as locals affectionately call it, doesn't have beautiful beaches or colonial architecture to help put it on the map. Until recently, the city didn't even participate in Brazil's much-anticipated carnival season.

On a blustery December morning, I made my way through the small Swedish town of Torsby near the Norwegian border. I had arrived well past midnight that same morning into a shadowy -13C winter wonderland. Now, snow crystals crunched under my feet as I ventured outside. I didn't so much walk as pulsa, the Swedish word for laboriously plodding through snow. 

Adding spicy chorizo to Chinese dumplings might be unconventional, but according to Boston Magazine, the savoury delight from Mei Mei Dumplings "might just be the best two-bite morsel in town".

Conditori La Glace in the heart of Copenhagen has been crafting cakes and confectionery since 1870. From weddings to silver jubilees, Denmark's oldest patisserie has a tradition of celebrating royal occasions.

One of the most successful shows in recent years, the razor-sharp dark comedy-drama The White Lotus, has been on everyone's minds since season one came out in 2021. 

The radishes grown for La Noche de Rabanos (The Night of the Radishes) in Oaxaca, Mexico, are a world away from the small, thin, red and white sliced radishes that are commonly found alongside lime wedges and bowls of salsa on the tables of most taco restaurants in Mexico.

Located in the heart of Central Asia, Karakalpakstan is the "stan within a stan", an autonomous state of the landlocked Republic of Uzbekistan that borders Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Home to the Indigenous Karakalpak people, the desert province was, until recently, dominated by the Aral Sea – a vast inland lake that has since shrunk to a fraction of its original size.

Located 10 miles off Scotland's north-eastern coast, the Orkney islands are a treasure trove of history, from the famous Neolithic village Skara Brae to the hauntingly beautiful Ring of Brodgar – a spellbinding stone circle that was a site of ritual and ceremony. However, when I visited another of Orkney's famous prehistoric sites, the Maeshowe tomb, my first impression was of an unremarkable green mound surrounded by a ditch.

The image of a celebrity chef dousing their Caprese salad, gazpacho or dolmas with extra-virgin olive oil is incredibly ambitious at the moment, with most Europeans facing record prices in the supermarket aisle. But why have olive oil prices risen so sharply?

The year was 1370, and even the shimmering canals of Venice brought no joy to Francesco Petrarch. Over the last two decades, the world-renowned scholar and poet had travelled the length and breadth of Italy. But with every passing year, he found himself retreating more from social life, seeking to escape the "ignorance" of his age.

There's no waffling about Belgium's baking heritage: waffles have a special place in the country's heart. In fact, the words "Belgium" and "waffle" are as synonymous as "France" and "baguette".

The holiday apartment in Alicante, Spain, has been a fixture of Lori Zaino's in-laws' family since her husband's grandparents purchased it in the 1970s. As a baby, it's where her husband took his first steps; he and Zaino have spent their summer holidays there almost every year for the last 16 years – now with a toddler in tow. Their families may look different each time they go, but each visit, year after year, has delivered everything they wanted from a Mediterranean summer holiday: sun, sand and plenty of beach time.

On a Sunday morning in the French coastal town of Douarnenez, a queue snakes out the door of a boulangerie. This is a common enough sight across the country, where picking up freshly made bread is a daily ritual, but here the people aren't just buying a baguette. Most are also waiting to purchase one of the kouign-amann, dubbed 'the fattiest pastry in Europe', which sit in stacks behind the counter, their laminated pastry glinting as they're picked up and slipped into a greaseproof paper bag.

Anyone interested in food as a window to class could do worse than exploring the options available on the RMS Titanic. The handful of menus that survived the wreck reveal important differences in the way the ocean liner's passengers ate. While third-class passengers dined on rice soup, gruel and cabin biscuits (essentially, a stomach-settling hardtack), first-class diners had a panoply of options.

San Francisco has always been synonymous with creativity. From the Beat movement of the 1950s to the boho period that birthed hippie culture in the 1960s, this hilly city situated at the tip of a peninsula along the Northern California coast is nothing if not progressive – and that creative spirit extends to its rich architectural heritage. 

I'm three dishes deep into the tasting menu at Al Gatto Verde – Massimo Bottura's new "Not Barbecue" restaurant at Casa Maria Luigia, his intensely stylish guesthouse on the outskirts of Modena, Italy – when the cotechino sangue di drago arrives.

While European and Scandinavian destinations frequently find themselves atop world indexes – like the world's healthiest countries, or best countries for raising children – Canada has quietly been marching up the ranks as a country to contend with. That's been especially apparent in the latest most liveable cities index, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which named three of Canada's cities in the top 10, more than any other country represented.

Arriving in Bansko for the first time, you might feel you've been transported back to a simpler age. Storks nest on telegraph poles, gaggles of head-scarved grandmothers gossip beneath apple trees on street corners and Roma on horse-drawn carts whip their steeds along the road. Above the red rooftops, the marble peaks of south-west Bulgaria's Pirin Mountains march over pine-clad slopes, looming over the town and its ski resort like the outstretched wings of a crouching dragon. 

To enter the town of Pomfret, located in the US state of Vermont, is to be instantly struck by its bucolic beauty. From the north, Howe Hill Road winds downhill in a series of gentle curves, each sweep revealing verdant farm fields dotted with sheep, or swaths of forest in which the red and orange autumn leaves cling to boughs. At one home, a tree heavy with apples bends over a meticulously maintained stone wall, its slate top filled with decaying fruit. 

The road less travelled isn't always easy. First of all, you need a road – or at least a track. Then you need the weather to be on your side. And, third, the destination has to be worth it.