Getting the flavor of...

The world’s waterfall capital

If you pass through Hamilton, Ontario, on the wrong highway, “you might think it’s a city of smokestacks, and miss its substance,” said Brandon Withrow in The Daily Beast. At heart, it’s a city of waterfalls—more than 150 by one count. And if you fit it in while visiting nearby Toronto or Niagara Falls, you’ll find the 570,000 residents unusually friendly and their postindustrial Lake Ontario port a place that’s rich in “lush outdoor spaces, posh nightspots, and colorful dive bars.” Because the 650-mile Niagara Escarpment bisects downtown, “you’re never that far from trails or waterfalls.” Just outside of the city, I enjoyed a short hike from 135-foot Tew Falls to Dundas Peak, which overlooks Hamilton’s leafy skyline. The Royal Botanical Gardens, with its 300 cultivated acres, was another pleasant surprise. Local hotels are nothing special, but the food is. Brunch at Verlan, a creperie, is “enough to make you want to move to Hamilton.” And breakfast at Cafe Baffico is equally memorable. “I now dream about their Canadian Maple and Honey Dipper doughnuts.”

New York’s true melting pot

Though many visitors to New York never leave Manhattan, “there’s no better place than Jackson Heights to feel the city’s DNA,” said Sebastian Modak in BBC.com. The Queens neighborhood, located a 40-minute subway ride from Times Square, is “one of the most diverse places on Earth,” home to 180,000 people and 160 languages. Since moving to the city, I’ve visited many times to feel its energy. The 7 train stops at Roosevelt Avenue, “a bustling maelstrom of cultural exchange” where “phone repair shops run by Tibetans abut Latin American bakeries churning out pillowy almojábanas.” For good reason, many day-trippers arrive in Jackson Heights hungry. There’s an overwhelming number of restaurants and food carts, with highlights including Juquilia (for Mexican), Samudra (South Indian), Mister Cangrejo (Colombian), and Fuska House (Bangladeshi).

Every time I spend a day in Jackson Heights, “I learn a little bit more about the world. It’s intimidating at first—so many languages, so much for sale—but lock into the frenetic rhythm of the place and it becomes hypnotic.”